Free Republic

"Historically, Catholics have argued that the papacy was a divinely-given institution papacy (Matt 16:17-19) etc., and they have relied on the notion that there have been bishops of Rome extending all the way back to the time of Peter. This notion of bishops extending all the way back was thought to be actual history. In fact, as Shotwell and Loomis pointed out, in the General Introduction to their 1927 work "The See of Peter": With reference to the Petrine doctrine, however, the Catholic attitude is much more than a "pre-disposition to believe." That doctrine is the fundamental basis of the...

For the full list of slogans, as translated by BBC Monitoring, read on: Let us all turn out in the general offensive to hasten final victory in the revolutionary spirit of Paektu! Let us greet the 70th anniversaries of national liberation and Party founding with high political enthusiasm and brilliant labour feats! Let us glorify the 70th anniversaries of national liberation and Party founding as revolutionary, auspicious events noteworthy in the history of Kim Il Sung's nation and Kim Jong Il's Korea! The great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are the eternal leaders of our revolution, the...

Kayla Mueller protested Israel for ISM. PalSolidarity reported: Today, 10th February, Kayla Mueller’s family confirmed she has been killed. Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the popular committee in the village of Bil’in where Kayla joined the protests, told ISM: “Kayla came to Palestine to stand in solidarity with us. She marched with us and faced the military that occupies our land side by side with us. For this, Kayla will always live in our hearts. We send all our support to her family and will continue, like Kayla, to work against injustice wherever it is.” Kayla Mueller volunteered with the...

“And more than 1 in 4 women has experienced some form of domestic violence.” Wow, just wow. Gone are the days that the president makes false claims that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college. Now 20 percent of all women in America have been raped or nearly raped. And 25 percent of American women — not just college women — have experienced domestic violence. Let’s just think about that for a minute. The current population of the U.S. is 316.1 million, with women comprising about half. That means there are about 158 million women and...

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson says the government is growing increasingly savvy at evading reporters through the use of social media and other avenues to push “their propaganda and spin.” Speaking at a Hillsdale College conference on American journalism, the Emmy Award-winning journalist and Daily Signal senior independent contributor called out the press for going soft in pursuit of the truth.Attkisson said that “unless something pretty drastic happens, it stands to continue and get worse no matter who is president next.”The author of “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington” said it’s...

As a senior archivist for the KGB’s foreign-intelligence directorate, Vasili Mitrokhin had access to a treasure trove of information. He unveiled those secrets after defecting to Britain in 1992. One such secret concerned the “active measures” — the lies – the KGB had used against the West during the Cold War. In the 1980s, for example, the KGB spread a couple of particularly pernicious rumors. It claimed the United States had manufactured the AIDS virus and that rich Americans were murdering children in the Third World for organ-harvesting purposes. Framed by faux science and ideologically screened “experts,” and harnessing anti-American...

Former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson said the Obama administration has been producing its own video content to promote “unfiltered” messages with taxpayer-funded staff, including hairstylists, makeup artists and wardrobe consultants. By cutting out the news media, Attkisson said the White House has figured out how to avoid questions and accountability. She also revealed that the Department of Agriculture has more than 1,200 “media relations employees” nationwide. “White House officials have exploited non-news media to spoon-feed unfiltered messaging, at times pure propaganda, into the public’s mouth. The Google-sponsored chat I mentioned – that came with a pre-selected audience and questions...

excerpt: In 2009, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein published a book, called “Nudge,” on how government and other organizations could induce people to avoid common errors. Last year, Sunstein gave the Storrs Lectures at Yale on the topic, which will soon be published as a book called “Nanny Statecraft.” Last month, the Obama administration announced that it is creating a new team to explore applications of this sort of empirical research to policy-making.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...

