Free Republic

When President Trump referred to Baltimore as a "disgusting rat and rodent infested mess", he could have just as easily been talking about its two-legged Democrat rats as its four-legged Norwegian rats. Charm City's Norwegian rats (rattus norvegicus) usually only come out at night and munch on trash in the shadows of housing projects, while its Democrat rats (rattus democratus) sashay around in the light of day and munch on taxpayer goodies in the marble houses of government. If you want to see a good example of rattus democratus in its native Baltimorean habitat, draw the curtains, send the kiddies...

The Green movement was the last segment of German Society to admit its complicity with National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust. While countless historical books have decried the industrial nature of the holocaust, such works fail to explain the motive behind the greatest crime of the 20th century. The Nazi economy and its industry were merely the means by which the holocaust was implemented and paid for. “Nazi Oaks” describes the anti-Semitic historical background of the early German green movement in the 1800’s that was later absorbed by National Socialism under the biological umbrella of ‘scientific’ Social Darwinism....

Does anyone have recommendations for treating heavily wooded property for ticks? My one-year-old basset hound (Sophie) is an indoor dog, but she has free access to a little over an acre of heavily wooded property. (300+ oaks and pecans.) I've tried every treatment I can find to put on Sophie to prevent ticks, but I'm still finding them on her once every few days. She sleeps on my daughter's bed, so I'm worried about a tick dropping off in the bed. She's a lemon basset hound so the ticks are easy to see unless they're really small. Is there anything...

Transcript of Elder Dallin H. Oaks speech given at BYU-Idaho on 13 October 2009. My dear young friends, I am pleased to speak to this BYU-Idaho audience. I am conscious that I am also speaking to many in other places. In this time of the Internet, what we say in one place is instantly put before a wider audience, including many to whom we do not intend to speak. That complicates my task, so I ask your understanding as I speak to a very diverse audience. In choosing my subject I have relied on an old military maxim that when...

Two stories published in The Salt Lake Tribune this week, as a British friend of mine would say, put the cat among the pigeons. The first story reported that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints baptized a recently canonized Roman Catholic saint by proxy and sealed him to a wife for eternity. "Father Damien, the Roman Catholic priest who cared for lepers in Hawaii in the 19th century, apparently is a saint twice over," Kristen Moulton wrote. " ... There is no evidence Damien ever married, which would have been a violation of his vow of...

Massachusetts residents say they are under siege from this year's large crop of acorns as the hard nuts have been falling from trees like rain. Greg Roberson and Neil McIsaac of Brookline, Mass., said they routinely encounter the nuts as they fall from area oak trees, creating safety hazards while in the air and once on the ground, The Boston Globe reported Saturday. "Every time I hear one, I think it's a kid throwing a rock at me," Roberson said. "They're falling everywhere." "I've nearly broken my neck several times," McIsaac offered. "There are tons of them."

JUST in time to complicate spring planting, the federal government is preparing to issue what agriculture officials call the most sweeping restrictions on the shipment of nursery plants ever undertaken in the United States, to try to prevent the spread of a virulent disease that has killed tens of thousands of oaks and other species along the West Coast. The restrictions, expected to be issued in early January, will affect millions of plants grown in California, Oregon and Washington, about one-third of the country's nursery plant supply. They will require inspection, sampling and possibly testing of all plants that could...

Sudden Oak Death Impacting Other SpeciesSudden Oak Death Impacting Other Species BERKELEY, California, April 8, 2003 (ENS) - Researchers believe a highly contagious disease that has killed tens of thousands of native California oaks could be spread by a wide range of other species. Sudden Oak Death (SOD) was first reported in 1995 in Marin County, California in oaks and tanoaks, but now scientists think that nearly all the main tree species in California's forests, as well as forest shrubbery and undergrowth, may act as hosts for the disease. "SOD's reproductive strategy may make it able to persist indefinitely...