Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder has at least one redeeming quality: he fights for what he believes in, and he doesn’t hesitate to express sentiments he knows many people will disagree with vociferously. As long as it’s done within the bounds of the law, that sort of thing should be considered a virtue no matter what one’s political orientation is. It must also be added that those who think Holder is pushing socialist views on race only because he now has the power to do so are wrong; he’s been doing so since his university days at Columbia. And there’s the...

New fossil dates show our ancient cousins disappeared 40,000 years ago. The Neanderthals died out about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, new fossil dating suggests, adding to evidence that the arrival of modern humans in Europe pushed our ancient Stone Age cousins into extinction. (Read "Last of the Neanderthals" in National Geographic magazine.) Neanderthals' mysterious disappearance from the fossil record has long puzzled scholars who wondered whether the species went extinct on its own or was helped on its way out by Europe's first modern human migrants. "When did the Neanderthals disappear, and why?" says Tom Higham of the...

Winston Churchill disparaged Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the Aug. 15, 1944 Allied "second D-Day" invasion of Southern France. Churchill joked that he was "dragooned" into an unnecessary invasion. D-Day, June 6th, had breached Fortress Europe. A French Riviera "pincer" was folly. However, the Allied senior commanders who dragooned the Prime Minister obeyed an old military axiom: Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals study logistics. The Germans destroyed Normandy's Port Cherbourg and blocked Antwerp. Supplies over beaches barely met daily needs. The George Patton-led U.S. 3rd Army's August 1944 armored dash stretched supply capacities. Patton's high tempo strike at the Reich required more gas...

James Foley was one of a new breed of activists calling themselves journalists. He didn’t travel to report on a story, but to promote an agenda. And the agenda was obvious from his Twitter feed. [snip] Foley came to Syria to support the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government. He cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethnically cleanse the Christians of Aleppo. In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his tweets and retweets were chock full of pro-terrorist propaganda. link

In the 1950s, with the airwaves filling with the sounds of rock 'n' roll, America was changing into a "transistor" nation. Deciding to capitalize on the popularity of radio, Winchester designated a prototype .308 Model 70 with a built-in radio in 1955. A speaker was set into the right side of the stock with a series of holes — carved in the trademark "W" outline — allowing the sound to be heard. Presented as a glittering show gun, the new Winchester soon proved a hard sell.

A new study concludes that modern humans arrived in Europe much earlier than previously believed, and clarifies more specifically the long time period they overlapped with Neanderthals. The significant overlap bolsters a theory that the two species met, bred and possibly exchanged or copied vital toolmaking techniques. It represents another twist in an enduring puzzle about human origins: why we triumphed while the better adapted and similarly intelligent Neanderthals died out. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Neanderthals are our closest known extinct relatives, with about 99.5% of DNA in common with humans. They had a brain...

As students prepare to return to school in the next few weeks, there's no better time for a conservative freakout over education. The issue of the moment is a new outline, or “framework,” issued by the College Board for advanced placement classes in US history. The framework is here. According to a resolution passed at the recent summer meeting of the Republican National Committee meeting in Chicago, it “reflects a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects.” The RNC calls the framework, which is to be implemented for some 500,000 AP history students this fall, “biased and...

The USS Houston sank during World War II after being hit by the Japanese, killing 700 sailors and Marines. Now, more than 70 years later, U.S. and Indonesian divers have confirmed that a sunken vessel in the Java Sea was the wreck of the ship dubbed "The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast."The Houston was carrying 1,068 crewmen when it was hit on Feb. 28, 1942, during the Battle of Sunda Strait. Only 291 sailors and Marines survived the sinking and their later use as slave labor by the Japanese. The vessel's commanding officer, Capt. Albert H. Rooks, was posthumously...

The decision to occupy Denmark was taken at a meeting in Berlin on December 17, 1939 – three and a half months after World War II broke out and almost four months before German troops invaded the country on April 9, 1940. A series of personal meetings between Norway’s Fascist politician Vidkun Quisling and Adolf Hitler led to the decision. Quisling was adamant that Hitler should deny Britain access to the northern Norwegian town of Narvik, and thus be able to control a Norway rich in raw materials. Quisling himself planned to lead a political coup and open Norway up...

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton lists the following guidelines on his blog. There is some doubt among scholars that Sir Robert Peel actually enunciated any of his nine principles himself — some researchers say they were formulated in 1829 by the two first commissioners of London’s Metropolitan Police Department.

