Free Republic

DANA POINT – A 29-year-old man lured a 14-year-old girl with the prospect of drugs, alcohol and a free tattoo to get her to go to his Mission Viejo home, authorities allege. The tattoo artist, who worked at a shop near Fourth and Bush Streets in Santa Ana, is accused of having "highly inappropriate contact and sexual advances" toward the teen and her friend, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.((snip))After the incident was reported, investigators learned Nieves-Vera had been deported after he had been arrested by Murrieta police in 2004 on suspicion of child annoyance....

A pyramid at the Maya city of Kiuic in Yucatan Peninsula started out as a ceremonial platform in 700 B.C., much earlier than previously thought, according to George Bey of Millsaps College. Many scholars think that the Maya collapse was caused by long-term drought and the depletion of natural resources, but Kiuic seems to have been abandoned rapidly around 880 A.D. Bey and Tomas Gallareta Negron of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History have found evidence that the residents left behind their grinding stones and other valuable kitchen tools, along with the remains of ancestors. “These were the Maya...

In a conference call today with a small group of journalists, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that President Obama was “arrogant and presumptuous” in saying in recent weeks that Israel “doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” “That’s an arrogant and presumptuous point of view and doesn’t further progress on anything,” the senator said, and he returned to that view throughout the call as he discussed the location of Israel’s capital and Israeli settlements. Paul decried U.S. politicians who display “this flippant and arrogant” attitude about internal Israeli affairs, saying that “no one can really know as much as...

In an address at Moscow State University, President Ronald Reagan described how information technology was rapidly transforming industrial societies. As if from “a chrysalis,” the world was emerging from a reality constrained by “physical resources into, as one economist titled his book, ‘the economy in mind,’ in which there are no bounds on human imagination and the freedom to create is the most precious natural resource.” That remark may have disappointed Warren Brookes ’50 slightly: he had noted in its preface that The Economy in Mind (1982) was “the work not of an economist but of a journalist.” But in...

An ancient floor which has not seen the light of day for 10,000 years has been uncovered at the Ayia Varvara-Asprokremmos site, the antiquities department said yesterday. The department said new finds during the latest excavations had redefined the understanding of the kind of human occupation that existed at the Neolithic site in the Nicosia district, which has been radio-carbon dated to between c. 8,800-8,600 BC... The presence of buried artefacts (usable, but abandoned) and evidence of erosional episodes indicated the punctuated character of the structure’s occupation, while the nature of the artefacts demonstrated the domestic character of the building,...

Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend is the biggest story on Twitter News January 17, 2013 Fernando Alfonso III more articles | email | Twitter — Deadspin published a blockbuster investigation Wednesday night, exposing the relationship between star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and his girlfriend—who reportedly passed away last year—as a grand hoax. The story has quickly taken over Twitter, which is now inundated with praise for the sports site, jokes at Te'o’s expense, and questions as to the star player’s level of involvement. The investigative piece by Deadspin's Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey reveals how Te'o's relationship with girlfriend Lennay...

A week after French aircraft rushed to the aid of a defeated and demoralised Malian army, French ground forces have begun fighting alongside the Malian army in Diabaly, a town 350 km north of capital Bamako. Since last year, northern Mali has been overrun by Islamist rebels organised under the banners of the Ansar Dine, the Movement for Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Last Friday, France sent in jets, helicopter gunships, and special forces to Central Mali as Islamist rebels advanced till 50 km from a major military base in Sevare, and captured...

THE LIBERAL VIEW OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT

On a shimmering Saturday 46 summers ago, three young women in bathing suits left their belongings on a crowded beach and climbed aboard a small motorboat on Lake Michigan an hour southeast of Chicago. It was noon on July 2, 1966, at Indiana Dunes State Park. A couple whose beach blanket was beside the women’s watched the boat glide away, then waited all day for them to return. They didn’t know the women but thought it was odd that they would leave purses unattended on a day when the park was packed with 9,000 holiday sunbathers. As they left at...

What did Lisa Jackson do? Looks like there is another scandal of the socialist party unfolding but I don't know the details of it. Does anyone know?

