Free Republic

At the time of Watergate, the French were completely mystified about what it was all about. "Of course, an incoming Administration rewards its supporters and prosecutes the prior Admin as much as it can", numerous French heads have civilly rolled. It's a fine tradition, in Pakistan, if you're a former head of state but haven't got the death penalty, you're a nobody. In the late 1960s, a newly-dead American Congressman was found to have $3.3 million under his bed. It was considered a grievous travesty; and even the fact that he didn't set up a foundation to garner $billions by...

Rapid mental rejuvenation in old mice suggests age-related losses may be broadly reversible. Just a few doses of an experimental drug can reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in mice, according to a new study by UC San Francisco scientists. The drug, called ISRIB, has already been shown in laboratory studies to restore memory function months after traumatic brain injury (TBI), reverse cognitive impairments in Down Syndrome, prevent noise-related hearing loss, fight certain types of prostate cancer, and even enhance cognition in healthy animals. In the new study, published on December 1, 2020, in the open-access journal eLife,...

(Alvesgaspar/Wikimedia commons/CC BY-SA 3.0) =============================================================== A tiny brown invasive species of spider that's creeping its way across the UK has a dangerous reputation for dissolving flesh, one that many experts have argued isn't deserved. There's now compelling evidence suggesting that stories of the false widow spider (Steatoda nobilis) causing horrid skin infections has at least some basis in fact. The false widow has called the UK home ever since it was spotted on its shores in the 1870s, most likely having hitched a ride from Madeira and the Canary Islands off the African coast. In recent decades its range has...

WASHINGTON, Monday, Dec. 3. The South Carolina members, after consultation, determined to resume their seats, and during an eloquent prayer by the Chaplain they appeared to be much impressed with the responsibility resting upon them and their constituents. As soon, however, as the roll-call commenced, the Southern members gathered into squads and engaged in earnest conversation. Republicans generally retained their seats, and seemed absorbed in the various letters and papers spread out on their desks. Extraordinary quiet pervaded the Hall, while the immense galleries and lobbies were packed to suffocation. The gallery allotted to foreign Ministers was full for the...

***THE CHEAP KNOCKOFF FRIDAY SILLINESS THREAD*** Satisfaction guaranteed or no money back!Release the Kraken History is full of examples of people who messed with the wrong folks. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor America opened up a can whoop a** that actually became radioactive at one point.When Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu spoke from his palatial palace to an assembled crowd in Romania he found out the hard way they were not liking it.Bin Laden thought he was going to get brownie points in Heaven for attacking America. He ended up getting roasted brown in Hell instead.79% of Trump voters believe...

I'm looking for books on American history that I can give to my ten year son. He's interested in the American Revolutionary War but he's interested in other topics as well. I'm concerned about ordering something from Amazon or elsewhere that might contain nonsense about transgender Founding Fathers or Muslim pioneers who took part in the Constitutional Convention. Any suggestions?

On Dec. 21, humans can witness something not seen in nearly 800 years. That’s right, during the upcoming winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will line up to create what is known as the “Christmas Star” or “Star of Bethlehem “Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to be to one another,” Patrick Hartigan, astronomer at Rice University, told Forbes. “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a...

Didi Taihuttu and Family =========================================================== Didi Taihuttu, his wife, and three kids bet all they have on bitcoin. In 2017, CNBC spoke to the Dutch family of five when they were in the process of liquidating their assets — from a profitable business and 2,500-square-foot house, to their shoes — and trading it all in for the popular cryptocurrency and a life on the road. Nearly four years and 40 countries later, Taihuttu and his family still don’t have bank accounts, a house, or all that much by way of personal possessions. All of the family’s savings remain tied up...

Another shiny monolith reminiscent of the one featured in “2001: A Space Odyssey” has appeared, this one on top of Pine Mountain in California. Dozen of hikers have trekked up to the top of the mountain in Atascadero, northwest of Los Angeles, to take pictures with the 10-foot shiny monolith, the Atascadero News reported. “The object was welded together at each corner, with rivets attaching the side panels to a likely steel frame inside. The top of the monument did not show any weld marks, and it appears to be hollow at the top, and possibly bottom,” the paper wrote,...

Newsmax TV flys like an eagle soaring in just weeks, heading towards leading the pact of Failing Fake News Media, Cable & Legacy TV stations. The the Newsmax menu TV shows and presentations, given a fantastic Christmas gift from Fox News Corporation which has on its own, committed self-inflicted, Media Suicide, cannot believe its good and grand progress in adding masses of TV viewers and new advertisers to the Newsmax brand!!! Also, TV stations, OANN & Rightside Broadcasting Network have likewise joined the million people TV viewer club!!! Them winds of change....they is a'blowing....big time!!!

