Free Republic

MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday reacted to the United States Supreme Court upholding Texas’ new abortion law. Scarborough lamented that the Supreme Court took away “a constitutionally protected right, recognized as written into the Constitution for half a century.” He questioned how SCOTUS would do away with a “constitutional right that 70% of Americans support.”

There are two views of when Revelation was written. One view is that it was written around AD 95-96. The second view is that it was written in the mid 60’s AD—prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. I will show that the early date has the strongest support. 1. Revelation 17:10 says that the book was written during the sixth king, who was Nero, who reigned from AD 54-68. (The previous five Roman rulers were Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius.) Interestingly, the text also says that the seventh king to come would reign only “a...

Many Christians understand the book to have been written around AD 95/96. They simply take this late date for Revelation on faith, without ever checking it out. But there is strong and convincing evidence that the book was written prior to AD 70 when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. Over 130 authors, from different theological persuasions, have been identified as holding to a pre-AD 70 date, during the latter years of the reign of Nero, who ruled Rome from AD 54 to 68. The argument for the late date of Revelation rests principally on a single AMBIGUOUS, THIRD-HAND comment...

"..............The AP says the translations on so poor that many users feel they were computer-generated. The name of the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, can be litterally read as “for the caution of health.” One health navigator who works in Miami told the wire service that, if anything, the site is written in “Spanglish.”....

Jerusalem, July 11, 2010 -- A tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem's Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say. The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower...

With the President and Congress’s plan to pass comprehensive health care reform reaching increasingly high levels of unpopularity, and reconciliation becoming an impediment, the leadership of the Senate is rumored to be preparing a new secret plan to railroad the bill through the Senate in record time by using a seldom used parliamentary procedure.Their plan is to proceed to a House passed non-health care bill to provide a shell of legislation to give Obamacare a ride to the House then to the President’s desk.  Sound confusing? We lay out the steps below, but essentially the Senate would pass health care...

Written in Bone Volume 60 Number 3, May/June 2007 by Brenda Fowler How radioactive isotopes reveal the migrations of ancient people A molar from the city of Campeche in Mexico (Courtesy Douglas Price) In the late thirteenth century, drought ravaged the American Southwest, withering the corn, squash, and beans upon which ancient inhabitants relied for survival. Across the region people abandoned their homes in a desperate search for arable land. Some were lucky enough to find a moist Arizona valley where they built a settlement now known as Grasshopper Pueblo. At its peak, the pueblo consisted of 500 rooms housing...

Research points the finger at PowerPoint University of NSW research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time. Photo: Andrew Meares Anna Patty Education Editor April 4, 2007 If you have ever wondered why your eyes start glazing over as you read those dot points on the screen, as the same words are being spoken, take heart in knowing there is a scientific explanation. It is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the written and...

Blogs are very important these days. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has one. The invention of the Web log, we are told, is as transformative as Gutenberg's press, and has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution. The ascendancy of Internet technology did bring with it innovations. Information is more conveniently disseminated, and there's more of it, because anybody can chip in. There's more "choice"--and in a sense, more democracy. Folks on the WWW, conservatives especially, boast about how the alternative media corrodes the "MSM," for mainstream media, a term redolent with unfairness and elitism. The blogs are not as significant...

'Earliest Chinese Characters' Unearthed Archaeologists have discovered pottery bearing inscriptions dating back 4,500 years, which could prove to be China's earliest example of written language. These pottery fragments, found in the ruins of an ancient city in Huaiyang County of Henan Province, are believed to be parts of a spinning wheel, according to a report released by the county government. A photo, posted on the local government's website, showed a piece of black pottery bearing white strokes. The fragment formed half of a round spinning wheel, with a diameter of 4.7 centimeters and a thickness of 1.1 centimeters. The inscriptions...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2006 -- About 50 authors, including current and former servicemen and women as well as family members, gathered in the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building last evening to sign copies of a 377-page book of their observations and experiences in the global war on terrorism. Navy Reserve Cmdr. Kathleen Toomey Jabs, 40, whose Navy officer husband deployed to Iraq in 2004, autographs a copy of “Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families.” For the book, Jabs wrote a fictional account about a military mother leaving her 4-year-old...

The recent release of Justice Harry A. Blackmun's private Supreme Court case files has starkly illuminated an embarrassing problem that previously was discussed only in whispers among court insiders and aficionados: the degree to which young law clerks, most of them just two years out of law school, make extensive, highly substantive and arguably inappropriate contributions to the decisions issued in their bosses' names. Even Roe vs. Wade, Blackmun's most famous decision, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, owed lots of its language and much of its breadth to his clerks and the clerks of other justices. A decade later,...

In April 2004, followers of Iraqi Shi‘ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a well-coordinated uprising across southern Iraq. While Western media focused on events in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala, violence occurred elsewhere as well. A Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) source forwarded the following after-action report regarding violence in the town of Al-Kut, the capital of the Wassit governorate and home to the Ukrainian contingent.The unclassified report, written by a coalition security contractor, highlights dysfunction between regional coalition offices and the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad, as well as tension between diplomats and security officers. The summary faulted a British...

When time erases written languages By Greg Lavine The Salt Lake Tribune While researchers periodically hail new finds as the earliest examples of human writing, few scientists have systematically peered into the other end of the process -- the fall of a culture's written symbols. Writing systems, like cultures, have come and gone throughout human history. Brigham Young University anthropologist Stephen Houston and other colleagues studied several dead script systems from around the globe to look for similarities and differences in their respective demises. "What's interesting is why people choose, or are forced, to drop something that had been enormously...

Saddam has Koran written in his blood By David Blair in Baghdad (Filed: 14/12/2002) Decorated with intricate designs, the delicate Arabic script of the Koran seemed to have been written in red ink. In fact, a skilled artist copied the 605 pages of the holy book using Saddam Hussein's blood. The Iraqi dictator donated three pints over two years and this, mixed with chemicals, was used for every verse. The resulting Koran was laid out in the Mother Of All Battles mosque in Baghdad, built to commemorate Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and his subsequent defeat at the hands...