Free Republic

The thought that most frequently pops into my head when I read diatribes by militant atheists is "Why won't you read a book?" Of course, put thus, the thought is implausible. The militant atheists who get interviewed in newspapers presumably have read books. Christopher Hitchens had certainly read a lot of books. But there are good books and there are bad books, and then there are necessary books. And, clearly, they haven't read any of the books that should, in a cultured society, be presumed necessary for participation in public debate. Take the theoretical physicist and public speaker Lawrence Krauss....

In a recent “Talking Points” broadcast on Phil Robertson, Bill O’Reilly made a number of assertions about Christian theology, which came as a complete surprise to me, a practicing Christian and a teacher of adult Bible studies. O’Reilly cited as his authority the fact that he had written a book about Jesus. Curious, I reviewed the Kindle edition of “Killing Jesus” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Far from establishing O’Reilly’s credentials as an authority on Christianity, I found this popular book contains no fewer than 133 historical errors. The book also contains multiple internal contradictions. For example, with stimulating...

According to the report, improper payments in the past decade, from 2003 through 2012, totaled up to $132.6 billion dollars, peaking during the 2010 economic crisis at $18.4 billion dollars. The report says the IRS was unable to show it has taken proper steps to fix the problem after the inspector general flagged it in 2008. Here's how the tax credit works: low income working families get a credit that reduces their tax bill. The size of the credit depends on their income and number of children. If the credit is larger than what they owe, or they pay no...

Treasury investigator says the Internal Revenue Service has paid out more than $110 billion in tax credits over the past decade to people who didn't qualify for them. The Earned Income Tax Credits were intended for poor working families. In a report released Tuesday, the IRS inspector general said more than one-fifth of all credits paid under the program went to people who didn't qualify.

When there is a plane crash in the U.S., even a minor one, it makes headlines. There is a thorough federal investigation, and the tragedy often yields important lessons for the aviation industry. Pilots and airlines thus learn how to do their jobs more safely. The world of American medicine is far deadlier: Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets. But these mistakes go largely unnoticed by the world at large, and the medical community rarely learns from them. The same preventable mistakes are made over and over again, and patients are left in the...

I,like some but unlike many,make many eoors when posting.Spelling (yes,I use spell check...usually),punctuation and other errors are often made by me.Is there a way that FR can set up something like what I've seen on other forums (car forums,for example) that allow the poster to delete of edit a post after "post" has been hit? I know nothing about computers and,therefore,don't know how difficult and/or expensive it be,if it's possible at all.Thanks!

On January 17, 2012, recall committees submitted recall signatures for Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Sen. Pam Galloway, Sen. Terry Molten, and Sen. Van Wanggaard to Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (“GAB”). Right away, the GAB began scanning recall petitions at a secret location. The GAB even set up a live web-cam where anyone can view the staff at work scanning and reviewing the recall signatures. There have been many concerns that thousands of fraudulent signatures would be counted in the recalls. During the 60 day circulation period, there were many reports of apparent...

This report by a Wisconsin Tea Party group is absolutely shocking. MacIver News Service | January 11, 2012 | [Milwaukee, Wisc] A shocking new report by a Wisconsin Tea Party group raises serious questions about the diligence of poll workers in Milwaukee County. The group, Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, found errors on more than one third of all Election Day Registration forms completed for the April 5, 2011 election in Milwaukee County. “We discovered 3,739 forms with errors,” said Larry Gamble, the groups’ spokesperson. “That 33.7% error rate is high enough to question the entire election process and raises doubts...

Bank of America and Morgan Stanley have agreed to pay more than $22 million combined to settle federal civil charges on improperly foreclosing on military personnel, The Associated Press reports. The latest home or commercial real estate news Sample Between 2006 and 2009, the mortgage lenders foreclosed on 178 military members in 22 states without getting court approval. The military members affected will each receive $125,562, on average. The banks will also continue to investigate whether improper foreclosures occurred in 2009 through 2010.

