Free Republic

A new pope has been named, and for Villanova University and Philadelphia, the pope might be a familiar face and name. Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, is a class of 1977 Villanova University graduate, earning his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. The new pope, a 69-year-old Augustinian friar, was one of the 21 new cardinals selected by Pope Francis. According to Villanova University, Pope Leo XIV was born in Chicago, Illinois, and joined the Order of St. Augustine in 1977. Following his undergraduate studies at Villanova, Pope Leo XIV earned a Master of Divinity degree...

New research from writers and researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid shows that Leon Panetta, the CIA director being considered on Thursday for the position of Secretary of Defense, had a previously undisclosed personal and friendly relationship with Hugh DeLacy, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA. DeLacy visited such countries as China and Nicaragua and was himself a personal contact of identified Soviet spies Solomon Adler and Frank Coe and accused spy John Stewart Service. Panetta spoke at DeLacy’s memorial service, directed a series of letters to him personally as “Dear Hugh,” and placed a tribute to him...

Since scientists first began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers. Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials...

"The ship was in the midst of a southbound transit through the canal when it suffered the casualty, Under orders from U.S. 3rd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Nora Tyson, Zumwalt is now stopped for repairs at the former U.S. Naval Station Rodman, he said." Hutchison Whampoa Limited controls former U.S. Naval Station Rodman.

The late Jimmy Carter didn’t come up spontaneously with the idea of giving away the Panama Canal, which America spent blood and gold on and which is an essential part of its national security. Instead, he had Robert A. Pastor, a communist, whispering in his ear. A globalist who desired to merge incrementally the U.S., Mexico, and Canada into a “North American Union” (NAU) along the model of the European Union, Pastor’s intellectual development was rooted in Marxism. Pastor played an instrumental role in the Carter administration’s decision to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. ... In what appears to...

The Democratic Party, in its infinite wisdom—or perhaps simply its knack for unaccountable government spending—has managed to turn the Justice Department into a highly effective money laundering operation for its favorite interest groups. This is not some new caper, by the way; it's a practice perfected under the Obama-Biden regime, and it has reached grotesque proportions since Biden's triumphant (or rather, cognitively uncertain) return to the Oval Office. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the capable stewardship of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, needs to tackle this glaring example of unchecked executive abuse. To put it plainly, these "settlements"...

In a semi-stealth promotion, a major Barack Obama fundraiser who served as a defense lawyer for a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist is scheduled to become the third-highest ranking Department of Justice executive. California-based attorney Tony West was named Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, making him the No. 3 man at the Justice Department. Here you have a man linked to a terrorist group who is now a top Justice Department official. It smacks of corruption," said political strategist and attorney Michael Baker. West assisted candidate Obama in raising tens of millions of dollars as a co-chairman for Senator Obama's...

On this date in 1985, the onetime General Secretary of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was suddenly executed for subversion. Though the date here says 1985, Munir was actually a very late casualty of the 1960s: specifically, the murky attempted “coup” of 1965 whose authorship the army quickly ascribed to the Communists and on that doubtful basis unleashed a ferocious bloodletting in 1965-66.* Along with the hundreds of thousands of leftists slaughtered — many in Muslim sectarian violence, as distinct from being specifically hunted down by the army — some 200,000 wound up in prison. According to a U.S. Department...

Then head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, he invented a new form of what 19th-early 20th centuries Tammany boss George Washington Plunkett famously called “Honest Graft.” It was simple. Until 1977, Congress had to approve any settlement of a civil suit against the Federal government over $100,000. This preserved the Constitutional requirement that Congress control the government’s purse. But in that year, seeking relief from the burgeoning volume of suits to review, Congress removed the cap, handing the Justice Department a permanent blank check to pay settlements unilaterally, in any amount, out of an account known as the Judgment...

Consumer prices have soared 20.2 percent since Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden took office 42 months ago, according to the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index (CPI). Americans continue to feel the strain of runaway inflation. That is the worst inflation record for any president since Jimmy Carter. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have spent the last three and a half years promoting the same ideas and touting the same economic programs. That’s now seen as a burden for Harris as she tries to distance herself from Biden’s unpopular programs and economy.

