Free Republic

Less than one month before Mike Johnson’s sudden ascent to the speakership, the Louisiana Republican, then a little-known member, joined with most GOP lawmakers to vote against $300 million in U.S. security assistance for Ukraine. Now, as speaker, Johnson has surprised many on Capitol Hill by publicly and repeatedly calling Ukraine aid a critical priority for the House. Where Johnson stands on Ukraine and how hard he plans to push for tens of billions of dollars in new aid could shape the future of the embattled country, just as the U.S. is facing questions about its commitment to Kyiv and...

First, there’s the extremely significant fact that the plesiosaur surfaced around 250 million years ago and died out around 66/65 million years ago. Plesiosaurs, the fossil record has conclusively shown, lived in saltwater environments: our planet’s oceans. Loch Ness, however, is a freshwater loch. Yes, there is evidence of the occasional plesiosaur in a freshwater environment all those millions of years ago, but the bulk of the cases are not suggestive of entire colonies of the beasts inhabiting freshwater bodies. It’s far more likely and plausible that they wandered into them and died there. And, yes, there are both a...

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden announced on Saturday that one of their German Shepherds, Champ, had died. Champ had been with the family for 13 years and passed away peacefully at home, a statement from the White House said. "Even as Champ’s strength waned in his last months, when we came into a room, he would immediately pull himself up, his tail always wagging, and nuzzle us for an ear scratch or a belly rub," the statement read. "Wherever we were, he wanted to be, and everything was instantly better when he was next to us." Champ,...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s dogs Champ and Major had returned to the building after the biting incident. “Champ and Major are here at the White House,” she said during the White House press briefing in response to a question about their status.

It’s not surprising that a man called Saint Bernard once said, “Love me, love my dog” in a sermon. After all, dogs have long been the world’s most popular pet. But now, the meanies at conservative media giant Newsmax have refused to throw man’s best friend a bone, attacking President Joe Biden’s dog, Champ, in a Friday segment. Host Greg Kelly felt the need to lift his leg and woof on the dog’s appearance, saying that Champ “looks a little rough,” and “needs a bath, a comb, and some loving care,” adding that he looks like he’s “from the junkyard.”...

The U.S. Air Force has deployed at least 20 missiles that could zap the military electronics of North Korea or Iran with high-power microwaves, rendering their military capabilities virtually useless without causing any fatalities, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively. Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing's Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and tested successfully in 2012. They have not been operational until now. The microwave weapons are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly...

France said it had foiled a militant plot and arrested seven people in the southern port city of Marseille and the eastern city of Strasbourg. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the seven people of French, Moroccan and Afghan origin, aged 29 to 37, had been detained on Sunday. Two were arrested in Marseille. Most of the others, he said on Monday, were arrested in Strasbourg - a city where one of oldest and largest Christmas markets is set to open this week. “An attack has been foiled ... The scale of the terrorist threat is enormous and it is not...

At first glance it looks like a potato-shaped asteroid flying through space. But this multi-coloured image is actually the Earth - and shows how gravity varies on different parts of the globe. The images were unveiled today by the team behind the GOCE satellite at a conference in Munich and are the most accurate ever released. The 'geoid' map, as it is known, is used to illustrate how oceans would look in the absence of currents or tides. The bright yellow colours show gravity at its strongest, while it is at its weakest in the blue areas. There appears to...

Does a giant crater lie beneath the Antarctic ice? Signs of an ancient impact could help to explain a mass extinction. Mark Peplow A dense bit of rock in the Antarctic (orange circle) seems to be circled by a crater. © Ohio State University Evidence of a cataclysmic meteorite impact has been unearthed in Antarctica, according to researchers who say the collision could possibly explain the greatest mass extinction ever seen on our planet. But scientists contacted by news@nature.com say they are sceptical, as no signs of such an enormous impact have been found in other, well-studied areas of Antarctica....

'Potato' Earth's deep secrets By Jonathan Amos BBC News Online science staff It is a map the like of which you have probably never seen before. Gravity highs are marked red; gravity lows are blue The sweep of colours shows minute variations in the Earth's gravitational field. If you were to fly over the red areas, you would be tugged ever so slightly downwards; the blues mark regions where the planet's attraction is much weaker. These gravity anomalies, as they are known, are imperceptible to the human senses, and so the scientists have wrapped the data on to a sphere...

