Free Republic

The Irish referendum—in which 66% of voters chose to allow parliament to legalize abortion—underscored the decadeslong decline of the Catholic church as a political force in that nation. It also accentuated a mirror image in Poland, the last major nation in Europe whose Catholic Church still dominates politics, society, and culture. Poland was once among the easiest places in Europe to get access to an abortion. Under Communism, ferries brought pregnant women from Sweden and Denmark for the procedure, which was free of charge. That changed at the end of the Cold War, when the Catholic church emerged as a...

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A California billionaire urging the impeachment of President Donald Trump denies suggestions that his efforts are helping Republican politicians including Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller running in the upcoming elections. Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer spoke in Reno on Wednesday as part of a 30-city “Need to Impeach” town hall tour, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. So far, he’s collected about 5.4 million signatures in support of the impeachment campaign, Steyer said. The campaign is also backed by 66 congress people and “plenty of celebrities.”

Authorities are investigating into how a baby ended up in a dumpster Friday morning after the mother gave birth to the child inside a Hurst restaurant. Police say the baby was born at a Souper Salad restaurant, where the mother worked, but was later found in a nearby dumpster in the 900 block of Melbourne Road. Authorities were first called to the scene at about 9:38 a.m. after they received a call from a witness who reported a medical emergency. Upon their arrival, police found a female believed to be the mother at the location and the baby alive inside...

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – Police have arrested a 19-year-old man in connection to a body found two weeks ago in a Nassau County wooded area in an incident being linked to MS-13 gang violence. Jose Lopez, 19, of Roosevelt, is facing second-degree murder charges.

Updated with Nerdist statement: Chris Hardwick, the Nerdist founder and host of NBC’s game show The Wall, AMC’s Talking Dead aftershow and a regular emcee in Hall H at Comic-Con, has been scrubbed from the Nerdist website he founded after being accused of sexual abuse and “long-term abuse” by his former girlfriend Chloe Dykstra. Legendary Entertainment, which owns Nerdist Industries where Hardwick launched his career as a comic and podcaster, just released a statement. “Chris Hardwick had no operational involvement with Nerdist for the two years preceding the expiration of his contract in December 2017,” it reads. “He no longer...

Like many new dads, Sabastion Sparks knew parenting would come with serious challenges. But most new dads didn't give birth to their child. They didn't breastfeed them. And they don't endure glares from strangers when they go shopping with their wife and their toddler son. Sabastion, 24, is a transgender man who lives with his wife Angel in suburban Atlanta. Assigned the female gender at birth, he began transitioning five years ago . It's a process that felt more complete last month when he had surgery to remove his breasts.

“North Korea has been threatening South Korea two or three times a year. They say, ‘We want to make Seoul a city of fire.’ They make weapons. They shoot our navy boat down. They shoot cannonballs into South Korean islands..." But this aggressive behavior hasn’t kept South Korean churches from praying for their Northern neighbors.Instead, South Korean Christians pray frequently for “freedom, for evangelism, for the transformation of the North Korean leaders, that God will be merciful to them and to us so our nation will be unified so we can go up there and evangelize in North Korea and...

Netflix has reportedly banned workers from looking at each other for more than five seconds as part of its new anti-harassment rules. The new policy also bans the company’s film crews from asking their colleagues for their phone numbers, according to an article in the Sun. “Senior staff went to a harassment meeting to learn what is and isn’t appropriate,” an on-set runner told the Sun. “Looking at anyone longer than five seconds is considered creepy.” “You mustn’t ask for someone’s number unless they have given permission for it to be distributed,” the source continued. “And if you see any...

Austin tax dollars to city election campaign dollars has some concerned about the legality of so called "Democracy dollars" An Austin commission is kicking around the idea of giving taxpayer dollars to residents who would then donate the money to local political candidates. Fred Lewis of the Charter Commission calls it the democracy dollars program. The program was created in Seattle and is so far the only US city with such a program. The commission’s Fred Lewis explained its to combat major donors from dominating elections. Each voter could get 50 bucks for each city race they can vote in....

In their never-ending effort to Balkanize America and buy black votes by stealing from all taxpayers, including black ones, the Democrats are reviving their call for reparations for slavery. After all, with blacks waking up to the fact that Democrats are doing nothing for them, a new bribe appears to be necessary. Given that there are no living Americans who were slaves or who owned slaves, it's clear that the idea of reparations has nothing to do with justice or concern for blacks; it's just another political effort to bribe voters with other people's money – just like Paul Ryan...

