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Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina received a ton of flak for shouting “you lie” in the middle of President Obama’s rally-for-Obamacare in a joint session of Congress. The issue was whether Obamacare would cover illegal aliens. PolitiFact called it one of the greatest distortions in that debate and bragged about calling it a half truth in a post on January 20, 2011: No new benefits for illegal immigrants. If they make a highlight reel of the health debate, they will surely include the moment when Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted ” You lie!” at President...

Did the President lie? Blago thinks so. Rod Blagojevich’s team asked the court to issue a rial subpoena to President Obama to get him to answer some key questions in Blagojevich’s trial. The ex-guv is accused of attempting to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat. The motion was made public but was supposed to have been heavily redacted. Unfortunately for the prosecution, the computer file released to the press was easily restored to an un-redacted state through simple computer features. So, here is the un-redacted subpoena:

How did the chimpanzee cross the road? 14 September 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Cautiously, it would seem. When it comes to crossing roads, chimps seem to have formulated their own version of a highway code. What's more, the time they spend pondering a strategy before crossing depends on how dangerous the road is. When some monkeys and baboons cross risky terrain, adult males travel at the front of the group to reduce the risk of it being attacked by predators. This had never been recorded in great apes, but now Kimberly Hockings of the University of Stirling in...

Sleep with Neanderthals? Apparently we (homo Sapiens) did By Faye Flam The Philadelphia Inquirer Though it's been 150 years since mysteriously humanlike bones first turned up in Germany's Neander Valley, the find continues to shake our collective sense of human identity. Neanderthals are humanity's closest relatives, with brains at least as big as ours, and yet we don't know whether we should include them as members of our own species. No longer does science consider them our direct ancestors but some suspect Neanderthals and modern homo Sapiens interbred during the 20,000 some-odd years we co-existed in Europe. The archaeological record...

Did the Ancient Greeks and Native Americans Swap Starcharts? Author Ker Than I had a story on SPACE.com yesterday about a very cool discovery: a one-thousand year old petroglyph, or rock carving, that was found in Arizona and which might depict the supernova of 1006, or SN 1006. The carving is presumed to have been made an ancient group of Native Americans called the Hohokam. The researcher who made the discovery argues that symbols of a scorpion and stars on the petroglyph match the relative positions of SN 1006 to the constellation Scorpius when the star first exploded. Well, after...

Did humans and chimps once interbreed? 17 May 2006 From New ScientistBob Holmes IT GOES to the heart of who we are and where we came from. Our human ancestors were still interbreeding with their chimp cousins long after first splitting from the chimpanzee lineage, a genetic study suggests. Early humans and chimps may even have hybridised completely before diverging a second time. If so, some of the earliest fossils of proto-humans might represent an abortive first attempt to diverge from chimps, rather than being our direct ancestors. We can observe the traces of this complex history in the human...

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival? 19:00 09 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival. Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island – one of the most remote places on Earth – was...

Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast. Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat.

US President George W Bush declared today that he had signed a rare presidential decree canceling any further expenditure of Federal funds on the US Space Shuttle program. "We cannot find any justification to continue deficit funding of a program that has no application other that proving that with enough money America can do anything," said Bush. "The whole world knows that already, so why keep spending money on it," he added. The announcement was made during an even rarer press conference with Whitehouse press corps, at which the President started proceedings by handing out Easter Eggs, quipping, "it might...

Did Dean pay his staff?

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

What did we do to deserve this? By Tom Parfitt in Beslan (Filed: 06/09/2004) They came in their hundreds to freshly dug graves on a meadow next to the main cemetery to bury the victims of the carnage. One funeral procession after another moved slowly through the crowds, the dead wrapped in white cloth and carried in open coffins. Weeping relatives witness Fatima Tetova's overwhelming grief at the burial of her children In the first grave, two young men were shovelling clods of earth on to their 50-year-old father, one of the oldest to die as three days of unimaginable...

'Why did you bring us? This is a slaughter' Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Kufa Friday August 27, 2004 The Guardian (UK) They came one wave after another: Shia demonstrators with banners and pictures of their ayatollahs and imams running towards the hidden line of men who were marked only by flying bullets. Beating their chests and shouting "Allahu akbar" (God is most great) at first they appeared not to realise the barrage they were confronting. When two or three men fell injured their colleagues picked them up and retreated. Only when the gunfire became heavy and bullets started whizzing overhead, peppering...

Bush 'did not ignore al-Qaeda' Mr Rumsfeld took to the airwaves to defend the administration Senior US officials have again rejected allegations that they ignored the threat from al-Qaeda before the 11 September 2001 attacks. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied charges by former counter-terrorism aide Richard Clarke that the administration was distracted by Iraq. "If one looks at what was done, we went to Afghanistan, we didn't go to Iraq" in the wake of the attacks, he said. Secretary of State Colin Powell also dismissed Mr Clarke's allegations. He denied that the incoming Bush administration paid little attention to terrorism,...

About a year after a high-ranking Republican officeholder in Illinois illegally used state workers to try to keep LP candidates off the ballot, a federal grand jury is investigating the incident. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a federal grand jury is looking into charges that Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka used state employees to challenge a slate of Libertarian candidates before the 2002 election. The employees were on the state clock at the time. Topinka, who was first elected state treasurer in 1994, is currently serving her third term in office. She also serves as the state...

Scarborough Country has spoken, and MCI had listened. It’s time for The Real Deal. Watch Joe Scarborough on “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC TV. Repeats 1am and 4am SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, our Scarborough Country staff began investigating the extreme views of Hollywood movie star Danny Glover. Mr. Glover, who is know primarily for his “Lethal Weapon” films, has a history of making divisive political comments. He called the president of the United States a racist, he blamed American policy for the murderous acts of September 11th, and he signed a petition comparing American soldiers in the Gulf...

My high-school daughter has been invited by the "National Youth Leadership Forum" (NYLF) to a seminar in Defense, Intelligence and Diplomacy (DID) in Washington DC. Their name sounds noble, they have slick marketing collateral and website, and other graduates from the same high school have apparently attended; but I thought it would be wise to continue with the due diligence and see whether anyone has had experience with NYLF, especially the DID section.

Previous thread: Help me stage my First Freep!! Looking for help from Chicago Area Freepers (In the Loop) 22 October 20002 Like so many first combat missions, mine started before dawn. As I gathered with my fellow business students for the ride into Chicago, we could hear geese honking to each other above the overcast as they formed up for their flight South. It seemed like a good omen to me. Later in the day, after touring the sites we had come to visit, we were released on our own recognizance until it was time to board the train for...