Free Republic

"Joe the Closer?" Oversight Chairman James Comer told Just the News on Friday that President Joe Biden played a specific role in his son’s business dealings. Witness testimony from the ongoing impeachment inquiry has indicated there is a key role in Biden family business dealings that Joe Biden played: showing that his son had access to him to close deals with characters from unfriendly countries. The latest in a string of interview transcripts released by the House Oversight Committee, bolsters this claim from Republicans. Jason Galanis—a former business partner of Hunter Biden—testified to Joe Biden’s special role in their deals,...

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed optimism Saturday about sealing a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling before the nation reaches its borrowing limit June 5. “I feel closer to an agreement now than I did a long time before,” he told reporters as he arrived at the US Capitol Saturday morning, after a marathon negotiation session that ended at 2:30 am, hinting that the final language could be completed within hours.

Now that the Philadelphia Eagles have signed a 4th quarterback -- Tim Tebow -- and talk is being bandied about re: Tebow's potential "role player" status...perhaps a review is in order to ponder a potential paradigm shift that the NFL is perhaps beyond the need to acknowledge. And for that, we need a quick review of another professional sport: Major League Baseball...and specifically the history of pitching: 1901-1968: For the first 68 years of the 20th century, Major League Baseball didn't even track "saves" by relief pitchers. Yankees pitcher Waite Hoyt was retroactively credited with "eight" saves in 1928. But...

Harvard scientists have developed a new bioprinting method that can create intricately patterned 3-D tissue constructs with multiple types of cells and tiny blood vessels. The work is a major step toward creating human tissue constructs realistic enough to test drug safety and effectiveness, researchers said. The method will also help bring closer the building of fully functional replacements for injured or diseased tissue that can be designed from CAT scan data using computer-aided design (CAD), printed in 3D at the push of a button. "This is the foundational step toward creating 3D living tissue," said Jennifer Lewis, senior author...

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that a peace deal could be imminent as he wrapped up his Israel visit, according to an AFP report. "I believe we are closer than we have been in years to bringing about the peace and the prosperity and the security that all of the people of this region deserve," he told reporters traveling with his delegation at Ben Gurion airport. The news follows reports from Maariv that negotiations were improving Thursday, as Kerry indicated that the US was more willing to follow Israel's stance on its security - specifically the...

Update: 1:49PM NORTH Korea has reportedly been seen moving a long-range missile in to position for launch. South Korean Yonhap news agency reports that North Korea's new KN08 Musudan missile has been spotted in the process of being transported towards the Sea of Japan. The KN08 Musudan is still under-development and it is unclear if it has the range to reach the United States mainland. Previous assessments have given it a range of 4000km - potentially enough range to reach Guam.

According to reports from the Free Syria Army, the Syrian military has moved forces stationed in the southern part of the Syrian Golan Heights closer to Israel. The Syrian military did not come close to the border with Israel. However, armored forces that were stationed along the Syria-Jordan border, which were recently reinforced, were moved and are now closer to Israel, according to the report. The Free Syria Army is the largest opposition group in Syria and is partly made up of defectors from the official Syrian Army. Israel has been concerned that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is...

As "The Closer" heads toward its finale, the health of Brenda's parents adds to the uncertainty of how Brenda will leave the show. Will she be fired or sued? Will Brenda voluntarily leave to care for her folks? Will Fritz finally get the job of his dreams and cause them to move? "The Closer" has highlighted other diseases and problems that people are coping with daily. Brenda suffered from polycystic ovarian syndrome, also known as PCOS.

A truck carrying Libyan rebel fighters drives towards the Zawiyah oil refinery. ZAWIYA, Libya—Fighting raged for a fourth straight day in this strategic coastal city 30 miles west of Tripoli on Wednesday, as rebel fighters battled to mop up pockets of loyalist soldiers and laid siege to the regime's last working oil refinery. The roads leading to Zawiya were clogged with rebel fighters pouring toward town and refugees fleeing in the opposite direction. The refugee flow from Zawiya, a city of 200,000 people, and from Tripoli hinted at the possible flood that could pour into rebel-held havens and neighboring Tunisia...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The outlines of a deal that would allow the United States to avert a debt default emerged on Thursday as top Republican and Democratic lawmakers held their first meeting aimed at cutting the bloated U.S. deficit. Republicans edged toward a White House plan that would cut some spending now and set long-term deficit reduction targets, but said more difficult decisions on taxes and healthcare spending would have to wait until after the 2012 election. A top Republican lawmaker, Paul Ryan, said there would be no immediate "grand slam" agreement on tackling the budget deficit, expected to reach...

