Free Republic

A University of Waikato archaeological scientist is helping rewrite the history of ancient human movement across the Pacific. Dr Fiona Petchey, working with archaeologists, has been using radiocarbon dating - technology that is now much more precise than when dating was first done 40 odd years ago. She has most recently worked with a researcher from Berkeley to date the ancient site of To'aga, on Ofu Island in American Samoa. The research showed the site had been settled nearly 500 years earlier, 2800 years ago, than had previously been thought. Dr Petchey told Don Wiseman there has been a lot...

 Tens of millions of dollars owed to California's schools were never paid, according to a new audit of the state lottery commission.“The lottery has not provided required funding to education,” according to the audit released Tuesday. Part of the mandate in the creation of the California State Lottery was that money raised from lottery funds was supposed to go to the state's schools. According to the state auditor's report, the lottery is supposed to increase its funding in proportion to any increase in net revenue, meaning that the more money the lottery makes, the more it’s supposed to pay out to the...

Greta Thunberg’s mother, Malena Ernman is promoting her family’s new book, “Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis.” She is using her daughter’s story as a tool for publicity. If the phrase “our house is on fire” is familiar it is because Greta frequently uses it when speaking in public about climate change. The parents of Greta work in the entertainment industry so they crave the stage. Ernman is a well-known opera singer in Europe and Svante Thunberg, Greta’s father, is an actor. Both parents have essentially all but given up their own...

Tony Romo made about $127 million as an NFL quarterback. He's on his way to making more than that as an NFL broadcaster. CBS and Romo have agreed to a multi-year contract worth approximately $17 million per season, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported, via sources informed of the deal. The New York Post first reported the news. With Romo's rookie deal set to expire, CBS avoided a potential bidding war with the most coveted football broadcaster by making him the highest-paid ever. In fact, his new contract is worth about twice as much as the reported high of $8...

I've been wondering why, if a man in King Co., Washington State in his 50s has died of the Coronavirus, apparently the first case in the U.S., that we haven't been told the RACE or ETHNIC BACKGROUND of said individual. I mean, is he of Chinese extract, or from the Orient? Did he have any dealings with people from the Orient in recent weeks or months that would explain him having been exposed? Two people in a nursing home in Kirkland, WA have also tested positive. Neither has done any traveling in recent months. But obviously, there's a common denominator...

"Pray at all times in the Spirit" (Eph. 6:18). Spiritual victory is directly related to the quality of your prayer life. Prayer is communication with God, and like all communication, it can be developed to maximum efficiency or allowed to languish. Which you choose will determine the quality of your spiritual life. Ironically, the freedom of worship we enjoy in our society and our high standard of living make it easy to become complacent about prayer and presume on God's grace. Consequently, many who say they trust in God actually live as if they don't need Him at all. Such...

As I watched my neighbor put her dog’s poop in a single-use plastic baggy, I thought about split pants in China. When my wife and I got off the plane, 18 years ago, to adopt our first daughter, we were taken aback by the split pants. Split pants are (or at least were, back then) pants the children wear that are open in the crotch area. That allows them to urinate or defecate unobstructed, onto the street or wherever they may be. The theory is that eventually they will learn to “aim it at the toilet” or something to that...

(warning upset West Hollywood, California home owner that is not happy about street bums living on his property uses a little profanity) Look at the homeless epidemic in Los Angeles due to failed liberal policies, high taxes, and high crime. Police are now demanding citizens allow homeless people to camp on their private property, threatening this man with arrest if he moves them. https://twitter.com/MichaelCoudrey/status/1233928266764828672 

As we were saying... China officials knew of coronavirus in December, ordered cover-up, report says Shame on the halfwit faux-conservative suck-ups who over the last third of a century mortgaged the global supply chain (including basic medicines) to a totalitarian dictatorship. And nuts to the technocrat Napoleon and Politburo shill Bloomberg who presumes to save America from a future he helped arrange. In other developments: Coronavirus: 2 dozen first responders quarantined in Washington state In China over three thousand health workers have been infected by COVID-19, and have thus helped spread the virus and infect many others, including those already...

