Free Republic

Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Wednesday that he would resign from his post after an independent investigation found “serious flaws” in some of the research he oversaw decades earlier. The panel of experts, which formed in January to look into allegations of research misconduct, found that Tessier-Lavigne did not personally engage in any fraud or manipulation of research data, nor did he have any knowledge of the malpractice going on in the lab. Still, the report found that on various occasions, when concerns about his papers emerged, Tessier-Lavigne “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record.”...

Manhattan DA Bragg recently indicted and arraigned former president Trump on 34 individual felony counts. According to statements from ‘star’ grand jury witness and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the matter concerns his payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence concerning an alleged 2006 affair—which she cannot prove and later denied in 2018. Trump reimbursed Cohen just before the 2016 election and apparently labeled it as legal expenses in his business records rather than ‘hush money reimbursement’, leading to Bragg’s business records misdemeanor charge. No less a legal scholar than Alan Dershowitz labeled this as ‘utter nonsense’.DA...

Harris County commissioners voted Tuesday to demolish and rebuild parts of the under-construction Beltway 8 bridge over the Houston Ship Channel after the original designs were found to have "significant" flaws. The setback will cost the county $291 million, including $50 million to demolish some sections that have already been built, according to the Houston Chronicle's Dug Begley. Work on the new Beltway 8 Bridge began in 2018, the same year another FIGG-constructed bridge collapsed near Florida International University in Miami, killing six people and putting the company's practices into question. COWI determined that there were 21 different "significant" design...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources. Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

Dive Brief: Six more contractors and designers have settled lawsuits for undisclosed amounts with victims' families and the survivors of the March 15, 2018, pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, the Miami Herald reported. Among the companies that settled is FIGG Bridge Group, which designed the pedestrian span. The other five companies are Bolton Perez & Associates; Corradino Group; A&P Consulting Transportation Engineers Corp.; RLT Engineering Services LLC; and Gerdau Ameristeel US Inc. There are more than 20 defendants being sued in civil lawsuits in Miami-Dade Circuit Court for their alleged roles in the collapse. The...

When I hear the phrase “structural problems” coming out of the mouths of elected officials, candidates or political pundits, I immediately assume that I’m about to get another lecture on America’s crumbling infrastructure. (And make no mistake, there are more than a few bridges and roadways that need some work. Pennsylvanians don’t say that their state bird is the traffic cone for nothing.) But this weekend, our colleague John Hawkins has knocked together one of his big five lists on a similar sounding topic with, The 5 Structural Problems That Are Destroying America.We’re not talking about interstates in need of...

The U.S. Department of State has known for decades that inadequate security at embassies and consulates worldwide could lead to tragedy, but senior officials ignored the warnings and left some of America's most dangerous diplomatic posts vulnerable to attack, according to an internal government report obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. The report by an independent panel of five security and intelligence experts describes how the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, which left Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead, exploited the State Department's failure to address serious security concerns...

Two inescapable flaws mar the Clinton economic legend. One is conveniently papered over; the other conveniently forgotten. Even so, a flawed legend is better than the economic reality President Obama’s policies have produced, so it is no surprise the sitting President has outsourced his economic messaging to the former President.The first flaw, described here and here, is that President Clinton raised taxes and the economy boomed. The flaw in the narrative is it ignores the passage of time—four years, to be exact. The timeline matters. Clinton raised taxes in 1993 just as the economy was set to take off from...

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments. The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008,...

The official, ultimate demise of the greatest socialist experiment in history, that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, occurred, ironically, on Christmas Day 1991, but only after it had dispossessed, imprisoned, tortured and murdered untold millions of its own citizen in the quest for the workers' chimerical paradise of equality and fairness, where each was projected to produce according to his ability and receive according to his needs. After 69 years of unremitting misery for the overwhelming majority of its people -- the socialist Nirvana never coming even remotely within sight -- the inevitable economic collapse took place, leaving...

A new headache may have been created for US and international currency use as it has been determined that a flaw was created in the printing of up to 30% of all new $100.00 bills scheduled for distribution in 2011. In a new report by CNBC today, an official familiar with the problem reported that the new $100 bills are so complex that the printers at the mint have experienced massive problems in the creation of the notes. A significant production problem with new high-tech $100 bills has caused government printers to shut down production of the new notes and...

