Free Republic

Facilitated variation is the first comprehensive theory of how life works at the molecular level, published in 2005 by systems biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart in their book The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. It is a very powerful theory, is supported by a great deal of evidence, and the authors have made it easy to understand. It identifies two basic components of heredity: (a) conserved core processes of cellular structure, function and body plan organization; and (b) modular regulatory mechanisms that are built in special ways that allow them to be easily rearranged (like ®Lego blocks) into...

President Obama today stood by his comments that the Cambridge, Mass., police department acted "stupidly" in its arrest of Henry Louis Gates, telling ABC News that the Harvard University professor should not have been arrested....

Police in Cambridge have reacted predictably to having the President call them stupid, as ABC reports today. Their union lashed out at Obama for commenting without having the facts on hand, and witnesses dispute Obama’s recounting of the event: .... I’ve heard about five different reports [on the details of the arrest],” Cosby said on Boston’s WZLX. “If I’m the president of the United States, I don’t care how much pressure people want to put on it about race, I’m keeping my mouth shut.” “I was shocked to hear the president making this kind of statement,” Cosby said referring to...

Among scientists at the university of New Mexico that spring, rape was in the air. One of the professors, biologist Randy Thornhill, had just coauthored A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, which argued that rape is (in the vernacular of evolutionary biology) an adaptation, a trait encoded by genes that confers an advantage on anyone who possesses them. Back in the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but...

The Frailty of the Darwinian Hypothesis, Part 1 Editor's Note: Ann Gauger is a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute. Her work uses molecular genetics and genomic engineering to study the origin, organization and operation of metabolic pathways. She received a BS in biology from MIT, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, where she studied cell adhesion molecules involved in Drosophila embryogenesis. As a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, she cloned and characterized the Drosophila kinesin light chain. Her research has been published in Nature, Development, and the...

Human-Chimp Similarities: Common Ancestry or Flawed Research? by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D.* In 2003, the human genome was heralded as a near-complete DNA sequence, except for the repetitive regions that could not be resolved due to the limitations of the prevailing DNA sequencing technologies.[1] The chimpanzee genome was subsequently finished in 2005 with the hope that its completion would provide clear-cut DNA similarity evidence for an ape-human common ancestry.[2] This similarity is frequently cited as proof of man's evolutionary origins, but a more objective explanation tells a different story, one that is more complex than evolutionary scientists seem willing to admit...

Next time someone tells you intelligent design is “based on religion,” you might point him to American Founder Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. As I explain in a special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion. Ironically, the critics of intelligent design often think they are defending the principles of Jefferson. The National Council for the Social Studies, for example, claims that intelligent design is religion and then cites Jefferson’s famous Letter to the Danbury Baptists calling...

June 16, 2009 — What kid hasn’t played with maple seeds to watch them spin in the air like helicopters? Scientists watch them, too. A team from the Netherlands and California found out how they stay in the air for so long without engines to drive them. One would think in an era of advanced aeronautical engineering the physics would all be worked out, but the abstract explains that the seeds know more than the engineers do...

June 17, 2009 — If you are a war-mongering beast who likes to burn things, you’re displaying your evolutionary past. That’s what a couple of news reports are claiming. New Scientist has a review...

Atheism, for Good Reason, Fears Questions --snip-- That theists and open-minded agnostics and atheists on the pro-Darwinist side of this debate are finally engaging the same fundamentalist atheist dogma that intelligent design proponents have engaged for several decades is a good sign. Fundamentalist atheists are of course fighting back ferociously, because they understand, as perhaps the accomodationists don’t, the profound implications of an understanding of the natural world that is not causally closed. Teleology is obvious in nature. Atheists and materialists intrinsically deny the reality of teleology-- Aristotelian final causation-- in nature, yet nothing in the natural world can be...

