Free Republic

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who recently announced plans to retire, rebutted conservative media speculation on Wednesday that his severe injuries are the result of a run-in with the mob. On CNBC's "Speakeasy," host John Harwood asked Reid about theories put forth by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart News that the injuries Reid sustained at the beginning of this year, including a blow to his right eye, are not, as he has said, the result of an accident involving elastic exercise equipment. "The last few days, a bunch of people are saying, Reid, he didn't have an exercise...

Senate minority leader Harry Reid is blind in one eye. The news comes a week after Reid announced that he will retire at the end of this session of Congress and not run for reelection. “It looked like somebody had hit you,” Fusion newscaster Jorge Ramos told Reid in a recent interview. “Are you afraid that you might not regain your eyesight?” “No, I’m over that, ‘cause I can’t see out of my eye, and that’s the way it’s going to be until something comes along that’ll change it,” Reid responded to Ramos. “Right now, I’ve had 11 hours of...

BOSTON (CBS) – There’s little question that blue eyes, for whatever reason, are considered an attractive facial feature, and only 17% of the world’s population has them. The vast majority of us have brown eyes. But apparently, for the right price, you, too, can have blue eyes. The only way to change your eye color has been to wear colored contact lenses, but now there’s a new procedure that change brown eyes to blue. According to ophthalmologists, we all have blue eyes below our brown eyes, under a thin layer of pigment. A California company has now developed a laser...

If you live in the southern hemisphere, the southern sky constellation of Centaurus may look a little different to you tonight, as a bright nova has been identified in the region early this week. The initial discovery of Nova Centauri 2013 (Nova Cen 2013) was made by observer John Seach based out of Chatsworth Island in New South Wales Australia. The preliminary discovery magnitude for Nova Cen 2013 was magnitude +5.5, just above naked eye visibility from a good dark sky site. Estimates by observers over the past 24 hours place Nova Cen 2013 between magnitudes +4 and +5 “with...

Common Core, the controversial set of education standards being instituted by many state governors and education leaders, is coming under fire for its selection of a book that’s on the suggested reading list for 11th graders. 'The Bluest Eye' ok for high school students? ‘The Bluest Eye’ ok for high school students? The book, a past selection of Oprah’s Book Club, has graphic sex scenes and descriptions that make many readers blush. The work in question comes from Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison who explains her motivation for the book. Morrison, says that she wanted the reader to feel as...

It turns out we seriously underestimated the central nervous system. It's hard to say what's crazier: the fact that Tufts University researchers spent a year cutting out the tiny eyeballs of tadpole embryos and sticking them back on to the tadpoles' tails, or: the fact that, when they hatched, a few of the tadpoles COULD ACTUALLY SEE OUT OF THE EYES ON THEIR TAILS. As you know, this is not the way vision is supposed to work--your eyeballs are supposed to be connected to a big fat nerve that carries incoming signals back to your brain, which combines the information...

The mystery surrounding an enormous eyeball that was discovered on a Florida beach last Wednesday, prompting many wild theories and educated guesses as to what kind of creature it had belonged to, has been solved. Scientists who examined the colossal blue orb say it most likely came from a swordfish.

Huge eyeball turns up in Pompano Beach Taking his usual morning stroll along the surf in Pompano Beach, Gino Covacci noticed a strange ball-like object at the high tide line. He kicked it over and found himself staring at the biggest eyeball he had ever seen. The blue, softball-sized orb he found Wednesday was a departure from the shells, cigarette butts and seaweed he usually sees. He put it in a plastic bag and put that in the refrigerator. "It was very, very fresh," he said Thursday. "It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag." He...

Just back from the doctors office, got the wrapper off of my left eye. When everything settles down I'm gonna have close to 20/20 in both eyes!It's a different world and it sure is pretty!

The rise of a "technocracy" was always part of the plan for Europe. So, as headlines scream that vain bids to save the euro threaten us with “Armageddon”, the EU’s ruling elite has toppled two more elected prime ministers, to replace them with technocratic officials who can be trusted to do Brussels’s bidding. The new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was the man who, as head of Greece’s central bank, fiddled the figures to enable Greece to get into the euro (against the rules) in the first place – before being rewarded with a senior post in the European Central...

