Free Republic

After nearly 100 years of rumors and historical speculation, DNA testing has confirmed that President Warren Harding had a child out of wedlock – his only biological child – with mistress Nan Britton. Britton first came forward publically with the claim that her daughter, Elizabeth Ann, was Harding’s daughter in a 1927 autobiography “The President’s Daughter.” In her account, Britton detailed a steamy six-year-long affair with the 29th president, including one encounter in a White House closet, before his untimely death in 1923. At the time of its publishing, the book was met with public ridicule and widely discounted as...

Former United States President announces he has been diagnosed with cancer which was found during recent liver surgery.Former United States President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday announced he has been diagnosed with cancer. "Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body," Carter said in a statement released by the Carter Center and quoted by The Associated Press (AP). "I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare." The statement made clear that Carter's cancer is widely spread, but not where it originated, or...

The CEO and Board of Directors of Solazyme, a company the military paid $149 per gallon for “alternative” fuel, have donated more than $300,000 to Democratic candidates and committees, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.Recipients of significant donations included the Obama Victory Fund and the Democratic National Committee. Additionally, Solazyme donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report found that the Department of Defense (DOD) paid Solazyme $149 per gallon for fuel made of algal oil, costing taxpayers a total of $223,500 in 2009. The group also received a...

The news that Rick Perry has stopped paying all of his campaign staff following Thursday's debate is a sure sign of major troubles -- and could be the leading edge of the collapse of his campaign. If this is the end -- and Perry's super PAC support could well keep him on life support for a bit longer -- it would be a remarkable bit of timing: Perry entered the 2012 presidential race as its frontrunner on August 13, 2011 -- almost four years to the day when it's become clear that his second bid for the presidency has faltered...

The gate of Gath, believed to be the home of the giant Goliath, has been discovered by archaeologists. I love this kind of story because I love it when the Bible is shown to have historical accuracies. You might recall: The Philistines occupied the high ground on one side and the Israelites occupied the high ground on the other side, with the valley between them. A champion stepped out from the Philistine ranks; his name was Goliath, from Gath; he was six cubits and one span tall. On his head was a bronze helmet and he wore a breastplate of...

Science continues to prove the Bible on a regular basis. This time, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel have uncovered what appears to be the hometown of the giant Goliath. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot.The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation,...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – A pair of small explosions just 20 minutes and a few miles apart shocked congregants Sunday morning at two churches in southern New Mexico. There were no injuries or deaths from the blasts outside Calvary Baptist and Holy Cross Roman Catholic in Las Cruces, Las Cruces police spokesman Danny Trujillo said. Each building sustained minor damage. Authorities are working to determine who planted the explosives, what materials were used and whether the blasts were related. "It doesn't appear to be coincidental because of the timing, but you never know," Trujillo told The Associated Press. Several agencies...

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) had been planning to call up on the House floor last week a measure from Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) that would have removed him as Speaker of the House if it succeeded—intending to embarrass Meadows—but abandoned the plan after his entire leadership structure learned that they did not have the votes to re-elect him as Speaker before the August recess. “[House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy was making phone calls—he was whipping it—and so was [House Majority Whip] Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA),” a senior conservative movement leader who’s had many personal and direct discussions with...

The 5,000-year-old house found in China was about 14 by 15 feet in size. Credit: Photo courtesy Chinese Archaeology ===================================================================================================================== The remains of 97 human bodies have been found stuffed into a small 5,000-year-old house in a prehistoric village in northeast China, researchers report in two separate studies. The bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults were packed together in the house — smaller than a modern-day squash court — before it burnt down. Anthropologists who studied the remains say a "prehistoric disaster," possibly an epidemic of some sort, killed these people. The site, whose modern-day name is "Hamin...

Chuck Schumer is getting an earful from opponents of the Iran nuclear deal. More than 10,000 phone calls have flooded his office line the past two weeks, organized by a group looking to kill the deal. Another group has dropped seven figures on TV in New York City to pressure Schumer and other lawmakers to vote against the plan. The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee has put its muscle behind an effort to lobby the New Yorker against it. And Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, was arrested for disorderly conduct while protesting the deal outside Schumer’s office....

