Free Republic

~ EXCERPT ~ The battle over the federal deficit hasn’t flipped in favor of the Democrats. The GOP isn’t suddenly at grave risk of losing its House majority. But after two years of getting pummeled over spending and the size of government, Democrats now appear to have found a political weapon that’s capable of evening out the fight: Medicare. The popular entitlement program wasn’t the sole issue behind Kathy Hochul’s upset victory in a New York special election Tuesday night, but strategists in both parties say it was an important force. And for the first time since November, the idea...

NEW YORK – Recalling Dan Brown's bestselling novel "The Da Vinci Code," computer experts have discovered strange anomalies in the Obama birth record released by the White House. They include a different birth registration number that shows up in "hidden text," remnants of the short-form certificate apparently bleeding through the long-form and a "smiley face" in the registrar's stamp that does not show up on other recently issued Hawaii birth records. Curiously, in a simple process run by Optical Character Recognition software that reveals hidden text, the registration number 10611 turns up, instead of 10641, the number displayed on the...

The real mystery lurking in the chapel where Dan Brown set The Da Vinci Code. From the outside, the Rosslyn Chapel does not look like a suitable place to hide Jesus' head. It's not much bigger than a country church, standing inconspicuously on a small hill in the miniature Scottish town of Roslin, a few miles south of Edinburgh. Its Gothic pinnacles, flying buttresses, and pointed arches have been battered by 500 years of capricious weather, and for years it has been encased in an exoskeleton of scaffolding as restoration efforts plod along. Until recently, it was covered by a...

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...

How many pages does it take to lay out the insanely complicated rules and requirements of our tax code? According to tax publisher CCH, the total number of pages devoted to federal tax code rules, IRS rulings, and regulations has grown to 72,536:It's no wonder that even the government's own experts and officials can't figure it out. Any system of rules that requires in excess 72,000 pages to explain and understand borders on useless. At this point it might as well be Calvinball. Via Cato's Chris Edwards.

In a study published last week by the Laffer Center, my colleagues Wayne Winegarden, John Childs and I estimate that these costs alone are a staggering $431 billion annually. This is a cost markup of 30 cents on every dollar paid in taxes. And this is not even a complete accounting of the costs of tax complexity.

WASHINGTON -- A lifelong fan of codes, Ricky McCormick wrote out two pages of letters, numbers and symbols and stuck them in his pocket. His body was found in a Missouri cornfield in the summer of 1999, those two sheets of paper still in his pants. ALPONTE GLSE - SE ERTE, one line read. Is that a coded plea for help? A reminder to pick up the laundry from the cleaners? The beginnings of a commentary on the weather in St. Louis? If you know, the FBI's top code-breaking unit wants your help in breaking McCormick's code - one that...

A lifelong fan of codes, Ricky McCormick wrote out two pages of letters, numbers and symbols and stuck them in his pocket. His body was found in a Missouri cornfield in the summer of 1999, those two sheets of paper still in his pants. ALPONTE GLSE - SE ERTE, one line read. Is that a coded plea for help? A reminder to pick up the laundry from the cleaners? The beginnings of a commentary on the weather in St. Louis? If you know, the FBI's top code-breaking unit wants your help in breaking McCormick's code — one that has baffled...

ATD At the Doctor's BFF: Best Friend Fell BTW: Bring the Wheelchair BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth CMB: Covered by Medicare CUATSC: See you at the Senior Center DWI: Driving While Incontinent FWIW: Forgot Where I was FYI: Found Your Insulin GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement GHA: Got Heartburn Again IMHO: Is My Hearing Aid On LMDO: Laughing My Dentures out LOL: Living on Lipitor OMSG: Oh My Sorry, Gas ROFL.CGU Rolling on the floor Laughing and Can't get UP SGGP: Sorry Gotta go Poop TTYL; Talk to You Louder WTP: Where's the prunces...

Part of the mystery behind an 'alien' book no one can read has at last been unraveled. Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript is among literature's great mysteries. The book of aging parchment is written in alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, and arranged into what appear to be words and sentences -- except they don't resemble anything written or read by human beings. And for decades, the manuscript has mystified scientists. "Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?"...

