Free Republic

The self-righteous man, like the Pharisee, gains nothing. He merely reinforces his own opinions and is left alone inside his own thoughts. He tells God, "I give you thanks that I am not like the rest of men." He himself has said it; nobody is his brother. The Publican, on the other hand, is a true man. He lives life at its depths and understands his own poverty. In front of the Almighty, he can only ask for mercy. The Publican teaches us that it is precisely mercy, not man's conduct, that characterizes his relationship with the Infinite. There is...

"There are no opening night jitters at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, where the cast of The Fantasticks is preparing to celebrate the show's 41st birthday on Wednesday, May 3. On that day, the Fantasticks, the longest running show of any kind in the United States, and the longest running musical in the world, will present its 16,875th performance.   "Before the mud of Woodstock there were the love songs of The Fantasticks. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, before Elizabeth Taylor received an Academy Award for Butterfield 8, and before Wilt Chamberlain completed the first of ...

Donahue's Children Part 1: Victims & Perpetrators by Robert L. Kocher This is a true story from the 70s. A couple who were in their fifties had a daughter who married a charming character she found somewhere. First, their daughter and her new husband received $35,000 for a down payment on a house and a start on their marriage, as a wedding present from her parents. Then, their daughter and her husband got deeply in debt and asked the parents for another $15,000 to bail them out. Her parents gave them the money. Then, they got in more trouble and ...

The following investigation was conducted at 11:00 AM this morning. I obtained the following information:The FEMA Regional Office that is responsible for the Oklahoma City area was telephoned. The woman who answered provided the following information:There is no one in DELL GREER's former office, as there are two disasters to which the FEMA Regional Office was responding on 6/13/2001, one in Southern Louisiana and one in Texas. DELL GREER has not worked for FEMA in some years. GREER did work in that office for FEMA at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The name RICHARD W. KRIMM was familiar ...

Starting at 9:00 AM on June 11, 2001, the following investigation was conducted: The documents linked on several Free Republic Threads by MIKE RIVERO, concerning the Oklahoma City Bombing were carefully examined on-line. These documents include, by their titles: 1. ARLENE BLANCHARD PRESS RELEASE 2. AFFADAVIT OF JOE HARP 3. AFFADAVIT OF TIFFANY BIBLE 4. STATEMENT OF JANE GRAHAM 5. AFFADAVIT OF VIRGIL STEELE 6. FEMA SITUATION REPORT NUMBER 5, DATED 4/20/95 FROM DELL GREER TO RICHARD W. KRIMM, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF FEMA'S RESPONSE AND RECOVERY DIRECTORATE 7. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COMMAND MEMO WRITTEN 20 APRIL 1995 BY CDR (COMMANDER?) ...

Eight days after the election, the AFLAC insurance company, that caters to Medicare recipients offering co-insurance to pay the 20% portion of medical bills not covered by Medicare, sent a letter to all their insureds claiming that Medicare cut benefits effective August 1, 2000. The AFLAC letter explained that, rather than pay the traditional 80% of medical bills, with AFLAC and other co-insurers paying the remaining 20%, Medicare unilaterally began paying 30%, 40%, 50%, or 60%, depending upon the circumstances. AFLAC knew nothing about this, and continued paying the 20%. Their clients started getting bills for the shortages.AFLAC claims that ...

THE WIDENING GYRE Are Our Politics Becoming Incoherent?By Edward Zehr "Turning and turning in the widening gyre; The falcon cannot hear the falconer," wrote the Irish poet William Butler Yeats in "The Second Coming," a poem much quoted since the social unrest of the 1960s. (The title is an allusion to the Antichrist). Besides being the source of much of the "slouching" being done of late ("And what rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?") it is also used as a sad commentary on the present state of political discourse: "The best ...

One of the enduring controversies involving the BATF raid on the Branch Davidian complex at Mount Carmel is whether or not the helicopters strafed the building. During the 1995 Congressional Hearing, BATF official James Cavanaugh, who served as a negotiator early in the siege, denied vehemently that any of his men fired on the Davidians from the helicopters. Such fire would have been illegal. Cavanaugh claimed that any bullet holes that surviving Davidians, or their attorneys, reported seeing in the roof during the siege were the result of commandos on the ground firing up at "a tower," by which Cavanaugh ...