Free Republic

When Liz Cheney was picked by Nancy Pelosi to serve as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, the Wyoming lawmaker launched one of her biggest lies. Cheney said she took the job to ensure the committee would achieve its goal of conducting a "nonpartisan, professional and thorough investigation" of the Capitol riots. But her time on the panel has not been nonpartisan, professional or thorough. From the very start, she helped load the scales against Donald Trump. At no time did Cheney bother to act judiciously or fairly.

Twice as nice: The two-headed garter snake is in the care of the Herpetology lab on East Campus. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln's herpetology lab is seeing double after securing a two-headed garter snake. The newborn bicephalic garter snake was discovered by Joshua Marshall of Hastings while clearing brush in Clay Center on Sept. 4. "I lifted up a log and wasn't surprised to see two small snakes, but then I realized that they weren't making great progress because there were two heads," he said. Once Marshall realized it was a two-headed snake, he placed it in a jar and...

The study, led by scientists at the University of Bath and including collaborators from Bristol, Cambridge and Germany, used fossils and analysed genetic differences between modern snakes to reconstruct snake evolution. The analyses helped to pinpoint the time that modern snakes evolved.Their results show that all living snakes trace back to just a handful of species that survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, the same extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.The authors argue that the ability of snakes to shelter underground and go for long periods without food helped them survive the destructive effects of the impact. In...

The Great Peacemaker, whose name means "Two River Currents Flowing Together" and is sometimes referred to as Deganawida, was an Iroquois Prophet who convinced five warring Indian tribes to join in peace. He prophesied that a "white serpent" would come to his people's lands and make friends with them, only to deceive them later. A "red serpent" would later make war against the "white serpent." After a season, a "black serpent" would come and defeat both the "white" and "red serpents". According to the prophecy, when the people gathered under the elm tree become humble, all three "serpents" would be...

Samuel McDowell, the late herpetologist and professor at Rutgers-Newark, spent a good part of his life studying ground snakes in New Guinea. Forty years later, Sara Ruane – who joined the Department of Biological Sciences faculty last semester – was able to find evidence that the snakes McDowell studied were, in fact, a new species of reptiles that have been hiding in plain sight. In research published in the Journal of Natural History, Ruane used DNA sequencing from five different genes, combined it with morphological information from preserved museum snake specimens, some of which McDowell examined in the 1970s, and...

The Texas rat snake was just as much of a speed demon as deadly vipers, challenging long-held notions about snake adaptations. When a snake strikes, it literally moves faster than the blink of an eye, whipping its head forward so quickly that it can experience accelerations of more than 20 Gs. Such stats come from studies of how a snake lunges, bites and kills, which have focused mostly on vipers, in part because these snakes rely so heavily on their venomous chomps. "It's the lynchpin of their strategy as predators," says Rulon Clark at San Diego State University. "Natural selection...

Crocodile caught wandering around California mall ROSEVILLE, CA — Don't shed any tears for a crocodile that was captured wandering outside a pet store at a Northern California shopping mall. California Fish and Wildlife officials have taken custody of the croc, are feeding it rainbow trout and will likely donate it to a zoo. Police say the crocodile was apparently left outside the Roseville store by someone who didn't want it anymore. The animal had grown to 4-feet long, and its jaws had been wrapped shut with heavy-duty tape. There was a note identifying it as a Nile crocodile and...

London, England (BANG) - Amy Winehouse is a "tattooed reptile" who will bring "untold human suffering" to St. Lucia. The former governor of the Caribbean island has written a public appeal begging officials to stop the "Rehab" singer from buying a house and settling there permanently. Jeff Fedee wrote in the St. Lucia Star newspaper: "I would strongly urge she be denied residency status to purchase property in St. Lucia. Is she being given special treatment?" "She'd be a menace and a dangerous influence to our society because the demons that inhabit her tortured body will have to be fed....

This afternoon I happened to look out the back and saw something black and long in the middle of the yard. I just mowed yesterday so I knew the yard was free of sticks and such. Turns out it was a big black snake! He isn't a rattler, does not look loke a water moccasin or a black snake. What the heck kind of snake is he? He has the triangular head which means he is a bad one, but I can't place his breed. Anyway, photography being as dangerous as it is, he got wrecked up some which is...

BROOKHAVEN, Miss. - It was no movie moment when a physician, flying himself across Mississippi in a one-seat plane, discovered a stowaway — a gray rat snake. Dr. Ed Carruth discovered the snake-on-a-plane when it began "licking" his arm Thursday, he told The Daily Leader of Brookhaven. "I've been flying planes for 50 years and over 14,000 hours, and this is the most unusual in-flight emergency I've encountered," he said. "I guess it wasn't exactly an emergency, but I did almost hurt myself when I saw it." Needing to fly the plane and lacking tools to get rid of the...

