Free Republic

It can store the information from a million CDs in a space no bigger than your little finger, and could keep it safe for centuries. Is this some new electronic gadget? Nope. It's DNA. The genetic material has long held all the information needed to make plants and animals, and now some scientists are saying it could help handle the growing storage needs of today's information society. Researchers reported Wednesday that they had stored all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. That all...

Rochester, N.Y. — Early Tuesday morning, Christopher Boise heard a noise coming from the basement. As he walked toward the source of that noise, the RIT student noticed two men standing in the downstairs portion of his apartment. "They were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs," said Boise. One of them had a handgun trained on Boise. Within moments, Boise screamed. His cries were heard by his roommate, Raymond Zheng. "It wasn't like a, 'I stepped by stepped on a piece of glass' kind of scream," explained Zheng. "So, I instinctively went to my gun bag." Zheng...

Julie Orr has plenty of reasons to bounce a check. In just a few years, she's gone from running a successful advertising business to being a single mom on disability. Hers is a dilemma of American life: A leg injury keeps her from working, but she can't afford the surgery without health insurance. Yet Orr says her woes didn't lead her to write a bum check at the grocery store. "Sure, we've fallen on tough times," says the 54-year-old from Riverside. "But I've never bounced a check before in my life. I've always been on top of my finances." Accidentally...

The Lupe Fiasco debacle only highlighted a deeper fissure. Lupe Fiasco at Sunday's concert. (NowThisNews) At a pre-inaugural party three nights ago, rapper Lupe Fiasco lived up to his reputation for stirring controversy when he played an extended, 30-minute version of his anti-Obama track “Words I Never Said.” For this, he was thrown off the stage by security guards. It’s unclear whether Fiasco was booted for repeating the song’s lyrics ad nauseam or for what StartUp RockOn, the concert’s organizer, described in an official statement as a “bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance.” The debacle raises legitimate questions about the wisdom of...

TOKYO, January 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The recently-elected government of Japan has made itself heard on the life issues. Finance minister Taro Aso, said on Monday that elderly and financially dependent Japanese have a duty to die quickly to take pressure off the government-funded social service system. “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die,” Aso said. He described elderly people in need of care as “tube people” and complained that it costs “several tens of millions of yen” a month to care for a patient in the final stages of life. Aso, who...

(CNSNews.com) - Delegate Eni Faleomavaega Jr. (D-American Samoa) used his time during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya to essentially give his endorsement for Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, saying, "I salute you and I look ahead to 2016, wishing you much success and extending to you my highest regards." “It is no good for any of us to use this tragedy for political gain,” Faleomavaega said at Wednesday’s hearing.

Get ready for scan-and-frisk. The NYPD will soon deploy new technology allowing police to detect guns carried by criminals without using the typical pat-down procedure, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday. The department just received a machine that reads terahertz — the natural energy emitted by people and inanimate objects — and allows police to view concealed weapons from a distance. “If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object,” Kelly said. A video image aired at a Police Foundation breakfast Wednesday showed an officer, clad in a New York...

Rob Kaufhold's gut told him it would get "ugly" when the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show banned the presence of assault rifles and high-capacity magazine rounds. The explosiveness of the gun control issue, and the power of social media, he believed, would assure that. His instincts were looking good Wednesday, as a growing list of vendors and celebrities announced they would boycott North America's largest outdoor show, which is set to begin Feb. 2 at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg. The owner of Lancaster Archery Supply said he quickly concluded outdoor enthusiasts would hold it against his business if...

There's no rational reason to care whether Beyonce was lip-syncing or really singing when she performed at the presidential inaugural Monday. But the disclosure was troubling nonetheless. It's not that we were all cheated, exactly. No one paid to stand outside in the cold to watch the ceremonies (though presumably the well-connected and the sponsors had no trouble getting bleacher seats). It's that Beyonce looked overwhelmed with emotion as she belted out the national anthem, giving the impression that her performance reflected her excitement about Obama being re-elected, or better yet, just pride in American democracy. The fact that she...

With the revised deadline for preventing automatic spending cuts only six weeks away, the Defense Department continues its pleas to Congress to come up with a new budget deal because national security readiness “is at a tipping point.” On Tuesday, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said reluctant preparations for sequestration are a drag on the department. “We’re investing a great number of manhours, resources and intensive planning for sequestration, which we, of course, hope to avoid,” he said. “When you have [forward deployed] service members who are asking about appropriations, that’s a signal to me that [it’s] weighing on their...

