Free Republic

Buddy Cianci (see-AN'-see) served two stints as mayor of Rhode Island's capital city, and both ended in felony convictions. Now he may try for a third. Cianci's charisma and shenanigans put him and Providence in the national spotlight - for good and ill - during his 21 years at the city's helm. He says he's leaning toward running again, 12 years after his conviction in a federal investigation into widespread corruption in his administration. Cianci says if he were mayor again, he could use his personality and experience to inject excitement back into the city. The mere discussion of a...

Adversity by Terry Johnson Background Reading: Romans 8:26-39; Genesis 50:15-21 In 1858, a gifted young Presbyterian missionary named John G. Paton sailed with his wife and infant son to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific to begin missionary work among the islanders. Within a few months of arrival, both his infant son and his wife had died, leaving him to labor alone. In August 1876, a gifted young theologian names Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield and his bride were honeymooning in Germany. While sightseeing in the Black Forest region, they were suddenly caught in a severe storm, and something that was...

A homeless man told the police on Friday that his conscience drove him to reveal something he’d kept secret — that he’d beaten a man to death in South Providence 24 years ago. By nightfall, Daniel Serrano, 65, was charged with the murder of 32-year-old Michael Holliday — a man he said he didn’t intend to kill, Maj. David Lapatin said. “He claims he was feeling very guilty about it,” the police major added. A workman discovered Holliday’s body in a vacant third-floor apartment at 27 Somerset St. on Feb. 24, 1990. The man had been beaten to death. He...

Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market —...

Philippians 4:19 Today, I am wearing an orange wristband marked “ARTPRIZE”. I’ll be wearing it most days for the next three weeks or so. ***** I’ve been riding the bus to school since the second week. Even at full fare—$1.50 each way—it’s less than the combination of gas and parking to drive myself. I use a 31-day pass, which costs $40; in that amount of time I make about 36 bus trips, each one costing a fraction over $1.11. I have used two of these passes so far, and have a fresh one in my pocket right now. These passes...

God’s Strange Providence David stood waiting and watching by the stone Ezel. It was his stone of destiny. His dear friend Jonathan was to determine whether King Saul still harbored murderous intentions toward David. If so, David would have to flee. If not, he would be able to return to normal living. David and Jonathan had agreed upon a signal. If it were safe for him to return, Jonathan would shoot three arrows and cry to the lad with him, “Look, the arrows are on this side of you; get them and come…” (v. 21). But if Saul still harbored...

God’s decretive will is sometimes described as the sovereign, efficacious will by which God brings to pass whatever He pleases by His divine decree. An example of this may be seen in God’s work of creation. When God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), He issued a divine imperative. He exercised His sovereign, efficacious will. When He did so, it was impossible for the light not to appear. It appeared by the sheer necessity of consequence.The decretive will can have no other effect, no other consequence than what God sovereignly commands. He did not request the light to shine. Neither...

Teitzei means “to go out” in Hebrew. It is in the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy 21:10 – 23:26). What many do not realize or appreciate is that the Torah is based on connecting principles. Not just that, but that the world is based on connecting principles, and that ultimately God Himself, so to speak is consistent and runs the universe consistently based on connecting principles. Thus, is something at some point seems disconnected or dissonant at any given point in time, it will be redressed and reconnected and the final consequence will be such that not matter what seemed out...

Waiting for that other shoe to drop And you swear this world's gonna come to a stop Drowning on dry land a can't come up for air Your knees are so weak and you look at that mountain Say there's no way over and no way around it And it feels like you're so far from home Even God's not there But Oh but every single sparrow flying And every broken soul that's crying He can see yeah you're in His reach If He can hold an ocean back with one little shore Then what's all this worry and...

What is striking in this history is the manifest hand of providence in the work of redemption. God is a God of long-range planning. He does not succumb to the all-too-human tendency toward immediate gratification and short-term goals. God sees the end from the beginning and rules the course of history, moving it inexorably toward its appointed destiny. In the affairs of the life of Abraham, God was providentially directing history toward David’s kingship and far beyond to the kingship of Christ. The genealogies show that the first advent of Christ was not an afterthought in God’s mind, a sudden...

The New Jersey Attorney General has indicted fifteen defendants for their alleged roles in a multi-million dollar heroin trafficking ring which supplied wholesalers throughout the northeast as reported by Christopher Baxter for The Star-Ledger. The accused ringleader is Dominican national Segundo Garcia who illegally re-entered the United States following his deportation on a drug conviction according to authorities. Dominican drug trafficking organizations -- both in the Dominican Republic and in North America -- increasingly have been appearing on law enforcement's radar screen for their involvement as distributors for the Mexican drug cartels. Last summer the feds busted 11 suspects in...

