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Friends say Pantagraph commenters always claim it’ll be a wild frontier if non-criminal Illinoisans carry legal self-defense firearms. Nonsense. I’ve been to self-reliant, truly wild America, without law enforcement or crime because inhabitants carry guns. Affiliations, status, education, wealth or lack of it are meaningless. You’re judged by the look in your eye. I recall in a primitive saloon in wilderness Alaska just south of Yukon River, fishermen, loggers, gold-panners, hunters and trappers discussed guns with me. Rugged alpha men, they exuded manners, politeness, kindness and self-confidence. Outside were stray dogs they all cared for. An old male “neighborhood grizzly”...

In the spring of 1961, President Kennedy spoke to Congress about his desire to “win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny.” He told Congress and the nation that “now it is time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise — time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.” His inspiring conclusion: “I believe we should go to the moon” — though he noted that this would require additional expenditures...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

Locals severely beat up nine pirates, killing two on the spot, when they were attempting to loot a boat in a remote char area on the river Jamuna in Daulatpur upazila of Manikganj yesterday. Police rescued and arrested seven pirates in a critically injured state. The dead or injured robbers could not be identified immediately. Police also retrieved several machetes and locally made weapons to be used by the pirates. Shawkat Hossain, officer-in-charge of Daulatpur Police Station, said 20 to 25 cattle traders on an engine boat were heading towards a cattle market at Bera in Pabna to buy cows....

The Virginia Frontier Culture Museum's 1740s log cabin is displayed as a work in progress. The cabin is a typical peeled-log, saddle-notched settler's cabin of the kind favored by Scotch-Irish moving into the wilds of the Backcountry. The construction was simple and required few tools. The museum's replica is built with one door and no windows -- a common practice which led to laws requiring homesteader's cabins have at least one window.

"Now, both stories are being told." This is how the ads campaign for Spielberg's miniserie "Into the West" began. In the making-of, the producers insisted that the old westerns were biased, and that an entire chapter of American history had been wrongly depicted for decades. "Into the West" was on TV to change this awful situation. However, after three minutes of the show, everyone could understand that "Into the West" was simply another piece of propaganda, dedicated to distort the truth and promote the "White guilt" mantra. There wasn't any respect for historical accuracy or attempt to do it right....

Southwest Airlines said Monday it has submitted a binding cash offer of more than $170 million to acquire Frontier Airlines, which will be sold at auction as part of Frontier's bankruptcy case. As part of the offer, Southwest would acquire about 80% of Frontier's existing Airbus fleet, or 40 aircraft, plus all of Lynx, Frontier's short-haul subsidiary. "We believe our bid ultimately should be seen as the strongest offer by all interested parties, including Frontier, its creditors, employees, and customers," said Southwest Air's Chief Executive Gary Kelly in a prepared statement.

The Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia, is a window on the past. The museum traces the history of various immigrants who settled the Virginia frontier in colonial and early American times with buildings depicting the architecture and lifestyle of the folk of England, Northern Ireland, West Africa, and Germany who came to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Most of the houses and other buildings are the real thing. The English farmhouse was built in England in the 17th century; the Museum had it disassembled and reconstructed it in Virginia. The 1820s and 1850s American farm houses are likewise the...

The plane that slammed into a mountainside near Nome in February lacked a voluntary but key piece of equipment that could have sped the rescue of the five passengers and pilot, a federal investigator said last week. Frontier Flying Service hadn’t removed the plane’s emergency beacon — a type that is no longer being heard by satellites — and replaced it with an updated model, said Jim La Belle, regional director for the National Transportation Safety Board in Alaska. The Fairbanks airline isn’t alone. Most of the state’s small commercial airlines apparently haven’t updated their equipment, though doing so is...

