Free Republic

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein. Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia...

Bystanders captured the moment a black teen was surrounded by five officers, then tased while his hands were up for allegedly vaping on the boardwalk Footage of Saturday's of 19-year-old Brian Anderson, who appears to be cooperative with police but was immobilized anyway, has gone viral Anderson appears to reach for the strap of his backpack but is instantly tasered by an officer and falls to the ground clutching his stomach in pain Eyewitnesses claimed he had been asked to take off his backpack Ocean City Council has banned smoking and vaping on its beaches and boardwalk, and only allows...

Rocket scientists, long considered the gold standard in intelligence among all professionals, are not nearly as smart as originally thought, according to a controversial new study published today by the American Association of Brain Surgeons. The study, which appears in the organization's monthly publication, Popular Brain Surgery, is entitled "The Intelligence of Rocket Scientists: Myth Versus Reality," and suggests that rocket scientists' reputation for smartness is largely undeserved. "It does require a superior intellect to function as a rocket scientist," the article concedes. "Having said that, though, rocket science is not brain surgery." The article drew an immediate rebuke from...