You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under 600 pages on an arrogant and abrasive egotist whose highest sustained rank in the State Department was that of a lowly assistant secretary? The answer is unabashedly yes. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable, if deeply flawed, statesman whose career was intimately intertwined with the 50 years of American decline from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Nearly all biographies have long, boring stretches you want to skip. This one has none. The access to Richard Holbrooke’s papers and to the...

Produced by longtime collaborator Gary Katz, the album went on to be the band’s most successful, and their first platinum disc.The recordings of Steely Dan are so superbly crafted that it’s no surprise they have won honors for their studio engineering as well as their superior musicianship. The band’s magnificent Aja album, released on September 23, 1977, went on to win a Grammy Award the following February 23. It was for Best Engineered Recording, Non Classical, for Al Schmitt, Bill Schnee, Elliot Scheiner, and Roger Nichols. This masterwork, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003, came...

Eight-year-old Phung Xuan Vu and his 10-year-old brother were responsible for fetching food for their family, which was in the constant grip of hunger. They were living in Vietnam in the 1980, so this required ration cards. One of the family's most important possessions was a booklet of vouchers for food. As the older child, Vu's brother took care of the booklet, knowing that if he lost it, the family would have nothing to eat. The vouchers inside were printed on waxy yellow tissue paper. They meant the difference between going hungry and having something to eat, although it was...

A canal was drained in Broad Ripple Village this week with ties to one of the most bizarre stories in Indianapolis history. It's the story of an eccentric millionaire, multiple massive heists, murder and lost riches that span from here to the Arizona desert. It's the story of Indy grocery heiress Marjorie Jackson, who kept more than $9 million hidden in her home on Spring Mill Road until she was murdered in one of the biggest residential burglary heists in U.S. history.

1. History of Their Activities The Japanese Red Army (JRA) is an international terrorist organization that was established by a faction of an extremist group who committed felonious crimes, such as attacks on police stations, bank raids, and the like in Japan with the objective of revolutionizing the country based on Marxist-Leninist ideology, and to ultimately unify the world under communism. It was formed abroad after the members fled from Japan in search of a base for their revolutionary activities while advocating the "Plan to Construct International Bases." Through contact with the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" ,...

Footage of High School students attending Andover High School in Bloomfield, Michigan.

There’s a reason why “may you live in interesting times” is a curse. The eras we call a “Terror” — Stalin’s Russia, Robespierre‘s France, Pol Pot’s Cambodia — are pretty interesting. Ethiopia in the mid-1970’s was one of the most interesting places in the world. After the Derg, a shadowy committee of leftist officers, toppled the monarchy in 1974, factional violence between Ethiopia’s two main Marxist parties soon came to the fore. Long story short, All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) backed the Derg — while its rival the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) denounced it as fascistic. And when Mengistu assumed...

Rare Video: Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy explains How Television Works 1977 vintage tech electronics CRT Spock

It's time to expose the Black Lives Matter [BLM] movement for what it is: a racist, violent hate group that promotes the execution of police officers. The evidence is in their rhetoric and written on their shirts. If you take a look at the Black Lives Matter Twitter feed, you'll find photos of activists wearing shirts that say, "Assata Taught Me."  Looks like it's going down in Cleveland. Follow @FEARLESSnFREE and @LotusLightSage for more details pic.twitter.com/wVe6oKF7jn— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) August 27, 2015 They're referring to infamous cop killer Assata Shakur, otherwise known as Joanne Chesimard, who shot and killed a...

In 1977 a flu broke out in northeast China which eventually spread to Russia and then around the world. It eventually took the lives of approximately 700,000 people around the world most of whom were young. It came to be known as the “Russian flu” because Russia was the first country to report it to the WHO. Scientists who examined its DNA concluded it was nearly identical to a previous strain of the flu virus which had caused an outbreak between 1949 and 1950. In nature, the flu doesn’t remain unchanged for 27 years as it circulates. So the fact...