Free Republic

After a summer of record-breaking heat, vast swaths of the United States are now grappling with extreme cold as a brutal Arctic blast brings snow squalls, deadly ice and life-threatening wind chills. As unprecedented heat makes way for cold, it can provide fuel for climate-change deniers who point to freezing temperatures as evidence that global warming is overstated. But scientists are clear: cold extremes will still occur even as winters warm overall. Global heat records outpace cold records — 2023 was the hottest year on record by a huge margin. And even as the US struggles to cope with intense...

The highest ranking woman in the Anglican communion has said climate denial is a “blind” and immoral position which rejects God’s gift of knowledge. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the most powerful women in Christianity, said that climate change was a moral imperative akin to that of the civil rights movement. She said it was already a threat to the livelihoods and survival of people in the developing world.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) came to prominence and notoriety when he famously shouted, ‘You Lie’ at Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. If ever there was a prime opportunity for a reprise, it occurred during an exchange between Wilson and Secretary of State John Kerry.Wilson asked Kerry if the U.S. was at war. If Kerry’s response had been a yes or no, the clip below would be no more than five seconds. As it was, Kerry took a more circuitous route to his answer, which was beyond ridiculous. After several seconds of hemming and...

PHOENIX — A man who slept with a 20-year-old woman when he was 14 — and didn’t learn he was a father until eight years later — is now being forced to pay child support, the Arizona Republic reports. Olivas, who said he was confused and going through a rough patch at that time of his life time, said the two went their separate ways after the encounter. Arizona law says a child younger than 15 cannot consent to sexual relations with an adult under any circumstance. All of it was put behind him, he thought, until two years ago...

CAIRO, Egypt — The U.S. airstrike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was just a stroke of luck, according to a Web statement posted Tuesday in the name of the umbrella group for Iraqi insurgents. The statement from the Mujahedeen Shura Council, or Consultative Council of Holy Warriors, was an attempt to discredit reports from the U.S. and Iraqi authorities that Zarqawi was known to be meeting key advisers at a house in a grove of palm trees north of Baghdad when U.S. fighter-bombers blasted the building last Wednesday evening.

When Steven Johnson's book about popular culture hit stores in May, he was prepared for a barrage of hate mail. After all, the author takes a rare position: that playing video games and watching TV shows like "The Sopranos" and "24" actually expand minds rather than numbing them. No flurry of angry correspondence has arrived yet, but that doesn't mean the book, "Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," isn't stirring debate. Critics are concerned that the title alone will give Americans - and their kids - license to spend more time...

Greens just can't make up their minds! http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200302\CUL20030220a.html Environmental Says Blizzard Consistent with 'Global Warming' Trend By Marc Morano CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer February 20, 2003 (CNSNews.com) - The record-breaking blizzard of 2003, which left more than two feet of snow in some areas of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, was "very much in line with the predictions of climate models" that predict human-caused "global warming," according to an environmentalist in Washington. When asked whether predictions of "global warming" have been altered by the unusually cold and snowy winter, including the recent blizzard, Melissa Carey, a climate change policy specialist with...