Free Republic

The eminent Nation announces with relish "the organization of a national committee of 100 to induce Congress to prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers," and offers the pious judgment that it is "a step forward." "Crime statistics," it appears, "show that 90% of the murders that take place are committed by the use of the pistol, and every year there are hundreds of cases of accidental homicide because somebody did not know that his revolver was loaded." The new law — or is it to be a constitutional amendment? — will do away with all that. "It will not be...

Why not go balls to the wall to express oneself ? What's to stop you ? Morality ? Where does that come from ? WTF, is going on here ? Is there no basis, no foundation for logic ?

Over the past ten days, the once seemingly solid broadcast career of Brian Williams has been shaken by a series of stunning revelations about his many fabrications. This has resulted in a six month suspension of Williams by NBC News with the strong possibility he will never return to his anchor slot. However, the unkindest but funniest cut of them all has probably come in the form of this inevitable Hitler parody video. What was not inevitable was how absolutely brilliant it is. My prediction is that it will be on the top 10 of most lists of the best...

Deep in the mountains of Jackson County, just outside Sylva, North Carolina, sets a large, baffling stone. It is a soapstone boulder, and it's covered with a plethora of strange drawings that some archaeologists believe may be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. Even the Cherokee Indians consider the site ancient, pre-dating their presence in the area... According to Cherokee legend, the markings on the rock were created by Judaculla, a slant-eyed giant who dominated the mountains in years long past. He was the "Great Lord of the hunt," a powerful being who could leap from one mountain to another, and...

In describing a volcanic eruption from a high mountain towering over the sea Hanno mentions such details as sulphuric fumes and streams of lava. The only volcanic area in West Africa is represented by Mount Cameroon, which is still active today. It is located at the deepest point of the Gulf of Guinea, where it rises suddenly from the seashore, reaching a height of over 4000 meters... Those who have seen it from the sea consider it one of the most impressive sights in the world. The natives call it Mongana-Loba, "Mountain of the Gods," which well agrees with the...

In accordance with a formal proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II of England, a new Canadian national flag is raised above Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Beginning in 1610, Lower Canada, a new British colony, flew Great Britain's Union Jack, or Royal Union Flag. In 1763, as a result of the French and Indian Wars, France lost its sizable colonial possessions in Canada, and the Union Jack flew all across the wide territory of Canada. In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was established as a self-governing federation within the British Empire, and three years later a new flag,...

JACKSON, MI - Marion Blumenthal Lazan has experienced the horror of constantly having death on her mind. Blumenthal Lazan spent six and a half years in refugee, transit and prison camps, including the infamous Bergen-Belsen, during the Holocaust. As just a child she battled mental and physical hurdles, witnessing countless deaths each day. "When I talk about those years it is a long related nightmare, a very bad dream," Blumenthal Lazan said. "I separate myself from it ever having happen to me and that is how I deal with it." On Wednesday, Feb. 11, Blumenthal Lazan shared her story of...

In a series of histograms (graphs showing the distribution of genome and population data), Hawks shows that Asian and European genomes have significantly more Neanderthal DNA than African genomes. The averages for Asian and European samples are around 3% higher than the average for African samples. Whatever gave Africans some degree of similarity to Neanderthals, non-Africans seem to have received around 3% more of it. Europeans average a bit more Neanderthal DNA than Asians, showing that Europeans probably mixed with Neanderthals as they moved into Europe, adding a secondary mix of Neanderthal DNA into their genome beyond the primary mix...

The first-known footage of the Eastland disaster was found by Jeff Nichols, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, while he was looking for unrelated material about World War I, the Chicago Tribune reported. Nichols found the footage on Europeana’s 1914-1918 website. Nichols said he found the clips in Dutch newsreels. Title cards describing what happened precede them. "It's as easily recognizable to someone who cares about Chicago history as the Titanic, so I knew what I had right away," Nichols, who has lived in Chicago for 20 years, told the Chicago Tribune. "I knew folks would...

When a black German woman discovered her grandfather was the Nazi villain of 'Schindler's List' An odd series of events led Jennifer Teege to discover that her grandfather was none other than the notorious Nazi Amon Goeth. By Avner Shapira| Feb. 6, 2015 | 7:05 PM In the mid-1990s, near the end of the period during which she lived in Israel, Jennifer Teege watched Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List.” She hadn’t seen the film in a movie theater, and watched it in her rented room in Tel Aviv when it was broadcast on television. “It was a moving experience for...

