Free Republic

Global Warming: Russian analysts accuse Britain's Meteorological Office of cherry-picking Russian temperature data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Is Copenhagen rooted in a single tree in Siberia? Michael Mann, a Penn State meteorologist, wrote in Friday's Washington Post that "stolen" e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit still don't alter the evidence for climate change. Mann, a creator of the discredited hockey-stick graph used in reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show man-made warming, attacks climate skeptics, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying they "confuse the public." Chutzpah has been...

If nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, then how about Monty Python's surreal humour brought to a London stage, in French, with English surtitles? That is exactly what a French troupe has done in the first and only authorised stage version of the television series that earned Monty Python international cult status. "It is like we have been adopted as knights of Camelot," said producer Remy Renoux, referring to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in which French soldiers taunt King Arthur and his companions with insults like "Your mother was a hamster!" "If Python fans are a little anxious they...

The national bird, the bald eagle, will have a national tree, the oak, to alight on if legislation passed Tuesday by the House makes its way through Congress and is signed by the president. The oak tree, said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, is present in all 50 states and "represents the fundamental characteristics of this great nation: strength, endurance and beauty." Goodlatte, in a statement, said the oak, in addition to being a highly prized material for furniture and flooring, has played a vital role in the nation's history. He recalled how Andrew Jackson took shelter under Louisiana's Sunnybrook Oaks...