Free Republic

Wanda Geter-Pataky found a way to supplement her income while on paid leave from her Bridgeport city job and facing criminal charges for ballot fraud: Bring crews of out-of-state non-citizens to marry as many as 100-plus Americans a month at New Haven City Hall. One recent day, for instance, Geter-Pataky conducted seven such marriages in New Haven City Hall. All seven involved an Indian-born spouse and an American-born spouse. None came from New Haven, according to their marriage licenses. They claimed they live in Houston, Waterbury, Queens, the Bronx, Long Island, Chesapeake, Virginia. As Geter-Pataky accompanied one of the spouses...

Usually, I get political wisdom from Rahm Emanuel, not his brother Ari. But a quote from Ari, the Hollywood macher, to Puck’s Matthew Belloni about the gender chasm in 2024 caught my eye. “This election is gonna come down to probably 120,000 votes,” Ari said. “You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala. It’s a jump ball. We’re gonna find out who wants this more — men or women.” Are we back to the days of Mars versus Venus? Or did we never leave? It is the ultimate battle...

Single-mother families make up one in five American families with children under 18. I grew up in one of them. Solo parenting is no easy feat. Even though my Philadelphia childhood was filled with happy memories, we went through hardship, too. I remember how stressed my mom would get about making ends meet. In high school, while I spent hours on homework, she was in court fighting not to lose our house. Too many single moms like mine face unnecessary economic insecurity that jeopardizes the wellbeing of their families. While some argue marriage is the best solution, what really uplifts...

A woman who married then divorced a ghost has summoned the spirit of an American mass murderer – in a prison’s death row. Spooky singer Brocarde says she conjured the ghost of Carroll Edward “Eddie” Cole at The Nevada State Penitentiary in the USA. She was conducting a paranormal investigation at the former jail – and says he tried to possess her body. Brocarde, from Oxfordshire in the UK, was filming while locked inside the execution chamber on its death row.

A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked a Biden-Harris administration plan to grant legal status to non-citizens who are married to U.S. citizens, pausing the program for at least the next two weeks while the legal challenge moved through the courts.U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker issued the administrative stay after the policy was enacted by the Biden administration earlier this year. 16 states challenged the policy proposal, with Texas (one of the 16) claiming "the state has had to pay tens of millions of dollars annually from health care to law enforcement because of immigrants living in the...

Half of Americans say they don’t want to go anywhere near those disgusting vacay-blockers who will someday fund their government entitlements.Will America become a majority-childless society? A new Pew Research Center survey suggest that sadly may be the case. Such a direction would have alarming consequences for not just individuals but also for our nation.When Pew asked Americans younger than 50 if they ever plan to have children, 47 percent—one-half of those polled—said “no.” That’s up 10 percent from just five years before. In fact, of those younger than 50, 57 percent said they never wanted to have children, even...

Organizers have planned protests in at least seven provinces on Thursday throughout Iraq in response to the introduction of amendments to a core family legal framework that could legalize child marriages, deprive widows of their inheritance, and facilitate sex slavery. The Iraqi Parliament began to debate amendments to the Personal Status Law on Sunday that would, critics say, effectively dissolve the country’s universal standards to protect women and girls on matters such as consent to marriage, alimony, and custody of children by allowing men to opt out, choosing traditional Shiite or Sunni Islamic mandates, instead. While child marriages, sex slavery,...

Many disputes arose a few years ago when the then-liberal U.S. Supreme Court created, in a decision condemned as unrelated to the Constitution, same-sex "marriage" for the entire nation. One of the more vicious was a series of lawsuits against a Kentucky county clerk who declined to issue ANY marriage licenses for a time because of the conflict the court decision created with her own constitutionally protected religious rights. An activist federal judge, David Bunning, took up the LGBT agenda and put Kim Davis in jail for a time. And two same-sex duos sued her for damages.

That George Cukor's 1952 film The Marrying Kind begins in a divorce court should be something of a warning. But it wasn't enough of one for audiences back then who sat down to enjoy Judy Holliday in a comedy playing the lovable ditz she'd perfected in Adam's Rib and Born Yesterday and got something very different. It actually begins at the Domestic Relations Court in Manhattan at Lexington and 22nd (now the administrative building for Baruch College) – a lovely bit of New Deal Art Deco architecture where a woman like Judge Anne B. Carroll (played by silent actress Madge...