They are two of the most beloved artists of all time: Edgar Degas, celebrated for his extraordinary draftsmanship and tender, dynamic paintings of ballerinas; and Vincent van Gogh, adored not just for his tragic life story, but for his shimmering canvases, those world-famous images of starry nights and bright sunflowers. Now, a museum dedicated to Van Gogh's oeuvre is asking whether it is "appropriate," in anno 2020, to exhibit a drawing by Degas. To be sure, it's not just any drawing. The sketch in question depicts a bathing woman from behind, her derriere revealed in all its flesh and glory....

Scientists convened on an unfinished underground power plant in Elma, Washington to test a group of autonomous military robots in a simulated disaster scenario. The winning team came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a 60 person crew that oversaw a group of 12 robots they'd programmed through an initiative called Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots (CoSTAR). CoSTAR’s robots autonomously explored the underground plant, which had been designed to simulate an urban disaster environment with a carbon dioxide leak and warm air vent. The robot group included Spot, the famous four-legged product of Boston Dynamics that was loosely modeled after a dog,...

Lisa Page doesn’t like Trump bringing up her unprofessional and inappropriate texts with Peter Strzok.. . . More than three years later, long after his election victory, Donald Trump is still obsessed with two officials who did their jobs while personally not liking him. They are still the stars of Trump rallies, where the president performs their exchanges, grotesquely.— Lisa Page (@NatSecLisa)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) responded Sunday to remarks by Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon, who went after Sanders for calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “reactionary racist.” Asked by CBS’ Margaret Brennan whether he believed there was a political cost for his criticism of the Israeli government and his refusal to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, Sanders responded “Yeah, I do,” and that the Israel lobby has “a lot of money, a lot of power.” “I’m Jewish, I’m very proud of my Jewish heritage,” Sanders added, noting his own experience living on a...

t’s finally happening! Nearly three years after the student revolt which became national news, Evergreen State College president George Bridges has announced his intention to return to teaching and hand the office of president to his successor. But true to form, Evergreen’s announcement of the decision said nothing about the reasons he is leaving. In fact, the Board of Trustees had nothing but praise for Bridges: Bridges, who came to Evergreen after serving as president of Whitman College in Eastern Washington, recently informed the board of his decision to retire as president and return to teaching, according to the news...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders will be in San Jose on Sunday for a rally ahead of Super Tuesday. ... The rally starts at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon at the San Jose Convention Center.

Vice President Pence says more than 15,000 coronavirus test kits were released over the weekend and more will be sent out. "This weekend, more than 15,000 testing kits have been released. Also the FDA has approved a testing regiment that state and local officials can be using. We're addressing it, we're leaning into it."

President Carmen Twillie Ambar’s Feb. 18 announcement that the College is formally considering outsourcing 108 dining and custodial jobs currently held by United Automobile Worker union members incited a campus-wide conversation and student-led protests and demonstrations. As activism in support of UAW continues, the College is in the midst of considering how best to approach its relationship with student activists. One approach taken by the Division of Student Life is to assemble a Rapid Response Team, meant to engage with student activism on campus in a constructive way. The team intends to inform students about different demonstration policies — such...

President Carmen Twillie Ambar, Oberlin College’s first Black president and just the second female president, shared with us all an impressively argued, 900-word announcement titled “Dining and Custodial Negotiations,” which reported that the College has proposed to, very shortly, cut every single one of its custodians and dining hall workers without warning, unceremoniously — a Trump-like “Get out of here, you’re all fired!” President Ambar’s defense of her actions is quite solidly based upon One Oberlin, which is the name of the final report produced by the Academic and Administrative Program Review. The president offers an unassailable argument for the...

In a torturous, twisted interpretation of federal immigration law, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary court order Friday to block the Trump administration from continuing to implement its Migrant Protection Protocols, known informally as the Remain-in-Mexico policy. But shortly after issuing the ruling, the three-judge panel voted 2-1 to put a hold on it, preventing it from going into force until the federal government can file written arguments by the end of Monday in favor of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and plaintiffs can respond by the end of Tuesday arguing in favor of...

Democrats in the US Senate were able to exploit the cloture rule to prevent the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” from coming to a vote. The bill introduced by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb) would have required a health care practitioner to render medical assistance to a baby that survives an attempted abortion. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the legislation “fake, dishonest, and extreme legislation. It would interfere with the final execution of a woman’s decision to terminate an unwanted child. Just because a doctor flubs the abortion procedure doesn’t mean the mother’s right to abort this child is...