Free Republic

The battle for Soledar in eastern Ukraine continues to intensify, with Ukraine denying claims by the private Russian Vagner military group that it had taken control of the salt-mining town. Ukraine's Defense Ministry cited "colossal losses" by Russian forces trying to capture the town in a sustained offensive that the ministry described on January 11 as "maniacal" as the community's fate hangs in the balance. -snip- Yevgeny Prigozhin, said his forces had taken control of Soledar, which lies near another heavily contested city, Bakhmut, after Russian troops regrouped during an Orthodox Christmas pause last weekend. -snip- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov...

Moscow has appointed Colonel-General Alexander Lapin as chief of staff of Russia’s ground forces, despite having been ousted as commander of the Russian Armed Forces' Central Military District in October, as Russian troops pursue a massive offensive in Donetsk, reports said Tuesday. The appointment was met with criticism from Russia hawks as Russian President Vladimir Putin looks to turn the tide in the near-year long war in Ukraine, where it has made little advances since it began losing territory in September. Lapin first received heavy backlash from top players in Putin’s war, including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner founder...

ussia has appointed Colonel-General Alexander Lapin as chief of staff of the country's ground forces, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, despite fierce criticism from leading hawks over his performance in Ukraine. Lapin, previously commander of Russia's central military district, was blasted last October by hawkish allies of President Vladimir Putin after Russian forces were driven out of the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, a key logistics hub. His promotion - widely reported across Russian media but neither confirmed nor denied by the Kremlin - drew mixed reactions from the influential Russian war bloggers who provide often critical...

Russia removed a top military commander in Ukraine following criticism from some of President Vladimir Putin’s top allies over the officer’s responsibility for a recent chaotic retreat in the country’s northeast that underscored Russian weaknesses on the battlefield. Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin, responsible for the Central Military District, Russia’s largest, was the last of Russia’s regional commanders still in place amid Moscow’s faltering invasion. It was unclear whether he had been suspended or removed from his post. Gen. Lapin was the top Russian commander for a part of Ukraine’s northeast that Kyiv’s forces retook in a lightning offensive in September....

CHECHEN leader Ramzan Kadyrov has immediately taken to Telegram to blame Russian commander Alexander Lapin for Russia’s retreat in Lyman, Ukraine. Ramzan Kadyrov blamed Colonel General Oleksandr Lapin, who commanded the defence of this section of the front, for the loss of Lyman. “I have always said: there is nothing better than the truth, however bitter and hurtful, but the truth,” he said. “It is the only way to move forward. That is why I cannot keep quiet about what happened in Krasny Lyman.” He added: “The commander of the Central Military District Colonel-General Alexander Lapin was in charge of...

Many factors led to ancient Rome’s fall, say politically-correct experts. True. At the same time, there were many reasons to explain her rise too. Also forgotten: some stand out more than others. Thus, to ignore history’s greatest forces is to ignore her most important lessons. Standing on the work of the late historian Will Durant, Rabbi Daniel Lapin turns to big-picture ethics. “Excessive regulation, excessive government size and intrusion, and excessive and abusive taxation policies were only the tip of the iceberg. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes,...

Just when I thought that I’ve heard every possible insult in the political realm this year Rabbi Daniel Lapin added his two cents. On the Glenn Beck program he said he views the atheists as parasites who without putting any energy into it benefit from America created by the faithful people. The Rabbi is entitled of his opinion and is free to call me parasite. However, I urge his friends to help him, because he may need advice from psychiatrist. Just two days ago a fellow who was calling people parasites strapped himself with bombs to make a point on...

Interview with Rabbi Daniel Lapin on How Today's World Compares to the Days of Noah By John-Henry Westen WASHINGTON, DC, June 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The recent death of Mrs. Ruth Graham, the beloved wife of preacher Billy Graham, has caused renewed reflection on her oft quoted comment:  "If God does not judge America soon, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."  Indeed, with the culture war raging on abortion and same-sex 'marriage', many a Christian has wondered about a coming purgation - a cleansing as in the time of Noah and the flood. It may come as a surprise to...

Like Noah, Jerry Falwell walked with God and found grace in His eyes. He was a friend to all Americans, he was a friend to the Biblical values that he believed America needed, and he was a wonderful friend to me. My children have wonderfully warm memories of Dr. Falwell from the Toward Tradition banquet in Washington DC at which our organization honored him. His speech to a largely Jewish audience that day, September 11, 2000, was almost prescient and he left an indelible imprint on everyone’s memories. Of his gigantic accomplishments in making a place at the political table...

I am certainly not a Churchill. I am not even a Revel. I am having enough trouble just trying to be a Lapin. But I am issuing a very serious warning about deep consequences, just as they did. It is a warning about the earliest stages of what could become a cataract of disasters if not resisted now. During the 1930s, Winston Churchill desperately tried to persuade the English people and their government to see that Hitler meant to end their way of life. The British ignored Churchill, which gave Hitler nearly 10 years to build up his military forces....