We’ve done several podcasts on America’s declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world. But we’ve never done an episode on the subject quite like this one. Today we go deep on the psychology of having children and not having children and the cultural revolution behind the decline in birthrates in America and the rest of the world. The way we think about dating, marriage, kids, and family is changing radically in a very short period of time. And we are just beginning to reckon with the causes and consequences of that shift. In...

The Supreme Court is in the midst of issuing a flurry of rulings as they finish up the court's current session. One of them that was handed down yesterday is raising eyebrows for unusual reasons. In the case of Department of State v. Munoz, Sandra Munoz was challenging the denial of her husband's ability to enter the United States from El Salvador to come live with her. Immigration officials at the U.S. Consulate in El Salvador had refused entry to Luis Asencio-Cordero because of tattoos he had which they believed indicated that he was a member of one of El...

Straight forward divorce stats. https://divorce.com/blog/divorce-statistics/

The taxicab theory is not new to the realm of relationship theories, but it is one that has resurfaced in popularity. Since one of my favorite things to do is break down theories that pop off and circulate on TikTok, this one caught my attention recently. These theories often look ridiculous because they’ve been given silly names, but there is usually some truth to them — which is why they’re worth examining. The taxicab theory attempts to answer questions like: How do men choose who they want to marry? When do men make that decision? What can women do? The...

This week, Harrison Butker, a player on the Kansas City Chiefs football team gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College--a small Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas. In this speech Butker said to the women graduates "some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world." USA Today featured a column denouncing Butker's "extremist, Neanderthal views." On ABC's The View, the panelists chastised Butker for "not following the example of...

Most of us are used to seeing well-known Evangelicals who live together outside of marriage celebrated in the news media—without any suggestion of a contradiction between their claims to be Bible-believing Christians and their choice to cohabit. Recent examples include top-rated Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes and A-list Hollywood actor Chris Pratt. Pratt and Mahomes are not anomalies; living together in sexual union outside of marriage is now accepted by most Evangelicals. Among those under 45, most have practiced cohabitation, plan to live together in the future, or are open to the possibility. A Pew Research Center study in...

They are making men illegal. The former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales faces a prison sentence of 30 months if convicted of charges of sexual assault and coercion. Rubiales grabbed and kissed footballer Jenni Hermoso at the Women's World Cup medal ceremony in August last year. He says it was consensual. She says it wasn't. But that's not the point. The point is that an area of life which has always been governed by manners, custom and judgement has now fallen under the grey, chilly shadow of criminal law. I confess I have not been all that given to grabbing...

She also shared tips on how she looks after her emotional well-being. 'I think we need more playfulness in this world. We should be very wary of ... adults who can’t play anymore'Sophie Grégoire Trudeau said women “shouldn’t expect the minimum” in what is being interpreted as a “veiled swipe” at Justin Trudeau by international media. Grégoire Trudeau has been making media appearances ahead of the publication of her debut book, Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other, which will be released on April 23, 2024. In Abu Dhabi, she was at the Forbes and Know Your Value’s annual 30/50...

The Irish can be a romantic bunch and every four years, there is a day for roles to reverse and for women to take charge of their romantic destiny. In Irish tradition, February 29, AKA Leap Day, is the day when women can propose to men. But why is the tradition so? Why do women propose on Leap Day, which is also known as Batchelor's Day or Ladies Privilege? Like many Irish traditions, this one has its origins in Irish folklore. Ladies who are planning to propose on Leap Day (February 29) have St Brigid to thank for the tradition.

WASHINGTON — First lady Jill Biden says she’s in a “work marriage” with her senior adviser Anthony Bernal, who can “make life hell” for White House staff with his “overbearing” persona, a new book reveals. The 72-year-old first lady, who regularly travels on behalf of her 81-year-old husband, relies heavily on Bernal, New York Times reporter Katie Rogers writes in “American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden.” “Jill and Bernal are, as Jill puts it, in a ‘work marriage,’ but his reach extends beyond the East Wing,” according to the book, which...

It was a Valentine’s Day from hell. According to a complaint filed Feb. 9 in federal court, Tom Mosgrove spent Valentine’s Day in 2022 in Santa Clara County jail after his then-wife called the police and reported that he pushed her into a closet and blocked her from leaving. Tom Mosgrove claims that he was not an instigator of the incident and never touched his wife nor did anything of a violent or threatening nature that night, but the police arrested him anyway because of a county policy that allegedly requires someone to be arrested when police respond to a...