Free Republic

Seven centuries after their demise, the skeletons of 12 plague victims have been unearthed in the City of London, a find which archaeologists believe to be just the tip of a long-lost Black Death mass burial ground. Arranged in careful rows, the bodies were discovered 2.5 metres below the ground in Charterhouse Square in works for a Crossrail tunnel shaft beside the future ticketing hall for Farringdon station. Tests are needed to confirm the skeletons' provenance, but the discovery should shed more light on life and death in 14th-century Britain and help scientists to understand how the plague mutated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Council at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington D.C., spoke with Breitbart News exclusively about Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster of the John Brennan nomination to CIA director over the administration’s failures to answer questions about domestic use of drones. Anders backed Paul to the hilt, and was highly critical of the Obama administration.

OTTAWA – Ancient, mummified camel bones dug from the tundra confirm that the animals now synonymous with the arid sands of Arabia actually developed in subfreezing forests in what is now Canada's High Arctic, a scientist said Tuesday. About 3.5 million years ago, Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island's west-central coast would have looked more like a northern forest than an Arctic landscape, said paleobotanist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Time Warner Inc. TWX +0.67% is in talks to divest most of its Time Inc. magazine group in a deal with Meredith Corp., MDP -0.13% said people familiar with the situation, potentially ending its long reign as the biggest U.S. magazine publisher. Under the proposal being discussed, Time Warner would retain its flagship newsweekly Time, along with Sports Illustrated and Fortune. But the rest of its magazines, including People, InStyle and Real Simple, would end up combined with Meredith's titles, which include Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle, whose readers are mainly women. The proposal calls for both companies...

An Indiana couple is facing up to 60 days in jail and $2,000 in fines for saving a deer from death. Jeff Counceller, a police officer, and his wife Jennifer spotted an injured baby deer on their neighbor’s porch. Instead of turning a blind eye to the dying fawn, the Councellers took the deer in and nursed it back to health. They kept the deer, Little Orphan Dani, in their backyard as it recovered. Everything was fine until an Indiana Conservation Officer spotted Little Orphan Dani in the Councellers’ yard. The Councellers were charged with unlawful possession of a deer,...

ARCHAEOLOGY is an inexact science, as Sir Arthur Evans, a flamboyant early practitioner, knew. However painstaking the digging process, an excavator can always promote an extravagant theory under the guise of interpreting the finds. As he started to unearth a prehistoric mound at Knossos in Crete at the turn of the 20th century, Evans put his imagination into high gear. He rebuilt parts of a 3,500-year-old palace in modernist style using cement and reconstructed fragmentary frescoes to suit his views on Bronze Age religion and politics.

wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both. Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out...

ALBANY — City Treasurer Kathy Sheehan has officially announced her candidacy in next year's mayoral race. Sheehan, 48, who was elected treasurer in 2009, had long dropped hints about a planned mayoral run. On Saturday afternoon, in front of Washington Park's Moses Statue, the Democrat made it official. "Let's face it: There is only one office in Albany that can deliver the changes many of us want," Sheehan said. "I am here to announce that I am running for mayor." Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Sheehan-to-make-a-run-for-mayor-4046442.php#ixzz2CXwLxZ3I

(CNN) -- As if they haven't had enough headaches in New Jersey in the past week, on Monday morning they added earthquake to the list. The magnitude-2.0 temblor struck at 1:19 a.m. and was centered two miles south-southeast of Ringwood, New Jersey, not far from the border with New York. The depth was 3.1 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Got married to Pricilla Chan, from Braintree Ma, now living in Palo Alto Ca. Last night? Spent it with Obama. What are her likes? Obama. Guess who is nosing up the campaign money trail?

Two marines have it down, alright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W57aBMYKvU

Two United States advisers who were shot dead in Afghanistan's interior ministry by an Afghan colleague had been mocking anti-US protests over the burning of the Koran, a government source said. The description of the shooting - which led to NATO pulling all its advisers out of Afghan government ministries - came amid renewed violence in a sixth day of anti-American demonstrations.

Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, the nation's largest radio operator, has upped John Hogan to chairman and chief executive. The promotion of Hogan, who had been president and CEO, comes as the company continues to try to make itself over as a general entertainment company. It recently changed its name to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment from Clear Channel Radio and is planning an expansion into television and live entertainment. Hogan has been with Clear Channel since 1999 and has managed to survive a few ownership changes during that time. The company is now part of CC Media Holdings Inc.,...

At night I hear a train whistle where I live, only occasionally and actually rarely. Have heard it about 3 or 4 times in about 7 years. Thing is I live about 7 miles from a train track. Is it possible to hear a train whistle that far away? and it does sound kind of ghostly, echoey, resonates. I wondered if anyone else hear knows how far a train whistle can be heard. I live in Phoenix Az, by Camelback Mountain.

Syphilis cases are up in gay men, according to the Delaware Department of Public Health. 76 cases of syphilis were reported to the Health Department last year. Nearly all of them were diagnosed among gay men, and the majority of those cases were in New Castle County. The department says this may be part of a rising trend in syphilis among gay men throughout the country, as increases in cases have been reported in cities such as New York, Miami, San Francisco and Chicago. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that’s transmitted from contact with an infected person. The disease...

Tell Congress: Don’t censor the Web Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs. Too much is at stake – please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.

A group of Amish men in western Kentucky have been jailed after refusing to put reflective triangles on the back of their horse-drawn carts. Jacob Gingerich was one of eight men sent to prison for a few days in September after ignoring state law that requires all slow-moving objects on the road to display reflective triangles. The group of Swartzentruber Amish men in rural Graves County, USA, refused to pay their fines and disobeyed orders from a judge, landing them in jail.

A murder investigation is under way in England after a woman's body was found on the grounds of Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham country estate. The remains were discovered on the vast estate in Eastern England shortly after 4 p.m. on New Year's Day, according to multiple reports. Sky News reported that the body was found by a member of the public in woodlands in Anmer, a tiny village 115 miles northeast of London that is situated on the 20,000-acre Sandringham estate. The remains were reportedly located about a mile from the main gate to Sandringham House, where the queen spent New...

HONOLULU — President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts and impose strict sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, signed the bill on Saturday. He said that although he did not support all of it, changes made by Congress after negotiations with the White House had satisfied most of his concerns and had given him enough latitude to manage counterterrorism and foreign policy in keeping with administration principles.

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com. The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted...