Free Republic

Outrageous egos battling each other across the cosmos? Check. Sci-fi nerds who’ve definitely watched too much Star Trek? Check. Humanity’s next chapter in a space left in the hands of insanely rich tech billionaires happy to take NASA’s tax-payer billions? Check. This is Mission Control: We have lift-off! Just a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful rocket to date - the 400-ft long, $67 million Starship - only for it to explode mid-air just four minutes into flight, a phoenix has risen from the flames to bravely take on the quest for space travel. Or at...

David Garrow, the award-winning biographer of Martin Luther King, has written a biography of Barack Obama. It’s called Rising Star. Carlos Lozada, a liberal who reviews books for the Washington Post, considers Garrow’s biography of Obama here. According to Lozada: Garrow. . .concludes his massive new work with a damning verdict on Obama’s determination: “While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.” Based on Lozada’s review, it appears that Garrow supports this conclusion in part by examining Obama’s relationship with his long-time girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. The two nearly married, but...

Longer than the Houses of Parliament and able to launch up to 108 air strike sorties per day, Britain’s new aircraft carriers will make potential enemies “think twice” about starting future wars, their senior naval officer has said. The new Queen Elizabeth Class carriers will be become Britain’s most potent conventional weapon and change the way the Royal Navy does business, Capt Simon Petitt said. The two vast 67,000 tonne vessels, which have cost £6.2bn for the pair, are the largest warships ever built in Britain. The first of the ships to be ready, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is due to...

In a high-profile speech in Harlem on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is expected to address the issue of systemic racism, and offer solutions for how to break down the barriers that hold back African American families. The speech is part of Clinton’s effort in recent days— as she closes in on the South Carolina primary and turns her attention toward more diverse March states — to show that she views racism and discrimination as stand-alone problems in American in need of their own solutions. Her approach appears designed to highlight the contrast with her chief rival Bernie Sanders, who so far...

On March 25, 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on their blog that ESA’s study of the mass of Phobos had been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. The announcement excerpted startling conclusions of ESA’s findings: “We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.” (1,2) Since that time, a number of prominent ancient astronaut blogs have had plenty to say about the findings. The ESA findings were most...

President Obama is working very hard to destroy US military superiority, consciously and unconsciously to the advantage our global enemies. In an attempt to seize control over national security and another overt attempt to bypass Congress, the Obama administration may have already made this play as of this writing. That play is that the United States and Russia both reduce nuclear weapons without a treaty, as a treaty would require ratification by the Senate. This would allow Obama and the Executive Branch to unilaterally cut our military capability and nuclear weaponry and ignore the treaty clause of the Constitution. It...

To grasp what's really motivating Cleaver, I apply what I call the "A Time to Kill" test.

In the three decades since the death penalty was reinstated, 86 condemned inmates have died in California. Thirteen were executions. Death-row prisoners are far more likely to succumb to natural causes. That’s what claimed 50 of them. Suicide is more common, too. There’s disagreement about whether it’s good or bad that so few have been executed. Death-penalty advocates say it’s “justice delayed, justice denied,” especially when victims’ relatives die before the killers. Opponents say delays leave time for evidence to be found to exonerate the innocent. Still, almost no one disputes the conclusion of a state commission two years ago...

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

Reformist Writer Dr. Kamel Al-Najjar: "If the Muslims are Serious About Presenting the Radiant Face of Islam… They Must… Acknowledge Their Dark Past" In January 2006, the Austrian-Iraqi Association for Development held its first conference on extremism and terrorism around the world, in Vienna. The conference was attended by Arab, Muslim and European researchers, intellectuals and diplomats. In the closing statement, the participants made the following recommendations: to present the humane and rational side of Islam which calls for co-existence and acceptance of the other; to condemn all forms of violence and terrorism; to promote dialogue and cooperation among all...

Our hollow prosperity-------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern PATRICK BUCHANAN © 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc. Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises. What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results? Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit...

Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations. ‘‘Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby is the fictional hero of the Great American novel. He is the archetypal American self-creator. He was born Jay Gatz but repudiated his origins and background while inventing a grand new persona. He was the perfect hero for a country born by casting off its European origins and creating a new world wherein success was determined, not by background, but by individual talent. Fitzgerald's tale is, however, a cautionary one, because he warns against the inescapability of the past, the dangers of trying too hard to escape from history. In the novel, Gatsby comes to...

Hollow mystery for Mars rover 13:27 19 January 04 NewScientist.com news service The Mars rover Spirit has completed its first full set of scientific measurements with the instruments on its robotic arm, revealing mysterious hollow grains in the soil.The one-metre arm used its microscope to take a close-up image of an undisturbed patch of soil next to the NASA rover. It shows mostly sand-sized particles, but with a large number of apparently hollow spheres or tubes. The image resolution is about 30 microns per pixel - about the width of a human hair. Such grains were completely unexpected. But John...