Free Republic

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” and yet enslaved more than six-hundred people over the course of his life. Although he made some legislative attempts against slavery and at times bemoaned its existence, he also profited directly from the institution of slavery and wrote that he suspected black people to be inferior to white people in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Throughout his entire life, Thomas Jefferson was publicly a consistent opponent of slavery. Calling it a “moral depravity”1 and a “hideous blot,”2 he believed that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of...

ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. — A woman whose car was left stranded along a Florida interstate when her tire blew out got a little unexpected help from former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, sheriff's officials say. O'Neal, who lives in the Orlando area, was traveling on Interstate 75 near Gainesville on Monday when he saw the woman pull onto the side of the road, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office said on a Facebook post.

GOP lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr Friday, urging the protection of the firearm rights of the St. Louis couple that saw their guns confiscated after they went viral for defending their home against demonstrators, according to reports. Mark and Patricia McCloskey were seen in a video brandishing a M16A2-style rifle and small handgun outside of their home as demonstrators broke through a private gate and encroached on their property line in June. Police executed a search warrant Friday and confiscated the couple’s rifle, and later their pistol, despite not yet filing any known charges against the...

In 1985, Michelle Obama presented her senior thesis in the sociology department of Princeton University. Although Michelle drew no such conclusion, the thesis is a stunning indictment of affirmative action. Those who benefited from it, Michelle most notably, may never recover from its sting. Her thesis reads like a cry for help. "I have found that at Princeton no matter how matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me," she writes, "I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as I really don't belong." She didn't. Michelle should never have been...

"Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?" - George Washington Carver George Washington Carver - His Life and Faith in His Own Words George Washington Carver was born a slave during the Civil War, possibly around the date of JULY 12, 1865, but there are no records. Within a few weeks, his father, who belonged to the next farm over, was killed in a log hauling accident. Shortly after the Civil War, while still an infant, bushwhackers from the Democrat South kidnapped George, along with his mother and sister. Moses Carver, a German immigrant, sent friends...

He intentionally fired into the air, but his political rival, the sitting Vice-President Aaron Burr, took deadly aim and fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel JULY 11, 1804. Alexander Hamilton was born in the British West Indies on the Island of Nevis, either in the year 1755 or 1757, and grew up on the Island of St. Croix. Just a few years earlier, in 1751, 19-year-old George Washington had accompanied his older half-brother Lawrence on a trip to the not too distant Island of Barbados. Since Alexander Hamilton's parents were not legally married, he was not permitted to attend...

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult....

We randomized 115 children to trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or placebo. Over the following 9 months, TIV recipients had an increased risk of virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections (relative risk: 4.40; 95% confidence interval: 1.31-14.8). Being protected against influenza, TIV recipients may lack temporary non-specific immunity that protected against other respiratory viruses. Influenza vaccination is effective in preventing influenza virus infection and associated morbidity among school-aged children [1, 2]. The potential for temporary nonspecific immunity between respiratory viruses after an infection and consequent interference at the population level between epidemics of these viruses has been hypothesized, with limited empirical evidence to...

Under noontime sunlight, superwhite paints (labeled EL1 and EL3) developed by the researchers remain significantly cooler than traditional white paints (right corner, labeled EL2), which could lead to higher energy savings in buildings. Credit: Jyotirmoy Mandal A research team led by UCLA materials scientists has demonstrated ways to make super white paint that reflects as much as 98% of incoming heat from the sun. The advance shows practical pathways for designing paints that, if used on rooftops and other parts of a building, could significantly reduce cooling costs, beyond what standard white 'cool-roof' paints can achieve. The findings, published online...

If you haven't seen this, you must. My husband found it today. (Did a search, and didn't see it posted yet.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1ybQWwLl4sThis is the heartfelt alarm communicated by a Gentleman who, along with his family, has actually experienced Communism, and is warning us that we may be headed for the same if we fall for lies and refuse to stand up against what is happening 'in our backyard'.

