Free Republic

Conflicting timeline reports and identical language used by numerous officers in separate reports raise questions.. A 104-page report issued three months after the events at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, said the Capitol Police’s Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) was ordered by supervisors not to use “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” like flash bangs. However, video evidence—along with Capitol Police Use of Force Reports obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—exposes conflicts in timelines, the brutality of the unprovoked attacks against Jan. 6 protesters, and how leadership ordered the deployment of munitions on a peaceful crowd. The Video Evidence.. Victoria White.. According...

The Ides of March—a day of murder that forever changed history ​The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C still resonates as a day of infamy. Here's how the plot unfolded.Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 B.C., forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since. For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon. But Romans would soon learn...

Dante Alighieri is a symbol of Italy and its poetry, but also of the city he was born, Firenze. A proud Florentine, Dante never kept the love he had for his hometown a secret, so why is he buried in Ravenna? Well, because that’s where he passed, of course, but the matter of where his mortal remains should rest was the cause of mystery and diatribes for centuries. Dante rests, today, in a quiet corner of the Emilia-Romagna town, his marble mausoleum protected by sunlight and heat by the leafy beauty of an oak planted by poet and Nobel laureate...

A Minnesota judge on Friday sentenced former police officer Kim Potter to two years for fatally shooting a Black motorist 10 months ago. Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu handed down the “significant downward” punishment for the former Brooklyn Center police officer after emotional courtroom statements from the victim's loved ones and the defendant herself. Chu ordered Potter to spend two-thirds of her sentence behind bars and one-third of it on supervised release. She's already served 58 days behind bars, which will go to her credit.

Embattled 'Waterboy' actor Peter Dante was caught on camera throwing a profanity-laden fit on an Los Angeles hostess who wouldn't serve him for not wearing a mask. Witnesses said Dante, 52, nearly reduced the service worker to tears on Monday after calling her 'garbage' and 'c***' after she refused to seat him at Quarters Korean BBQ in L.A.'s Koreatown for violating the city's mask policy, which mandates that restaurant customers mask up before they are seated to dine indoors. In the video, the hostess is standing next to a 'No Mask No Entry' sign ...

Thomas Jefferson famously adapted key passages of John Locke’s Second Treatise in his draft Declaration of Independence. An 18th century gentleman could hardly regard himself as learned without the ability to quote a few Lockean passages from memory. Yet, what of the average colonial? Books were expensive imports. How were the yeomanry educated well enough in Lockean concepts to readily understand and accept this radical document, the Declaration of Independence? Through newspapers. Like modern Americans, our colonial forebears were also political junkies. Freewheeling editorials, letters to the editor that criticized parliamentary and colonial governments were standing features of public life....

The Fount of Knowledge is divided into three categories: 1. “Philosophical Chapters” (Kephalaia philosophika) – “With the exception of the fifteen chapters that deal exclusively with logic, it has mostly to do with the ontology of Aristotle. It is largely a summary of the Categories of Aristotle with Porphyry’s “Isagoge” (Eisagoge eis tas kategorias). It seems to have been John Damascene’s purpose to give his readers only such philosophical knowledge as was necessary for understanding the subsequent parts of the “Fountain of Wisdom”. 2. “Concerning Heresy” (Peri aipeseon) – “Little more than a copy of a similar work by Epiphanius,...

I’ve been through hell several dozen times, and each time I go I want to take pictures and bring them back to show life-size on my living room wall with my $399 data projector from Microcenter in order to warn my family and friends. I find in the Gospel of Luke my folly in this daydream, for “if they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (16:31).Oh, well. If people won’t heed warnings, the next best thing is to give them a list of 10 must-see...

President Obama delivered brief comments today on the capture of a man suspected to be involved in the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate. The president said the capture sends a clear message to the world that whenever an American is attacked, “no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice.” Yesterday U.S. special forces captured Ahmed Abu Khattala in a surprise raid. Khattala had previously denied in a number of interviews he gave that he had any direct involvement in the Benghazi attack. In his comments today, Obama praised the...

