Free Republic

Liberals think they’re more intelligent than conservatives because they are. Liberalism can be defined as the willingness to contribute large amounts of private resources for the welfare of genetically unrelated others. Research shows that more intelligent children in the US and UK are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children. Studies show the effect of childhood intelligence on adult political ideology is twice as large as the effect of either sex or race.

California Republicans are up in arms over a bill that would severely limit a person’s right to defend their home.A new bill would significantly restrict self-defense rights in California, including the rights of people protecting their homes. The bill’s sponsor, Asm. Rick Chavez Zbur (D–Los Angeles), promised to amend the proposal to not take away self-defense rights after Republicans came out against it in force. The big picture: Assembly Bill 1333 would eliminate certain circumstances under which homicide is justifiable, including in defense of a home or property. Current state law says homicide is justifiable “when committed in defense of...

President Obama made a crude joke about the size of President Trump’s manhood. The crass remark came during his address to delegates at the Democratic National Convention meeting in Chicago. Obama, using his hands to illustrate, suggested Trump’s manhood was small. What’s even more curious is why Obama would be obsessed with another man’s nether regions.

While appearing on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlin Collins, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg criticized former President Donald Trump’s recent public appearances, saying he’s “lost a step.”“Sometimes you get the feeling that Trump’s heart isn’t in this anymore, the laziness of his attacks, not to mention the, again, lack of any coherent account of what he’s actually going to do to make Americans lives better,” Buttigieg said. “You can just tell that he’s lost a step. You know, he’s getting mushy or fuzzy or more confused.” Discussing a Thursday press conference Trump held, after which he was accused of rambling...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg slammed recent attacks against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) by former President Trump as “mushy and lazy” on Friday, suggesting Trump’s heart may not be in the race anymore. “It’s also pretty mushy and lazy for Donald Trump’s best attack to be, what was it, ‘He’s heavily into lotsa different worlds,’ like?” Buttigieg said on CNN’s “The Source” with anchor Kaitlan Collins.

A former North Dakota State Senator pleaded guilty today to traveling to Prague, Czech Republic, to have commercial sex with minor boys. According to court documents and facts established in public proceedings, Ray Holmberg, 80, of Grand Forks, took approximately 14 trips to Prague between 2011 and 2021 to engage in commercial sex acts with minor boys. During some of these trips, Holmberg used the alias “Sean Evans” while staying at a brothel where young boys provided commercial sexual services. Holmberg also went to a public park in front of the main train station in Prague to procure sex from...

British singer-songwriter Rod Stewart poked fun at former President Trump for questioning Vice President Harris’s race and ethnicity, saying he never knew Trump “was Orange” until the GOP presidential nominee suddenly “became an Orange person.” “I didn’t know he was Orange until a number of years ago, when he happened to turn Orange,” Stewart wrote in his post, which featured four headshots of Trump, side by side, appearing to show Trump’s skin tone appearing progressively more orange. “I respect either one, but he obviously doesn’t because all of a sudden he made a turn and he went — he became...

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that he believed the Republican Party “long ago sacrificed their claim to be the party of family.” Buttigieg said, “It kind of classic projection, right? The very things he’s talking about, virtue, strength, security, family, those are all things that Trump’s Republican Party has completely abandoned, making any claim to. Virtue, really? In a party led by Donald Trump with the affairs and the porn stars and everything else that is associated with that guy. Security? When we’re talking about a party led by somebody who has been rolled repeatedly...

Caleb J. Lines, Senior Minister of University Christian Church, whose church is part of the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination, might hate Jesus more than anyone we know. We could tell you that he’s pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, and routinely insists that the bible should not be trusted, that it is not “God-breathed,” and that Jesus did not die for the sins of the world, but this recent Instagram post explains the level of reprobation we’re dealing with. In a recent sermon for “Comic-Con Sunday” Lines explains that a Canaanite woman was the only one to “rightly correct Jesus” after he...

A television presenter with Poland’s state broadcaster has apologised for the years of “shameful words” directed at LGBTQ+ people, in a moment hailed by a prominent rights campaigner as the closing of a chapter in Polish society. Bart Staszewski, an activist and film-maker, said the apology made to him live on air on Sunday showed the transformation of a broadcaster that served as a mouthpiece for the Law and Justice (PiS) party during its time in power. Looking directly into the camera, Szeląg said: “For many years in Poland, shameful words have been directed at numerous individuals because they chose...