1) Lack Of Personal Responsibility: 2) Short Attention Spans: 3) Excessive Self-Esteem: 4) Short Term Thinking/Instant Gratification: 5) Immorality:

...But Clinton has three problems that make her the weakest, most divisive Democrat in the race: First, she is a living symbol of the culture wars of the 1990s and will rally the Republican base like no other candidate. It is always easier to remind voters than to instruct them. And it won't take much reminding for Republicans when it comes to Clinton and her high-profile husband. Just a few words and phrases are necessary to evoke an entire era: "I didn't inhale." Kathleen Willey. Whitewater. "Two for the price of one." Polling to select vacation sites. Baking cookies. Joycelyn...

If talk show hosts ran the world, we'd have a national sales tax. We'd have no immigration, and we would have long ago carpet-bombed the entire Middle East. We'd also have something called "fair trade," which means no real trade at all. But they don't run the world; they just pretend that if they did, everything would be great. I would be a lot more confident that this was true if I didn't know so many talk show hosts. I would be even more confident if they had really run anything of consequence before. But I do, and they haven't....

Got a PDA and a magnet? You could switch votes cast in an Ohio election by connecting your PDA to the voting machine. A study conducted over a two-month period this year found that Ohio's voting systems are seriously flawed. An 86-page report released by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner says, "The findings in this study indicate that the computer-based voting systems in use in Ohio do not meet computer industry security standards, and are susceptible to breaches of security that may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process." When Brunner was campaigning for her office seat, she promised...

A380 jet flawed, fired worker alleges ,br> Seattle Times 10/02/05 author: Los Angeles Times, Peter Pae (Copyright 2005) VIENNA -- Ever since the Mangans gave up their comfortable house in Kansas City and moved here a year ago, the family has been living in a kind of suspended animation. SNIP Mangan alleges that flaws in a microprocessor could cause the valves that maintain cabin pressure on the A380 to accidentally open during flight, allowing oxygen to leak out so rapidly that everyone aboard could lose consciousness within seconds. It's a lethal scenario similar to the 1999 crash that killed professional...

Editorials imploring courts to uphold precedents often involve musty, ancient rulings. So here's something novel: We ask the California Supreme Court to honor the precedent it set all of 15 days ago. What's at stake – Proposition 77, an initiative taking away state lawmakers' anti-democratic power to draw their own election boundaries – is crucial to ending the gross dysfunction paralyzing California's government. This plea is necessary because on Tuesday the 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld a ruling kicking Proposition 77 off the November special election ballot. In a 2-1 decision, the court held that minor discrepancies between the...

SACRAMENTO – In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a "bold new era of reform" that he said would make government more accountable, improve education and control state spending. He later endorsed a series of five ballot measures for the Nov. 8 special election intended to turn his rhetoric into reality. But mistakes have shrunk Schwarzenegger's once broad agenda. Two of the measures were written so poorly that the governor decided to jettison them. A third, which deals with how political districts are drawn, faces a legal challenge today over a flaw that could cause it to be dropped from the...

3 safety goals for shuttle missed The finding that NASA falls short of key recommendations likely will not postpone next month's scheduled launch of Discovery.WASHINGTON -- A divided advisory group concluded Monday that NASA had failed to fully meet three key recommendations for safely returning the space shuttle to flight, including eliminating all critical launch debris and developing a way to repair the ship's heat shielding in orbit. Although embarrassing to NASA, the findings by the Stafford-Covey Task Group are not expected to postpone Discovery's planned launch in July. Members of the panel who spoke Monday after their final public...

LOS ANGELES -- Back east, well-placed Democrats have agreed that the party's 2008 nomination is all wrapped up better than three years in advance. They say that the prize is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's for the asking, and that she is sure to ask. But here on the left coast, I found surprising and substantial Democratic opposition to going with the former first lady. Both the Hollywood glitterati and the more mundane politicians of Los Angeles are looking elsewhere. They have seen plenty of Sen. Clinton over the past dozen years, and they don't particularly like what they've seen. Two...