Free Republic

Mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tumbled Tuesday on news of a deal to close them down. Both stocks lost about 40% of their value in one hour. An announcement of the deal, crafted by the Senate Budget Committee's top Democrat and Republican, did not disclose a timeline for the closure but said a draft of the legislation would be released soon. It is likely years away from its final approval. With multiple bi-partisan efforts and the support of President Obama congress managed to dissolve billions of investors retirement funds.

Some 4,000 years ago a young woman's cremated bones – charred scraps of her shroud and the wood from her funeral pyre still clinging to them – was carefully wrapped in a fur along with her most valuable possessions, packed into a basket, and carried up to one of the highest and most exposed spots on Dartmoor, where they were buried in a small stone box covered by a mound of peat. The discovery of her remains is rewriting the history of the bronze age moor. The bundle contained a treasury of unique objects: a tin bead and 34 tin...

New Zealanders are to vote on whether to change their national flag, with many including the country's prime minister wanting to see it replaced with the silver fern symbol used by the All Blacks rugby team. Prime Minister John Key today announced plans to hold a referendum within three years, receiving the backing of his political opponents who said they would follow through with plans even if they oust Key in this year's national elections. The current flag depicts the Southern Cross star constellation and includes Britain's Union Jack in the top left corner.

I missed the big Carl Sagan thing when it happened. I was in high school when Cosmos came out, we lived in the country and if you wanted to watch a different television network, you had to go up into the attic and turn a giant antenna with a pipe wrench. Sports and girls and D&D were more of a priority than television. .................................................... Then suddenly we get a claim that Giordano Bruno is responsible for the concept of the universe - because he read 'banned' books. Lucretious wasn't science - there was no scientific evidence for his claim that...

The Mystery of Stonehenge, Ancient Petroglyphs and Crop Circles There are many theories about the origins and functions of Stonehenge. Only through exploring the significance of the electromagnetic universe do we begin to understand the implications of this great stone megalith. Revelations have appeared via another great mystery, crop circles but in a formation so obtuse it was largely bypassed.In 2009 at Manton, Wiltshire, UK, a stand alone pattern appeared. A peculiar stark design, it attracted little in the way of analysis going largely unexplored.However it is a major key to much crop circle imagery and meaning; that Earth life...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

From Chapter 2, The First Despotic Utopias Men who carry through political revolutions seem to be of two main types, the clerical and the romantic. Lenin (he adopted the pen-name in 1901) was from the first category. Both his parents were Christians. Religion was important to him, in the sense that he hated it. Unlike Marx, who despised it and treated it as marginal, Lenin saw it as a powerful and ubiquitous enemy. He made clear in many writings (his letter to Gorky of 13 January 1913 is a striking example) that he had an intense personal dislike for anything...

According to Swedish defense contractor Saab, the U.S. Army is planning to issue recoilless rifles broadly to regular units for the first time in more than 30 years. The decision reflects the service’s combat experience in Afghanistan. The ground combat branch had previously made a small purchase of recoilless rifles in 2012, but just for units in Afghanistan. All light infantry units may now receive them.

The IRA staged an audacious attempt to assassinate Prince Philip in Australia during an official trip, a former spy has claimed. The Irish paramilitary group allegedly planted two bombs targeting the Duke of Edinburgh’s cortege as he travelled through Sydney in 1973. Both devices were located minutes before the royal visitor was due to pass, prompting an immediate security operation to allay the threat.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Friends and family are mourning the death of a national hero. William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, a South Philly native and World War II vet who was portrayed on the television miniseries, “Band of Brothers,” died on Saturday at the age of 90. Guarnere's son, William Guarnere Jr., confirmed Sunday that his father died at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Guarnere was rushed to the hospital early Saturday and died of a ruptured aneurysm early Saturday night. Born in South Philadelphia on April 28, in 1923, Guarnere was a non-commissioned officer with the legendary Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry...

One thousand years ago, on a floodplain of the Mississippi River near modern-day St. Louis, the massive Native American city known today as Cahokia sprang suddenly into existence. Three hundred years later it was virtually deserted... While analyzing cores from Horseshoe Lake, an oxbow lake that separated from the Mississippi River some 1,700 years ago, Munoz's team discovered a layer of silty clay 19 centimeters (7.5 inches) thick deposited by a massive ancient flood. It's unlikely that the ancient floodwaters were high enough to inundate the ten-story mound at Cahokia's center, a structure now called Monk's Mound... But a flood...

