Free Republic

Today’s Cryptogram XUPHP WL QVHP LXYOWBWXM XUKE UMBHVSPE WE XUP YEWTPHLP, KEB WX UKL K ZVESPH LUPZC ZWCP. --- CHKER NKOOK You can find this little fun word game, to combat early dementia and senility in us baby boomers, in several daily publications. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram). Beware, the game is very addictive. If this is your first time, don't be intimidated. PLEASE DO NOT post the answer in general comments, but DO post your time and any tips you might give...

Homeland Security reached a five-year high in approvals of citizenship applications last year, and swore in more people as naturalized citizens as well, according to the new statistical report released Friday night. Those numbers contradict the criticisms of congressional Democrats who had complained about backlogs building at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security branch that handles legal immigration. The new report also suggests that far from a crackdown, the government is processing more asylum-seeker petitions than any of the last four years. That included a 61 percent increase from 2017 to 2018 in affirmative asylum applications — though...

CNN is reportedly set to impose a “net 90” payment term on freelance employees beginning in June, meaning the company’s freelancers will be paid just once every three months. “In a blow to their financial stability, CNN sent a letter to several of the network’s freelancers this week, extending their payment terms to net 90 (payment 90 days after invoice). The move has met with significant blowback. “Net 90 is NOT a reasonable payment term for people who must pay rent every 30 days,” Freelancers Union Executive Director Caitlin Pierce wrote on Thursday. “CNN is effectively asking freelancers to finance...

Republicans have been successfully leveraging the Supreme Court balance of power as a major campaign issue to ignite their base since the 1980s. For Democrats, the 2020 election may mark the first in modern times that they unite around the high court as a driving force in a presidential election. Democratic candidates are increasingly advocating "court packing," that is, upping the number of Supreme Court justices to balance the bench -- or ensure a liberal majority. The idea is unlikely to succeed for historical and practical reasons but its resonance on the campaign trail reflects Democrats' new emphasis on the...

Some Reservations about the Newport Tower C-14 Dates</h1><p> </p><h2>J. Huston McCulloch</h2><p> August, 2001 </p><p> This paper was published in the <i> Midwestern Epigraphic Journal</i>, Vol. 15, 2001, pp. 79-92.</p><p> </p></center> In a widely cited 1997 paper, Johannes Hertz raises a number of arguments against a pre-Colonial origin for the famous <a href="http://www.redwood1747.org/tower/millmenu.htm">Newport, Rhode Island Stone Tower</a>. Hertz insists that it was modeled after the 17th century Chesterton Mill in Warwickshire, England, and points out that a 1948-9 survey by Hugh Hencken and William S. Godfrey found indisputably colonial artifacts at the bottom of a trench that surrounds the foundations. He...

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Acting Secretary, Kevin McAleenan, hosted CNN’s Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper for a private, off-the-record meeting last month. ... “What was discussed behind closed doors, we’ll likely never know, but if I’m a member of the administration battling each day to counter the wall-to-wall disinformation campaign of Tapper and the opposition party, this meeting is sacrilege,” the source told Breitbart News.

Now, a story in the Sunday Telegraph is just the latest to pose serious questions. The newspaper reports that China has been "rigging" 5G equipment testing to discredit Huawei's rivals, including Nokia and Ericsson. According to government and industry sources, "Beijing is feeding secret details of security vulnerabilities" to the testers to tip the balance in Huawei's favor. The testing encompasses "hacking techniques used to check for weak spots... vulnerabilities discovered by China’s secret state hackers have been passed to the 5G testers to ensure Nokia and Ericsson’s equipment is found to be insecure." Huawei's security issues have always been...

President Trump Question: “Are the Drug Lords, Cartels & Coyotes really running Mexico?”…Posted on June 1, 2019 by sundance Oh, he’s done it again… President Trump spotlights the truth that everyone prefers to  avoid discussing: “Are the Drug Lords, Cartels & Coyotes really running Mexico?”Everyone knows the truthful answer to that question is a resounding YES, Mexico is a narco-state controlled by drug cartels and political system of bribes and payoffs therein.The most recent evidence was in testimony within the El Chapo Guzman trial, where witnesses testified to paying-off government officials, including the former President of Mexico: Reuters – Accused...

