Free Republic

December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects. During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents. Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector,” but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden’s son Hunter. On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting...

Sheldon K. Friedlander, whose work in identifying the sources of particles in Southern California smog led to new ways of studying and regulating air pollution, has died. Friedlander died Feb. 9 at his home in Pacific Palisades of complications from pulmonary fibrosis, his family said. He was 79. While a professor at the California Institute of Technology in the 1970s, he was among the founders of aerosol science - the study of gases and particles in the air. Friedlander discovered a way to analyze the chemical makeup of smog particles and trace what was creating air pollution at any given...