William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, one of the World War II veterans whose exploits were dramatized in the TV miniseries "Band of Brothers," has died. He was 90. His son, William Guarnere Jr., confirmed Sunday that his father died at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Guarnere was rushed to the hospital early Saturday and died of a ruptured aneurysm early Saturday night. "He had a good, long life," his son said. The HBO miniseries, based on a book by Stephen Ambrose, followed the members of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division from training in Georgia in 1942 through some of...

A sprawling city in the heartland of the United States was a cultural melting pot hundreds of years before Europeans ever set foot in North America. A study of dozens of teeth found at Cahokia, an ancient metropolis near modern-day St. Louis, shows that immigrants moved to the city from across the Midwest and perhaps as far away as the Great Lakes and Gulf Coast regions. Cahokia rose to prominence around A.D. 1050, when it underwent what some archaeologists call a cultural Big Bang. "All of a sudden, there's a giant rise in the size of the site," said study...

INGLEWOOD (CBSLA.com) — A horse was exhumed Saturday at the now defunct Hollywood Park Race Track. CBS2′s Greg Mills was there and said archeology students from USC participated in the dig. The horse was buried near the grandstand about eight feet down. The students arrived just before 8 a.m. Saturday morning. By 5 p.m., they’d already dug far enough to expose the horse’s remains, including the ribs and hindquarters. The dig was an unusual project for the students to undertake. “It really gives them the chance to get hands-on experience,” said archeologist Sarah Newman.”It’s experience that is really hard to...

For 68 years, this woman fruitlessly searched for answers regarding her fighter pilot husband’s death. When she finally found out what had happened, it was greater than she could have imagined.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

The Black Hitler was a Chicago community organizer who moved to New York. Somewhere along the way he picked up a gold lined cape, a purple turban and a stepladder on which he used to stand while giving speeches outside the stores of Harlem's dwindling Jewish community. The cape and the turban were combined with Nazi style military shirt and jackboots, for the quixotic uniform of a man who is remembered today as a pioneering labor leader-- but was known back then as the Black Hitler. {snip}

"The Japanese pilots immediately began strafing the surviving crewmen, ..and grazing Lieutenant Baggett's arm. the pilot opened his canopy and approached within feet of Baggett's chute, ..., enraged by the strafing of his helpless crewmates, raised the .45 automatic concealed against his leg and fired four shots at the open cockpit. The Zero stalled and spun in.... .....;

A collection of rare 9,000-year old masks, which are considered among the most ancient human portraits, are to go on show in Jerusalem. The masks all originated from Israel and have the same striking features, perhaps to resemble the spirits of dead ancestors. It is thought they were used by in religious and social ceremonies and in rites of healing and magic. The exhibition at The Israel Museum is the result of a decade of investigative work into where the masks came from and it is the first time that the group of 12 Neolithic masks will be displayed together...

The death of Ireland’s High King during the famous bloody battle of Clontarf almost exactly 1,000 years ago will be remembered with a special service in his burial county of Armagh next month. Brian Boru (Bóraime) may have been born in County Clare but, as the well-known theme song ‘The Boys from the County Armagh’ notes, his ashes lie in the city, at the Church of Ireland Cathedral. The legendary leader had requested to be buried in Armagh, possibly due to its religious links to St Patrick, and it is said he was brought to the city by the clergy...

On the off chance you might encounter people who don't understand why George Soros and Monsanto might want the Ukraine.... The official title of the tsars was "Tsar of all the Russias", meaning primarily 'Great Russia' (Russia), 'White Russia' (Belorus), and 'Little Russia' (Ukraine). That is the heart of the Slavic Orthodox world and Ukraine is the breadbasket of that world. The Ukraine could feed everybody from the Volga to the Atlantic and that in fact was Hitler's plan; the idea was to build a super-gauge train to haul foodstuffs from Ukraine to Europe and, as I read it at...

