Free Republic

It's one thing to read about schisms in the Church in history-books. Watching the brisk steps being taken toward it in your own time is something else entirely. For years, stubbornness has been in control of the situation. Voices of caution are raised, but no one wants to listen. Theology is transformed into points of view or, you could say, into arguments justifying the slow crawl towards the abyss of schism. We have witnessed a solid engineering to create an Orthodox papal ideology and sabotage true conciliarity. We have experienced the disavowal and destruction of all the rules that guided...

American politician Joseph McCarthy, Republican senator from Wisconsin, testifies against the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Washington, DC, June 9, 1954. (Getty Images) An open letter to Brent Bozell, Tucker Carlson, Sen. John Cornyn, Jerome Corsi, Joseph diGenova, Hugh Hewitt, Sen. Mh itcMcConnell, Bill O’Reilly, President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and all other conservatives who still decry “McCarthyism”: How about reconsidering the origins of “McCarthyism” and understanding them for what they are—the very seeds of our Marxian destruction and collective shambles? To set the scene, imagine that post-World War II period, when Americans were still trying to...

When Burt Reynolds drove his celestial Trans-Am into the Great Beyond he took a significant chunk of America’s dwindling reserve of testosterone along with him. Unless you grew up in the ‘70s, its hard to understand his influence and impact, and how he reflected what Americans (particularly American men) wanted to be. Flicks like The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, and the criminally underrated Sharkey’s Machine, all offered us a tough but funny hero who took on the bullies in authority with a smirk, a joke, and when appropriate, a football to the “nether regions.” Of course, you couldn’t...

Beijing leans on an array of levers to extract intellectual property—sometimes coercively DuPont Co. suspected its onetime partner in China was getting hold of its prized chemical technology, and spent more than a year fighting in arbitration trying to make it stop. Then, 20 investigators from China’s antitrust authority showed up. For four days this past December, they fanned out through DuPont’s Shanghai offices, demanding passwords to the company’s world-wide research network, say people briefed on the raid. Investigators printed documents, seized computers and intimidated employees, accompanying some to the bathroom. Beijing leans on an array of levers to pry...

The Russian Communist Party has announced it will form a coalition government with the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) in three regions where Kremlin-backed candidates suffered rare gubernatorial election defeats over the past week. Incumbents from the ruling party in the Far East Khabarovsk region and central Russia’s Vladimir region lost gubernatorial runoffs to LDPR on Sunday. Candidates from the Communist Party and A Just Russia will compete for the governor’s seat in the Siberian republic of Khakasia on Oct. 7 after its governor’s withdrawal from the race. “We will now form a coalition government in Khabarovsk, Vladimir and Khakasia,”...

As a left-leaning state that has embraced the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, California is unlikely to pursue work requirements for that program. But with the Trump administration backing efforts by a handful of states to impose such requirements, backers of the measure said it was important to enshrine in state law that California would not do the same. Critics have said that work requirements will limit the care of those unable to work, including those with chronic physical ailments, mental illness or substance abuse problems. Four states have already taken action to move toward work mandates,...

Electoral authorities in Russia's Far Eastern Primorye region annulled the result of a disputed gubernatorial runoff vote, after the country's top election official said it was marred by "serious violations." A total of 12 members of Primorye's election commission on September 20 voted in favor of the annulment of the result of the closely contested vote in the region, where the Communist Party cried foul after the Kremlin-backed incumbent surged ahead at the end of the ballot count. One election commission member voted against the proposal. It is the first time a runoff has been annulled in Russia since 1996,...

When Turlock, California’s Pitman High School was coming up with a list for its inaugural athletic hall of fame class, it probably didn’t take long before they got to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Twelve years after he graduated from Pitman, five years after he led the San Francisco 49ers to within inches of a Super Bowl title and one year after GQ named him its Citizen of the Year for his highly publicized social activism, Kaepernick will headline his prep alma mater’s first hall of fame class. Kaepernick is expected to attend the ceremony along with eight other inductees...

A Louisiana mayor reportedly banned his city’s recreation programs from purchasing Nike products in the wake of an ad campaign featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Mayor Ben Zahn, of Kenner, signed a memo last week that states that “[u]nder no circumstances” can any Nike apparel or equipment be “purchased for use or delivery” at any recreation facilities in the city. “Effective immediately all purchases made by any booster club operating at any Kenner Recreation Facility for wearing apparel, shoes, athletic equipment and/or any athletic product must be approved by the Director of Parks and Recreation, or his...

The National Fraternal Order of Police won’t boycott Nike, but they made it crystal clear that they won’t stand for the company’s controversial Colin Kaepernick ad. In a press release deliberately titled, “Believe In Something Even If It Means Sacrificing Everything,” Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, issued a powerful dismissal of the Nike ad – and completely humiliated Kaepernick in the process. “The Fraternal Order of Police has been called upon to boycott Nike for capitalizing on this former professional football player because he attracts controversy,” Canterbury says in the release. “In our experience, boycotts...