[Catholic Caucus] Church must rethink its 'anachronistic' sexual ethic: priestRonaldo Zacharias, a moral theologian, feels Catholic theology not helping people integrate sexuality into their personhood Father Ronaldo Zacharias (left) is pictured with Pope Francis while attending the International Congress of Moral Theology from May 13-14, 2022, at the VaticanThe Catholic Church's "established, dogmatic models of the theological approach to sexuality have become anachronistic," a moral theologian told a conference on sexuality and culture at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome.Developing a new theological ethics of sexuality is "a task for the entire church...

With just five days to go until the government shuts down without a spending deal, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is at a crossroads. He can either shut down the government and possibly save his standing with the GOP hardliners threatening to oust him, or work with Democrats to pass a short-term spending bill and avert a government shutdown—potentially at the expense of his own speakership. Caught in the middle of the California Republican's political calculus are including hundreds of thousands of federal workers millions of Americans who would be impacted by even a short government shutdown, and scores of everyday...

Republican infighting reached new heights this week as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy engaged in a war of words with conservative hard-liners on his right flank. Republicans in the Senate watched their counterparts in the House with dismay as internal squabbles over spending put McCarthy’s future as speaker in doubt and increased the odds of a government shutdown at the end of the month. “It’s a shitshow in the House. It’s always a shitshow in the House,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “Eventually, what’s going to happen is a government shutdown, [and it] will not go well for us.” Rep. Steve...

Cardinal McElroy bans EWTN from San Diego diocese mediaSan Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy sharply criticized the Eternal Word Television Network, the conservative Catholic U.S. media conglomerate, in an interview with Spanish magazine Vida Nueva published on March 24.Vida Nueva asked McElroy about the decision of newly installed Bishop Fernando Prado of San Sebastián, Spain, to ban diocesan television from carrying content produced by EWTN. Prado wrote that he made the decision “trying to support the communion of the diocese with the Successor of Peter.”“I would not have EWTN on diocesan media either,” McElroy responded.“EWTN worries me because it represents a...

The Dalai Lama has apologised after footage showed him asking a boy if he wanted to suck the Tibetan spiritual leader's tongue. His office said he wanted to apologise to the child and his family "for the hurt his words may have caused". The video also shows the Dalai Lama kissing the child on his lips. "His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras. He regrets the incident," his office said.

Transgender Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine says that gender-affirming care for minors has the 'highest support' of the Biden administration. Levine has promised that medically changing children's gender will soon be normalized, praising the controversial medical intervention which has been banned in several states at the Pediatric Grand Rounds Session at Children's Medical Center in Hartford. Levine was invited to speak at the event about the Florida Parental Rights in Education law and the political implications of gender reassignment surgery taking place at children's hospitals. 'I think that it's not going to be politically advantageous. It wasn't particularly in...

Responding to critics of his January article on “radical inclusion“ for “LGBT people, women, and others in the Catholic Church,” Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego characterized “the moral tradition in the church that all sexual sins are grave matter” as a 17th-century innovation that is “jarringly inconsistent with the larger universe of Catholic moral teaching.” “For most of the history of the church, various gradations of objective wrong in the evaluation of sexual sins were present in the life of the church,” Cardinal McElroy wrote in an article published on March 2 in the Jesuit periodical America. “But in...

A couple of days ago, I noticed ministry friends of mine sharing videos of a well-known pastoral voice, Senior Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church located in Alpharetta, Georgia. After looking around for the video myself, I discovered the video was an excerpt from the Drive Conference at North Point in 2022. Many people are familiar with this pastor in Georgia. Some of his statements diminishing the authority of Scripture, and his callous jest at Christians who think it more authoritative, led those in the Church to surmise that his issues with biblical authority indicate a much more...

[Catholic Caucus] Jesuit Father James Martin Says Gay Marriage Is MarriageROME — Jesuit Father James Martin, an LGBT advocate, affirmed Saturday his belief that two men can enter into a real marriage that must be recognized as such.Responding to Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who proposed that Pete Buttigieg’s same-sex marriage to his partner Chasten is not a true marriage but rather a “legal fiction,” Father Martin countered that “Pete Buttigieg is married.”

An education professor delivered a lecture in early January at a major mathematician meeting that described college math as “white” and “cisheteropatriarchal.” “Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice” was the full title of the lecture given by Luis Leyva, associate professor of mathematics education at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. Leyva delivered the lecture Jan. 4 in Boston at the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2023. The summit is the “largest mathematics gathering in the world,” according to its website. “Cisheteropatriarchal” is a...