Free Republic

Pajamas Media | Friday, December 12, 2008 The funeral for Shirwa Ahmed last week in Burnsville, Minnesota, punctuated a growing national security threat metastasizing inside the U.S. — one Homeland Security and law enforcement authorities have quickly taken note of. Ahmed, who killed himself in a suicide bombing attack in Somalia in October, is just one of up to 40 men from the Twin Cities area who have disappeared and are feared to have returned to their homeland for training with the al-Shabaab terrorist group to wage jihad. The FBI is investigating similar disappearances in other major Somali communities in...

Most of Antarctica has about 2 1/2 miles of ice covering it, and that cold, white wasteland is what most people picture when they think of the South Pole. But a series of dry valleys in Antarctica, about 4,000 kilometers square, have no ice on them at all. The moisture is sucked from the dry valleys by a rain shadow effect — winds rushing over them at speeds up to 200/mph — leaving a bizarre and fascinating landscape, which looks more like Mars than the rest of our planet...

The Conservative movement of today basically consists of individuals with various personal beliefs (both religious and ideological), but conservatism in general sadly rejects outright the absolute authority of the Bible, the Holy Word of Almighty God. It is a “bestselling” book widely reverenced, but too many Conservatives reject its Divine authority and preeminence. These “Subjective Conservatives” cannot see out of this box called time, and thus they are oblivious to the realities of Holy Scripture truth. This includes the coming establishment of the literal Kingdom of Almighty God on earth, as well as their own eternity destiny (John 3:3-5; Romans...

Right-Wing Flame War! By JONATHAN DEE Published: January 21, 2010 Charles Johnson has been writing a blog for almost as long as the word “blog” has existed. A bearish, gentle-voiced, ponytailed man who for three decades enjoyed a successful career as a jazz guitarist accompanying the likes of Al Jarreau and Stanley Clarke, Johnson has always had a geek’s penchant for self-education, and in that spirit he cultivated a side interest, and ultimately an expertise, in writing computer code. His Web log, which he named “Little Green Footballs” (a private joke whose derivation he has always refused to divulge), was...

SNIPPET: "Say hi to Abu Zubair's online home away from home. The man who's online writings were so convincing, that he changed Youssef al-Khattab's life. Or, if you want, just call him what I do: Hassan Khalid. How's Maryland, Hassan? Oh, wait, you mean you're NOT in London? ;-) In any event, he loves Osama bin Laden and thinks you should too."

It’s going to fail. Here’s why it’s going to fail…

Today's Gospel : John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him...read more...

God’s Son did not disdain to become a baby. Although with the passing of the years he moved from infancy to maturity, and although with the triumph of his passion and resurrection all the actions of humility which he undertook for us were finished, still today’s festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary. In adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life, for the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday...

Simeon's prayer is a hallmark of the Catholic Church's night prayers (compline). In it is the assurance that we have seen our salvation and if we were to pass in the night it would be well. read more...

VATICAN CITY – A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday. The 82-year-old pope quickly got up and was unhurt, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini. Footage aired on Italy's RAI state TV showed a woman dressed in a red, hooded sweat shirt vaulting over the wooden barriers and rushing toward the pope before being swarmed by bodyguards. Read more.

"The loving providence of God determined that in the last days he would aid the world, set on its course to destruction. He decreed that all nations should be saved in Christ..." read more...

-excerpt- Mir Hossein Mousavi today released a new statement denouncing the regime’s brutal tactics against the Green Movement ... -excerpt- While the statement is quite similar to other statements he has released in the past, several points on closer inspection stand out. -excerpt- ... Mousavi for the first time actually discounts his own influence and that of Mehdi Karroubi. He admits that even though people asked him to call for protests or at least lend his support, he did not do so in the case of Ashura. He also acknowledges the fact that people came out without him calling them...

As some Houston leaders called on Sunday for measures to help guard against future terrorist attacks, others questioned why the Nigerian man charged with trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit spent time last year in Houston. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is believed to have traveled to Houston in 2008, but no details of the trip were available Sunday. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston declined to discuss any connection Abdulmutallab might have to the city, saying details of the investigation remain classified. U.S. government officials did confirm that they are looking into his travel itinerary, but the FBI...

I know…technically the decade doesn’t end until next year. Whatever. The first 10 years of the 20th Century, as it was, was a great era for great movies. In my mind, we saw a true resurgence of innovation and imagination…with some routine Hollywood nonsense thrown in. Now, I took some editorial leeway on some of these, as you will see. For what it is worth, here is my top 10 list:

Hacked emails discussed manipulating data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures Calls for an independent inquiry into what is being dubbed "Climategate" are growing as the foundation for man-made global warming implodes following the release of emails which prove researchers colluded to manipulate data in order to "hide the decline" in global temperatures.

Holder wants gun registration? So says the Law Enforcement Alliance of America: Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement. A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement. Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them. So, he doesn’t want due process protections for people who want to own guns. Even though...

This is the comment left at our blog:As John F. Kennedy once said, "Where there's smoke, look for a smoke-making machine." The whole "story" of ACORN is a fabrication of the Republican National Committee and those folks in Republican politics who come out with the daily "talking points" for people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. ACORN has had the audacity to register poor people to vote, and those poor people are usually Democrats. This infuriates the Republicans and the right wing commentators. So the right wingnuts find any transgression they can and pump it up and repeat it again...

Whatever Happened to Sanctions? Malcolm A. Kline, November 13, 2009 It’s interesting that the same worthies on campus who clamor to disinvest from Israel have yet to endorse sanctions on Iran. It should be noted that, as Claire Lopez points out in a report for the Center for Security Policy, the Iranian government employs a Washington lobby whose primary purpose is to get sanctions lifted on the renegade regime....

Limits To Diversity & Tolerance Malcolm A. Kline, November 9, 2009 When school district representatives told a Southern California teacher to remove the banners he had on display in his classroom, “diversity” and “tenure” were used to justify the order, according to an attorney from the Liberty Counsel. “Mr. Johnson, if a Muslim student came in here, he wouldn’t be comfortable,” bureaucrats told the educator, the barrister from LC said at a Capitol Hill seminar on October 28, 2009.....

Photos of today's crowd outside the Capitol: Health Care Protesters Overwhelm Capitol Bethany Stotts, November 6, 2009 Today’s November 5 rally may have drawn as many as 20,000 protesters against the health care bill which will soon come up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to an Americans for Prosperity representative. As I’m no crowd size estimator, I won’t even hazard a guess, but the panoramas below should give you an idea of how many people were there.....