A Phoenician Fortress in Oklahoma? The following pages of this website are the photographic documentation of various unusual phenomena my wife, Sue, and I have found in southern Oklahoma and north Texas. What you see is what we saw and with the exception of some graphic arrows in one of the photos, no manipulation of the visual facts has been done. The original seven pages of photos began back on September 10, 2000. My wife publishes a community newspaper called TGIF, the weekend bandit. Most simply refer to it as the Bandit. It is distributed in six counties in Oklahoma...

<p>The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Saturday slammed the US decision to transfer its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise the disputed city as Israel's capital.</p> <p>The Saudi-hosted summit condemned the "transfer of embassies of the United States and Guatemala to Jerusalem" and urged all members to "boycott" countries that have opened diplomatic missions in the city, a statement said.</p>

Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe salutes attendees ahead of the fourth plenary session of the 18th International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Shangri-la Dialogue, an annual defense and security forum in Asia, in Singapore, on Sunday, June 2, 2019.   | Photo Credit: AP Interference on Taiwan “doomed to failure”; Wei says war with U.S. would be a disaster China will fight anyone who tries to interfere in its “reunification” with Taiwan, Defence Minister Wei Fenghe said on Sunday in a combative speech peppered with threats against the United States over its military presence in Asia.Speaking at the...

Of all the chambers in the Great Pyramid, the subterranean chamber is the largest, as well as the most mysterious. It is 46 feet long, 27 feet wide, hewn into the limestone bedrock, and difficult to describe. The descending passagewayÂ’s entrance to the subterranean chamber is near the floor at the northeast corner. A six-foot-wide square pit shaped like a funnel has been tunnelled in the middle of the floor, near the east wall. This square-shaped pit is actually the mouth of a shaft that is eleven feet deep, although in 1816 the Italian explorer Count Caviglia drilled into the...

DEKALB COUNTY, (Decatur) GA. - Police say they are searching for a group of dozens of people who vandalized the administrative building in DeKalb County. The vandalism happened at the Maloof Administrative Building around 9:30 p.m. Friday in Decatur.

Twitter has suspended a large number of Chinese-language user accounts, including those belonging to critics of China’s government. It seems like a particularly ill-timed move, occurring just days before thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. “A large number of Chinese @Twitter accounts are being suspended today,” wrote Yaxue Cao, founder and editor of the U.S.-based publication China Change. “They ‘happen’ to be accounts critical of China, both inside and outside China.” (Please see link for full article)

More than a decade has passed since we joined forces to try and find out if there was any reality to a claim that highly accurate units of length had been in used during the British Neolithic. We found that these supposedly primitive people were using a highly developed science that connected them to the rhythms of the Earth.But our biggest personal challenge has been to face up to the consequences of our own findings because they have brought us to the point where we have found compelling evidence that our planet and its environment has been carefully designed for...

Maryland's highest court will soon decide whether a 16-year-old girl, "S.K.," can face child pornography charges for taking a video of herself performing a sex act and sending it to a few of her close friends.S.K. shared the video, in which she performs consensual oral sex on an unidentified male, with two close friends and fellow students, who later reported her to the school resource officer. S.K. was the only person charged in connection with the alleged crime.The Special Court of Appeals upheld S.K.'s conviction, ruling that the consensual nature of the sex act in question was irrelevant, as was...

A recent dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch highlights some of the dangers of the enormous scope of modern criminal law. In a recent dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch warns of the dangers of the modern expansion of criminal law to the point where "almost anyone can be arrested for anything": History shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If...

...High-tech companies have long promoted the idea that they are egalitarian, idyllic workplaces. And Google, perhaps more than any other, has represented that image, with a reputation for enviable salaries and benefits and lavish perks. But the company’s increasing reliance on temps and contractors has some Google employees wondering if management is undermining its carefully crafted culture. As of March, Google worked with roughly 121,000 temps and contractors around the world, compared with 102,000 full-time employees, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times. Though they often work side by side with full-timers, Google temps are usually...

At the back of an altar in Westminster Abbey is a looted tablet deemed so holy by Ethiopian Christians that only priests from the country’s Orthodox church are able to look at it. But the abbey has been accused of gross cultural insensitivity for apparently failing to respond when leaders of the church asked to be able to pray beside the artefact. “I was very shocked and surprised,” said Samuel Berhanu, a deacon in the Ethiopian church in London, who contacted Westminster Abbey last year asking for permission for Ethiopian Orthodox church leaders “to organise a viewing and prayer session”....

A short homage to Westerns. Country legend Billy Ray Cyrus makes his comeback...with a 19 year old rapper.