Former President Barack Obama called on the Democratic National Committee to give a bigger platform to progressives as they continue to butt heads with the party's centrist members. "One thing I will say about the Democratic Party is that promoting young people is really important. We stick so long with the same old folks and don't make room for new voices," Obama said in an interview with Peter Hamby on Snapchat's Good Luck America. Obama also acknowledge the party's controversial decision to allot Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only 60 seconds at this summer's national convention, while handing out significantly more television...

On Wednesday, The Debrief’s Tim McMillan gave us the most detailed look yet at the Pentagon’s ongoing research of unidentified flying objects, UFOs, or what the government refers to as “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Publicly announced earlier this year, the “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” is run out of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Its mission is to detect, analyze, and catalog UFOs. I can confirm the accuracy of McMillan’s story, the previously unreported Navy UFO encounter in late 2019, and his description of task force intelligence reports from 2018 and 2020. And that the government has been unable to positively...

Christopher Camacho of Ontario, Canada, found a wallet in an old couch and returned it to owner Darcy Major, who last saw it in 1966. Photo by pprasantasahooo/Pixabay.com ================================================================ Dec. 2 (UPI) -- An Ontario, Canada, man who lost his wallet 54 years ago had the item returned to him after another man found it in an old couch. Darcy Major, 86, of Port Dover, said his wallet went missing in 1966, and he never found out what happened to it until Christopher Camacho got in touch with his children. Camacho found the wallet in an old couch and got...

WASHINGTON, Sunday, Dec. 2. A quorum of both branches of Congress is present, and business will therefore commence at once. All the New-England, Pennsylvania, and nearly all the Western, New-York and Cotton State members have arrived. Senators CHESNUT and HAMMOND are not here, and will not be. South Carolina will not reappoint them nor choose successors. There are two lines of policy marked out and discussed in political circles respecting the course to be pursued by the Republican and Democratic Parties in Congress at the opening of the present Session. Among the Republicans, one is to propose compromises, and make...

Big business, the right wing, and now the courts have rung the bell on what is now the fourth round of the fight to expel socialists from Seattle City Hall. The corporate elite are determined to do so by hook or by crook. They failed in the first three rounds to buy this city council seat, the last time with unprecedented corporate cash from Amazon. The latest effort, a right-wing recall campaign, is perhaps the most serious threat so far, seeking now to use the courts and four trumped-up charges to overturn my reelection last year. It’s not for nothing....

A photograph of a damaged Allied ship after the Luftwaffe raid of Bari Harbour, Italy, December 2, 1943. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Before the atomic bomb came along, chemical weapons were the ultimate red line – the boundary between supposedly civilised warfare and unrestrained barbarism. Even before their horrors were first unleashed on a large scale in World War I, nations had sought to ban the use of “poison weapons.” After approximately 90,000 were killed by gas warfare during World War I, the moral and legal revulsion intensified. Numerous solemn proclamations and protocols were created in which civilised nations pledged never...

National lawmakers introduced a joint resolution Wednesday aimed at striking language from the U.S. Constitution that enshrines a form of slavery in America’s foundational documents. The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s ban on chattel enslavement to expressly prohibit involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. As ratified, the original amendment has permitted exploitation of labor by convicted felons for over 155 years since the abolition of slavery. The 13th Amendment “continued the process of a white power class gravely mistreating Black Americans, creating generations of poverty, the breakup...

“Voting in Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony,” blustered the ineffective Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday, as he denounced well-publicized efforts to enlist temporary residents to vote in the January 5 election for two seats in the U.S. Senate. “Third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting.” But he and other Republican state officials have the responsibility not to use a voting system that allows fraud in the first place. Occasionally urging people to behave, and not to exploit a system rife with vulnerabilities, does not prevent fraud when...

An 8-mile-long "canvas" filled with ice age drawings of mastodons, giant sloths and other extinct beasts has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest. The gorgeous art, drawn with ochre — a red pigment frequently used as paint in the ancient world — spans nearly 8 miles (13 kilometers) of rock on the hills above three rock shelters in the Colombian Amazon, a new study finds. "These really are incredible images, produced by the earliest people to live in western Amazonia," study co-researcher Mark Robinson, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, who analyzed the rock art alongside Colombian scientists, said...

Twenty-two-year-old Marion Morrison, known to his friends as Duke, was carrying a table on his head across the soundstage of a John Ford movie. He was working as a prop man at the Fox Studio in Los Angeles early in 1930. Director Raoul Walsh was looking for a leading man for an epic western film he was developing about a great wagon train journeying across vast deserts and mountains to California. Walsh didn’t want a known star to play the lead. He was looking for someone who would “be a true replica of the pioneer type.” He didn’t want the...