Free Republic

LONG-TERM climate change could be responsible for moving the Earth's tectonic plates. A team of scientists based in Australia, France and Germany has established a link between monsoons in India over the past 10 million years and the motion of the Indian plate. The scientists have found that as monsoons in the area increased the plate moved by almost one centimetre a year.

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JUNE 30, 2009 President Obama Announces Rural Tour with Cabinet Secretaries and Administration Officials WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, President Obama announced the launch of his Administration’s Rural Tour. This summer, over the course of the next few weeks and months, top Administration officials, including Cabinet Secretaries, will fan out across the nation to hold a series of discussions on how communities, states, and the federal government can work together to help strengthen rural America. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretaries Gary Locke and Tom Vilsack will kick-off the...

Religious Right Power Brokers The Top Ten by Rob BostonThe United States is home to dozens of Religious Right groups. Many have small budgets and focus on state and local issues; the most powerful organizations conduct nationwide operations, command multi-million-dollar bank accounts and attract millions of followers. They have disproportionate clout in the halls of Congress, the White House and the courts, and they wield enormous influence within the political system.What follows is a list of the nation’s Top Ten Religious Right groups, as determined by publicly available financial data and political prominence. (For budgetary data, Church & State used...

More than 30 local pastors last night officially accused two evangelical megachurches of illegal political activities. In a rare and potentially explosive action, the moderate ministers signed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate World Harvest Church of Columbus and Fairfield Christian Church of Lancaster and determine if their tax-exempt status should be revoked. The grievance claims that the Rev. Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church and the Rev. Russell Johnson of Fairfield Christian Church improperly used their churches and affiliated entities — the Center for Moral Clarity, Ohio Restoration Project and Reformation Ohio — for partisan politics,...

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators on Wednesday announced a $4.5 million settlement involving deceptive advertising claims for the dietary supplements CortiSlim and CortiStress. The Federal Trade Commission alleged that three defendants in the case made false or unproven claims about the two products in infomercials promoting the supplements. The marketers made false claims about CortiSlims' ability to cause rapid, substantial and permanent weight loss in all users,

The first time I heard the rumor, I thought it was a joke. Haley Barbour for president? I never quite understood how he rose to become chairman of the Republican Party. But president of the United States? Where are America's leaders? Where are they hiding? Why are endlessly recycling the same old political retreads? Ever since getting elected governor of Mississippi, sources close to Barbour say, he's been thinking about the possibility of going for the big prize. I guess it's natural and understandable. As chairman of the GOP, Barbour was in the limelight, constantly on television and getting a...

The Democrats turn their lonely eyes to Hillary: Give us a message. Lead us home. Even for the Wonder Woman of the Party of JFK, this is no easy task. How to decry the excesses of the Bush administration and the GOP Congress without validating the label "The Party of No"? How to lure enough GOP votes to win elections at a time when Democrat means liberal and liberal is a term of derision? A Web site set up by a minister and his daughter (www.liveliberal.com) has an answer you can wear on a T-shirt: "Liberal is not a dirty...

Boston Democrats Pose as National Security Hawks and Social Moderates Kerry's Massachusetts Masquerade by Terence P. Jeffrey Posted Jul 30, 2004 True Values Deep in section 15 last Sunday, the New York Times printed the results of a poll it had conducted surveying more than 1,000 of the Democratic delegates. It revealed a group hailing from the hard left: 44% favored same-sex marriage (while another 43% favored civil unions), 62% said imposing environmental regulations is more important than preserving jobs, 66% opposed the death penalty for murderers, 75% favored abortion on demand, 77% said they are more concerned that anti-terrorism...

Fun with Fingerprint Readers Tsutomu Matsumoto, a Japanese cryptographer, recently decided to look at biometric fingerprint devices. These are security systems that attempt to identify people based on their fingerprint. For years the companies selling these devices have claimed that they are very secure, and that it is almost impossible to fool them into accepting a fake finger as genuine. Matsumoto, along with his students at the Yokohama National University, showed that they can be reliably fooled with a little ingenuity and $10 worth of household supplies. Matsumoto uses gelatin, the stuff that Gummi Bears are made out of. First...