In Malaysia's current political climate, it is no longer possible to distinguish Islamic radicals from Islamic moderates. Despite official boasting about the country's diverse population and commitment to pluralism, Islam and the government have essentially merged. For two decades, the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) government invested enormous public resources in building up a network of Islamic institutions. The government's initial intention was to deflect radical demands for an extreme version of Islamic governance. Over time, however, the effort to out-do its critics led the UMNO to over-Islamicize the state. The UMNO's program has put Sharia law, Sharia courts,...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

A newly deciphered letter home dating back around 1,800 years reveals the pleas of a young Egyptian soldier named Aurelius Polion who was serving, probably as a volunteer, in a Roman legion in Europe. In the letter, written mainly in Greek, Polion tells his family that he is desperate to hear from them and that he is going to request leave to make the long journey home to see them.

In May of 1774 General Thomas Gage was appointed military Royal Governor over Massachusetts. Gage would become very aggressive in the efforts to control the colonist and subdue their “seditious” behavior. He was going to enforce the “Coercive Acts” upon the colonists whether they liked it or not. Gage passed laws that forbade any town meetings without his approval and would only legally allow one town meeting a year. At one point he sent troops to disband and eliminate a crowd that had gathered in Salem, Massachusetts. The people, outraged at the display of force, responded by gathering over 3,000...

Sarah with Greta On the Record. Very interesting. She gearing up for her speech tomorrow. Video here.

...Over the past 50 years or so, these post-Protestants have gradually formed the core of a new and fascinating social class in America....And we can recognize their origins in mainline Protestantism when we discern some of the ways in which they see the world and themselves. They are, for the most part, politically liberal, preferring that government rather than private associations address social concerns. They remained puritanical and highly judgmental, at least about health. And like all puritans, they are willing to use law to compel behavior they think right. Nonetheless, they do not think of themselves as akin to...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

World War I began 100 years ago this summer. It's a centennial that goes beyond mere remembrance; the consequences of that conflict are making headlines to this day. To underline that, All Things Considered wanted to turn history on its head and ask historians and listeners alike: What if World War I had never happened? (Submit your answer in the form below.) If that sounds like an unlikely exercise, compare it to an even more unlikely event — the one that occurred on June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo. It was the spark that ignited a global conflagration,...

<p>You're a 16th century German prince plotting to crush a peasant rebellion, or perhaps you're leading an army against the Ottoman Empire or looking to settle the score with a rival nobleman. What's a guy looking for a tactical edge to do?</p> <p>Bring on the rocket cats!</p>

Long after the Empire's collapse, the Union Jack remains an internationally recognized symbol of Britain. But all that could change soon. Scotland, one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom (along with England, Northern Ireland, and Wales), will hold a referendum on independence this September. If it succeeds, Britain's iconic flag may need a makeover. The Flag Institute, the U.K.'s national flag charity and the largest membership-based vexillological organization in the world, recently polled its members and found that nearly 65 percent of respondents felt the Union Jack should be changed if Scotland becomes independent. And after...

Real WW2 combat footage - Kamikaze Attack, USS Laffey (DD-724)

Most competent historians can trace the decline of the West to World War I, which started 100 years ago. The slaughter on the fields of Flanders, the subsequent influenza epidemic, the dissolution of centuries-old European monarchies and empires, and a global depression, led to a sort of cultural post traumatic stress syndrome after the war. All the more amazing is that the West had totally won the war. All the retrograde powers had been defeated. The victors were America, France, and Britain, the very core of the Western ideal. They were uncontested and unbeatable. But the victory was Pyrrhic. It...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

When Putin Met Reagan Written by Alex Selwyn-Holmes December 7, 2009 In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan travelled to Moscow for his 4th summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviets prepared a grand welcome; buildings across from the Kremlin were repainted, streets repaved and trees and flowers planted along the boulevards. The president’s schedule included attending the Bolshoi Ballet, speaking to students at Moscow’s State University and visiting Danilov Monastery, while First Lady would tour Leningrad.The visit was not without its own share of diplomatic incidents. The First Couple took an unscheduled walk through the Arbat, a Moscow shopping pedestrian street,...

Gobekli Tepe Summary In 1994, almost forty years after The Urantia Book’s 1955 publication, excavations began at the Gobekli Tepe archaeological site in Turkey. The Gobekli Tepe site already reveals 50 engraved stone monoliths, some of them dating back to 12,000 years ago, that are at least 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. A full excavation to the bottom of the site has not yet occurred, and only a small percentage of the site has been uncovered. The evidence suggests that the complex of round rooms with two especially large pillars in the middle were built for...