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com A rabbi has launched a defense of D. James Kennedy, whose new television special this weekend will raise an alarm about the bloodshed credited to the influence of Darwin's theories of evolution, and has been attacked because of its message. Did Hitler practice Darwinism? The program is "Darwin's Deadly Legacy", a Coral Ridge Ministries production featuring more than a dozen experts in various fields talking about the connections between Darwin's theories, eugenics, Hitler and abortion. Its premise is that Darwin's thinking changed the world's perception of people, so instead of considering them made in God's image, they...

Examining which issues raise its organizational blood pressure, it is easy to see that the Anti-Defamation League chiefly represents two categories of Jews. One, Jews for whom the doctrines of secular fundamentalism and of the Democratic Party have replaced the authentic principles of Judaism. Two, Jews who consider Christian conservatives to be a far greater peril than Islamic extremism. It now turns out that the ADL represents yet a third category of Jews: those passionately dedicated to defending Darwin. Once again, like a friendly and frolicsome puppy with a large, bushy tail that constantly knocks down expensive vases, the ADL,...

After years of defining itself as the party of secularism, the Democratic Party is at a crossroads—they’ve suddenly discovered that Americans are becoming more religious. So what can they do? Learn how to sound spiritual. Well into America’s third great religious awakening (about which I started writing ten years ago), magazines like Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes have all carried articles speculating on the growing buying power of America’s evangelicals. Yes, Henry, they really do spend over seven billion dollars a year just on religious articles. Time recently ran a cover story about the country’s 25 most powerful evangelicals. Some...

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Bryan Rudnick, 561-499-3201 News Advisory: WHAT: Jews for "It's OK to Say Merry Christmas" press conference WHEN: Thursday, Dec. 1, 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at The National Press Club (529 14th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.) in the Murrow Room. WHY: To speak out against the War on Christmas -- ongoing efforts to purge Christmas from our schools, public events, retail establishments and the culture, and why this should concern Americans of all faiths. WHO: Don Feder -- president, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation Michael Horowitz -- senior fellow, Hudson Institute Rabbi Daniel Lapin --...

What do you do if you are devoted to the Democratic Party which has spent years defining itself as the party of secularism, and you suddenly discover that Americans are becoming more religious? Answer: you learn how to sound spiritual. America’s third great religious awakening, about which I started writing ten years ago, is well under way. Magazines like Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes have all carried articles speculating on the growing buying power of America’s Evangelicals. Yes, Henry, they really do spend over seven billion dollars a year just on religious articles. Time recently ran a cover story about...

Heading an organization whose entire purpose is to promote friendship and mutual respect between Jews and Christians, egregious assaults on this friendship really bother me. As I reported last week, it gives me little pleasure to admit that most of these assaults come from my side of the fence. Well, here we go again. In Bellevue, Washington, just a few miles from my home, a Jewish Reform temple has been upsetting its neighbors by insisting on hosting an encampment of homeless people on its property. Fearful neighbors in this upper middle class enclave of young families point to countless offenses,...

NEW YORK - Institutionalized Christianity in the U.S. has grown so extremist that it poses a tangible danger to the principle of separation of church and state and threatens to undermine the religious tolerance that characterizes the country, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, warned in his address to the League's national commission, meeting in New York City over the weekend. (Haaretz Newspaper, Israel.) We Jews aren’t chic any longer. Not too many people care for Jews these days. Europe, including England, makes little secret of how it feels towards Jews. If possible, they care even less...

God Causes the Problems—And all along you thought it was President Bush Rabbi Daniel Lapin September 28, 2005 Once upon a time in St Louis, there lived a husband who yearned to vacation in Los Angeles while his wife craved a few days in New York. Averaging their desires and finding the midpoint, the couple went to Kansas City. Averaging doesn’t always work. Averaging doesn’t work when you are dealing with two very different things like Los Angeles and New York or like traditional Americans and those of the secular fundamentalist persuasion. Now, in one of the best examples of...

The Only Thing We’re Short of Is Time by Rabbi Daniel Lapin President, Toward Tradition With five single daughters, each more beautiful, brilliant, and gracious than the next, I am naturally interested in the topic of “meeting & mating.” Perusing various match-making websites the other day, I was baffled by how many women, who, as part of their “sell” proclaimed their political affiliation. Frankly, who cares? And didn’t their mothers ever tell them not to talk about religion, sex, or politics? What is more, almost to a woman, they all declared themselves to be “left wing liberal.” Now, why on...

<p>Every few weeks or so Rabbi Daniel Lapin finds a reason to fly east from his home in Mercer Island, Wash., near Seattle, and spend a few days in Washington, D.C. He might be leading a Bible study on the Hill, having dinner with his ''close friend'' House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, breakfast with Karl Rove. Last year he came for a private Shabbat dinner with President Bush. ''The president recognizes my enthusiasm for his faith,'' says the rabbi.</p>