Most people run from snakes. But some, like Chris O’Bryan, run to them. "Sometimes there’s a snake in here," O’Bryan said, checking undergrowth at Steele Creek Park. The snake had vacated, but the day was not a total loss – he bagged an elusive cave salamander moments later, which was enough for O’Bryan, who is not a snake hunter but a herpetologist, someone who studies reptiles. And he has plenty of curiosity for any he finds. Poised and precociously articulate, O’Bryan, at 18, already has years of experience – including television exposure – in the naturalism field. Herpetology is an...

Rising temperatures are responsible for pushing dozens of frog species over the brink of extinction in the past three decades, according to findings being reported today by a team of Latin American and U.S. scientists. The study, published in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that climate change has already helped wipe out a slew of species and could spur more extinctions and the spread of diseases worldwide. It also helps solve the international mystery of why amphibians around the globe have been vanishing from their usual habitats over the past quarter-century -- as many as 112 species have disappeared...

Madison: The shy, retiring, and threatened Wood Turtle [Glyptemys insculpta], easily overlooked and facing an uncertain future as its habitat is developed, appears to have driven a stake into the heart of plans by Chatham Borough and Chatham Township to develop two playing fields on the Woodland Park property off Woodland Road, adjacent to the Independence Court neighborhood in Madison. In a long-awaited decision released Monday, December 12th, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) classified a portion of the site as "exceptional" wetlands for their habitat value, requiring a 150-foot buffer from any development, and effectively blocking the plan...

A new weapon in the battle against HIV may come from an unusual source –- tropical frogs. Investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have discovered that compounds secreted by frog skin are potent blockers of HIV infection. The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Virology, could lead to topical treatments for preventing HIV transmission and reinforce the value of preserving the Earth’s biodiversity. "We need to protect these species long enough for us to understand their medicinal cabinet," says Louise A. Rollins-Smith, associate professor of microbiology & immunology, who has been studying the antimicrobial defenses of frogs for...

USFWS Contacts: Al Pfister(970)243-2778 x 29 or Diane Katzenberger (303)236-4578 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced the withdrawal of the Southern Rocky Mountain population of the Boreal Toad (Bufo boreas boreas) from the list of species being considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Service has determined that listing this population of the Boreal Toad at this time is not warranted because it does not constitute a distinct population segment as defined by the ESA. Although no further action will result from this finding, the Service will continue to seek new information on the taxonomy,...

A lizard known for its dinosaur-like features is back in line for endangered species protection, according to backers of the tiny, desert reptile. A federal judge in Arizona on Tuesday ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred when it dropped the Flat-tail Horned Lizard from consideration as a "threatened" species eligible for special legal protection. In a 15-page ruling, District Court Judge Neil Wake said the government "violated the Endangered Species Act" by failing to evaluate the impact of habitat loss on the species when it withdrew a proposal to list it as threatened. The ruling, according to environmentalists...

LOS ANGELES - Park visitors have gone from feeding ducks and fish to nourishing a scaly green creature more likely found in Amazonian swamps than a Los Angeles lake — a giant crocodile-like caiman. Since a gardener spotted it last Friday, people have tried to glimpse the 200-pound reptile wading and sunbathing at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park. Like many Angelenos, the animal is an immigrant who is quickly adopting to its new home. It has already acquired, for example, a nickname matching its Latin American roots and its penchant for tortillas tossed by visitors: Carlito.

Roundup Kills Frogs as well as Tadpoles, Pitt Biologist FindsPITTSBURGH — As amphibians continue to mysteriously disappear worldwide, a University of Pittsburgh researcher may have found more pieces of the puzzle. Elaborating on his previous research, University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of biological sciences Rick Relyea has discovered that Roundup, the most commonly used herbicide in the world, is deadly to tadpoles at lower concentrations than previously tested, that the presence of soil does not mitigate the chemical’s effects, and that the product kills frogs in addition to tadpoles. In two articles published in the August 1 issue of the...

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Gill net fishermen in Pamlico Sound could kill up to 100 threatened and endangered sea turtles every year through 2010 under a federal permit sought by the state. The permit also would allow up to 320 additional turtles to be caught and released during each September-to-December flounder fishing season. The proposal has outraged environmentalists and drawn criticism from some federal and state officials. They note that the Army Corps of Engineers isn't allowed to harm a third of that number of turtles for its dredging operations across the whole Southeast. The state Division of Marine Fisheries believes...

The eight salamanders found on the site of the new Ann Arbor high school are not endangered Smallmouth Salamanders [Ambystoma texanum] as originally thought. Instead, they are hybrids, part Blue-spotted Salamander [Ambystoma laterale] and part Jefferson Salamander [Ambystoma jeffersonianum], said James Ball, a York Township research scientist in herpetology who did some of the testing on the amphibians. Neither the Blue-spotted nor the Jefferson Salamander are on the threatened and endangered species list in Michigan, and hybrid salamanders do not qualify as threatened or endangered in the state, either. District officials, who learned of the salamanders' lineage on June 8,...