Free Republic

Paleontologist gets 4 months in halfway house, three years of probation GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Renowned dinosaur hunter Nathan Murphy was sentenced Wednesday to four months in a halfway house and three years probation after pleading guilty to stealing fossils. Murphy was accused of stealing 13 dinosaur bones from central Montana's Hell Creek badlands in 2006. He pleaded guilty in April to theft of government property. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon also sentenced him to 300 hours of community service and ordered him to pay $17,325 in restitution.

<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio airport summoned a bomb squad to detonate a suspicious item that turned out to be pickled mangoes.</p> <p>X-ray equipment used by federal security screeners in Columbus could not detect what was inside a sealed canister in luggage being inspected around 7 p.m. Tuesday. The container was labeled "baby food," but authorities say security personnel became suspicious when the woman who owned the suitcase claimed the canister held pickles.</p>

Abraham Lincoln once remarked that “nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” This week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her liberal colleagues demonstrated once again that in matters where power may conflict with principle, these liberals will put power first every time. On Monday, I introduced two amendments to H.R. 2847, the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill. One amendment would have kept the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) out of the 2010 Census, effectively barring taxpayer dollars in the bill provided to the Census Bureau from being disbursed...

June 17, 2009—The fossil hand of a long-necked, ostrich-like dinosaur recently found in China may help solve the mystery of how bird wings evolved from dinosaur limbs, according to a new study. The ancient digits belonged to a 159-million-year-old theropod dinosaur dubbed Limusaurus inextricabilis. Theropods are two-legged dinos thought to have given rise to modern birds. Although it was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the newfound dinosaur was a small herbivore, said study co-author James Clark, a biologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The animal was about 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) long and had relatively short, clawless...

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSEVA14340720090612?sp=true

Sens. Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn each spent over $140,000 in taxpayer money on travel in the first half of the fiscal year — about 10 times as much as some of their Senate colleagues. Cornyn, a Texas Republican, topped the list by taking costly charter flights around his state and spending nearly $40,000 on a retreat in Maryland for 59 staffers. Schumer, a New York Democrat, was close behind, routinely flying private charters to cities in his state served by commercial airlines, a report by Politico disclosed. Politico cited one trip Schumer made in early December, when he spent...

Calling all NY Freepers!! Liberty Starts Here Again! Much of the significant fighting early on in the Revolutionary War occurred in New York – Fort Ontario, Fort Ticonderoga, The Battle of Saratoga, The Battle of Long Island, Fort Stanwix, Manhattan, White Plains, and many more. With Liberty so imperiled today, our hope is that Liberty starts here again in New York. Our message to our representatives is simple: We're Voting the Ins Out! Tuesday, June 16th at high noon (12 – 3 pm) in East Capitol Park

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Global Foundries has sent a formal commitment letter to New York state for the construction of the Fab 2 project at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in upstate New York. The letter initiates the construction phase of the Fab 2 project and triggers the process of issuing state bonds for reimbursements payments and incentives to the company for the development of the estimated $4.2 billion wafer fab. The purchase of 223 acres of land from the campus is set for Wednesday (June 10). Global Foundries also has completed a development agreement with two New York townships which...

Two federal studies add up the corn fuel's exorbitant cost. The Obama Administration is pushing a big expansion in ethanol, including a mandate to increase the share of the corn-based fuel required in gasoline to 15% from 10%. Apparently no one in the Administration has read a pair of new studies, one from its own EPA, that expose ethanol as a bad deal for consumers with little environmental benefit. The biofuels industry already receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced, or about $3 billion a year. Meanwhile, import tariffs of 54 cents a gallon and...

Magnitude 7.1 Date-Time Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 08:24:45 UTC Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 03:24:45 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location 16.783°N, 86.166°W Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program Region OFFSHORE HONDURAS Distances 130 km (80 miles) NNE of La Ceiba, Honduras 225 km (140 miles) N of Juticalpa, Honduras 320 km (200 miles) NNE of TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras 1170 km (730 miles) SSW of Miami, Florida Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 6.3 km (3.9 miles); depth fixed by location program Parameters NST=119, Nph=119, Dmin=323.9 km, Rmss=0.88 sec, Gp=104°, M-type=(unknown type), Version=6 Source...

An actual cartoon from the Chicago Tribune in 1935! The more things change...

Magnitude 4.1 Date-Time Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 22:49:11 UTC Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 03:49:11 PM at epicenter Location 33.933°N, 118.331°W Depth 12.1 km (7.5 miles) Region GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, CALIFORNIA Distances 2 km (2 miles) NE (44°) from Hawthorne, CA 3 km (2 miles) ESE (107°) from Lennox, CA 3 km (2 miles) SSE (152°) from Inglewood, CA 7 km (4 miles) E (80°) from El Segundo, CA 16 km (10 miles) SSW (210°) from Los Angeles Civic Center, CA Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 0.4 km (0.2 miles); depth +/- 1.1 km (0.7 miles) Parameters Nph=120, Dmin=7...

ALBANY — Members of Albany County Young Democrats are "shocked and disturbed" at the revelation that the former president of the organization, Benjamin Jakes-Johnson, spent almost four years facing child pornography charges while rising through the ranks of the local group, as well as the party's state and national affiliates. Jakes-Johnson, 29, received a 57-month sentence in U.S. District Court Thursday after pleading guilty last October to one count of possessing child pornography. According to the office of the U.S. Attorney for New York's Northern District, Jakes-Johnson's computer and several discs were seized in October 2005 at his parents' house...

General Electric Co. announced this morning that it is planning to build a $100 million advanced battery factory in the Capital Region that will employ 350 people. New York state will contribute $15 million to the project, including $12.5 million from Empire State Development Corp. and $2.5 million from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The company just formed the new battery business and has applied for federal stimulus money for the project. The first battery product produced at the plant will be a hybrid locomotive. GE already has customers in other industries such as telecommunications, energy...

Lawrence Summers, President Obama's chief economic adviser, declared recently that "Let's be very clear: There are no, no tax increases this year. There are no, no tax increases next year." Oh yes, yes, there are. The President's budget calls for the largest increase in the death tax in U.S. history in 2010. The announcement of this tax increase is buried in footnote 1 on page 127 of the President's budget. That note reads: "The estate tax is maintained at its 2009 parameters." This means the death tax won't fall to zero next year as scheduled under current law, but estates...

On Wednesday, April 15, a rally will be held in Albany’s Riverfront Park at the Corning Preserve. From 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. citizens from throughout the capitol region will gather to peacefully but forcefully express their disgust with elected officials and where they are taking our country.

The Magazine's Credenda Among our convictions: It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens' lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government(the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA postponed the launch of space shuttle Discovery just hours before it was to head to the international space station Wednesday because of a hydrogen gas leak that could have been catastrophic at liftoff. The leak was in the same system that has already caused a vexing one-month delay. Shuttle managers were shooting for another launch attempt Thursday night provided they could fix the problem quickly.

There's no question that employees at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have watched with some concern as the LHC got all the press about being the future of physics despite the fact it hadn't actually produced anything. They have also quietly continued setting world records and are once again reminding people that Fermilab's Tevatron, currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator, is actually ahead, even in the race to find the as-yet undefined "Higgs particle." Now scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations have observed particle collisions that produce single top quarks. The discovery of the single top confirms important...