Part of a short-line railroad in Oregon's ruggedly beautiful Wallowa County has become a 30-mile-long parking lot for about 700 idled railcars, some blighted with graffiti. Many residents aren't happy. David Stein, for one, said mustard-yellow centerbeam lumber cars along tracks owned by the Wallowa Union Railroad have spoiled his view of mountains, meadows and pine forests from his home outside Enterprise. "What can you see?" Stein, 54, asked in disgust. "Trains!" The situation is a snapshot of a national picture. The economic slump has idled about 70,000 Union Pacific railcars, now sidetracked wherever space can be found, said Zoe...

Boise, Idaho (AP) -- A man who was hit by a truck near the city's downtown was also slapped with a citation. Boise police ticketed Ebrahim Balah, 62, for jaywalking shortly after the accident Wednesday.

MIAMI -- A reputed gang member showed off his guns and taunted police on an Internet video to come and get him -- and they did just that. "Last night, we granted his wish," said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta on Wednesday. "King Bird Road" Rudy Villanueva, 31, and another alleged gang member were arrested early Wednesday on federal weapons charges after the video appeared on several Internet sites in recent weeks. Investigators said they were incensed when they saw the video and heard the threats. "We were offended, obviously," said Lt. Israel McKee, head of the street gang unit...

Blacks have been charged higher auto loan rates than other auto buyers, federal research says. But the gap in loan rates could narrow, and possibly disappear, as the result of recently concluded lawsuits. Blacks paid a typical auto loan rate of 7 percent for new cars, compared with 5 percent for whites in 2004, according to a consumer organization's analysis of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. That was the most recent survey available. And blacks were more likely than auto buyers in general to have auto loan rates higher than 15 percent. For used car loans, 27 percent...

Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim By Debbie Schlussel Many months ago, readers began asking me whether Barack Obama is Muslim. Since he identifies as a Christian, I said, "no," and responded that he was not raised by his Kenyan father. But, then, I decided to look further into Obama's background. His full name--as by now you have probably heard--is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali's son--Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father, the late Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., apparently a Muslim....

On site report from Kristinn at a Cindy Sheehan anti war rally being held at the Independence Mall outside the Constitution Center. , Cindy said that she is determined t not only wants to see George Bush impeached but she wants to see him tried for Crimes Against Humanity. She states is so determined to see this done she says she will live for 1000 years. She went further by saying that even if she were involved in a fiery plane crash she would walk out alive just to see this done. Kristinn yelled out to her as she was...

A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.

"Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan said Friday that she's troubled by the death of al-Qaida's top operational terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, predicting that it will actually make things worse for U.S. troops in Iraq. "I suspect it's gong to make the insurgency in Iraq worse," she told Cincinnati, Ohio's 9News. The peace crusader added that the expected increase in violence "will just prove to me that our presence in Iraq is just fueling the violence, fueling the insurgency." "The killing and the cycle of violence has to stop," Sheehan insisted. The California pacifist was in Cincinnati to join with the...

Hello, fellow white people! Yeeeeeehaawwwwww! What in tarnation is all this jibber jabber I hear about the Iraqi war going anything but one hundred percent perfectly?! I tell ya what that is: COMMIE talk! These Un-American libs (which include minorities, women, and other minorities, such as blacks and homosexual gay queers!) the war has turned into a black hole with no "forseeable" (whatever in tarnation that big word means) end in sight. To this I say, shut your damn mouth! The only opinions that should be expressed are those that are in total agreement with our distinguished president, Dick Cheney,...

WASHINGTON -- Four African-American New Orleans residents told a House committee Tuesday that they felt a sense of abandonment from all levels of government when Hurricane Katrina hit three months ago and believe more lives and homes would have been saved had the victims been predominantly white and wealthier. "People were allowed to die," said Leah Hodges, who told the panel she still doesn't know if her brother survived the hurricane. She likened what happened to New Orleans, and many of its black residents, to "genocide and ethnic cleansing."

Sean Penn bales water out of a boat with a plastic cup as he and members of his entourage make an attempt to rescue stranded people in New Orleans.

