Free Republic

A relaxed-looking juvenile Hawaiian monk seal lounges near a sandy white beach on some green foliage. Its eyes are half-closed and it has a serene expression on its face. But the seal’s calm demeanor is surprising. Why? Well, there’s a long, black-and-white eel dangling from its right nostril. “It’s just so shocking,” Claire Simeone, a veterinarian and monk seal expert based in Hawaii, told The Washington Post on Thursday. “It’s an animal that has another animal stuck up its nose.” Simeone wasn’t the only person stunned by the photo of the seal and its unusual facial ornament that was shared...

For everybody in the San Francisco Bay Area, December 7 is the one day each year that the beacon on Mount Diablo is lit in commemoration of the 1941 attack on the U.S. Yes, even in the Bay Area we have true patriots! Mount Diablo’s beacon is lit at sunset and shines all night on this single evening each year: The history of the beacon is interesting... The Beacon was originally lit by Charles Lindbergh in 1928 to assist in the early days of commercial aviation. The Beacon shined from the summit of Mount Diablo each night until December 8,...

Regardless of the arguments attempting to deny the existence of fake news or down play its impact, the truth is that it has infected both journalism and social discourse. The business of propaganda or creating false news for the purpose of manipulating public opinion is not new. People like Dan Rather have made a career of it, the New York Times built an empire using it and CNN created a worldwide brand, making the use of fake news an accepted format in the process. ~snip~ The first amendment guarantees both free speech and freedom of the press. It is fundamental...

Love for one’s people is as natural as love for one’s family. No one can be faulted for this love, only respected. After all, no matter how much the modern world whirls and jerks about, we still aim to keep intact our family, and we hold it in special regard, suffused with sympathy. A nation is a family, too, except an order of magnitude higher in numbers. It is bound by unique internal ties: a common language, a common cultural tradition, a shared historical memory, and a shared set of problems to resolve in the future.

Murtaza Ahmadi went viral in 2016 after pictures of him emerged wearing a makeshift Lionel Messi shirt fashioned out of a plastic bag. The Afghan boy’s humble tribute to his Barcelona idol touched the hearts of many, including, it seems, Messi himself. Murtaza would receive a package from the player via UNICEF, which included a real signed shirt, and he later even met his hero in a friendly played in Qatar. But those moments of joy have been replaced by dark times. The seven-year-old has been forced to flee his home after receiving death threats. His family say his fame...

In the year after Hillary Clinton’s presidential defeat, donors seemed to abandon the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, with contributions plummeting nearly 58 percent. The $36 million nosedive in donations has come to light as Republican legislators plan to hold hearings on the results of a federal corruption investigation into the non-profit next month. Federal authorities have long been probing the non-profit over allegations of “pay to play.” Specifically, the FBI investigation focused on whether any donations made to the foundation were linked to policy decisions made while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, according...

To cleanse the palate, a watershed moment in celebrity public service announcements. This is simultaneously the most trivial, and most useful, PSA to come out of Hollywood in decades. And it’s not annoying! Until today I couldn’t have imagined what it’d be like to watch an A-list actor speak didactically about a Matter of Concern and not come away highly irritated. “When’s he going to get to the part about climate change or impeaching Trump?” I kept thinking. Tom Cruise PSA

It’s an unconventional take on the nativity scene at St. Susanna’s Parish Dedham. The baby Jesus is in a cage, the wise men are closed off by a wall. For the parish, the crèche is meant to be thought provoking. “We try to take a picture of the world as it is and put it together with a Christmas message,” said Pastor Fr. Stephen Josoma. That message this year questions “peace on earth”, since Jesus represents migrant children being held at the southern border separated from their parents. The wise men are the caravan of migrants behind the border wall....

Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list. Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years. The email exchanges included then-FBI...

On Tuesday, Emerald Robinson, chief White House correspondent for One America News Network (OANN), unleashed a powerful rumor that The Weekly Standard is on its last legs. Sources confirmed to CNN that Editor-in-Chief Stephen Hayes warned staff the future of the paper is uncertain. One of the magazine's key editors, Bill Kristol, has adopted a firmly anti-Trump stance, becoming a well-known #NeverTrump leader.

“Magic mushrooms” may soon become legal in Oregon, where even powerful politicians seem high — on the idea, according to a report. The state’s attorney general green-lit language allowing the bill to hit the ballots in 2020, assuming advocates get enough signatures, according to Oregonlive.com If it passes, the initiative would decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms and allow them to be manufactured with a license. Oregon would become the first US state to legalize the drug. The bill will need 140,000 signatures in order to appear on the ballots in the 2020 general election, the paper reported. Nationwide, possession of psychedelic mushrooms...

SEE article at link as not sure of copyright laws

Like millions of Americans, I am following the Mueller witch hunt with a lot of interest and a lot of disgust. The destruction of our justice system going unchallenged by 95% of our congress and legal scholars is angering many of us. But the fact that none of these people being set up and charged need to relinquish their rights is a particularly astonishing thing to see.

Equality is the chief faux virtue of our time. Our obsession with it brings to mind the great G.K. Chesterton’s observation, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”

(Alaska) One school in Mat-Su was so badly damaged by Friday’s earthquake that it won’t reopen this school year, and the status of five others remains up in the air. The quake’s epicenter was in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the second-largest municipality in Alaska with more than 100,000 residents, about a third of whom work in Anchorage. The magnitude 7.0 quake shredded asphalt around the borough, but wreaked most havoc near the epicenter on Point MacKenzie, near the borough’s port. At least 117 people here reported mostly minor injuries such as bruises, cuts or anxiety, according to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center....

New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg branches off into global warming alarmism (while still mocking conservatives) on the front of Monday's Business Day with an oddity about a freelance environmentalist going viral with emotional videos of dead dolphins on the beach in Naples, Fla. that she blames on global warming: “Filling a TV News Gap With Just an iPhone.” The online headline: “News Networks Fall Short on Climate Story as Dolphins Die on the Beach.” Note how the Times steals a base, equating climate to the dead dolphins as if there is a clear, proven linkage (there isn’t). But...

It’s back. A controversial bill with the potential to add millions of apartments and condominiums near transit — which died in its first committee hearing earlier this year — was resurrected Monday, but with a number of significant changes. Already, some of the changes are raising eyebrows.

The ranking officer of a Minneapolis police precinct was removed from his post Monday after an image of what appears to be a Christmas tree decorated with racist ornaments circulated on social media, authorities said. The removal came three days after two officers who were allegedly involved in decorating the tree were placed on paid leave. Minneapolis Police Department spokesman John Elder confirmed that Inspector Aaron Biard was removed from the top position at the north side precinct station where the tree was apparently photographed. "After very thoughtful review and consideration I have made the decision that effective immediately Assistant...

Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that “there is no place” in the clergy for gay people... Italian news outlets have published excerpts from a four-hour interview between Pope Francis and Spanish Missionary Fernando Prado, published as a book titled "The strength of vocation"... Avvenire published on November 29 the full excerpt in which Prado asks the Pontiff specifically about the inclusion of “people with homosexual tendencies.” Francis admits that this is “something that worries me..." He calls homosexuality “a very serious matter, which must be discerned adequately from the beginning” with those who seek to become clergy. “We...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k7qdTbUyu0