Free Republic

Eighty years ago today, in the early morning at a place called Trinity in the desert outside Alamagordo in the New Mexico desert, a new star arose from the landscape. It was not a natural phenomenon. This unprecedented display of light and heat, brighter than two suns as one observer said, was a thing engineered by the minds of men. It was seen for hundreds of miles in every direction. "I am become death, destroyer of worlds," project lead Robert Oppenheimer uttered when he beheld the culmination of years of research. Physicist Kenneth Bainbridge perhaps summed it up better: "Now...

A girl dubbed “Little Miss Nobody” has been identified some 62 years after her burned body was discovered buried in a remote Arizona desert, authorities said. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office will identify the girl Tuesday during a press conference at a community college in Prescott. “The unidentified little girl who won the hearts of Yavapai County in 1960 and who occupied the minds and time of YCSO and partner for 62 years will now rightfully be given her name back and will no longer need to be referred to as Little Miss Nobody,” sheriff officials said in a statement....

EL PASO - A Defense Department plan to pull 450 National Guard troops away from inspection duties along the border is sparking an outcry among critics who fear it will lower the nation's defenses against terrorism.Some of the Guard troops have been on the job for more than 10 years and were trained to identify suspicious vehicles with hidden compartments that could conceal weapons. Under a plan approved in February by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the new customs agency will hire inspectors and train them to replace the Guard troops. "This proposal would pull out the National Guard...