AUSTIN (KXAN) - KXAN Austin News has uncovered dozens of cases in which unpaid tolls have turned into bills as high as tens of thousands of dollars. Toll roads first came to Central Texas four years ago. There are now a total of five tollways, including Texas Toll 130 in East Travis and Williamson counties. The bottom line is the toll bills were not paid, and they ended up becoming criminal cases. Although drivers can pay with cash at most tolls, use their TxTag or Pay by Mail as the signs say, some drivers contend the last option poses a...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama admitted having made tactical errors but stood by his accomplishments Sunday in an interview weeks ahead of crucial midterm elections. Obama confessed to the The New York Times that during his first 20 months in office he had probably not focused enough on public relations, which, like it or not, is an all-important part of the job. "Given how much stuff was coming at us, we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right," he was quoted as saying in a lengthy magazine...

Perhaps Paul Krugman believes that by labeling other economists as politically extreme, he can undercut their credibility. But his is badly weakened by the myriad errors he makes. Paul Krugman and Robin Wells caricature my recent book Fault Lines in an article in the New York Review of Books. The article, and their criticism, however, do have a lot to say about Krugman’s policy views (for simplicity, I will say “Krugman” and “he” instead of “Krugman and Wells” and “they”), which I have disagreed with in the past. Rather than focus on the innuendo about my motives and beliefs in...

Bereaved families are to be told that organs were removed from loved ones without consent after a huge blunder affecting the UK donor register. Around 800,000 people have had their wishes about the use of their organs wrongly recorded due to an error. An investigation found that 45 individuals for whom false data were stored have since died. The NHS is about to contact approximately 20 families who allowed organs to be taken after being misinformed about what consent had previously been given. Joyce Robins of pressure group Patient Concern told the Sunday Telegraph: "This Government has got an absolutely...

In Sunday’s column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, the increase in typos and other copy editing errors stood trial. Apparently, angry letters have started coming more frequently, wondering, for example, “If they don’t care about basics like grammar and spelling, how much do they care about factual accuracy?” Alexander served up the standard Old Media 2010 answer: our staffs have shrunk! But he also had a bizarre new scapegoat, namely, search engine optimization. Huh? “Through buyouts and voluntary departures, the number of full-time copy editors declined from about 75 to 43 between early 2005 and mid-2008,” he explained. “There...

The Syllabus of the principal errors of our time, which are stigmatized in the Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Apostolical Letters of our Most Holy Lord, Pope Pius IX. I.— PANTHEISM, NATURALISM, AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM. 1. There exists no supreme, most wise, and most provident divine being distinct from the universe, and God is none other than nature, and is therefore subject to change. In effect, God is produced in man and in the world, and all things are God, and have the very substance of God. God is therefore one and the same thing with the world, and thence...

Health minister characterizes reports of 20% to 30% error rates as highly exaggerated Questions about a possible high rate of errors in breast cancer testing done in the Canadian province of Quebec surfaced last week. Government health officials were forced to publicly acknowledge that they had received a report in April of a limited study that indicated an error rate of between 15% and 20% in hormone receptor testing, and an error rate as high as 30% in HER2/neu testing. Following the first news reports of this situation last Thursday, Quebec health officials scrambled to respond to public concerns. In...

WASHINGTON – New questions surfaced Wednesday about the accuracy of a CIA document meant to settle who in Congress knew about severe interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration. Three new errors appeared to emerge in the CIA's matrix of 40 congressional briefings on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. Those techniques include waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, which President Barack Obama has called torture. The CIA acknowledged one of the errors but continued to stand by its version of events in the other two cases.

President Obama, it should be noted, is not a particularly big drinker, though he has been known to enjoy a vodka martini time and again.

We are a little late to the party, but it is worth adding a few words now that our favourite amateur contrarian is at it again. As many already know, the Forum on Physics and Society (an un-peer-reviewed newsletter published by the otherwise quite sensible American Physical Society), rather surprisingly published a new paper by Monckton that tries again to show using rigorous arithmetic that IPCC is all wrong and that climate sensitivity is negligible. His latest sally, like his previous attempt, is full of the usual obfuscating sleight of hand, but to save people the time in working it...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has stopped telling a story of a pregnant woman's medical tragedy after an Ohio hospital challenged its accuracy last weekend. But recent accounts of the episode have omitted key details that suggest there was more truth in the essence of Clinton's tale than her critics, and even her presidential campaign, have acknowledged. Since early March, the New York senator has often told campaign audiences a heartbreaking story of a young Ohio woman who began having problems with her pregnancy. She said the woman was twice turned away by a local hospital because she...