Neanderthals may have caught, butchered and cooked wild pigeons long before modern humans became regular consumers of bird meat, a study revealed on Thursday. Close examination of 1,724 bones from rock doves, found in a cave in Gibraltar and dated to between 67,000 and 28,000 years ago, revealed cuts, human tooth marks and burns, said a paper in the journal Scientific Reports. This suggested the doves may have been butchered and then roasted, wrote the researchers—the first evidence of hominids eating birds. And the evidence suggested Neanderthals ate much like a latter-day Homo sapiens would tuck into a roast chicken,...

Pharoah, let my people go: How did ancient Egypt become a land of slaves building fantastic monuments to dictatorial leaders? The land of Egypt was rich and fertile, a seeming paradise for egalitarian living. Stephanie Pappas writes in Live Science about how despots “evolved” in ancient societies, but that’s a misleading use of the term; it actually was a series of bad choices by free people. She writes how Simon Powers at the University of Lausanne came up with a mathematical model to explain the shift from egalitarianism to despotism. Whether it actually explains them could be disputed, but he...

Okay, So I know of a few people who are shall we say very Lower middle class who used to be Mid-Middle class until recently due to the wonderful economy as of late. I know they are wanting to prep, but are unable to make ends meet and I have been rotating out my own personal prepping stock to just keep them fed day to day. (don't worry I am not giving them expired food, just food that is nearing expiration). The question recently arose about if they should get an EBT card and use it to buy their own...

On this day in 1941, Adolf Hitler orders that the systematic murder of the mentally ill and handicapped be brought to an end because of protests within Germany. In 1939, Dr. Viktor Brack, head of Hitler's Euthanasia Department, oversaw the creation of the T.4 program, which began as the systematic killing of children deemed "mentally defective." Children were transported from all over Germany to a Special Psychiatric Youth Department and killed. Later, certain criteria were established for non-Jewish children. --SNIP-- Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the man who would direct the systematic extermination of European Jewry, had only...

Capt. James is one of the world's most celebrated lifesavers. His lifesaving began at age 15 when he joined the Massachusetts Humane Society. Over the years, until the age of 75, he was credited with saving more than 600 lives until his death at age 75. He was on duty with the U.S. Life-Saving Service, which later merged with the U.S. Coast Guard. Ingalls has delivered three NSCs, and three more, including James, are currently under construction. A seventh NSC, Kimball WMSL 756, is scheduled to begin construction in early 2015. James is scheduled to deliver next summer. "Teamed with...

Archaeologists hoping to discover Roman and Iron Age finds at a Welsh hillfort were shocked to unearth pottery and arrowheads predating their predicted finds by 4,000 years at the home of a powerful Iron Age community, including flint tools and weapons from 3,600 BC. Caerau, an Iron Age residency on the outskirts of Cardiff, would have been a battleground more than 5,000 years ago according to the arrowheads, awls, scrapers and polished stone axe fragments found during the surprising excavation. “Quite frankly, we were amazed,” says Dr Dave Wyatt, the co-director of the dig, from Cardiff University... “But no-one realised...

Archaeologists suspect a “sacred way” could have led to a henge 6,000 years ago at Iwade Meadows, to the west of the Kent industrial town of Sittingbourne. Positioned on a north-west slope, the 30-metre diameter structure is one of several prehistoric monuments on a north-west slope above the Ridham fleet stream running through the centre of the site. ...says Dr Paul Wilkinson, of... SWAT Archaeology... “The monuments are in a location that would have formerly had extensive views to the Swale Estuary and the Island of Sheppey beyond. “The archaeological evidence suggests that the outer ditch may have originated in...

Fighting Bob Fest will return to Baraboo next month after taking place in Madison for the past three years. The political festival, set for Sept. 13 at the Sauk County Fairgrounds, was first held in Baraboo in 2002 to honor the legacy of the late U.S. senator and former Wisconsin Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette. La Follette is considered one of the founders of the progressive movement and organizers say the intent of the festival is to honor his contributions and energize progressives by providing a forum for speakers, networking and camaraderie. The annual festival, which draws thousands, was...

A site in southwestern France found to be rich in the bones of horses and other large herbivores has provided important insights into the hunting and scavenging habits of Neanderthals. A team of archaeologists from the French archaeological agency Inrap have unearthed hundreds of bones at the Middle Paleolithic site in Quincieux dating back 35,000 to 55,000 years. The work was started due to roadworks in the area, with the outstanding discovery prompting local authorities to extend the time available for excavations. The excavation of the prehistoric site, on a hill overlooking the old bed of the Saone River, revealed...