Free Republic

We sympathize with those voters who feel locked out of a political system that seems closed-off, self interested and remote. We hear every week from readers who feel Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is their best chance to demolish a crony system that isn’t even interested in their concerns, much less committed to addressing them. These are two, distinct issues to consider, even though in the heat of the moment they might seem of a piece. First, yes: Many of us are so removed from the workings of the federal government that we don’t even know where to begin to...

Friday on MSNBC when asked about the thousands of emails released by WikiLeaks from a hack of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee (D-TX) mistakenly denounced the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, instead of WikiLeaks.

(Note: When pasting this document into FreeRepublic, it seems that most of the special formatting is lost, such as bold, italics, underlined words and embedded links. To read the document with the formatting and embedded links go to the link of the document.) Forbidden To Speak About Sin On September 14, 2016, at the monthly formation of the clergy of the diocese of Perugia, my cardinal said: “I would like to say something that I forgot to tell you, but I feel it is important. Because I myself had to reflect a lot on this to convince myself. When you...

New Calculations Melt Old Ice-Age Theory by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. * Resources › Earth Sciences Resources › Ice Age In 1976, the journal Science published a paper titled "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages."1 This paper seemed to confirm a particular explanation for the dozens of ice ages which secular scientists claim to have occurred within the past 2.6 million years.2 Known as the Milankovitch (or astronomical) theory, this model is currently the dominant secular explanation for these supposed ice ages. For this reason, this paper is an icon in the field of paleoclimatology, the study...

A little, that is. Shadi Hamid writes in the LA Times about why Islam isn't like other faiths -- as I've long been explaining here. He explains the reason the Quran is different from the Bible in very articulate terms: Contrary to what many think, there is no Christian equivalent to Koranic "inerrancy," even among far-right evangelicals. Muslims believe the Koran is not only God's word, but God's actual speech -- in other words, every single letter and word in the Koran comes directly from God. This seemingly semantic difference has profound implications. If the Koran is God's speech, and...

ROCK HILL Donald Trump despises the media, and so do I. He says the media is out to get him, and they are. Except me. I love Donald Trump. He never changes. Even Thursday night in Charlotte, when he said he regrets a few words he has said. Sure he has insulted people. So have I, and I have been insulted sometimes. I deserved it. Still, I would never vote for him, even for dogcatcher. Trump brought his primary campaign to Winthrop University in January, I predicted his romp to the Republican nomination, running roughshod over such poor alternatives as...

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study report. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them. “These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have...

Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users. Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant...

You are not as bad as people say, you are much, much worse. Now we know why some animals eat their own children. Please, keep talking. I always yawn when I am interested. Talk is cheap, but that's ok, so are you. If we killed everybody who hates you, it wouldn't be murder, it would be an apocalypse! This is an excellent time for you to become a missing person. I'm busy now. Can I ignore you some other time? When I look into your eyes, I see straight through to the back of your head. A sharp tongue...

Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscar acceptance speech last night to declare that climate change "is real" and to blast what he called the "politics of greed." DiCaprio won the Academy Award for best actor for his role in "The Revenant" as a 19th-century frontiersman who is left for dead after being mauled by a bear. He said making "The Revenant" was "about man's relationship with the natural world" and noted that the world in 2015 marked its hottest year on record. The production crew, he said, had to move to the "southern tip of this planet" in order to find...

Given its huge success in describing the natural world for the past 150 years, the theory of evolution is remarkably misunderstood. In a recent episode of the Australian series of "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here", former cricket star Shane Warne questioned the theory - asking "if humans evolved from monkeys, why haven't today's monkeys evolved"? Similarly, a head teacher from a primary school in the UK recently stated that evolution is a theory rather than a fact. This is despite the fact that children in the UK start learning about evolution in Year 6 (ten to 11-year-olds),...

It is a common scene in World War II movies: a captain maneuvers in close to a big ship and fires a spread of torpedoes. None of them detonate. Some submarine officers lost the will to fight and had nervous breakdowns. In fact, German engineering was not always at fault. Sabotage (sporadic, opportunistic, often a personal enterprise) was almost a second army arrayed against the Third Reich. Here are some revealing war stories: 'U-505s fifth patrol, in July 1943, lasted less than two weeks--she was attacked by Allied airplanes and had to return to France for repair. The next four...

Liberals: They produce nothing. They create nothing. They are the parasites that live off other people’s honest labor Liberals like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders represent the worst of America, children in grown-up positions, obstinate in their ignorance. They abhor free market capitalism, limited government, fiscal responsibility, faith-based anything except faith in government, self-determination, individual responsibility, anything traditional or time-tested. They assume they know everything and yet know nothing. President Reagan rightly observed: “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” These liberals, like so many other liberals, personify...

Teacher at Trojan Horse school who said Islam was the 'true religion' and Christians and Jews were ignorant is found guilty of misconductA former teacher at two Birmingham schools linked to the Trojan Horse scandal could face a lifetime ban from the classroom after he told pupils that Christians and Jews were 'ignorant' and Muslims have 'the true religion'. Wakass Haruf, 30, was found guilty of 'professional misconduct' for making the 'inappropriate' comments during a playground sermon to mark Islamic Friday prayers in June 2013. A panel said that while Mr Haruf's comments to pupils during the sermon were...

The time has come for desperate measures against the Oligarchy. Mitch McConnell is safely ensconced in the Senate Majority Leader position, for the Establishment and its donors went all out in 2014 to protect him. And we know the Establishment and its donors will do the same to protect Paul Ryan. They will work to destroy anybody to dares to run against him in a primary. And then they will just say "too bad, republicans, it's Ryan or the democrat." Therefore, the conservatives in Paul Ryan's district can do the nation a service by voting against him in November of...

test topic, ignore

Some folks in the Twitterverse apparently don’t know their musical history. Angry Twitter users took to the social media platform in the days leading up to NBC’s broadcast of “The Wiz Live!” to decry what they considered racist casting. The Thursday-night live production featured an all-black cast led by Queen Latifah, David Alan Grier, Ne-Yo and newcomer Shanice Williams. That is in keeping with the history of the stage musical, which has always featured a black cast, as well as the 1978 film starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. However, many Twitter users vented about the casting nonetheless. I just...

A Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is calling for an end to the investigative body, but Republicans are hitting back hard, pointing out that the lawmaker, Adam Schiff, has largely served “in absentia,” attending only one of 45 interviews the committee has conducted. Schiff, from California, issued the call to disband the committee in a New York Times op-ed published on Friday. He claimed that the panel has lost sight of it purpose of investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is now focused only on taking down former Secretary...

In the largest watershed study of its kind, Michigan State University researchers have sampled 64 river systems in the state for E. coli and the human fecal bacteria B-theta and found that, in a nutshell, septic tanks aren't working. At least not as well as experts thought. The researchers say that "sample after sample" shows bacterial concentrations are "highest where there were higher numbers of septic systems in the watershed area," water expert Joan Rose tells Phys.org.

The Om Hindu Organization of North Carolina is planning to build a 3,600 sq ft temple in Clemmons and has bought 7.6 acres at the site where the sign board, which was shot at, was put. (Representative illustration) Houston: A sign board for a planned Hindu temple in the US state of North Carolina has been fired at, leaving over 60 holes in the sign, prompting authorities to probe the incident that has shocked the Indian community. The incident happened sometime between noon July 4 and about 1pm last Saturday, Forsyth county sheriff's office said in a report. The sheriff's...