In what one professor calls “affirmative action” grading, Brooklyn College wants to “re-educate” instructors whose minority students have lousy grades, The Post has learned. In an eight-point “anti-racist” agenda shared with the school community this month, college president Michelle Anderson said the school had “recently raised funds to offer professional development to faculty in classes with the highest racial disparities in outcomes” and the most grades of D or F or withdrawals.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech) ================================================================================= Life isn't always easy for astrophysicists: just when they've figured out another aspect of the patterns of movement in our Solar System, along come two of the moons of Neptune to mess everything up. The two moons in question are Naiad and Thalassa, both around 100 kilometres or 62 miles wide, which race around their planet in what NASA researchers are calling a "dance of avoidance". Their strange orbit was first detected by NASA researchers in November 2019. Compared with Thalassa, Naiad's orbit is tilted by about five degrees – it spends half of its time above Thalassa...

Artist's conception. Image: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) Astronomers from Caltech have reported that they’ve observed a collision between two black holes. Normally such an event is invisible, but this time a more massive black hole sitting nearby helped illuminate the other two as they collided. If confirmed, the findings, published in Physical Review Letters, would be the first optical observations ever made of a black hole merger. What happened: First detected in May 2019 and dubbed S190521g, the merger happened about 4 billion light-years away, within the vicinity of a supermassive black hole called J1249+3449. This object is 100 million times...

A small team of researchers at Purdue University has found the strongest evidence yet of the existence of abelian anyons. They have written a paper describing experiments they conducted designed to reveal the existence of the quasiparticles and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server while they await peer review. Anyons are neither bosons nor fermions—in fact, they are not elementary particles at all. Instead, they are classified as quasiparticles that exist in two dimensions. They can be observed, theoretically speaking, when they appear as disturbances in two-dimensional sheets of materials. Theoretical physicists have suggested their existence since the...

The Pennsylvania Assembly ordered it to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Quaker leader William Penn founding the Colony in 1701 and writing the Charter of Privileges. Quakers were the first and strongest voices to end slavery.  In 1751, Pennsylvania's Assembly declared a "Year of Jubilee" and commissioned the bell to be put in the Philadelphia State House. Speaker Isaac Norris read the Leviticus chapter 25 verse 10: "And ye shall make hallow the fiftieth year, and PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee." "Jubilee" in the Israelite calendar was, after...

Under intense pressure from mostly Black community organizers, some local governments are responding to demands to defund the police and divest from law enforcement. The push to reduce police budgets and reliance on police intervention in noncriminal matters has been accompanied by calls to invest in more resources for people and communities. Not surprisingly, the same demands advanced by police abolitionists off-campus have also emerged from students, faculty and staff at colleges and universities around the country. In some cases, that has already happened. The University of Minnesota, for example, responded to the demand of the undergraduate student government by...

In 1778, British Captain James Cook discovered Hawaii, which he named "The Sandwich Islands" in honor of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich -- the acting First Lord of the Admiralty. Captain Cook was killed on his third visit to Hawaii in 1779. When Captain Cook's voyages were read in England they raised awareness of new lands. This inspired a missionary movement, led by William Carey, who took the Gospel to India in 1793. The Hawaiian Islands were united by King Kamehameha I in 1810. In 1819, King Kamehameha I died. His wife, Kaʻahumanu, and his son, Liholiho (King...

Does anyone else have an “Am I being given crazy pills” moment when somebody trumpets some version of a universal basic income nowadays? On Tuesday the Parliamentary Budget Office published a response to a request by Independent Group Sen. Yuen Pau Woo; Sen. Woo had asked the PBO to estimate the costs of a federal guaranteed basic income for all Canadians between the ages of 18 and 64. The senator proposed that the income amount ought to be in line with Ontario’s aborted 2017 pilot project on basic income: $16,989 for individuals, $24,027 for couples. He wanted to know the...

Now, the only thing really keeping academia attached to the body politic like the institutional deer tick that it is was the widespread and baseless belief that our universities are somehow our culture’s crucial repositories of knowledge and learning. But it’s kind of hard to argue that when it belches forth graduates who decide to show that black lives matter by toppling statues of Abe Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. If these bozos are considered “educated,” I’ll stick with the allegedly ignorant. At least someone without an Ivy League degree can give me a hand changing my oil or, you know,...

Now, I care I never cared if you were “gay” or whatever acronym you chose to call yourself, until you started shoving it down my throat. I never cared what color you were, if you were a good human, until you started blaming me for your problems. I never cared about your political affiliation until you started to condemn me for mine. I never cared where you were from in this great Republic until you began condeming people based on where they were born and the history that makes them who they are. I never cared if you were well...