Free Republic

Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments, a scientist claims today. Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a ‘water world’ if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels. They also considered what would happen in a second ice age which could be triggered by an asteroid strike, and if humans colonised other planets. Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a ‘water world’ if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels. They also considered...

SAN FRANCISCO (Tribune News Service) — A federal law that prohibited people from wearing military medals they didn’t earn is unconstitutional for the same reason as a law that made it a crime to lie about earning a medal, a federal appeals court ruled Monday: It’s a falsehood that is protected by freedom of speech. In an 8-3 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the now-repealed law against wearing unearned military decorations was a ban on a type of “symbolic speech.” Although the government can forbid falsehoods that cause tangible harm, like fraud or...

Moscow, January 12, Interfax - The new national security strategy of Russia contains an expanded list of national interests, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Vladimir Nazarov told reporters on Tuesday. "The list of national interests of the Russian Federation has been expanded. It has been supplemented with the strengthening of national defense, the provision of national accord and public unity, higher competitiveness of the national economy, and the preservation of culture and traditional moral values of Russian society," Nazarov said. President Vladimir Putin approved the Russian national security strategy on December 31, 2015. The strategy proclaims the same strategic national...

Representatives from DraftKings and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association attended a public hearing in Boston on Tuesday to debate proposed regulations aimed at ending “unfair and deceptive acts and practices that may arise in the gaming process.” While the daily fantasy sports (DFS) companies have previously expressed a willingness to work with legislators and law enforcement officials to create industry-wide regulation, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's regulations might prove seriously damaging to their bottom line, especially if they end up being replicated in other states.

Current and future U.S. military leaders will face immense pressure to lower standards in the services in order to allow more women to serve in combat roles, a top general recently warned. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command and a Marine for 45 years, told reporters on Friday that his "greatest fear" is the easing of the military's stringent training standards as a result of the new policy of integrating women into combat and infantry posts.

Shot a pig with blue fatA man from Morgan Hill, CA posted about how he shot a pig on their ranch and noticed that it had blue fat. They did not start cutting open the pig until they had strapped it to the ATV and driven back home so most of the blood has left the pigs body at this point. They have also shot wild pigs on the ranch before and none of them have been blue. A spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Morgan Hill Times experts have "occasionally" seen cases where wild...

Soooooo muuuuuuuuch. Where does one even begin. I see the emails saying, **What is going on? How can this be happening? Why is Pope Francis doing this?** I’ve already answered these questions, but I understand that sometimes it takes multiple **encounters** with the **tender two-by-four of reality** to have reality fully, permanently set-in. So, I’ll walk you through it again. Bergoglio keeps saying heretical things, recently denying the divinity of Christ (it was always just a matter of time) by saying that Our Lord had to beg forgiveness of Mary and Joseph for His **little escapade** when at age 12...

More Americans are now installing solar panels on building rooftops than mining coal or extracting oil and gas, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-profit solar advocacy group The Solar Foundation. The shift is a profound one that highlights how U.S. clean energy, both solar and wind, have emerged as large and rapidly growing sectors. It also shows how many traditional fossil fuel industries like coal and oil have struggled to expand in recent years. The U.S. solar industry grew dramatically in 2015, and is expected to continue to do so this year. The industry now employs 209,000...

IBD warned over a year and a half ago that President Obama wasn't about to spend his post-presidency building houses, like Jimmy Carter, but that there were discernible signs that he would seek to become secretary-general of the United Nations. In the West Point speech he gave in May 2014, IBD pointed out that the president denied the reality of the American global decline he has engineered. "Think about it," he told the assembled cadets. "Our military has no peer." It was disturbingly similar to Carter's pathetic 1979 "malaise" speech, in which Carter boasted of "the outward strength of America,...

“In many parts of society today, whether in popular culture, academia, the media or politics, there’s a tendency to falsely equate noise with results,” Haley said. “Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference.“

Two brothers have each been charged with attempted murder in connection to a stabbing over the weekend. Twenty-two-year-old Cornelius Green of Minneapolis and 23-year-old Devon Green, who has no permanent address, were both charged Tuesday. They are expected to make their first court appearances Wednesday. According to the criminal complaint, the stabbing was reported at 2:30 a.m. Saturday near the Choice Gentlemen’s Club on Second Avenue North in downtown Minneapolis.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A leading pro-life congressman said today that there will be at least three empty seats at tonight's State of the Union address. In a press release, Congressman Steve King, R-IA, said that in addition to the gallery seat left empty by President Obama in honor of victims of gun violence, "There will be another empty seat in the gallery during Obama’s last State of the Union address. I have reserved it to commemorate the lives of more than 55 million aborted babies, ‘the chorus of voices that have never been heard in this...

She's jumped onto the #BlackLivesMatter bandwagon and seems to not support law enforcement.

For a guy who spends his time behind the wheel of a car going upwards of 200 miles per hour, you might wonder what else it takes to get NASCAR Driver Ryan Newman’s adrenaline pumping. Apparently it’s operating a massive Cat® mining machine. Newman, who races the No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet in the Sprint Cup Series, remotely operated a D11T Dozer from a trailer at the Phoenix International Raceway on November 13. The 230,000 pound machine (one of the largest in the world) was at the Caterpillar Tinaja Demonstration & Learning Center in Tucson, Arizona. While the concept seems like...

Last night we boarded the Big Yellow Bus…and headed over to the Capital for Big Guy’s last SOTU where, promising brevity, he droned on for an hour - which is brief in Obama-speak.In order to save time he declined to mention Lady M and her symbolic guests this year, including the victims of gun violence who were invited butt unable to attend.Lady M haz a sad for the gun victims, who had no guns with which to shoot backThat empty chair symbolism will continue to have a lasting impact on the legacy of the Obama presidency. Although oddly enough, nobody...

More details emerged Tuesday morning regarding a secret recording of a meeting between ex-diplomat Alon Liel and about five central activists in Breaking the Silence, a group that besmirches the IDF abroad. The meeting took place in the Tel Aviv offices of Breaking the Silence – which receives funding from the New Israel Fund, among other sources – on December 17, 2015, and was recorded by a "secret agent" from nationalist group Ad Kan. According to Yifat Erlich of Yediot Aharonot, who saw the entire recording, Nadav Weiman, Breaking the Silence's coordinator of activists, started the conversation by explaining that...

By Thomas Lambrecht- Since 1972, The United Methodist Church has been wracked by an ever-increasing conflict over doctrinal issues, particularly relating to human sexuality and marriage. Disagreements over the definition of marriage and the practice of homosexuality have not only become more vociferous within the U.S. portion of Methodism, they threaten to tear the church apart. Demonstrators have become bolder in their efforts to disrupt meetings and dictate agendas. Pastors and even bishops have determined to ignore and contradict church teaching by openly performing same-sex weddings and ordaining persons living in a homosexual relationship. Many attempts at dialog, negotiation, and...

The Black Lives Matter [1] movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. Its agitation has provoked police killings and other violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. If allowed to continue, that agitation could devolve into anarchy and civil war. The BLM crowd appears to be spoiling for just such an outcome. Nevertheless, BLM appears to be exercising considerable leverage over the Democratic Party, in part...

When Jesus Francisco Cabrera told police he was stabbed by two white men who told him he didn’t belong in this country, Palo Alto police immediately launched a hate-crime investigation.

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces. “There is no surprise on executing ISIS fighters from Ramadi,” he said. “They did the same to fighters after Tikrit.”