Free Republic

SNIP Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death. Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret. The paper, by an international group of researchers, was published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology. It offers additional surprises: A famous lock of hair — the subject of a book and a documentary — was not...

A 5-year-old boy was “screaming his lungs out” Sunday as he came “flying out of the door” of an SUV during a botched theft of a flat-screen TV from a Falmouth Wal-Mart by his mom and her boyfriend, according to police reports released yesterday. Eyewitnesses said they ran to help as the crying boy fell “out of the car onto the ground” and then got up and started to chase the SUV.

Steve Forbes: Perry’s flat tax ‘most exciting tax plan since Reagan’s’ Zachary Roth October 20, 2011Steve Forbes, whose flat tax plan helped make him an unlikely contender for the Republican presidential nomination 15 years ago, is praising a new version of the idea from Rick Perry. And Forbes, who says he helped devise Perry's plan, left little doubt that he'll formally back the Texas governor before long.In an interview with Yahoo News, Forbes called Perry's proposal, announced in a speech Wednesday, "the most exciting tax plan since Reagan's," in 1980.Asked whether that included his own 1996 plan, Forbes said it...

Undoubtedly a team of scientists already has been dispatched to Las Vegas to study the phenomenon that tens of thousands of startled CNN viewers saw firsthand Tuesday night. For the first time in the five years since he launched his methodical, by-the-numbers, always placid, PowerPoint-inspired campaign for the presidency of the United States, an emoticon crossed Mitt Rombot's faceplate. In layman's terms, the former governor short-circuited. Even more surprising, the first person ever to dent that metallic exterior was the same one politicos had confidently written off only a few weeks ago. Yes, Rick Perry - who in two months...

In previous debates, the adviser explained, Perry had tried to abide by time limits, leading some observers to say he seemed passive and withdrawn. Perry intended to make sure that didn't happen in Las Vegas. It didn't. The Las Vegas debate was Perry's fifth, but the first one in which Perry really showed up to play. That doesn't mean he won, doesn't mean he was particularly likable, doesn't mean he always had cogent answers. But it does mean that Perry, on the verge of being completely written off as a candidate, gave himself a chance to get back in the...

He is also half white. Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black. We call him that -- he calls himself that -- because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There's no in-between. That was my reaction when I read these words on the front page of this newspaper the day after the election: "Obama Makes History: U.S. Decisively Elects First Black President."