Free Republic

HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-size portions of hours and minutes. They call...

The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Monday to Rob Porter, a former White House aide whose close proximity to President Donald Trump is potentially of significant value to Democratic lawmakers amid growing calls for a formal impeachment inquiry. Porter, who served as White House staff secretary for just over a year, is one of the administration officials cited most often in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in the Russia investigation. He spent about 20 hours being interviewed by Mueller’s team, and the final report documents his role in episodes detailed as part of the obstruction of justice investigation....

Pope Francis' climate proposals would hurt the poor be keeping them in poverty. The Mills Brothers, among dozens of others, sang “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Somebody should tell Pope Francis this doesn’t have to be true if the world follows a sensible energy policy. On June 14, Francis met with the CEOs of British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell at the Vatican to promote schemes to mitigate what he says are the catastrophic effects of manmade global warming. Speaking to the oil executives, the Pope said “today’s ecological crisis, especially climate change, threatens...

“Twitter is a sewer. It brings out the worst in humanity,” Stephens posted. “I sincerely apologize for any part I’ve played in making it worse, and to anyone I’ve ever hurt. Thanks to all of my followers, but I’m deactivating this account.” Stephen’s announcement comes after he flew off the handle on Dave Karpf, a media and public affairs professor for George Washington University who called him a “bedbug.” This appeared to be an off-hand joke about the news that the Times recently had a bedbug outbreak in their newsrooms.

E / MAGAZINE / 1980 / VOLUME 32, ISSUE 1 / CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE Culpable Negligence A SUBMARINE COMMANDER TELLS WHY WE ALMOST LOST THE PACIFIC WAR Edward L. Beach December 1980 Volume 32 Issue 1 My surreptitiously retained file of war-patrol reports of Trigger , Tirante , and Piper (submarine numbers 237, 420, and 409) still makes fascinating reading, to me at least. Trigger (SS 237), completed at Mare Island, California, early in 1942, started her career slowly, but as we learned our dreadful business her improvement was steady. Before she died, a tired old submarine at age three years,...

Capt. James Lawrence "Don't Give Up the Ship!" & Captain Oliver Hazard Perry "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" Among the many U.S. Navy and Marine heroes confronting Tripoli's Muslim Barbary pirates was Captain James Lawrence. In 1804, Captain Lawrence was second-in-command, under Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, of an expedition to destroy the captured 36-gun frigate USS Philadelphia held in Tripoli's harbor. It had run aground on an uncharted sandbar. Muslim pirates captured it and were preparing to use it for piracy. James Lawrence also commanded the USS Enterprise which fought battles with the Tripolitan Corsairs along the...

More great white sharks than ever are being spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia—including a 10-foot female who pinged in Halifax's harbour last month. Sharks aren't new visitors to these waters—about 20 different kinds of sharks have been regularly inhabiting the area for hundreds of years. But, just as grizzly bears aren't native to Nova Scotia's forests, great whites were never a run-of-the-mill sighting here.(snip) For the past few years, Warren Joyce, a fisheries technician with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has been working with colleagues in Cape Cod, studying and tagging sharks in efforts to learn about their patterns...

[Catholic Caucus] John Paul II Institute. The Hit, the Boss, the Button A name change, rewritten statutes, professors replaced, a revised order of studies. With Pope Francis an authentic earthquake has struck the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family - this being the original designation - founded by pope Karol Wojtyla in the early years of his pontificate and initially entrusted to the leadership of Carlo Caffarra, a theologian of great expertise on the subject and a future cardinal.In the previous post, Settimo Cielo highlighted the justified revolt of numerous students and of many tenured...

"Inevitable victory of freedom over oppression, of Christian religion over the forces of evil" - Franklin D. Roosevelt. Courageous people of faith have always faced challenges. This was acknowledged by President Franklin Roosevelt regarding settlers along the Mississippi. Between 1699 and 1760, in the Louisiana Territory, the French founded 5 major settlements on the east side of the Mississippi River (in present-day Illinois): Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Fort de Chartres, Saint Philippe, Prairie du Rocher; and one settlement on the west side, Ste. Genevieve (in present-day Missouri.) On August 22, 1935, President Roosevelt greeted by telephone the Bi-Centennial Celebration of Sainte Genevieve,...

When the White House decided to levy tariffs on goods from China, U.S. leaders were divided on whether a prolonged trade dispute was a wise course of action. Now, so is Beijing. China's leadership is being confronted by government factions offering contradictory approaches to resolving the ongoing trade war with the U.S. Some argue for cutting a deal as quickly as possible to save China's economy; a vocal and growing group of hawks argues China should push back against the United States and avoid an agreement at all costs. As U.S. and Chinese negotiators head into their 13th round of...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) refused to budge on her controversial support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation last year, and now the consequences of that decision may be coming home to roost. In an interview with Politico published Monday, the senator acknowledged that her 2020 reelection bid will inevitably be affected by her decision to vote for Kavanaugh after Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school, but Collins stood behind that choice. “Have I lost some votes because of my decision to support Justice Kavanaugh? Yes, I have. And I’m sad...

