Free Republic

The latest search for remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre has ended with 32 additional caskets discovered and eight sets of remains exhumed, according to the city.... ...Searchers sought unmarked graves of people who were probably male, in plain caskets with signs of gunshot trauma... Two sets of the 66 remains found in the past two years have been confirmed to have gunshot wounds, according to Stubblefield, though none have been identified or confirmed to be victims...

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A Republican state senator from Oregon said on Tuesday that the designation of slaves as three-fifths of a person was not racist, drawing condemnation from at least two black lawmakers. Sen. Dennis Linthicum, from Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, said during floor debate that the intent of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which classified a slave as three-fifths of a person in the U.S. Constitution, was a way to prevent slave states from gaining too much power in Congress. "The three-fifths vote was actually to eliminate the overwhelming influence the slave states would have in representative government," he...

What's next, Mika? Giant alligators in the sewers of New York City? On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski perpetuated the hoary urban legend that domestic violence spikes on Super Bowl Sunday. Brzezinski's blunder came in the context of the panel's discussion of the NFL's domestic violence mess. Arguing that football is a violent game and that "there's a connection" with what happens at home, Mika continued, "domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday. We've seen the numbers. Why is that?" Actually, Brzezinski has apparently not seen the numbers, since that myth has been thoroughly debunked, often by organizations fighting domestic violence,...

Dinosaur that lived 85 million years ago was size of a bus, but breathed like a bird A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.

January 29, 2008 (Computerworld) A popular urban legend debunking site has stopped serving up adware downloads after the practice was criticized by security experts and users, according to one researcher. Snopes.com, a site that exposes urban legends, had until yesterday been funding its operation in part with revenues from a pop-up ad that posed the question "Do you want to block Junk emails?" That pop-up, said Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software, in turn shilled ad-serving software from Zango Inc., a well-known adware distributor that settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in late 2006 over charges it used unfair...

There are certain rumors that refuse to die and make the rounds across the Internet--which Al Gore didn't create--every year. From the U.S. government issuing Social Security numbers based on race (false) to blacks being eligible for a $5,000 tax credit based on slave reparations (good luck with that), there are some rumors that resurface like clockwork. One such rumor, according to various e-mails circulating on the Internet, is the idea that blacks' right to vote will expire when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 expires at year's end. ( ... ) the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, ... guaranteed...

Pasadena's Top Ten Urban Myths John Stossel has a column on the Top Ten List of Foolish Media Myths (excerpted below). What would the list look like if applied to the City of Pasadena? No. 10: Pasadenans have less free time due to traffic congestion and the light rail is the best solution. No. 9. Closing four schools and sharing services with the City will solve Pasadena Unified School District's financial crisis. No. 8: Democrats make for good government. No. 7: Pasadena is getting too crowded. No. 6. Chemicals like perchlorate in drinking water are leading to learning deficits in...

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University. That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers...

Forty-five years ago this week, ...1959, most Americans celebrated Thanksgiving sans cranberry sauce. Earlier that month, a government health official had announced that traces of the weed killer aminotriazole — a chemical that caused cancer in rodents — had been found in the cranberry crop. The spokesman urged housewives to "be on the safe side" and refrain from buying cranberries because the rodent data suggested that the "contaminated" cranberries could pose a human cancer risk. There was never any real health risk. The cranberry scare of 1959 marked the beginning of a modern wave of "chemical phobia" and a government...