"I just read in an Indian depredation claim I copied from the National Archives last summer that Black Kettle was understood by everyone in 1868 as being a spy for the raiding Indians. He would profess peace and all the time he was gathering information he would later share with the Dog Soldiers to assist them in their raids, etc." Dr. Jeff Broome, author of the very important book "Dog Soldier Justice", the most accurate depiction of the Indian massacres of 1868 "Some of the raiders came from Black Kettle's camp. As was the case on numerous previous occasions, his...

DENVER, Colo. -- A passenger tried to open a plane door during a Frontier Airlines flight on Saturday morning but was subdued by airline staff and passengers, an airline spokesman said. Police and Transport Security Administration staff met Flight 514 after the plane landed in New York City and took the man into custody, said Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas. Hodas said the man would not have been able to open the door even if he had not been subdued. "You need special training to open the door," he said. There were 128 passengers and five crew members on the plane,...

Washington - The Dark Ages is not just a period in human history on Earth. For astronomers it represents the far-flung corners of the universe about which precious little is known, and which could yet hold the key to how planets were first formed. ... Added to that, the new telescope would be able to search further afield for planets that might have the right conditions to sustain life. Mountain gave the example of a seemingly habitable planet, about 1.5 times the Earth's size and orbiting a star about 20 light years away, that was discovered last month by a...

"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. "First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable." - Nicholas Nassim Taleb In Taleb's world, Black Swans are not just events like 9/11 or the crash of '87. They can be positive events like the...

AFTER the destruction of America’s Columbia space shuttle three years ago, the final frontier was in danger of becoming a frontier too far. The shuttle programme began to be wound down, aspirations for the International Space Station were scaled back and scientific projects such as the Hubble telescope were decommissioned. However, beyond the shuttle, space is a booming market and, for the first time, much of the drive is coming from the private sector. The multibillion-dollar satellite business continues to be very important to companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and EADS, which builds the Ariane rocket. Russia, China and Japan...

FORT TARIK, Iraq, May 7, 2006 – No country can seal off its borders, nor does it make sense to do so in the 21st century. A border patrol car's rear view mirror reflects the activity at the Tarik border fort on Iraq's border with Iran. The fort is nearly fully operational. Photo by Jim Garamone  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. But secure borders are necessary, and the Iraqi border police and other members of the Iraqi security forces are working to secure the new democracy's frontiers. "One of the greatest advantages of secure borders is the ability...

Failure Is Not An Option My Two Cents on Taking Up Space By David J. Aland 14 April 2006 We visited the Kennedy Space Center this week, a bittersweet reunion for me. I have long been a fan of the Space Program, too young to appreciate the Mercury flights, but fully tuned to the Gemini and Apollo programs. Every mission fed a growing spark of enthusiasm, and fed my hope that some day I might also walk upon the Moon. My school years were measured as much by missions as by other milestones. I clearly recall the tense days of...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. troops will conduct their first joint military exercise along the border between the two Asian nations, the U.S. military said Monday. The operation will be an "air assault exercise" involving a small contingent of Afghan soldiers and an unspecified number of Pakistani troops, U.S. military spokesman Col. Laurent Fox said during a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We feel that it is important that the only way we will solve the terrorism and insurency problem is to work closely together with each other," Fox said.

In championing the so-called “Frontier Line,” a Western states electric power development and transmission project, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed a memorandum of understanding on it yesterday, is embracing the newest frontier of the old energy economy. The Frontier Line is about coal-fired electric power. That’s why the Frontier Line would originate in coal producing Wyoming and is embraced by the coal lobby of the Mountain West. They have the coal power, we have the electricity market in need. The out-of-state wind farms that are talked up by Schwarzenegger and his energy czar, Joe Desmond -- who will depart his...

Dr. Samuel Lichtenstein cut a 2-inch hole between an elderly man's ribs. Peering inside, he poked a pencil-sized wire up into the chest, piercing the bottom of the man's heart. Within minutes, Bud Boyer would have a new heart valve — without having his chest cracked open. Call it closed-heart surgery. "I consider it some kind of magic," said Boyer, who left the Vancouver, British Columbia, hospital a day later and was almost fully recovered in just two weeks. In Michigan, Dr. William O'Neill slipped an artificial valve through an even tinier opening. He pushed the valve up a patient's...