Large ancient-DNA study uncovers population that moved westwards 4,500 years ago. A mysterious group of humans from the east stormed western Europe 4,500 years ago -- bringing with them technologies such as the wheel, as well as a language that is the forebear of many modern tongues, suggests one of the largest studies of ancient DNA yet conducted. Vestiges of these eastern emigres exist in the genomes of nearly all contemporary Europeans, according to the authors, who analysed genome data from nearly 100 ancient Europeans. ...last year, a study of the genomes of ancient and contemporary Europeans found echoes not...

They're probably about half as old as scientists once thought they were. But a pair of butchered bones found in a cave near the Alaska-Yukon border are "definite" evidence of human presence in North America just after the end of the last Ice Age, perhaps as much as 14,000 years ago, according to a new study. The bones were originally discovered in the late 1970s by Canadian archaeologist Dr. Jacques Cinq-Mars at a site known as Bluefish Caves, high in northwestern Yukon Territory. In one of the caves, dubbed Cave 2, archaeologists found more than 18,000 fragments of bones from...

For the first time, grape seeds from the Byzantine era have been found. These grapes were used to produce "the Wine of the Negev" -- one of the finest and most renowned wines in the whole of the Byzantine Empire. The charred seeds, over 1,500 years-old, were found at the Halutza excavation site in the Negev during a joint dig by the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority. "The vines growing in the Negev today are European varieties, whereas the Negev vine was lost to the world. Our next job is to recreate the ancient wine, and perhaps...

This week’s DTIC document is one well worth reading in the interest of understanding the AR-15’s early deployment and subsequent “fall from grace” later in the 1960s. It bears more detailed examination than I usually put into the Weekly DTIC, so this will be a longer post than usual. The document is DARPA’s Field Test Report, AR-15 Armalite Rifle, a controversial document extolling the virtues of the early AR-15 in Vietnam. The basic thesis of the document is best summed up in this quote:

The Buffalo branch of the nation's oldest civil rights organization has asked elected officials to deny any future requests to attach the 13th president's name to places or things, citing his signing of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves.

The 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will go to winner Harold Holzer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for "Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion" (Simon & Schuster). The Prize is awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Holzer was chosen from 114 nominations as the 2015 recipient. He will receive $50,000 and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' life-size bust “Lincoln the Man” in a ceremony April 23 in New York City. The Prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and...

LANSING, MI -- Today is the 206th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, one of the greatest U.S. presidents. There's a lot to be thankful to Lincoln for: guiding the country through the Civil War and helping end slavery. But residents of Michigan have something special to thank the 16th president for. He coined the term many of us use to describe ourselves: Michigander. There is an ongoing debate about if Michigan citizens should be described as Michiganians or Michiganders. Lincoln coined the term Michigander when he was in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1848, Lincoln gave a speech against...

A long-lost painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was confiscated from a bank vault in Switzerland after Italian police said it had been exported illegally and was in danger of being sold for up to £90 million. Swiss police, acting on a request by their Italian counterparts, seized the portrait of Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, from a private bank vault in Lugano on Tuesday. After being lost for centuries, the painting was rediscovered in 2013 in a collection of 400 artworks kept in a Swiss vault. The authorities then were alerted to the existence of the painting, but it...

In the 1968 Star Trek episode Bread and Circuses, Capt. James Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Leonard McCoy beam down to Planet 892-IV, a parallel to Earth in almost every way—except Rome never fell. The aliens capture the Enterprise’s familiar trio. Kirk has a predictable romantic encounter. There are televised gladiatorial games that pit the crew against sword-wielding warriors named Flavius and Achilles. The episode even lampoons the cutthroat competition between television broadcasters and their search for ratings. When one of the gladiators refuses to fight with his usual vigor, the master of the games snarls, “You bring this network’s...

Danish photographer Thomas Bangsted sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from “spray and pray” photography. The Brooklyn-based artist often spends months or years completing individual pictures through researching, traveling, shooting, and post-processing. The 7-minute video above offers a glimpse into how Bangsted creates his art.