Free Republic

Amidst all the filth, vulgarity, profanity, sexuality and political correctness (in which the former is not evil but not affirming LGBTQ is) there some pretty good Christian and family films that you can see for free. Tubit is an American ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox Corporation and has been around for a while providing licensed content, and has some gems among the refuse that is to be refused (best to search under appropriate category) and requires no sign up for videos here, although a few short video ads interrupt. The list of movies below is not exhaustive, but most...

"What are you afraid of?" Pope Francis asked this question during his March 27 prayer service, just two Fridays before the strangest Good Friday of most contemporary Western Christians' lives. At a time of such uncertainty, it was a reminder to trust in more than we can clearly see, more than is of this world. There's an old Bill Buckley column about Good Friday that I often read around this time of year. In it, the founder of National Review magazine shares his annual conundrum of whether to close the office on that sacred day. This is what he struggled...

There have been a few moments in recent weeks when the new reality of the coronavirus epidemic hit me in special ways. One of them was when Amazon put books on the bottom of its priority list. Bookish type that I am, that is what Amazon is for me: books. And I've rediscovered the bookstores and distributors I used to rely on before Amazon made things so simple. I'm thinking I really shouldn't go back. Aren't we all having a renewed appreciation for the smaller businesses in our lives and the people behind them? Of course, there have been more...

The nation must now endure another gut-wrenching tragedy, with at least 31 having been senselessly gunned downed in Texas and Ohio over a weekend. This following a week where three were gunned down in California. My appeal is to consider these tragedies a crisis of culture and not to turn them into politics, which is already happening. I'm thinking about the words of Robert F. Kennedy when he spoke to a crowd in Indianapolis in April 1968, after hearing the news that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. "In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the...

This past week, I was honored to be asked to speak at Heritage Action's Conservative Policy Summit in Washington, DC. As the only House Member besides Speaker Paul Ryan, I was humbled to help cast a vision for decision-makers and thought-leaders on finding solutions for some of our nation's greatest social problems. The evidence over the past 50 years makes it indisputable: the federal government hijacked the American Dream and the family has been decimated. We see this plainly in our everyday lives. The American Dream is social at its very nature. It begins with life. Common sense tells us...

Amid the cross-country race to election 2016, the secular left’s utter disdain for both our Creator Christ and His faithful followers is fast approaching critical mass. Self-styled “progressives” – that is, America’s cultural Marxist agents of ruin – typically disguise their designs on despotism in the flowery and euphemistic language of “reproductive health,” “anti-discrimination” and “multiculturalism.” We see this Orwellian newspeak at play right now in Washington, D.C., where congressional Republicans endeavor to prevent, if only timorously, two unconstitutional pieces of legislation from taking effect. The first, the District of Columbia’s so-called “Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act,” would force pro-life groups,...

Last Thursday my wife and I welcomed our first grandbaby into the world. My oldest daughter Hannah (who leveled ACORN) and her husband Joe (who’s currently leveling other nefarious nuts) had a handsome little boy they’ve named, Hamish. Badass name, eh? Obviously, we were elated for Hannah and Joe and the thought that we get to have a new little life scooting around occasionally at our casa felt pretty cool to us as well. But truth be told, it also freaked me out a wee bit. So … what was perturbing to moi? Well, it was largely the realization that...

NEW YORK -- At a dinner sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation last Thursday (I am an unpaid national advisory board member), there was a debate about wealth redistribution. A team of Canadian students who think government should "spread the wealth around" faced off against a team of American students who think government has no business doing any such thing. The theme continued when former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) debated Chrystia Freeland, a member of Canadian Parliament. While all of this was informative, civil, interesting and at times entertaining, the final speaker, CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, may have uttered...

This jaw-dropping revelation is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest assessment of the homosexual lifestyle. The WSJ report further warns: “Gay and bisexual men represent an estimated 2 percent of the U.S. population but more than half of all people living with HIV and 66 percent of new HIV infections. They are the only population group in the United States for which HIV infections are rising.” What do you say of an adult or adults who, for selfish political reasons, encourage sexually confused children to adopt a sex-centric identity and lifestyle laced with a 50-50 chance...