Douglas Edwards CBS World News Today

When the Greens speak of "deniers" as they so often do, they are using holocaustal language to describe their opponents metaphorically, but seem to be completely unaware that historically speaking, there was a strong undercurrent of environmentalism swirling under the banner of National Socialism ...

Amazing photographs, captured in vivid colour, show life in Russia in the early 1900’s as the country stood on the brink of the First World War - and revolution. Photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was one of the nation’s leading photographers at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He was commissioned to capture a photographic record of Russia after the monarch saw his colour portrait of Leo Tolstoy. The portrait of Tolstoy, taken in 1908, just two years before the author's death, was Prokudin-Gorsky's most famous work and became widely popular and was reproduced on postcards, large prints and in various publications.

My public high school wasn’t the best, but we did have an amazing history teacher. Mr. L, as we called him, brought our country’s story to life. So when he taught us about the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson’s campaigns to force at least 46,000 Cherokees, Choctaws, Muscogee-Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles off their ancestral lands, my classmates and I were stricken. ....................................................... But then it was lunchtime, and we pulled out our wallets in the cafeteria. Andrew Jackson was there, staring out from every $20 bill. We had been carrying around portraits of a mass...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 THE NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

In 1964, a pair of engineers at Bell Labs in New Jersey tried to build a better antenna and ended up uncovering the origins of the universe. After ruling out city noise, nuclear bombs and pigeon poop, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson argued that a strange radio hiss in their readings was the first confirmed signal of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This relic glow emerged as a result of the big bang and now permeates the universe. The discovery solidified big bang theory as our best explanation for cosmic origins, and Penzias and Wilson went on to net a...

Runners ran up to the man, shouting, "Thank you for your service"When Mercury News reporter Julia Prodis Sulek woke up Sunday morning, she wasn't sure why she heard all the clapping and cheering outside her San Jose home. Then she peeked outside. She saw dozens of runners zipping by, up on the sidewalk, as part of the 408k Race to the Row, which benefits the Pat Tillman Foundation. All the commotion outside was for 95-year-old World War II veteran Joe Bell, who came outside in full military dress and stood on the sidewalk to root on the runners. But it...

While Cold War geopolitics has recently reasserted itself in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, America is profoundly mired politically and culturally on the inside with a Post Modernism that accentuates multi-cultural, ethnic, and indigenous differences at the expense of the classic American melting pot ideal. Such identity politics is far more rooted in Fascism than in classic Marxism.

Led Zeppelin 2012 720p

China may feel overwhelmed by all the choices available to them now on the world stage. They must be looking at just how easy it has been so far for their 'friend in facism' Putin, to invade and retake Crimea, a virtual overnight operation, and not a terribly bloody one at that. The violence needed to retake Crimea does not compare to what happened and continues to happen in Syria. How did he do it? The Chinese will watch and learn. They will likely wait a month or two for this Ukrainian / Crimean situation to settle into some sort...

HILLARY CLINTON has her sights firmly set on the White House, but her super-wealthy political foes are hatching a massive $500 million plot to destroy that dream! In a blockbuster world exclusive, The ENQUIRER has learned that the “dirty tricks” campaign is aimed at wrecking the 2016 presidential campaign of the 66-year-old former first lady. Sources say operatives are digging up details on at least eight Hillary “secrets!” They will also try to use a variety of evidence to rip the covers off Hill­ary’s torrid love affairs with both men and women, according to in­siders “Super-wealthy Anti-Clinton Factions are willing...

The first session of the U.S. Congress is held in New York City as the U.S. Constitution takes effect. However, of the 22 senators and 59 representatives called to represent the 11 states who had ratified the document, only nine senators and 13 representatives showed up to begin negotiations for its amendment. In 1786, defects in the Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce and the inability of Congress to levy taxes, leading Congress to endorse a plan to draft a new constitution. On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion...

Exclusive pictures show autopsy on a four year old bison preserved in ice since ancient times. The autopsy, conducted on 27 February 2014, is understood to be the first in the world on a 9,000 bison, and it could provide vital scientific information. The creature was found in exceptional condition in July 2011 by Yukagir community members in the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, where mammoth remains were also found. This bison, dating from 9,000 years ago, was located on the shore of a lake in the north of Ust-Yana district. The body became visible after a part of...