I went looking for a Wikipedia page for Lisa Page. There is one, but it's blank. There is almost NOTHING online about her other than she had the affair with Peter Strzok. There is more about her husband (Joseph Burrow) than about her. Obviously things have been scrubbed by someone pretty damn good at scrubbing.

This is completely ridiculous and could end up hurting more than it helps. Netflix has reportedly banned workers from looking at each other for more than five seconds as part of its new anti-harassment rules. The new policy also bans the company’s film crews from asking their colleagues for their phone numbers, according to an article in the Sun. “Senior staff went to a harassment meeting to learn what is and isn’t appropriate,” an on-set runner told the Sun. “Looking at anyone longer than five seconds is considered creepy.”

A white man confronted a black female swimmer at a ritzy California hotel’s pool on Monday, questioning whether she bathed before taking a dip, according to video of the incident. The man insisted he was perfectly within his rights to ask such an intrusive question at the Westin Hotel in Pasadena, footage posted Wednesday by the woman, Texas resident Carle Wheeler, showed.

Former NFL tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. has been arrested in San Diego County on rape charges, according to multiple reports. NBC 7 in San Diego reports that Sheriff’s deputies arrested Winslow at his Vista, California home on Thursday. He stands charged with two counts of kidnapping with the intent to commit rape, two counts of forcible rape, one count of forcible sodomy, one count of forcible oral copulation, two counts of residential burglary and one count of indecent exposure, the district attorney’s office told NBC 7.

. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday morning had both good and bad news for President Trump and his party. The good news was that optimism about the direction of the country and the percentage of people believing that the economy is improving are both up from the last NBC/WSJ poll in April. Not surprisingly, the president’s job approval was up, as we have seen in other polling of late. The bad news for Trump and the GOP is that even with that hopeful news, Republicans are 10 points behind Democrats on the closely-watched generic congressional ballot, while...

The economy’s booming. Some states have raised minimum wages. But even with recent wage growth for the lowest-paid workers, there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Not even in Arkansas, the state with the cheapest housing in the country. One would need to earn $13.84 an hour — about $29,000 a year — to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour. Even the...

Naomi Tomky was still laid out on the operating table after an emergency C-section when the earliest pangs of regret kicked in. “The baby was being lifted over my head,” the 34-year-old freelance writer remembers, “and the anesthesiologist was like, ‘what’s her name?’ I started explaining and was like, oh God, what have I done?” Tomky’s now 8-month-old daughter is Tove (pronounced TOH-vah), a Swedish moniker that’s typically said like TOO-vah, but in this case, the expectant parents from Seattle changed the pronunciation for a twist. “My husband has Swedish heritage and then Tova, or Tovah, is a common Hebrew...

America’s birth rate is at its lowest level in three decades. That’s a problem for Pampers and Huggies. Birth rates began dropping in 2008 as the economy sank into a recession. Better access to contraceptives and younger Americans having children later in their lives have extended the decline, the National Center for Health Statistics found. The downturn caused disposable diaper and training pant sales to fall almost 6% from April 2017 to 2018, according to Nielsen’s most recent brick-and-mortar retail scanner data. “This new reality is beginning to take a substantial toll,” said Svetlana Uduslivaia, the head of industry research...

Landlord’s failure to respond or defend puzzles observers ATLANTA, Georgia––A $4.25 million default judgment issued on June 1, 2018 against Atlanta landlord Jonathan Kent Hart, 61, for an August 26, 2016 pit bull attack may be the biggest yet in which the victim is believed to be likely to collect at least a substantial part of the money. But further litigation is expected, while defendant Hart’s lack of response to the case perplexes observers. Victim Nakisa Shavon Hiles, 40, formerly Nakisa Hiles Wilkerson, had just rented a room at 1572 Montreat Avenue SW, Atlanta, according to court filings, and “was...

Full Title: Dem Rep Sponsoring Trump Tax Cut Repeal Paid No Taxes for Five Years Repeal could cost the state of Colorado hundreds of millions Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado, who is sponsoring a bill that would repeal the Trump tax cuts, thereby effectively raising tax rates on most Americans and businesses, recently reconfirmed to a reporter in his home state that for at least five years he paid no income taxes at all from 2001 to 2005. The issue resurfaced in a recent debate as Polis is running for governor. The five-term congressman is one of the ten wealthiest...