In the "space race" of the early 1960s, when reporters asked U.S. rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun what he expected to find on the moon, he jokingly replied: "Russians." Nowadays, his answer might be: "Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Europeans." India, China, Japan and Europe are busy launching, or planning to launch, robotic spaceships to the moon and points beyond.

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2006 – President Bush today thanked U.S. troops serving on the "frontier of freedom" at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. "I'm proud of our United States military," he said during a surprise visit to Afghanistan, his first trip to the country. "Many of you volunteered for service after Sept. 11, 2001. You saw that our nation was attacked, and when the country called upon you, you said, 'Let me serve.'" Bush told the troops they are accomplishing two important missions in Afghanistan. "One is finding an enemy and bringing them to justice so they don't hurt our fellow...

LAGOS, Nigeria - When Chinese companies flooded the Nigerian market with cheaper versions of the generators Rex Nwankwu once imported from Italy, he said his business was imperiled. Now he's looking for Chinese suppliers, he said from a long line of visa applicants outside China's consulate in Nigeria's biggest city of Lagos. "People would rather buy the cheap and inferior Chinese generators, than buy one of my superior but more expensive Italian ones," said Nwankwu. "To remain in business I had to join the bandwagon to China." China's growth has sparked a global race with the West for markets and...

Insurgencies are not put down in a fortnight. But considering the successes in the recent counter-insurgency sweep in Iraq's Al Anbar Province, one fact becomes obvious to anyone with so much as a sliver of an understanding of ground combat operations: Eliminating the insurgency in Iraq is best left to those who best know how to do it.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2005 – Through partnerships with most major U.S. carriers, the Fisher House Foundation is making it possible for Americans to donate unused airline miles to troops wounded in the war on terror and their families. The program, "Operation Hero Miles," was created in 2004, when nearly 500 soldiers per day were returning to the U.S. from Iraq for rest and recuperation. "At that time, the military would only fly service personnel to a gateway city," said Pamela Lea-Maida, administrator of Operation Hero Miles at the Fisher House Foundation. "From there, personnel had to pay the rest of...

Frontier Completes Transition to Airbus April 13, 2005 8:07 PM ET Frontier Airlines Inc. has completed its transition to an all-Airbus fleet, saying it should result in an $11 million annual cost savings for the carrier.

<p>Flight Quarantined After Mysterious Illness February 09, 2005 DENVER — Eighty passengers on a Frontier Airlines (search) plane coming from were quarantined Tuesday for more than 90 minutes at Denver International Airport (search) after a woman became ill on the flight. An in-flight medical consulting firm used by the airline was unable to determine the woman's ailment and a medical team that met the plane on the tarmac kept passengers on Flight 449 as a precaution, airline spokesman Joe Hodas said. Passengers were allowed off the Airbus A319 at 9:55 p.m. after it was determined the woman was not contagious. Hodas said passengers told him the woman had developed an unknown rash. The woman, whose name was not released, was taken to a hospital. Her condition was not immediately known.</p>

Should Chávez Be on the List Of Terrorism Sponsors? Recording reveals 100 FARC guerillas in Caracas for Chávez event. DISIP (Intelligence) report reveals Venezuelan frontier overrun by ELN, FARC and ELP guerrillas.

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!

Everywhere, Americans are called "cowboys." On foreign tongues, the reference to America's Western rural laborers is an insult. Cowboys, we are told, plundered the earth, arrogantly rode roughshod over neighbors, and were addicted to mindless violence. So some of us hang our heads in shame. We shouldn't. The cowboy is in fact our Homeric hero, an archetype that sticks because there's truth in it. Cowboys were of course plainsmen — Midwesterners operating from Texas to Kansas to the Dakotas. But their ideas and ideals spread across the continent to our Mountain West as well, even as far as the Alaskan...

