Free Republic

J. Carter Brown, 67, a master impresario, creative showman and energetic fundraiser who in 23 years as director of Washington's National Gallery of Art elevated the museum's profile, enhanced its appeal and broadened its mission, died of cancer Monday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, his family said in a statement.

The "selfish gene" theory proposed by Richard Dawkins has been an influential thread in scientific and popular thinking for the past 25 years. The key concept is that any action is a supremely self-serving one on the part of the actor, devoid of motivation to serve the larger group to which the actor belongs (i.e., genes as parts of an organism). As far as Dawkins is concerned, the struggle for survival always takes place at the scale of the individual gene. Instead of thinking that organisms compete, Dawkins would have us think that different versions of the gene, known as ...

WASHINGTON — Senior sources in the Justice Department's Campaign Finance Task Force tell Fox News they plan to turn down a chance to retry Democratic fund-raiser Maria Hsia on Federal tax fraud charges. A mistrial was declared last week in Los Angeles when the jury deadlocked. The Judge gave prosecutors until Thursday to decide what to do. Hsia faces four counts of income tax evasion. Hsia faces a later trial in Washington, D.C. on charges of funneling illegal foreign contributions to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign through monks and nuns at a Buddhist Temple in California. She is also charged ...