In Washington, D.C., a culture that embraces regulatory oversight and rule-making and where bureaucracies are everywhere, no federal agency is more warren-like than the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the safety and efficacy of food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and medical devices. The health and well-being of every American depends on the FDA's rigorous collecting, sifting and interpreting of data to approve products ranging from those that cure nail fungus to devices that electronically zap the brain to relieve anxiety. FDA regulators are scientist bureaucrats who tirelessly navigate the tedious but essential world between reports and medicine in a poorly lit...

I'm not an Egypt watcher, but it appears the Muslim Brotherhood is continuing plans to isolate the Arabian Peninsula. Iran's move to seal the western approaches didn't pan out thanks to both Bush '41 (Somalia operation) and Bush '43 (US, France, and initially Germany in Djibouti). The MB's real objective, in my opinion, is closing the Suez Canal. This, with Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, will effectively put our economy in bottom of the tank thanks to Obama's prior spending sprees. Our capability to militarily act is extremely limited, even if the administration had the will to do...

Conservatives despise him. Many liberals remain stubbornly unimpressed. Now, even babies — sweet, lovable, barely sentient babies — have turned on President Obama, the man with whom they once invested so much hope. Though he tries time and again to connect with these impressionable young citizens, it is all in vain, for his overtures are met only with cold shoulders. Tiny, cold shoulders.

When Kenneth Watson was 16, he thought nothing of the gnat that flew into his eye: "I don't think you can afford to be afraid of bugs in the Bible Belt," he said. But two weeks later when the Hardy, Ark., teen was getting ready for school, he knew something was terribly wrong when he couldn't see. When he told his mother, she thought he was faking. "I had slept late and my mom thought I was skipping school," he said. "Sometimes I would come up with crazy stories, and she told me to get up and get ready." As...

I've been noticing some long distance vision problems for several months. I had an exam today, cataracts in both eyes. The doc says new specs will keep me going for a while but plan on surgery within 2 years or so.The good news is that there are no signs of glaucoma, and my optic nerves and arteries look good.I've probably been missing a lot, when your eyes just gradually start having problems you don't always notice how bad they are.

A recently discovered comet is surprising skywatchers by becoming brighter than predictions had first suggested and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks. Comet McNaught, officially catalogued as C/2009 R1, was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera. It's the 51st comet that bears McNaught's name. Although initially an extremely faint object, enough observations of the newfound comet were made to allow Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to calculate an orbit. Comet McNaught is expected to...

An American woman lost her eye yesterday during a demonstration in Jerusalem against Israel's naval raid on a Gaza aid flotilla. Maryland college student Emily Henochowicz, 21, was hit in the face by a tear gas canister shot by an Israeli border policeman and underwent surgery in a local hospital, where she is now recuperating.

What is vodka eyeballing? A new fad among some kids in Europe may be spreading to the US. In online videos it is dubbed vodka eyeballing and now the claim is that some American teens have tried the odd way to get a buzz. It is just as it sounds - supposedly it is a shot of vodka into the eye. This bizarre new "trend" has found a home on YouTube and some say they are concerned for US kids as the claim is that it will get you a buzz quicker than taking a shot of vodka by mouth....

Even as drunken student antics go, it was, by any stretch of the imagination, a disturbing scene. Surrounded by cheering rugby players, applauded by fellow members of the university netball team, 19-year-old Melissa Fontaine tipped back her head and giggled as fellow drinkers in the Students' Union bar pulled apart her eyelids and allowed them to pour a shot of vodka into her left eye. 'Vodka eyeballing', as it is known in student circles, is the latest drinking craze to sweep through Britain's universities. Those who do it claim that it induces feelings of drunkenness at break-neck speeds, providing...

THE eye has long been an evolutionary battleground. Ever since William Paley came up with the watchmaker analogy in 1802 - that something as complex as a watch must have a maker - creationists have used it to make the "argument from design". Eyes are so intricate, they say, that it strains belief to suggest they evolved through the selection and accumulation of random mutations. Recently, evolutionary biologists have turned this argument on its head. They say that the "inside out" vertebrate retina - curiously structured so that its wiring obscures the light sensors and leaves us with a blind...