Eva Schloss calmly thrust out her forearm as if a routine gesture, revealing a row of tattooed numbers. The 83-year-old Holocaust survivor fields plenty of requests to see them, as she travels the world telling of her time in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. “They ask me questions and ‘Can I give you a hug?” Schloss said this week, sitting in the lobby of a San Francisco hotel, where the London resident is on a California speaking tour. “’I’ve never met a Jew, I’ve never met a Holocaust survivor.’ It’s quite amazing.” If Schloss’ story was simply...

Immigration activist who’s a leader in Dream Act movement joins Arizona congresswoman’s staff PHOENIX — An immigration activist who’s one of the leaders of the Dream Act movement is joining the staff of U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema as a district outreach director.

Surf's up as the Mavericks big wave surfing contest is called for this weekendThe Mavericks Invitational will be held Sunday, according to texts that have been received by contestants and other leaders of the surfing contest. Contest founder Jeff Clark confirmed the news just before 2 p.m. “The waves are going to be insane, the weather is going to be beautiful, and the level of surfing will break new ground,” Clark said. Mavericks will begin at 8 a.m. to coincide with a forecast of large west-northwest swell. The news means 24 of the world's best surfers will be making their...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military has suspended the transfer of detainees to some Afghan prisons out of concern over continuing human rights abuses and torture, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday in response to questions about the subject. In addition, the American-led coalition said that it had asked the Afghan government to investigate allegations of torture by Afghan Local Police units that have been trained and advised by American Special Operations forces. The moves were a setback on detention issues that have created tension between the countries, and on years of international efforts to promote humane treatment...

The Comptroller's job is to pay the bills. And, all people deserve to see the electronic record- the State's checkbook- of exactly where those dollars are spent. Responding to our lawsuit, Illinois Comptroller Spokesman Brad Hahn said, "... there is no 'magical' state checkbook to flip through." The Comptroller's office can practice semantics all they want. However, the facts are: there are accounts; there are checks written out of the those accounts; and, there are records of those transactions. The public has a right to see each of those transactions. It's that simple... After nine months of stonewalling by the...

Sixty percent of high school and college students say they plan on owning guns at a later stage in life, an academic study from American University revealed on Monday. According to a brand new study, sixty percent of young Americans plan on purchasing firearms in the future. According to the study, about 40 percent of the American students surveyed said they definitely planned to own firearms once they had established their own households. Another 20 percent said they were “contemplating” owning guns. Those findings were part of a broader study conducted by American University professor Jennifer L. Lawless and Loyola...

"I was going to write my Congressman but there was a sudden gust of wind and the letter blew away." Make sense? How about: this: "I lost my firearms in a (insert overused unfunny cliche) accident so I no longer exercise my Second Amendment rights." In other words, I'll just pretend to not be armed until some ill-defined time in the future, and then I'll get out my firearms, and do some practice since I won't have had any for years and then... ?? Maybe at that point I'll find my pen and some more paper and ???

From the mid-17th century to the late 20th century, the American economy grew roughly 3.5% a year. That growth rate has since declined significantly. When the final figures are in for 2012, the annual rate of real output growth for the first dozen years of this century is likely to be about 1.81%. What accounts for the slowdown? An important part of the answer is simple: Americans aren't working as much today. And this trend reflects more than the recession and sluggish economy of the past few years. The national income accounts suggest that about 70% of U.S. output is...

The national homicide rate for 2011 was 4.8 per 100,000 citizens — less than half of what it was in the early years of the Great Depression, when it peaked before falling precipitously before World War II. The peak in modern times of 10.2 was in 1980, as recorded by national criminal statistics. “We’re at as low a place as we’ve been in the past 100 years,” says Randolph Roth, professor of history at Ohio State University and author of this year’s “American Homicide,” a landmark study of the history of killing in the United States. “The rate oscillates between...

Here’s a look at the numbers: The U.S. firearms industry's economic impact is $32 billion. To put that in perspective, that’s about the same size as the U.S. organic industry and more than the budget of Nigeria. It’s grown from a $19 billion business in 2008 and appears to be accelerating at a quick clip. Background checks for gun buyers increased nearly 60% from December 2011 to December 2012. The FBI has already recorded 16.5 million background checks from Jan. 1, 2012 to November 2012 – the most on record. There are 51,000 gun shops in America, according to the...