Free Republic

In around 1485 or 1486, Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli came up with probably his most famous painting, the "Birth of Venus." Botticelli’s choice of subject was nothing new. Venus and her equivalents, including the Greek Aphrodite and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, are among the most common figures depicted in art. Archaeologists dub one of the oldest of all sculptures, the “Venus of Willendorf,” on the assumption that this 25,000-year-old work was intended to represent a Stone Age fertility goddess similar to the Venus of later tradition. In virtually all civilizations, a Venus equivalent plays a prominent role in myth, legend...

"The Travesty of Justice Ends for Michael Flynn” blared one headline last week. On the same day, another headline warned of “The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Flynn Case.” Both articles appeared in major national newspapers, and the writers must have known that thousands of critical eyes would be on every detail of their stories: important to get things right. But the law of the excluded middle should tell us that one of these stories is embarrassingly, egregiously and maybe even career-endingly wrong.