Victim punched in the head in unprovoked attack PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Providence Police are investigating a number of violent attacks that all took place within one half hour early Sunday morning. Brown University sophomore, Joseph Sharkey, was punched in the head while he was talking to a group of women on the corner of George and Thayer Streets around 2:23 a.m. Sharkey is a guard on the Brown University Basketball team. "He king of got sucker punched in the face and kind of hit his head on the concrete, after that he was knocked out cold," said Brown University...

www.fbi.gov/boston/press-releases/2013/federal-indictment-unsealed-as-rhode-island-state-police-and-federal-agents-arrest-seven-search-ten-businesses-and-residences-and-seize-cash-vehicles-and-business-records-in-alleged-cigarette-trafficking-conspiracy Federal Indictment Unsealed as Rhode Island State Police and Federal Agents Arrest Seven; Search Ten Businesses and Residences; and Seize Cash, Vehicles, and Business Records in Alleged Cigarette Trafficking Conspiracy Investigation and Indictment Alleges Complex Interstate Conspiracy That Allegedly Defrauded Rhode Island of More Than $1 Million in Tax Revenue U.S. Attorney’s Office May 08, 2013 District of Rhode Island PROVIDENCE, RI—A federal grand jury indictment that names seven individuals and alleges a complex interstate contraband cigarette trafficking conspiracy responsible for the sale of more than $1.2 million dollars of contraband cigarettes in Rhode Island and the loss of...

http://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/providence_god_in_control/providence The Psalmist asked, “Why do the wicked prosper, while the righteous suffer?” The prophet Habakkuk asked virtually the same question in his day as he witnessed his homeland overrun with the invading armies of the Chaldeans. Initially, from Habakkuk’s perspective, he did not see God’s hand in the suffering of his people. Where was the Judge of all the earth during this time of injustice, he wondered. Here Dr. Sproul explains how God’s providence and suffering go hand and hand.

I am not nearly as thankful as I ought to be. The two most important days of my life I often take for granted. The First Day was the day that Christ died for my sins. Jesus took the punishment for every one of my sins, even the ones I haven’t committed yet. Dreadful thought that I would live as in ingrate! Glorious thought that he would die anyway! That one day alone should be enough to cause me to live every moment in continuous Thanksgiving. Righteous Christ died for me, the ungodly. But there was another Day. The Day...

"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (Pro. 16:33). "God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.11). If Creation was a unique exercise of divine energy causing the world to be, providence is a continued exercise of that same energy whereby the Creator, according to his own will, (a) keeps all creatures in being, (b) involves himself in all events, and (c) directs all things to their appointed end. The model is of purposive personal...

Gerard "the Frenchman" Ouimette, a former enforcer for the Patriarca family in Providence, RI, was sentenced to life in 1995 pursuant to the federal three-strikes-your-out law following an extortion conviction, and has used the time to write his memoirs What Price Providence? about the life as reported by W. Zachary Malinowski for the Providence Journal. The imprisoned mobster apparently has an ax to grind with law enforcement according to the book's description on Amazon: Readers will have difficulty discerning whose behavior is criminal, Gerard Ouimette's, the author, or the Government's. * * * This book tells the entire ugly truth,...

Where have all the progressives gone? You say you haven't seen hide nor hair of them over the past four or five days? You're wondering where they all are? Did they commit mass hara-kiri after the Wipeout in Wisconsin? Have they all moved to France (where they don't wear underpants)? Have they retreated into OMB (Occupy Mom's Basement)? No, the reason you haven't seen the progressives around much lately is this: The progs were dense in Providence. A dense concentration of them, I mean. In Providence, Rhode Island. They were all there for "Netroots Nation 2012," the seventh annual...

As The Blaze previously reported, liberals assembled this weekend in Providence, Rhode Island, for Netroots Nation, an annual conference aimed at promoting the progressive cause. Closing out the event was Van Jones, the former White House official who has distinguished himself as being especially hostile toward the American right. In his address, the one-time green jobs adviser warned the audience about the Tea Party and encouraged them to fight diligently to ensure their policies are enacted.

Rawhide! It was the name of a great TV Western of the 1960s, starring Clint Eastwood. But it was also the secret service code-name for President Ronald Reagan. As an actor who had once starred in Westerns (host of and guest appearances in Death Valley Days, guest appearances in Wagon Train and Zane Grey Theater, Cattle Queen of Montana, The Last Outpost, Santa Fe Trail - where he played George Custer, ...), President Reagan quite liked that code-name, Rawhide. But not long after being sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, Rawhide was in for a rough...