Liberal television pundit and Democrat political strategist Paul Begala has used a liberal blog to try to refute a Cybercast News Service story that quoted him as saying Republicans wanted to kill him and his children to preserve tax cuts for the rich. Begala's latest commentary appears on the "Campus Progress" blog. "Republicans don't want to kill us. They just want to lie about us," he wrote. The Campus Progress blog belongs to the group that sponsored his appearance at the July 13 first-ever Campus Progress National Student Conference in Washington, D.C. "Imagine my surprise in returning from taking my...

A man accused of scamming businesses up and down the East Coast as well as in Buffalo while passing himself off as a rapper was arrested Friday in Georgia. Police and the U.S. Marshals Service apprehended Walker Washington, 36, of Augusta, Ga., who identified himself as the rapper Da' Franchise. Washington racked up large bills for catering, studio recording sessions and other services, then left town without paying them, police and business owners said. About a dozen companies in Western New York say they were scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars when Washington came to this area last...

taxes

should I do? We live out in the country and the dog brought it home a few weeks ago. She says she wants to keep it for decoration and it is now stuck on her fence post. When I take her the paper every day, it creeps me out. Her dog is always leaving deer horns in my yard also, so it must be out there killing deer and breaking their horns off.

Did our Commander-in-Chief act like one during the (in)famous 7 minutes?

AFTER ZEL MILLER'S SPEECH AT THE CONVENTION, HE HAD SEVERAL INTERVIEWS. ONE OF THESE WAS WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS HOST OF MSNBC'S "HARDBALL". MR. MILLER HAD STATED IN HIS SPEECH THAT JOHN KERRY WOULD USE "SPITBALLS" AS WEAPONS IN THE "WAR ON TERROR". MR. MATTHEWS QUESTIONED MILLER'S USE OF THE TERM AND ASKED MR. MILLER IF HE TRULY BELIEVED MR. KERRY WOULD USE "SPITBALLS" AS WEAPONS. MR. MILLER INFORMED MR. MATTHEWS THAT HE WAS USING A METAPHOR. FURTHER QUESTIONING AND SOFT PROBING OF MR. MILLER'S SPEECH RESULTED IN AN UNBELIEVABLY ANGRY RANT BY MR. MILLER. MR. MILLER WENT TO THE POINT...

Bangor Daily News - Print this Article By Liz Chapman, Of the NEWS Staff e-mail Liz Last updated: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Tape airs of Baldacci flip-flop on liquor AUGUSTA - A year-old audio tape has come back to haunt Gov. John Baldacci this week as he defended his decision to lease the state's wholesale liquor business despite a loss to taxpayers of about $100 million. The tape, aired Monday on Maine Public Radio, features the governor saying the state would not lose any money on the landmark deal that turns over all wholesale liquor operations to the private...

PHOENIX (AP) - A man found driving a vehicle that belonged to slain Cincinnati Reds outfielder Dernell Stenson was booked on a charge of possession of stolen property, police said Thursday. Kevin Riddle, 43, was jailed Wednesday night about two hours after Stenson was found dead in the street in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, police said. Riddle is not a suspect in Stenson's death, said Chandler Police Sgt. Mark Franzen. Franzen called Riddle an "investigative lead" in the case. Police said they didn't know if the two men knew each other. Stenson's body was found Wednesday by police responding...

Speaking at U of Arkansas

  WRITTEN IN STONE: AN ARCHITECT DEFINES THE CLINTONS   by Mia T, 12-30-02   If mutability of meaning was necessary for the survival of the clintons--their survival hinged ultimately on the deconstruction of words and laws--it is more than a little ironic, and a manifestation of the special sway and shortsightedness of the pathologic ego, that clinton's monument to himself will necessarily define the clintons with the permanance of great inviolate places of iconic architecture. Whereas a huckster removes meaning from institutions --the wife picked up where the husband left off--an architect encodes meaning in buildings. James S. Polshek,...

<p>NEW PALTZ, N.Y. -- Three New York women calling themselves the Hudson Valley Peace Brigade say they're heading to Iraq Saturday for a 10 day mission of peace.</p> <p>They set up the trip through a group called Voices in the Wilderness. The international group has brought hundreds of people in and out of Iraq since the Gulf War as a challenge to war and U.N. sanctions.</p>