A new material that could be used to create a real-life Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloak" has been designed by British scientists. The material, called "Metaflex", may in future provide a way of manufacturing fabrics that manipulate light. Metamaterials have already been developed that bend and channel light to render objects invisible at longer wavelengths. Visible light poses a greater challenge because its short wavelength means the metamaterial atoms have to be very small. So far such small light-bending atoms have only been produced on flat, hard surfaces unsuitable for use in clothing.

CHICAGO (AFP) – Physicists have come closer to finding the elusive "God Particle," which they hope could one day explain why particles have mass, the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday. Researchers at the Fermilab have managed to shrink the territory where the elusive Higgs Boson particle is expected to be found -- a discovery placing the American research institute ahead of its European rival in the race to discover one of the biggest prizes in physics. Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with...

Scientists a step closer to steering hurricanes By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 1:07am BST 21/10/2007 Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature – unveiling plans to weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina. How to halt a hurricane: Click to enlarge The damage done to New Orleans in 2005 has spurred two rival teams of climate experts, in America and Israel, to redouble their efforts to enable people to play God with the weather. Under one scheme, aircraft would drop soot into the near-freezing...

Moves Closer To Full-Fledged Presidential Run (CBS/AP) WASHINGTON -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday defended the Iraq war and criticized Al Gore's global-warming movie. As for his presidential ambitions, Giuliani coyly inched closer to a formal announcement. "I am 100 percent committed," he said. "That official part, I still have to do a formal announcement. But we'll figure out how to do that. My idea is that I'm going to try to announce this in 100 different places." Giuliani, a Republican, said he supports efforts to move California's 2008 presidential primary from June to February, a...

Opening of Silk Road weaves India closer to China By Catherine Elsworth (Filed: 07/07/2006) To the music of military brass bands, China and India set five decades of hostility behind them yesterday, opening a long-closed Silk Road pass across the Himalayas. Both governments enthused about improving trade between the two rising powers of Asia, which is surprisingly low for growing economies with a population of more than a billion people each. A Chinese trader greets Indian soldiers on the Silk Road But the opening agreement restricts border trade to items such as goat fur and yak tails, on the Chinese...

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Next to the close relationship the Navy shares with the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Adm. Mike Mullen said he considers the Navy's continuing partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard as the "single most critical relationship we can possibly have when it comes to securing the maritime domain," during his speech at the 18th Annual Suface Navy Association National Syposium Jan. 10. "We talk a lot about the Navy-Marine Corps Team, and we should," Mullen told the audience. "But we are also going to start talking about the Navy-Coast Guard Team." He said that the...

AL ASAD, Iraq -- “Twas the night before Christmas, all were asleep, curled up in their racks. I looked all about, a strange sight I did see, no tinsel, no presents, instead a plastic bottle Christmas tree.” These words, from Andrea Schutz’s version of “Twas the night before Christmas,” bring the traditional holiday poem to the deserts of Al Asad, Iraq. Schutz, the key volunteer advisor for Marine Tactical Air Command Squadron 28, and the families of deployed Marines have been able to participate in the Christmas celebration here by making and sending Christmas ornaments for a water bottle Christmas...

Spiral arm of Milky Way looms closer than thought 19:00 08 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The Milky Way is made of four main arms curving around its centre – astronomers measured the distance from Earth to a star-forming region called W3OH inside the Perseus arm (Image: Y. Xu et al/Science) One of the Milky Way's star-studded spiral arms lies twice as close to Earth as some previous estimates suggested. New research has produced the most accurate distance measurement ever made of the arm, which could help astronomers understand how our galaxy's spiral structure formed. The Milky Way...

MILLION MOAN MARCH: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE SPEAKERS By Michelle Malkin October 15, 2005 12:21 PM ***135pm EDT update...Al Sharpton calls President Bush "evil...James Crow Jr., Esquire...broken levees are weapons of mass destruction...Our people are dying in Iraq and being drowned in New Orleans...We'll be in Baton Rouge on the 29th...this is the beginning of the regeneration of the movement for our people..."*** If you tune into C-SPAN right now, you will hear a lot of angry bloviating and blaming. The 10th anniversary of the Million M[o]an March is here and Farrakhan's fulminators have seized the day in D.C....

While the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism—2003 report [1] labeled Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2003," the Bush administration has yet to agree on a national security presidential directive to define U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic.[2] Meanwhile, Tehran continues to edge closer to nuclear capability.[3]The following are excerpts from the 9/11 Commission Report, an unclassified version of which was released to the public on July 22, 2004.[4] The commission interviewed more than 1,000 people in ten countries and conducted an unprecedented review of U.S. intelligence. Among its findings, excerpted below, was evidence of a...