A random act of terminal kindness Dawn Sutton was shaking off a nap Monday when she stepped from an early-morning flight from Phoenix into the center of a media frenzy. Awaiting her on Concourse A at Denver International Airport were Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter, half a dozen TV cameras and a host of cheering airline employees. She was being honored as Frontier's 25 millionth passenger. "It just happened so quickly," said Sutton, a 27-year-old Thornton resident. "I didn't even have makeup on." Sutton politely declined Potter's invitation to join him at a news conference celebrating the Denver airline's 10th...

Politicians try to contain frontier violence By Peter Foster in Islamabad (Filed: 20/03/2004) Pakistan's politicians in the country's wild tribal lands have called a council meeting today in an attempt to contain the violence and protect civilians. Pakistani tribesmen gather to discuss the situation in Wana The attempt at talks suggests that the government offensive against tribal fighters and al-Qa'eda militants is placing the tribes under huge pressure after four days of large-scale military operations. In Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North-West Frontier Province, tribal politicians yesterday demanded that the government troops call a halt to the offensive.In Wana,...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's army launched a major offensive against suspected terrorists in a mountainous region near the border with Afghanistan believed used by al-Qaida fugitives, senior officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. It was not clear whether any major arrests were made during the operation, said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. He said more information would be provided throughout the day. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the army spokesman, told AP that the operation near Wana, the headquarters of the deeply conservative South Waziristan tribal region, was continuing. "We don't yet have details about casualties or arrests," he...

Suspicious device found in terminal. A,B,C serve Alaska, NW and Southwest. Developing.

Frontier pays back 9/11 loan By The Associated Press Frontier Airlines said today it has become the first U.S. airline to repay a post-Sept. 11 loan from the government. Frontier CEO and president Jeff Potter said the $11.6 million balance remaining on the $70 million loan would be given to members of the state's congressional delegation later today. After the 2001 attacks, Congress established the Air Transportation Stabilization Board to distribute $10 billion in loans to cash-strapped airlines. Since then, discount carriers like Frontier have grown quickly despite the economic downturn. Potter said the Denver-based airline used the loan to...

Mechanic disables jet, citing safety concerns By Jeffrey Leib, Ryan Morgan and Jim Hughes Denver Post Staff Writers Friday, January 03, 2003 - A mechanic who said he was concerned about the safety of a Frontier Airlines 737 prevented its takeoff from Denver on Wednesday by tossing a wheel restraint into an engine, authorities say. The plane, loaded with about 130 passengers, had just been pushed back from the boarding gate for a trip to Dallas when the incident occurred. The day before, the plane had been struck by lightning near Tampa, Fla., but Frontier officials said the jet was...

<p>Forty years ago this month, John F. Kennedy made his famous Rice University speech, in which he supposedly laid out the rationale for the Apollo program.</p> <p>We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.</p>

<p>"If they were governmental or international (expeditions), Antarctic-style restraint might be feasible. On the other hand, if the explorers were privately funded adventurers of free-enterprise, even anarchic disposition, the Wild West model would be more likely to prevail," he said.</p>

On the launch fields of Cape Canaveral, rusty gantries and smoke-stained concrete pads sit as silent relics of the Cold War. What is worthwhile has long since been salvaged; the rest awaits demolition while signs warn visitors not to come too close to the dangerous parts. Though sad to look at, the relics are only small-scale dangers. The same cannot be said of another Cold War relic that poses far more risk to America's future. That is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Like the abandoned launch fields, the Outer Space Treaty needs to have its valuable parts salvaged, and...

<p>Last week, Rand Simberg noted how much hostile email he’s gotten in response to his columns in support of space colonization.</p> <p>The letters he published in his column described humanity as some sort of pestilential "cancer on the face of the universe," unfit to spread beyond the Earth.</p>