Free Republic

The first sign of an impending cataclysm in the summer of 1831 was an eerie dimming of the Sun, which for days appeared bluish green across the Northern Hemisphere. In the ensuing weeks, foul weather and a long cold snap triggered crop failures and famines in India and Japan. The instigator was long presumed to be a climate-altering plume from a major eruption, but the volcano’s identity had been one of the great unsolved mysteries of volcanology. “It’s like a whodunit,” says Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge. At long last, the culprit has been unmasked in...

Rick Santorum appears to be eyeing the White House again, with the former Pennsylvania senator telling Newsmax TV’s Steve Malzberg that he may run for president in 2016. “I’m certainly leaving the door open for that,” Santorum revealed on “The Steve Malzberg Show” Wednesday afternoon. … “The same advisors who botched these last two campaigns are now saying, ‘Well, you know, since we can’t win with moderate Republicans, we have to now try to be liberal Republicans to win instead of standing up for the values that made our country great,’” he said. …