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Saint Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor in the second century AD. A disciple of Saint John the Evangelist, Polycarp died martyr in AD 155 or 156 for refusing to renounce Christianity. His martyrdom was marked by various miraculous prodigies, but foremost among them, perhaps, is the incredible fortitude of the man--who was at least 86 at the time of his trial--and his willingness to speak the truth to power even with the threat of immediate death hanging over his head. Here is an excerpt from the account of his martyrdom, recorded by Saint Irenaeus, in which Polycarp...

This week, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson announced that actor Jussie Smollett’s claim that two Trump supporters assaulted him after his January 29th 2 A.M. run to Subway for a tuna sandwich was a hoax. “Suspicions were first raised when the responding officers noticed that the sandwich survived unscathed,” Johnson said. “How does that happen with two men beating on Mr. Smollett? To put it succinctly, it made his story seem fishy.” “After we located the suspects it turned out they were friends of Mr. Smollett who alleged that he had paid them to lightly beat him without doing any...

It is now safe. Did you hear that, Saturday Night Live? It is now safe to satirize Jussie Smollett. After weeks of fearing to tread into this area of comedy due to not wanting to challenge the official line that Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime perpetrated by MAGA hat types, despite a lot of evidence that this was actually a hoax, the comedy floodgates seemed to have finally opened this week. On Friday night the Daily Show presented an hilarious skit brutally mocking Smollett in the form of a Lifetime movie parody.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has finally revealed her grand scheme to regulate cow farts. The part of her Green new Deal that was ridiculed the most has now been explained by the 29-year-old. But the thing is, the idea and the reasoning behind it is still ridiculous. The explanation was made on the premiere of Showtime’s “Desus & Mero,” The New York Post reported. “And so it’s not to say you get rid of agriculture, it’s not to say we’re gonna force everybody to go vegan or anything crazy like that,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But it’s to say, ‘Listen, we...

I just started a Change.org petition to have Jussie Smollett host the Oscars and I need signatures. I'm open to suggestions to edit the petition to increase the humor quotient. Ideas?

“‘Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth’” (Matthew 5:5). God rewards the gentle with His own joy and gladness. But more specifically, He allows such saints to “inherit the earth.” In the future the Father will completely reclaim earth, and believers will rule it with Him. Because only believers are truly gentle, Jesus could confidently proclaim “they shall inherit the earth.” “Inherit” denotes the receiving of one’s allotted portion and correlates perfectly with Psalm 37:11—“the humble will inherit the land.” We sometimes wonder why the godless seem to prosper while the godly suffer, but God assures us...

An Internal Revenue Service analyst in San Francisco was the source of government records showing that Michael Cohen, when he was President Trump’s personal lawyer, funneled millions of dollars from foreign companies, as well as an alleged hush-money payment, into Cohen’s illegal shell company, federal prosecutors charged Thursday.

Vatican Sex Summit Report: Day Three Disgruntled papal nuncios meet in secret in Rome Church Militant has learned exclusively of a secret meeting that occurred with a good number of papal nuncios last night. The point of the meeting was to air their grievances among each other at how the Vatican simply ignores whatever bad behavior of priests or bishops they report — meaning bad sexual behavior. The nuncios, we were told — a somewhat sizable group of them who are here because of the sex summit — are extremely upset and angry and didn't really discover the scope of...

Mayor Steve Adler revealed the contents of a letter that'll be placed on the moon in about 40 days. It's part of the Arch Mission Foundation's goal to archive all human knowledge in space. The letter was on Space X's Falcon Rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral this week. Adler included Kerbey Lane's highly-coveted secret queso recipe. He said the challenge of eating queso in zero gravity is, "one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win." He also said maybe next time- they'll remember the chips. Also on the...

Conservative groups are calling on the University of California, Berkeley to take action against a campus employee who praised an alleged assault on an activist who was recruiting at a table. The university employee, Yuvi Panda, cheered the alleged assault – which campus police said happened on Tuesday -- on Twitter on Wednesday night. He tweeted: “OH MY GOD THE MAGA PEOPLE ON UC BERKELEY CAMPUS YESTERDAY GOT PUNCHED IN THE FACE BY SOMEONE THIS MAKES ME FEEL EMOTIONALLY SO MUCH BETTER.” In a news release Friday night, UC Berkeley officials announced that police had identified a potential suspect "Based...