It was the summer of 2011. We were visiting friends in North Carolina one weekend for a lovely wedding on the beach. Our strong-willed, opinionated and hyper-inquisitive children, a boy and two girls, were, at the time, 10, 7 and 6 respectively. My gorgeous, though Chicago-tough and Sicilian-sassy, wife and I were at lunch with the kids at a little seaside café the following day. A late morning ocean breeze puffed through the eatery’s open bay windows, filling our nostrils with that salty pong of damp sand and faint sea life, forecasting a beautiful day ahead. We were discussing the...

Pope Francis said something so important last week that it will either be widely ignored or widely disparaged. The pope criticized "these marriages, in which the spouses do not want children, in which the spouses want to remain without fertility. This culture of well-being ... convinced us: It's better not to have children! It's better! You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside; you can be carefree. It might be better -- more comfortable -- to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the...

The movie Noah has ironically spawned a flood of hullabaloo, eh? Personally, heretofore, I haven’t seen the flick, but I plan on watching it this Sunday. Yes, I said it. I’m going to check it out even though I’ve been warned by the brethren not to because it isn’t "biblical". I guess I’ll have to wear a disguise so my more persnickety readers won’t recognize me. I think I’ll go as Carrot Top. That’ll toss them off my scent trail. Now, when the anti-biblical criticisms began to fly against this pic in its ramp-up for release, I was like, “You...

Those attending the Family Research Council’s most recent Values Voter Summit heard a lot about religious liberty -- and with good reason. In ways both large and small, that cornerstone of freedom has found itself under attack at home and abroad. All Americans should be concerned about its well-being. Religious liberty is as characteristic of America as our democratic political system and our free-market economy. Nowhere in the world is there more religious diversity, with all manner of faiths existing in relative harmony in the same neighborhoods, and with different houses of worship sharing the same streets in many...

The 50 year anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington is causing a lot of people in my generation to reminisce. In doing so, it is hard not to be struck by two puzzling facts: (a) the fall of racial barriers to success almost everywhere and (b) the lack of economic progress in the black community as a whole, relative to whites. On the one hand, it would seem that a black in America can achieve almost anything, even being elected president of the United States. On the other hand, if we compare the economic condition of blacks and...

There is increasing evidence that faith and family based movies and TV is making an impact on the film industry.

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”– Martin Luther King Jr.The U.S. Supreme Court is expected any day to release opinions on two landmark cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor) that, should the court overstep its authority, threaten great violence to the age-old institution of marriage – society’s fundamental cornerstone.Also at stake is the high court’s already fragile legitimacy.Lest there be any doubt as to where the Bible-believing Christian community stands, scores of Christian leaders and clergy – Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant alike – have released a...

It was interesting to watch the state of Texas recently pass a law that allows anyone to say the greeting "Merry Christmas" in the state's public schools and buildings. Gov. Rick Perry signed the law saying he wished it wasn't necessary, but, in his opinion, protecting the words "Merry Christmas" has to be done because they are under fire from the freedom-from-religion crew. America has been heading down the secular road for decades, and a new Gallup poll reinforces that. When asked whether religion is losing its influence on American life, 77 percent said yes. Just 20 percent disagreed. But...

With Father's Day on Sunday, there is good news and bad news. First the negative: Single mothers head up almost 9 percent of American households. The good news? Fathers who care are making a huge difference in this country. How do I know? It is estimated that close to 40 percent of all those incarcerated in the USA did not have a father in their childhood home. So doing the math, a responsible father seems to be a strong force for promoting righteous conduct. It was never easy being a father. Did you know that American icon Davy Crockett abandoned...

Using Agriculture Department data, researchers at the Environmental Working Group found that Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican and a farmer from Frog Jump, Tenn., collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012. The data is part of the research group’s online farm subsidy database, from which the group issues a report each year. In 2012 alone, the data shows, Mr. Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops. It is unclear how much Mr. Fincher received in crop insurance subsidies because the names...

The headlines were misleading: "Moms are Breadwinners in Record 4 of 10 Households." Immediate thought: Wow, 40 percent of wives are primary breadwinners. Nope. If you read down to the fifth or sixth paragraph in most stories about the new Pew study, you'd discover that the number of women out-earning their husbands was actually just 22.5 percent of married couples with children under the age of 18. The 40 percent figure includes single-parent households, in which the mom is not the primary, but the sole, earner. They're always lauded, those single moms. Politicians of both parties always append the word...