On Friday, we checked in on the Pentagon’s ongoing effort to recruit, vet, and train ambitious "freedom fighters" to join the battle against ISIS in Syria. It goes without saying that covert US efforts to aid the multifarious groups vying for control of the country have met with disastrous consequences so far, but if there’s anything Washington is particularly adept at, it’s making bad foreign policy outcomes worse, which is why we weren’t at all surprised to learn that the commander of the Pentagon's new Syrian "force" was captured, along with his deputy, by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra last week near...

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the obscure, one-eyed zealot who led the Taliban from its beginnings as a band of student insurrectionists through a fateful alliance with Osama bin Laden, to military defeat following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the movement’s re-emergence as an insurgency that threatened the American occupation in Afghanistan, died more than two years ago in Pakistsan, according to Afghanistan’s intelligence agency and the office of Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani. The cause of death was unclear.

President Bush's son, Jeb, is looking for a maid who's a legal U.S. resident. A maid who had worked at Bush's Miami home for three years was deported back to her native Honduras last week. Bush was out jogging when immigration agents showed up so his wife, Columba, had to deal with them. "She indicated, `Yes, she works here,' brought the lady out, and the two agents showed her the deportation order,said Richard Smith, director of the INS's Miami office."

The latest controversy over Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email system while secretary of state is not only a possible drag on her presidential campaign, but it also creates a potential headache for Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The inspectors general for the State Department and intelligence community on Friday disclosed that an internal review of Clinton's system concluded some emails contained classified information and that the inspectors general had sent a non-criminal "referral" to the Justice Department over the matter. Lynch and her department must now determine what to do next -- including whether to open a criminal investigation...

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, tweeted a graphic Saturday morning that appears to depict President Barack Obama committing suicide by holding a gun to his head. “We welcome no war, nor do we initiate any war, but if any war happens, the one who will emerge loser will be the aggressive and criminal U.S.,” the quote attributed to Khamenei said.

A super-PAC that supports Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has received a $15 million donation from two Texas brothers, according to CNN. Billionaire brothers Farris and Dan Wilks donated $15 million of the total $38 million that the Keep the Promise super-PAC will disclose in election filings next week. The siblings sold the fracking company Frac Tech in 2011 for $3.5 billion. Farris Wilks explained their support for Cruz in a statement to CNN. "Our country was founded on the idea that our rights come from the Creator, not the government. I'm afraid we're losing that," Wilks said. "Unless we elect...

--- Senators generally refrain from impugning their colleagues on the floor, a practice codified in Senate Rule XIX: “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” The penalty for breaching that rule is to be ordered to take one’s seat — in effect, to sit down and shut up. But no senator rose to make a point of order before Cruz left the floor. “It’s unusual, certainly,” Betty K. Koed, the Senate’s official historian, said of Cruz’s remarks....

Senator Ted Cruz, the sometimes-incendiary Texan running for the Republican presidential nomination, took to the Senate floor on Friday to call his party’s majority leader a liar in an extraordinary public airing of grievance. --- Far from backing down, Mr. Cruz joined the conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh on Friday afternoon, basking in Mr. Limbaugh’s praise for a “direct hit” on leadership like none he could remember. “It’s not a good day when the majority leader is willing to lie to the Senate,” Mr. Cruz told Mr. Limbaugh. Tea Party groups, the Heritage Foundation’s political arm, and Charles G....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) On Saturday’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors spoke about the protests at Democratic primary candidates Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), when Black Lives Matters protesters demanded O’Malley and Sanders mentioned Sandra Bland, who was recently found dead in her prison cell, by name. Cullors was asked by guest co-host Janet Mock what her plan was for Republican candidates, specifically Jeb Bush, for calling “black lives matter” a “slogan.”(continued)

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Saturday unleashed a personal attack at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, days after being the target of the governor’s latest campaign blast.>p> Trump’s speech in Iowa came on the heels of a fundraiser for Walker referring to the New York business mogul as “DumbDumb” in an event invitation email earlier this week. Blasting the “horrible” insult from Walker’s campaign, Trump went on the offensive with criticism against Walker’s economic record. “Wisconsin is in turmoil,” Trump told a boisterous crowd at a rally in Iowa. He pointed to the state’s roads, schools and hospitals, which he said...