Remember the Reichstag fire? It was perhaps the seminal event that sealed Germany’s fate as a socialist dictatorship before the Allies were finally able to pry that nation out of the jaws of Nazism in 1945 (although for the eastern portion of the country human dignity and freedom wouldn’t come for another 40-plus years thanks to Soviet imperialism). If you’re not familiar with that event, the date was February 27, 1933. Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Germany’s chancellor just four weeks hence, though his Nazi party was in an unstable position at the center of a coalition government...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Friday denied allegations from former Trump adviser Roger Stone that his indictment was leaked to CNN before it was unsealed last month. “The Special Counsel’s Office is aware of no information indicating that reporters were given any advance knowledge of a possible indictment from the Special Counsel’s office,” the filing states. Stone’s legal team had filed a motion in federal court claiming his indictment had been leaked after CNN was the only network to stake out Stone's Fort Lauderdale home when he was arrested before dawn last month. CNN later aired video of the...

Rep. Joe Kennedy said he hopes for the sake of the country and the integrity of the US election process that special counsel Robert Mueller turns up nothing in his Russia investigation. "It is probably too much to hope that what Mueller's report is actually going to say is, 'Nothing to see here, nobody did anything wrong, we got everyone already and case closed.' That's what I hope it says," the Massachusetts Democrat told Van Jones on "The Van Jones Show," airing Saturday on CNN at 7 p.m. ET. Sources told CNN on Wednesday that Attorney General Bill Barr is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL_2BY375M8

Abuse summit day two: How to hold bishops to account The bishops discussed how to make themselves accountable, but will this be enough for the victims around the world? (ROME – February 22nd, 2019) “Accountability”: that was the theme chosen for Day 2 of the meeting for the protection of minors taking place this week at the Vatican.An address by the Archbishop of Mumbai, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, set the tone for the day. His Eminence focused primarily on bishops’ accountability to each other — in the key of “collegiality” — and spoke of the bishops’ need to engender and...

Chick-fil-A is one of the most successful food chains in the US, earning the dedication of patrons and the regular praise of fans on social media. It's a company known for its commitment to traditional Christian values, and now the daughter of Chick-fil-A's founder is revealing some valuable life lessons from her father and the source of the company's impressive success.Trudy Cathy White's new book, "Climb Every Mountain: Finding God Faithful in the Journey of Life," highlights her life as child in the Cathy household and difficult experiences she has had to overcome. At the center of it all...

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele claimed Friday on MSNBC that President Donald Trump was ‘probably’ upset that law enforcement prevented a terror attack against prominent Democrats. A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant was arrested earlier this week for allegedly stockpiling guns and ammunition with the alleged intention of carrying out a large-scale terror attack to “establish a white homeland.”

Although the remarkable dumpster fire that is the Jussie Smollett self-beclowning saga has captured all the headlines this week, the legally murky kerfuffle that is the so-called "ISIS bride" — Hoda Muthana — is probably the more nationally pressing story. Muthana was born in the U.S. to a father who was a Yemeni diplomat. All sides of the constitutional debate regarding the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause concede that if the Clause's intermediary phrase, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," means anything at all, it refers to the fact that the children of foreign diplomats are not...

Wilfred Reilly is an associate professor at Kentucky State University where he teaches political science. Reilly has a piece at USA Today which is based on a forthcoming book he is writing on hoax hate crimes. His conclusion is that these crimes happen far more often than people think: Doing research for a book, Hate Crime Hoax, I was able to easily put together a data set of 409 confirmed hate hoaxes. An overlapping but substantially different list of 348 hoaxes exists at fakehatecrimes.org, and researcher Laird Wilcox put together another list of at least 300 in his still-contemporary book...

A mother says she is furious over an incident involving her son at Hico High School this week. Amy Martin said a teacher cut her 16-year-old’s hair without permission Tuesday at the direction of Principal Shelli Stegall. “My son was taken to the special education building where a teacher chopped off his bangs,” Martin said. “They were cut straight across. It reminded me of Jim Carrey’s haircut in Dumb and Dumber.” Martin said the school never asked permission to cut her son’s hair, which it said was too long and violated the district’s “code of conduct.” Her son Lane Kiesling...