Free Republic

Christopher Story - The Perestroika Dedeption A 'friend' tipped me off to this video and it is very interesting. The interview explains how the 'fall' of the Soviet Union was staged for the West to lower it's guard, so Russia and China can achieve global dominance. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3625436796243208628

Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date, according to a new theory by a University of Melbourne physicist. Professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics, is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago and believes that buried in the notations is the evidence that he discovered a new planet that we now know as Neptune. A hypothesis of how to look for this evidence has been published in the journal Australian Physics and was presented at the first lecture in the 2009 July Lectures in Physics...

The Obama administration will continue throughout the summer to proclaim that things are still on track. The stimulus, along with their entire domestic agenda, they will claim will work. All we need to do is give it more time. In reality, we will all be following the administration off the economic and financial cliff.

Temperatures dropped to a record low in Prince Edward Island overnight Tuesday, with reports of frost throughout the province.Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said that to his knowledge, frost has never been reported before in July in P.E.I. “That 3.8 we got last night kind of sticks out as being lower than some of the other records for anytime in early July,” Robichaud told CBC News on Wednesday. “So we’re looking at a significant event,” he said.

Here is video of Andruw Jones of the Texas Rangers last night where he hit three home runs in consecutive at bats against the Los Angeles Angels. Jones homered in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th innings, giving him 14 home runs on the season. Jones is a top candidate for Comeback Player of the Year. He was tossed aside by the Lost Angeles Dodgers in the offseason because he had a disastrous season with them in 2008, hitting only 3 home runs all year and batting under .160. The Rangers picked him up in the offseason and gave him a...

'Unto these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names. To the more thou shalt give the more inheritance, and to the fewer thou shalt give the less inheritance.' (From this week's Torah portion, Pinchas; Number 26: 53-54). Property rights are a basic value in the Torah. Our Forefathers were all wealthy men. Jacob even endangers himself and re-crosses the Yabok stream to retrieve some small belongings. Our Sages teach us that righteous people hold their money as dear as their bodies. An entire Talmudic tractate deals with the minute details of a "strange"...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week (see trends). When comparing Job Approval data from different firms, it’s important to keep in mind that polls of likely voters and polls of all adults will typically and consistently yield different results. In the case of...

Here is the conventional wisdom in politics, a candidate cannot win without their base. The sophisticated pundits have been talking about the Republican base as if it were shrinking. What is shrinking within the Republican party is; the conservative base that has left the Republican party to become Independents. That conservative base is where Palin brings her star power to the 2010 midterm elections. Note to the professional pundits. You are new to the Palin factor and your conventional wisdom was really never conventional or wisdom at all. Your analysis is called the status quo in the mundane thinking in...

Escalating job worries and rainy weather dampened shoppers’ appetite for buying summer staples like shorts and dresses, resulting in sharper-than-expected sales declines for many merchants in June and increasing concerns about the back-to-school shopping season. As retailers reported their monthly figures Thursday, the weakness cut across all sectors but to hit clothing stores particularly hard. Even low-priced Costco Wholesale Corp. saw same-store sales decline compared with June last year, when stimulus rebate checks helped business. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. no longer reports same-store sales each month.

I have attempted to remain open minded throughout the investigation of Air France Flight 447. I had hoped that the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) would come forward and present the facts as known. The evidence shows this is not the case and as a matter of fact, the only reason Thales pitots are still on the Airbus airplanes is for the protection of European companies and their European labor/workers. One would think that Boeing might want to update their complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO)? The European aviation industry is more concerned with their own business interest and...

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom. - Sun Tzu Like virtually all political observers, I was at first surprised by Governor Palin's decision to hand the reins of Alaska governance over to Lieutenant Governor Parnell. On the national stage, it sent the entirety of the political and chattering classes hurtling into the air like a flock of geese flushed by a hunter, flapping wildly and honking their displeasure. Palin's announcement, made by the...

ALBANY -- Gov. Paterson yesterday put New York on a course to become a banana republic, with an unelected governor (himself), an unelected lieutenant governor (Richard Ravitch) and an unelected state comptroller (Tom DiNapoli), who, under pressure from Paterson, has refused to give elected senators their pay. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, c'mon up -- to Albany! Maybe now we know why Paterson flunked the bar exam after three years at Hofstra Law School. Paterson's unprecedented move -- in defiance of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and 230 years of state history -- is mind-boggling in its implications for democracy, not...

What is portrayed as the debate between religion and science feels increasingly like watching the very bitter dissolution of a doomed marriage. The relationship started out all roses and kisses, proceeded to doubts and regrets, then fights and silences, a mutually agreed separation, and finally to curses and maledictions: “I wish you were dead!” In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss declared “the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.” Krauss’s essay was the latest eruption of a vituperative argument going on in the scientific community over “accommodationism.” Accommodationists hold that even atheists...

When President Obama meets with Pope Benedict XVI tomorrow, there will be no right-wing Catholic demonstrators upbraiding the pontiff, as they did Notre Dame earlier this year, for conferring the church's legitimacy upon this liberal politician. In fact, whether he is the beneficiary of providence or merely good luck, Obama will have his audience with Benedict just three days after the release of a papal encyclical on social justice that places the pope well to Obama's left on economics. What a delightful surprise it would be for a pope to tell our president that on some matters, he's just too...

The problem described in this article could be viewed as a genetic problem of some sort, or you could view it, as I do, as a political problem. My own view is that the variable which correlates most closely with every sort of urban pathology in America is democrat machine politics, and that 97% of the problems which blacks experience living in America would evaporate within five years of the democrat party being outlawed and banned. What is it Like to Teach Black Students? by Christopher Jackson Until recently I taught at a predominantly black high school in a southeastern...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Charles Schumer wants to give every child born in the U.S. a $500 savings account, courtesy of the federal government. The Democrat from New York plans to introduce legislation next week that would establish savings accounts for all newborn U.S. citizens and allow them to grow tax free...

When last we left CNN co-founder, Reese Schonfeld, he was in a deep funk over the horrible CNN ratings. He had hoped that the election of Barack Obama as president would help that ailing network's ratings but, as reported by Schonfeld, a harsh reality quickly set in: Now, seven months after Barack Obama's victory, CNN's ratings have gone down the drain. From May of last year to May of this year, CNN lost 22% of its total primetime audience. MSNBC was down 2%, while FoxNews was up 24%. In the key advertising demographic (25-54), Fox was up 31%, CNN was...

Here is a CNN video report that says Janet Jackson attempted an intervention to help her brother, Michael Jackson, in 2007 when he was living in a rented Las Vegas mansion. She had visited him there and was shocked at his appearance and the "creepy" look of the house inside. But, reportedly, Michael Jackson refused to allow entrance to her sister and brothers when they attempted to visit him to do the intervention. (Watch Video)

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women? JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to...

What excites me most about Royal Skousen's Analysis of Textual Variants, Part One: 1 Nephi 1 — 2 Nephi 10 (hereafter Analysis) is what it says about Latter-day Saints' commitment to the scriptures in general and to the Book of Mormon specifically. This volume, like others in the series published to date, bespeaks our desire to know, as accurately as possible, what the text actually says. We understand that even those with the best intentions sometimes introduce mistakes into the most sacred and important texts. Skousen demonstrates that he and others value the Book of Mormon so much that meticulous...