The Grunion mystery, solved at last Matt Grills | The American Legion MAR 19, 2010 Nearly three years after USS Grunion (SS 216) was found off the Aleutian Islands, Bruce Abele continues to puzzle over what sank his fatherÂ’s submarine in the early days of World War II. In 2006, Abele and his two younger brothers, John and Brad, made headlines when an ocean-surveying firm they hired to scan the floor of the Bering Sea sent them an image of an oblong object with features resembling a conning tower and periscope mast. The next summer, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV)...

In the United States, the white share of the population is declining as Hispanic, Asian and black populations grow. But the shift to a more diverse nation is happening more quickly in some places than in others. From 2000 to 2018, 109 counties in 22 states, from California to Kansas to North Carolina, went from majority white to majority nonwhite – that is, counties where non-Hispanic whites are no longer the majority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. (Our analysis includes only counties with a minimum population of 10,000 in 2018. These counties represent 77%...

US Submarine That Vanished on 1st Mission in WWII Is Found Off Alaskan Islands By Laura Geggel 22 days ago History Nearly 80 years ago, the USS Grunion submarine sank on its inaugural mission during World War II, taking the lives of 70 sailors with it as it plunged to the bottom of the Pacific. Now, after years of searching, a team looking for WWII-era submarines has found the Grunion's bow about 2,700 feet (820 meters) under the water's surface, off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Upon finding the long-lost bow, the team used autonomous underwater vehicles...

A Washington, DC, mom says her political-consultant husband left her for Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to a bombshell divorce filing obtained by The Post. Dr. Beth Jordan Mynett says her cheating spouse, Tim Mynett, told her in April that he was having an affair with the Somali-born US representative... The 37-year-old congresswoman and mom of three paid Tim Mynett and his E. Street Group approximately $230,000 through her campaign since 2018 for fundraising consulting, digital communications, internet advertising and travel expenses.

Armed smugglers allegedly associated with the Gulf Cartel were responsible for the onslaught of automatic fire that endangered the lives a Border Patrol Marine Unit in early August, as it policed the banks for drug smugglers and human traffickers along the Rio Grande Valley River, in Texas. Department of Homeland Security investigators recently uncovered that it was to prevent the Border Patrol boat from trampling or breaking an underwater pulley line devised by the cartel to transport large quantities of cocaine into the United States, according to a For Official Use Only law enforcement sensitive document obtained by SaraACarter.com... The...

"While DHS was at the hospital and speaking with one of the children, the child disclosed that she was allegedly being fed dog feces," said Delaware County Undersheriff Tracy Shaw. "This is definitely an extreme case of child neglect, one of the worst that I’ve seen." According to court documents, Moore was in denial about the extent of the neglect. At the time, she claimed she didn't want them hospitalized because she had a meeting with the department of human services the next day. Shaw said that while DHS had received "many complaints" about Moore in the past, this was...

oe Walsh, the former congressman who's challenging President Trump in the Republican Party's presidential primary, said in a Monday night CNN interview that he lost his popular radio show and had just received notice before arriving to the studio for the sit-down. Walsh told CNN's John Berman that he expected the move because nearly "80 to 90%" of his audience supports the president. "I am running for president. I oppose this president. Most of my listeners support the president," said Walsh. "It's not an easy thing to do to be in conservative talk radio and oppose this president." The conservative...

All three networks couldn’t stop gushing over pop star Taylor Swift’s liberal awakening on full display at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards. While accepting an award, the singer called on the White House to respond to a Change.org petition to pass the “equality act” a federal level law banning “discrimination” against transgender and gay people. ABC, NBC and CBS gave Swift the royalty treatment, praising her “powerful” and “intelligent” “transformation” embracing the left. On Good Morning America, correspondent T.J. Holmes was enthusiastic at how quickly the awards show turned political: “The VMAs started at 8:00 eastern live last night....

After his mysterious demise, celebrity predator-pervert Jeffrey Epstein still manages to dominate the news. That calls for a look back at another man who also liked ‘em young, but who has become a civil-rights hero with glowing memorials on every hand. As NBC News reports, the Harvey Milk Terminal at the San Francisco International Airport is “the first in the country to be named for an LGBTQ leader.” The recently opened $2.4 billion terminal contains an exhibition titled “Harvey Milk: Messenger of Hope,” which honors “the first openly gay individual elected to public office in California.” In 2016 Ray...