For nearly two centuries, musket balls, canister shot and other artifacts from intense fighting at Caulk's Field waited to tell the story of a sweltering August night in 1814, when militiamen sprang a trap on a British raiding party bent on destruction. How did the citizen-soldiers best their battle-tested foes? State archaeologist Julie Schablitsky hopes to figure that out. With the help of cadaver-sniffing dogs and history buffs armed with metal detectors, she is retracing the footsteps of Sir Peter Parker, a British marine captain who led 170 troops, and a like number of militiamen commanded by Col. Philip Reed....

When Collin County Sheriff Terry Box posted his thoughts on the national gun control debate Sunday on Facebook, he did so in response to emails and phone calls he had received from county residents asking for his position on gun control. He knew his post would generate discussion, but he didn't foresee the statement spreading like wildfire across the Internet, Box said Tuesday. While his words have been twisted to say that he will not enforce any new gun laws, Box said this is not the case, adding his comments had nothing to do with the 23 recommendations made by...

Nielsen says that 20.6 million people across 18 networks watched President Obama be sworn in for his second term Monday. As we noted yesterday, NBC led the way among broadcasters, with CNN topping cable news. The 20.6 million figure was down from 37.8 million viewers in 2009, a drop of 46%. That said, it was an improvement over George W. Bush‘s second inauguration in 2005, which saw a similar percentage drop from his first. In a post explaining the numbers, Nielsen throws in this factoid: Viewership has historically slid for second term inaugurations. Pres. Richard Nixon is the only president...

".....has emerged among the worst mass killings involving firearms in recent US history: Ft Hood: Registered Democrat/Muslim. Columbine: Too young to vote; both families were registered Democrats and progressive liberals. Virginia Tech: Wrote hate mail to President Bush and to his staff. Colorado Theater: Registered Democrat; staff worker on the Obama campaign; Occupy Wall Street participant; progressive liberal. Connecticut School Shooter: Registered Democrat; hated Christians. Banning guns won’t help. Maybe we should try banning moonbats.

FAIRFIELD — Connecticut Against Gun Violence has proposed a tough legislative agenda that would expand the definition of an assault weapon and ban them from the state, including all such existing firearms. CAGV also in its proposal would not grandfather in all large capacity magazines of more than seven rounds that, along with the assault weapons, would have to be destroyed, turned over to police or taken out of Connecticut. New York just adopted a law that reduces the largest capacity magazine from 10 bullets to seven bullets. Connecticut Against Gun Violence is a nonprofit formed in 1993 to advocate...

During a panel discussion on Wednesday's NBC Today, attorney Star Jones and the network's chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman hyperventilated over Britain's Prince Harry revealing in interviews that he killed Taliban fighters during combat in Afghanistan. Jones fretted: "Why do you need to antagonize the Taliban?" Snyderman chimed in: "I thought he jumped the shark when he was shown playing video games and then it was, 'Oh my God, we killed people.'" Co-host Matt Lauer sparked the exchange by wondering: "He talks about his missions, the missions he went on where he was fired upon by the Taliban and returned...

Speaker John Boehner said he believes the primary goal of President Obama’s second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party.” “Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans,” Boehner said in a speech Tuesday to The Ripon Society. “So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. “And let me just tell you, I do believe that is...

Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran lashed out at Rand Paul on Twitter, deriding the senator for daring to bluntly question Hillary Clinton over her role in the Benghazi scandal. Moran mocked, "Curious: What is Rand Paul's foreign policy background? Did he serve in the military? Did he study, live, do business or charity overseas?"

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A woman was arrested Tuesday after allegedly participating in a fight her daughter arranged with another child. Two students from Dana Middle School prearranged a fight and met in an alley in the 1300 block of West Gaffey Street on Jan. 14 at 3 p.m. “The juvenile suspect brought along her mother and aunt, and during the fight, they both took part in the conflict and assaulted a 12-year-old victim,” Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. Amber Lee Gutierrez, 33, voluntarily went to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Station for an interview Tuesday...

Taro Aso TOKYO, January 23, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The recently-elected government of Japan has made itself heard on the life issues. Finance minister Taro Aso, said on Monday that elderly and financially dependent Japanese have a duty to die quickly to take pressure off the government-funded social service system. “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die,” Aso said. He described elderly people in need of care as “tube people” and complained that it costs “several tens of millions of yen” a month to care for a patient in the final stages of life....