While enthusiasts across the world pored over the Voynich manuscript, penned by an unknown author in a language no one understands, a research team at the University of Arizona solved one of its biggest mysteries: When was the book made?University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day. Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's...

Napolitano: Colored threats replaced by 'formal, detailed alerts' in three months By Jordy Yager - 01/27/11 03:42 PM ET Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on Thursday that the department is planning to phase out its color-coded threat advisory system over the next three months. In its place, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to issue “formal, detailed alerts” about “a specific or credible terrorist threat” to law enforcement officials, private businesses – such as shopping malls or hotels – and the American public, depending on the nature of the threat. “These alerts will include a clear statement that...

WASHINGTON—Welcome to the world of the temporary tax code. In the late 1990s, there were typically fewer than a dozen tax provisions that had just a limited lease on life and needed to be renewed every year or so. Today there are 141. Now Congress, taking up a deal worked out between the Obama administration and Republican leaders, is poised to turn the whole personal income-tax system into something of a temporary structure. The plan embraces a broad range of provisions—an extension of Bush-era rates, a new estate-tax formula—but for only two years. A payroll-tax cut in the bill is...

It appears Mona Lisa, who has been captivating people for centuries, just got much more interesting. Art detectives have discovered that one of the world’s most famous paintings contains small letters and numbers put there intentionally by Leonardo Da Vinci: Hidden in the dark paint of her pupils are tiny letters and numbers, placed there by the artist Leonardo da Vinci and revealed only now thanks to high-­magnification techniques. Experts say the barely distinguishable letters and numbers represent something of a real-life Da Vinci code. The revelation could have come straight from the pages of Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da...

That was the despicable message Gold Star mom Debbie Lee got from Jodie Evans and her Code Pink organization regarding her son, Marc Alan Lee of the United States Navy, who was killed in action in 2006. She tells her heartbreaking story at Big Peace. Evans, a major Obama ally and fundraiser, is about to hold a fundraiser for California Democrat and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. In her spare time, she raises money for terrorists and other America-haters – with impunity. This includes helping launch the “peace flotillas” against Israel in order to help the Hamas terrorist organization, a project...

"Car bomb explodes in Derry" IRISH TIMES REPORTERS SNIPPET: "A car bomb has exploded outside a police station in the North. The blast occurred at about 3.20am in a taxi which had been parked outside Strand Road police station in Derry. Damage was caused to the station and the perimeter wall but no one was injured in the incident. The explosion follows a telephone warning that a device had been planted in front of the station. According to the PSNI, a taxi driver was approached by two men on Cook Street at about 3am, one of whom had a gun....

For those unfamiliar, a 'hash' is a computed summary of a longer piece of text. For instance, this entire article could be hashed to a simple 32-byte hash which can be used to guarantee that the text is unchanged as modifying a single character in the text would yield a totally different hash. The article from The Age infers the solution, without actually revealing it, noting that it is connected with the organisation's mission statement: "USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and...

SNIPPET: "U.S. counterterrorism officials have linked one of the nation's most wanted terrorists to last year's thwarted plot to bomb the New York City subway system, authorities said Wednesday. Current and former counterterrorism officials said top al-Qaida operative Adnan Shukrijumah met with one of the would-be suicide bombers in a plot that Attorney General Eric Holder called one of the most dangerous since the 9/11 terror attacks."

When the towers of the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001, Clarence Wolf Guts asked his son to call the U.S. Department of Defense to see if the country needed his code talking abilities to find Osama Bin Laden. Wolf Guts was in his late 70s at the time, so his son, Don Doyle, did not make the call, but said the request personified his father's love of country.

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, March 18, 2010 Chicago Resident David Coleman Headley Pleads Guilty to Role in India and Denmark Terrorism Conspiracies Admits Conducting Surveillance for Lashkar e Tayyiba in Planning 2008 Mumbai Attacks David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen of partial Pakistani descent, pleaded guilty today to a dozen federal terrorism charges, admitting that he participated in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper. In pleading guilty to all 12 counts that were brought against him in December and were...