Free Republic

Before telephones became common, before rural America saw electric service, before automobiles were available to the wage earner. At the turn of the new century, it came in from abroad. No one noticed at first as the infection spread silently and swiftly. The most devasting part was that by the time the the first alarms were heard- it was already too late. In 1901, as the American age began, the mighty American Chestnut tree was king of the eastern forests. One out of every four hardwood trees in the United States was a chestnut, and formed a part of the...

-- A healthy American chestnut tree discovered on a New Hampshire farm may serve as the "mother tree" to bring back a species nearly wiped out by Asian blight.The tree was found on a 125-acre parcel owned by Bill and Nancy Yates. Bill Yates remembers 60 years ago when American chestnuts lined the road near his home before the tree was all but wiped out on the Eastern seaboard. American Chestnut Foundation officials hope to use the tree as a way to bring the tree back to New Hampshire. Leila Pinchot, the foundation's New England science coordinator, pollinated the 40-foot...

Republican firebrand Patrick Buchanan said yesterday that President Bush should be impeached for failing to stem the "invasion" of illegal immigrants across America's Southern border...

The Bush Administration is pushing to create a North American Union out of the work on-going in the Department of Commerce under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in the NAFTA office headed by Geri Word. A key part of the plan is to expand the NAFTA tribunals into a North American Union court system that would have supremacy over all U.S. law, even over the U.S. Supreme Court, in any matter related to the trilateral political and economic integration of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Right now, Chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement allows a private...

ALBANY, Ga. - A stand of American chestnut trees that somehow escaped a blight that killed off nearly all their kind in the early 1900s has been discovered along a hiking trail not far from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Little White House at Warm Springs. The find has stirred excitement among those working to restore the American chestnut, and raised hopes that scientists might be able to use the pollen to breed hardier chestnut trees. "There's something about this place that has allowed them to endure the blight," said Nathan Klaus, a biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources...

MIDI - GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER - version 2 Tookie got run over by a gurney...that had come to take him for his shot It looks like he may have a concussion...outside the prison Snoop Dog's really hot Tookie co-founded the Crips gang...many cities they've destroyed He's nominated for a Peace Prize...but this year he won't be opening his toys They say he writes books for children...death would be a tragic loss When I saw that in the paper...the whole lunch I just had eaten I had tossed Tookie got run over by a gurney...that had...