Lithuania on Friday urged American retail giant Walmart to stop selling T-shirts and hoodies with Soviet hammer and sickle symbols, insisting the image insults victims of often deadly Soviet-era persecution. “We sent a letter to Walmart requesting the withdrawal of products with Soviet symbols and we are still waiting for a reaction,” Lithuanian ambassador to the US Rolandas Krisciunas said. The hammer and sickle symbol is banned in Lithuania... The Baltic state’s foreign minister Linas Linkevicius tweeted: “You wouldn’t buy Nazi-themed clothing, would you? “We trust @Walmart’s moral stance & call to withdraw products with the symbols of mass murders.”...

Keith Ellison's political career began with controversy over his links to the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan, connections that continues to dog him to the present day despite his repeated disavowals. But less commonly known is another radical association of Ellison's: a decade-long relationship with Marxist University of Minnesota professor and 1974 Communist Party gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, Erwin Marquit. Marquit helped launch Ellison's national political career in 2006 using Marquit's political connections, anti-war associations, personal donations, and hosting at least four fundraisers over the years for Ellison in the Marquit home near Cedar Lake in the Bryn Mawr section...

NBC security analyst and former CIA director John Brennan is doubling down on a threat to sue President Trump after the outspoken former Obama official was stripped of his security clearance. Brennan appeared Friday night on MSNBC and told Rachel Maddow he is exploring litigation against the president. This follows Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) saying Trump stripping Brennan of his security clearance is illegal. “As you can imagine, a number of lawyers reached out to say that there is a very strong case here, not so much to reclaim mine but to prevent this from happening...

Russia will spend hundreds of millions of rubles on restoring the golden dome of the National Capitol Building in Havana, Cuba, in what Russian critics have said is an example of misplaced spending. Russian users reacted sarcastically to the plan, with opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s aide Leonid Volkov calling it “brilliant news, simply the best.” Popular blogger Ilya Varlamov wrote a post on Telegram ridiculing Russia’s decision to spend the money abroad. “Russia will spend 642 million rubles to restore roads and repair hospitals across the country!” he wrote. “Whoops, I made a typo, sorry!" Though opened after eight years...

heart attack, yup. It was said by her own mother, during a live TV broadcast and there wasn’t shit the news media could do about it. It’s also exactly at that moment the media hurriedly buried it. Now, I’m no conspiracy nut either, but I do recognize it when someone’s trying to manipulate a story to push an agenda. If you try to look up the cause of death, the only thing that’ll come up will refer to the original report from the scene that day, which was just the opinion of whoever showed up and filled it out, but...

President Trump has accused China of intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, protectionism, and driving a trade deficit. But these disputes obscure an embarrassing reality: America has voluntarily ceded its intellectual arbitrage to China by opening the U.S. up for total download without even attempting to return the favor. Information flows abundantly and freely eastward. Little returns west. Chinese investors, students, government officials, and corporations have mapped every inch of America. The same cannot be said for Americans. But this situation is not actually due to protectionism by the Chinese state. Rather, Americans have voluntarily chosen isolation. The flood of...

Former NAACP president and current Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous is demanding that television stations stop airing a commercial from his political opponent. “Evidence to the controversy” An attorney representing the Ben Jealous campaign sent a letter to four television stations telling them to pull down a political ad from incumbent Governor Larry Hogan. “The Republican Governor’s Association in this advertisement uses selective editing techniques to make the false claim that Mr. Jealous is a socialist, despite clear and repeated evidence to the controversy,” wrote James Temple Jr., which likely meant to say “evidence to the contrary.” Former NAACP president...

"Strongman politics are ascendant," Barack Obama warned in South Africa. He spoke passionately about "the politics of fear and resentment" at the Mandela Lecture. He worried that we were entering a world, “where might makes right and politics is a hostile competition between tribes and races and religions.” While the media used the remarks to attack Trump's meeting with Putin, Obama had shared a stage with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who had come to power promising to seize land from white farmers. Ramaphosa was the latest in a series of ANC strongmen, including his predecessor, an alleged rapist, beginning...

Author and radio host Mark Steyn on the increasing leftist and radical turn - and future - of the Democratic Party.

CNN’s Van Jones was the guest on Thursday’s The View where he plugged his primetime weekend show aimed at bringing together conservatives and liberals. While he mostly argued the haughty Michelle Obama-esque “When they go low, we go high” approach for the left, host Sunny Hostin badgered him for that take, saying anything less than hostility to Trump voters was being “complicit.” The lengthy segment started with the guests naturally asking Jones what he thought about the White House banning his colleague Kaitlan Collins from the Rose Garden yesterday. He blasted the action, saying she did the right and only...