Free Republic

In his new autobiography "Confess", JUDAS PRIEST's Rob Halford reveals that he was once arrested for cruising Venice Beach toilets (in a case of police entrapment), yet the cops didn't release the information to the media because they were PRIEST fans. Asked by NME what effect he thinks being "outed" would have had on him, the singer — who came out as gay on his own terms in 1998 on MTV — said: "The police did me a favor by keeping it out of the press because it would have been big news. I always refer to that, slightly tongue...

Fleetwood Mac has fired Lindsey Buckingham after a disagreement over the band's upcoming tour, Rolling Stone has confirmed. The band announced Monday that Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Neil Finn of Crowded House will replace him. News of Buckingham's departure initially broke when former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Billy Burnette shared an April 4th tweet that has since been deleted, saying: "Breaking news: Lindsey Buckingham is out but I'm not in." Rolling Stone has confirmed Buckingham's departure, though no specific tour dates have been announced. Fleetwood Mac issued a collective statement about the news, saying: "We are...

HARRISBURG — Conservative state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe wants everyone to know that he’s heterosexual, has a wife, and doesn’t want to be touched — at least not by a male colleague. The Republican from Butler County made that clear Tuesday during a meeting of the House committee he chairs. Mr. Metcalfe’s comments, captured on video, came after the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Matt Bradford of Montgomery County, was trying to make a point about a bill having to do with land use and, for a split second, put his hand on Mr. Metcalfe’s left forearm. The two were seated side...

From all of last week's headlines saying that the Pope wants to forget this nonsense about abortion and gays, you'd imagine that Germaine Greer had been elected to run the Catholic Church. Actually what the Pope was saying was that he wants the Church to talk more about what it's for than what it's against. But that doesn't mean it won't still be against those things that contradict its teachings and traditions. Just ask Greg Reynolds of Melbourne – a priest who appears to have been both defrocked and excommunicated because of his radical views on women clergy and gay...

Here he goes again on his own. Going down the only road he’s ever known. OK, David Coverdale isn’t totally on his own. The 57-year-old singer has a new Whitesnake lineup behind him. But he is going down the only road he’s ever known on an old-fashioned, heavy-metal double bill: Whitesnake and Judas Priest play the Comcast Center on Tuesday. As Coverdale pointed out in a phone interview from his Lake Tahoe home, “You’re not going to listen to Whitesnake for environmental songs or to change your life. You’re going to listen to Whitesnake for hard rock.”

Adam Gadahn was just another Riverside County devotee of death metal, but then he turned up on an FBI terror list If the radical right wanted to paint a portrait of a terrorist, they couldn’t do much better than Yahiye Adam Gadahn. In fact, the FBI’s announcement last May that it was actively seeking Gadahn for questioning regarding his possible ties to Al Qaeda energized conservatives in ways they could not have imagined – helping to not only whip up fears of Islamic radicalism but also to fuel the deepening “culture war.” The 25-year-old former Orange County resident had a...

Pope Benedict XVI Thursday recounted the Biblical betrayal of Jesus by Judas, calling the apostle a double-crosser for whom "money was more important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love."Benedict's traditional depiction of Judas came during his Holy Thursday homily, a week after the release of an ancient Egyptian Coptic text dubbed the "Gospel of Judas," in which Judas is portrayed not as Jesus' betrayer but as his confidant who was doing his will by handing him over to his enemies to be crucified.Holy Thursday marks the start of a series of solemn ceremonies in the...

14 years after Painkiller, Rob is back and so are the monster riffs and dual leads ...