Free Republic

'Jackie Kennedy of China' at Center of Political Drama By JEREMY PAGE, BRIAN SPEGELE and STEVE EDER The wife of sacked Communist Party official Bo Xilai made quite an impression when she showed up in Mobile, Ala., 15 years ago with her young son in tow. Denver lawyer Ed Byrne, whom she had hired to represent Chinese companies embroiled in a legal mess in U.S. federal court, was struck by her brains, charm and beauty. Gu Kailai, he says, seemed like the "Jackie Kennedy of China." Gu Kailai was close to a British businessman who died mysteriously. . The business...

Archaeological dig at abandoned Roman city in Hampshire yields earliest representation of an Egyptian deity found in Britain... A battered and corroded thumb -- sized piece of bronze has turned out to be a unique find, the earliest representation of an Egyptian deity from any site in Britain -- and appropriately, after almost 2,000 years hidden in the ground, it is Harpocrates, the god of secrecy and silence. The little figure was found at Silchester, site of an abandoned Roman city in Hampshire, in last summer's excavation, but his identity was only revealed in months of careful conservation work. His...

A man has been found guilty of leading a "satanic" sex cult from his home in a small Welsh town. Colin Batley, 48, of Kidwelly, west Wales, presided over a group that preyed on young children and held occult rites. He was found guilty at Swansea crown court of rape and carrying out perverted sexual acts on children and adults. Batley was the self-styled high priest of the group, which operated from a series of homes in a cul-de-sac in the seaside town. He and five other alleged members insisted throughout the five-week trial that no cult had ever existed....

I have a foolproof plan for carbon sequestration. The costs are low, the effectiveness high. I have been conducting a trial right here in my own home. What we need is an army of Horuses. The concept is quite simple: no matter how little I feed Horus, he keeps getting bigger. Undoubtedly, he is sequestering carbon for reasons known only to his little cat brain. What we need to do is take advantage of this. I am sure that two or three Horuses assigned to every US household should offset the carbon footprint of each home. Yes, Horus produces poop,...

I have discovered the only sure way to get Horus to exercise: I have to wander aimlessly from room to room in the house; Horus then follows me (sometimes even running ahead and jumping on furniture in defiance of fat-cat-gravity). I know from prior experience that simply projecting myself from a to b will not work. Horus seems to know that I have a purpose and a destination, and he waits me out (since frequently I return from b to a). Ah, but let me go in search of something I have misplaced (in this case a copy of “In...

Now that I have navigated successfully the Bermuda Triangle of Storage that is the Closet of Doom, I realize that Horus rightly has been concerned about my welfare when I am up in the office. Especially when I go into the closet! When I occasionally would venture in there to look for something that had been swallowed up, he would follow me in with all his feline indicators on high alert. I just chalked it up to inexplicable cat behavior, bt now I know that he truly feared for my well-being. Not that I am anthropomorphizing, really. He wasn’t concerned...

People anthropomorphize animals all the time. Amusingly, usually. And most of us are guilty (although I have a workmate who never indulges in this behavior. She did call me the other day, though, to have me instruct her in the pronunciation of the word, so that she might not sound like a fool while she ridicules those of her acquaintance who imagine their dogs to be smiling at them.) I myself frequently imagine Horus to be gazing at me in loving adoration, while he more probably is projecting the little dotted butcher’s lines onto the contours of my flesh and...

Horus has no clue about Sarah Palin, but he has finely tuned radar for when I want to be cat-imated and when I don’t. Just like every cat ever born, Horus knows when he’s wanted, and he studiously avoids putting himself forward when it suits his human. No. He inserts his patently NOT-TRANSPARENT catself between me and my computer whenever I really have to get something done on the aforementioned device. Like my expense report or my email when I absolutely, positively have to get a message out FIVE SECONDS AGO. (“Horus, you are a DOOR, not a window,” I...