Free Republic

A metro rider was robbed of his pricey Canada Goose parka by two teen thugs who accused him of 'snitching'. Video filmed by another straphanger on the DC Metro on Wednesday showed one of the robbers forcing the young man to take off the coat in his seat. 'Snitch, Imma crush your b***h a**,' he berated the rider as he yanked the jacket from him after he took it off, then walked away. The victim protested: 'Dude, I wasn't snitching... I was just talking about something else. I wasn't gonna snitch! I'm sorry!' It's not clear whether the 'snitching' accusation...

20,000 Boer Children Died in Concentration Camps, Boer War, 1899-1901. Very many victims of the February 1945 Dresden Firestorm were not German Citizens, They were Women and Children fleeing the Russians. These issues bear on the current conflicts. You can argue about "justification", but not about whether or not this happened. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts", asserted the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) The first modern instance of targeting civilians as pawns of war, came during the Boer War, when the families of the very tough guerilla fighters from among the Boer...

Ford Motor Company will make history by importing its next generation Lincoln Nautilus from China — the first time ever to do so. The move comes as backlash mounts against a planned Ford plant in Marshall, Michigan, that involves China’s premier electric vehicle battery supplier. This month, Ford executives announced that the Lincoln Nautilus will be made in China and imported to sell to Americans in the United States. Previously, the SUV was made in Ontario, Canada before being shipped to the U.S. market for sale.

When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there’s remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Surprisingly, archaeology—tools, artifacts, cave art—suggest that complex technology and cultures, “behavioral modernity,” evolved more recently: 50,000 to 65,000 years ago. Some scientists interpret this as suggesting the earliest Homo sapiens weren’t entirely modern. Yet the different data tracks different things. Skulls and genes tell us about brains, artifacts about culture. Our brains probably became modern before our cultures.Key physical and cultural milestones in...

Several years ago, Edwin Settle wrote a syndicated news article titled “Jonah’s big fish story teaches important lesson.” Mr. Settle was a former college professor (COE College) and minister with a doctorate from Yale Divinity School.In his article, he attacked the book of Jonah by stating: “The book of Jonah cannot be accepted as history” (Settle, B-4).Professor Settle listed several alleged inaccuracies contained in the book. It is incredible that one could be alive for three days in a fish’s belly.It is unlikely that a city would so unanimously respond to the preaching of someone of a different language...

For the Bush administration, its conflict with Iran began with news of the Iranian nuclear enrichment program. For Iranians, the conflict started in 1901 when the British took advantage of a weak government to obtain a highly profitable oil concession. Since then, Iran has been locked in a struggle to control its own destiny, even at the risk of confrontation with the international community. Every successive American President since Jimmy Carter has been inaugurated with the historical conflict with Iran. The Iran Libya Sanctions Act, although lifted for Libya, is still in full effect for Iran. Also the US remains...