In trying to predict where earthquakes will occur, few people would think to look at Earth's gravity field. What does the force that causes objects to fall to the ground and the moon to orbit around the earth have to do with the unpredictable ground trembling of an earthquake? Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have found that within subduction zones, the regions where one of the earth's plates slips below another, areas where the attraction due to gravity is relatively high are less likely to experience large earthquakes than areas where the gravitational force is relatively low....

Gravity highs (red) and lows (blue) on the Moon (Lunar nearside right, farside left)Science Results from the Japanese space agency's SELENE mission to the Moon are revealing details about why the lopsided lump of rock orbiting Earth is so unbalanced.The SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer, or Kaguya) mission was launched in September 2007 to gather detailed geological information about the Moon. The results are published in Science1,2,3,4.Because the Moon has no atmosphere or weather to speak of, its geology has remained almost unchanged since it formed. So unpicking its structure could offer information about how the early Solar System —...

Explanation: Why do some places on Earth have higher gravity than others? Sometimes the reason is unknown. To help better understand the Earth's surface, sensitive measurments by the orbiting satellites GRACE and CHAMP were used to create a map of Earth's gravitational field. Since a center for studying this data is in Potsdam, Germany, and since the result makes the Earth look somewhat like a potato, the resulting geoid has been referred to as the Potsdam Gravity Potato. High areas on this map, colored red, indicate areas where gravity is slightly stronger than usual, while in blue areas gravity is...

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah (CBS St. Louis) — Boeing successfully tests a new missile that can take out electronic targets with little collateral damage. The aerospace company tested the microwave missile last week on a two-story building on the Utah Test and Training Range where computers and electronic systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the missile’s radio waves, according to a Boeing press release. The missile, known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project), fired a burst of High Powered Microwaves at the building, successfully knocking out the electronic systems and computers, and even taking out...

Dubbed “North America’s Loch Ness Monster,” the purported leviathan of Lake Champlain, “Champ,” has just resurfaced. On Feb. 22, 2006, Good Morning America aired exclusive video footage of “something” just below the surface of the water, possibly the lake’s fabled creature. A pair of Vermont men, Dick Affolter and his 34-year-old stepson, Pete Bodette, had made the digital recordings the previous summer while salmon fishing. ABC consulted two retired FBI forensic image analysts, who concluded that the video appeared authentic, although they could not say what it depicted. The incident added to a long list of Champ sightings, which...

Bad taste: Tyson says Holyfield's ear would have 'been much better' with his rival's BBQ sauce Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield trade jokes about infamous ear-biting incident on Twitter Former heavyweight champ tweets 'Holyfield's ear would've been much better with his new BBQ sauce' as his former rival looks to promote his new product. It's been 15 years since Mike Tyson had a taste of Evander Holyfield's ear. On Friday, Tyson let it be known that he would have preferred some dipping sauce to go along with it. The former undisputed heavyweight champ raised a few eyebrows when he tweeted:...

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to Boxing Champ Manny Pacquiao: "You know, there are reports, your Forbes magazine, other places say you make tens maybe more millions of dollars, $40 million one year. Philippines is a very poor country. Do you think that there is some, there is something wrong with somebody, with somebody in the Philippines making that much money when people are starving in your country?"

Nic Henke is a home-brewer, just as his German-American grandparents were two generations ago. You could say that beer is in his blood. "Yeah, and it's probably measurable some days," jokes Henke, whose love of the craft is evidenced in the several-thousand-dollar home-brewing room in the basement of his Mendota Heights home. Henke, who brews two or three styles of beer each month, is a member of the St. Paul Homebrewers Club, which meets monthly to talk beer and critique their brews. Members then pit their beers against others from across the nation. Tonight, they'll find out whether they keep...

I just wanted to brag about my daughter today. She won her school spelling bee today. What is very remarkable is that she's only in the third grade and beat all the fourth and fifth graders. Her picture is going to be in our town's newspaper, as well. She's following in her dad's footsteps, I guess. ;-) I won 2 spelling bees (7th and 8th grade) when I was in school. She's a chip off the old block (vicariously bragging, sorry!) and we are all so very proud of her. BTW, She's in the gifted program at her school. Her...

PLATTSBURGH -- Carl Roberts was enjoying a pleasant evening with friends Thursday while fishing at Wilcox Dock. They had been casting their lines since 6 p.m. and had caught quite a few perch, but the fish unexpectedly stopped biting around 8 p.m. The wind was calm, the sun was still shining above the western horizon, and Lake Champlain was as tranquil as could be. RAPID MOVEMENT But then, a movement out on the lake caught the angler's attention. Something in the water was moving rapidly from left to right about 100 yards beyond the dock. "It had to be 50...