In January 2010, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal health spending would total a bit more than $11 trillion between 2011 and 2020. Today, the Congressional Budget Office thinks it made a mistake. Costs are coming in lower-than-expected, and the CBO's newest projections suggest the federal government will spend $600 billion less on health care than they predicted back in 2010. So far, so good: projections are always wrong by at least a bit, and it's nice to have the extra $600 billion in America's pocket. But here's the incredible thing: as Paul Van de Water, a health...

Jack Webb (Dragnet) plays a Rod Serling-like role as he introduces us to Jerry Donovan -- an average guy who shrugs off his inconvenient, civic responsibilities. Jerry "wakes up" in a communist-controlled town, where he's the only American left. This film was produced for the Defense Department by studio mogul Jack L Warner and stars many Warner Brothers stock actors -- including Jack Kelly (Maverick), Robert Conrad (Wild Wild West) and Andrew Duggan. At the time, Jack L. Warner was very staunch anti-Communist, even though he released a pro-Communist feature film, Mission to Moscow, in 1943. Producer: Department of Defense...

WUWT reader Warren Smith writes in with this quiz: TEST YOURSELF: What is your knowledge of how fast the polar ice caps are melting? 1) According to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, as of the end of December 2014, the extent of Arctic sea ice coverage, when compared to the year-end averages from 1981 through 2010, was: A) About 90% below normal B) About 75% below normal C) About 50% below normal D) About 25% below normal E) Less than 5% below normal F) About 33% above normal 2) According to data from the National Snow...

2014 was, according to NOAA and NASA, the warmest year on record for the entire world. Locally, it was also the hottest year in California’s history. The world’s climate is changing, at least according to science and data. 2014 was also the year of Frozen, Disney’s animated musical blockbuster about two sisters and a snowman (more or less), amassing over $1.2 billion in worldwide box office receipts and billions more from countless sing-a-long showings, DVD sales, and merchandise since its November 2013 release. And now, in 2015, we’re learning where these two seemingly disparate facts intersect: the State Department’s Admiral...

I am sure that my fellow freepers can provide a list of Obama SOTU phrases that he will surely use tonight in his speech to the masses...

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record.

While the media spikes the football in the face of a Russia hobbled by U.S. sanctions, the decline of the ruble and collapse in oil prices, Vladimir Putin’s protectorate poses a direct threat to America and its interests that we ignore at our own peril.In the 15 years since Vladimir Putin ascended to his position as de facto czar, Russia has executed a long-term strategy that the West has failed to recognize and effectively counter under both Democratic and Republican administrations.Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West thought it had defeated the Soviet Union. But unlike in a...

The larger-than-life Russian leader has held power — with one title or another — for 15 years, and is set to reign for at least a decade more. Yet Putin remains inscrutable. With only a smattering of biographical details released to the public and his sometimes puzzling public appearances, scholars — and even many world leaders — still struggle to understand the man at the helm of the Kremlin. To glean a clearer picture, FRONTLINE took a closer look at some of the most identifiable aspects of Putin’s public persona. --------------------------------------------------------- Putin’s Way, FRONTLINE’s investigation into the accusations of criminality...

LifeNews, a mainstream Russian TV news channel, aired a segment on Thursday in which a regular guest and "expert political analyst" stated that the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris had in fact been carried out by United States intelligence agencies. The guest, Alexei Martynov, suggested that US intelligence had launched the Charlie Hebdo attack in order to sabotage the global effort against Islamist terrorism, which he argued Russia is leading. Martynov also argued that the attack was meant to pressure French President Francois Hollande into maintaining Western economic sanctions against Russia. The segment ran for 10 minutes, during which...

As with other economic one-act shows run by a crackpot, today's Russia finds itself on the financial ropes as the oil price bounces off 6-year lows and it's currency circles-the-drain. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy than Vladimir Putin. Thus, the Kremlin needs an outside enemy to legitimize a government (living in a Soviet time-warp) that seems to be ruining pretty much everything it touches these days. The collapse in the price of petroleum has pulled-away the curtain and exposed  Oz (Team Putin) as a bunch of economic incompetents who really don't know what to do. Except 'blame the Americans':...