On the evening of Good Friday, a man on the run from a death sentence wakes up in a dark forest, lost, terrified and besieged by wild animals. He spends an infernal Easter week hiking through a dismal cave, climbing up a grueling mountain, and taking what you might call the long way home. It all works out for him, though. The traveler returns from his ordeal a better man, determined to help others learn from his experience. He writes a book about his to-hell-and-back trek, and it's an instant best-seller, making him beloved and famous. For 700 years, that...

You think you’ve heard nearly every stupid thing there is to hear and then someone even stupider comes along and lowers the bar again. From the Daily Telegraph:Dante’s Divine Comedy ‘offensive and should be banned’The classic work should be removed from school curricula, according to Gherush 92, a human rights organisation which acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination. [You just knew the UN would be mentioned, right?]Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president.Divided into three parts – Hell, Purgatory and Heaven –...

The protesters railing against EA for the game Dante's Inferno were part of a marketing scheme, reports the Associated Press. A viral marketing agency hired by EA reportedly organized the stunt, and hired about 20 people to picket the game. After it was picked up by the blogs, several began to question whether the protest was legitimate based on an amateurish Web site and anonymous domain registration. EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood confirmed it today. (pic at site)

- YES! To begin with, let's try and fully understand what Renaissance Florence actually has accomplished, apart from making tourists feel like this: "I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear...

How about telling us all your age, gender and location. Also, if you want, who you like in the upcoming presidential primary.

Scientists recreate (less ugly) face of Dante By Malcolm Moore in Florence Last Updated: 2:26am GMT 12/01/2007 Dante Alighieri did not, after all, have bulging eyes or a pointed chin — but his enormous nose was true to life, according to scientists who have created a replica of the poet's face by measuring the remains of his skull. The 3D reconstruction, based on skull measurements, alongside Botticelli's portrait of Dante Alighieri The researchers at the University of Bologna have pieced together the "true face" of Florence's favourite son and discovered that it was very different from the portraits of him...

THE controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad was reignited yesterday after an Italian Catholic magazine printed one on its front cover.Studi Cattolici carried a drawing of the Prophet in Hell, with the Italian writer Dante Alighieri asking the poet Virgil: "That man divided in two from his head to his feet - isn't that Muhammad?" Virgil replies: "Yes, it is him and he is in two because he has divided society - while the man next to him with his arms down represents Italian politics towards Islam." The cartoon is a play on Dante's Inferno - a similar scene...

Muslims outraged by new cartoon of Prophet in Hell By Malcolm Moore in Rome (Filed: 17/04/2006) An Italian magazine has infuriated Muslims by publishing a cartoon showing the Prophet Mohammed cut in half and burning in Hell. The drawing appears in Studi Cattolici, a monthly magazine with links to the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic group, Opus Dei. It shows the poets Virgil and Dante on the edge of a circle of flame looking down on Mohammed. "Isn't that man there, split in two from head to navel, Mohammed?" Dante asks Virgil. "Yes and he is cut in two because he has...

"Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."

ROME, FEB. 9, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's new encyclical on love came as a surprise to most everyone. Some wags commented on the paradox of the "German Shepherd" exclaiming that God is Love. Others are amazed that the erstwhile watchdog of Church doctrine would choose to dedicate so much ink to social teachings. My surprise had nothing to do with this. I was floored when the Holy Father said he was inspired by Dante. During an audience with members of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" on Jan. 23, Benedict XVI introduced the new encyclical saying that the 14th-century Italian poet...

Dante's Divine Comedy, the most sublime religious poem the Christian West has produced in two thousand years, provides us to this day with profound insights into human nature. In the Inferno Dante provides us with a vivid, unforgettable image of what Christians have always believed about sodomites. He places them in the seventh circle of Hell, the fiery circle of the violent, far below the lustful heterosexuals of the second circle. Why this big separation? The answer is extremely important and revealing. Dante wants us to understand that homosexuals do not suffer in life from a deficiency of the will,...