Free Republic

A Santa Rosa man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of child endangerment and other charges after he allowed his 15-year-old daughter to drive his Dodge Ram while he sat by as a drunken passenger, the CHP said. An officer stopped the truck Sunday night around 7:30 p.m. after noticing it going about 20 mph in a 35 mph zone on Llano Road with expired registration, said Officer Jon Sloat in a news release. He stopped the truck after it pulled into a private driveway and found that a 15-year-old was driving along with passenger Grasifedo Chavez, 35. Chavez told the...

French archaeologists have uncovered the well-preserved body of a noblewoman who died 350 years ago – along with the clothes in which she was buried, including her cap and shoes, still intact. The corpse of Louise de Quengo, a widow from an aristocratic family from Brittany, was discovered in an hermetically sealed lead coffin placed in a stone tomb at a convent chapel in the western city of Rennes. Four other lead coffins dating from the 17th century were also found at the site of the Saint-Joseph chapel, as well as 800 other graves containing skeletons. Researchers expected to find...

Ancient Humans Had Sex With A Mystery Species Stephanie Pappas Live Science Dec. 4, 2013, 3:33 PM A new, improved sequencing of ancient human relative genomes reveals that Homo sapiens didn't only have sex with Neanderthals and a little-understood line of humans called Denisovans. A fourth, mystery lineage of humans was in the mix, too. As reported by the news arm of the journal Nature, new genetic evidence suggests that several hominids — human relatives closer than humans' current living cousin, the chimpanzee — interbred more than 30,000 years ago. This group of kissing cousins included an unknown human ancestor...

Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries. In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years. The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans....

"In dealing with Mr. Buchanan, one must accept at the beginning two caveats. First, as is his style, he will always resort to ad hominem attacks in lieu of an argument." "[I} was appalled by his absence of logic..."

So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book "stinks." Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The...

One of the only well preserved dinosaur skin samples ever found is being tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to determine skin colour and to explain why the fossilized specimen remained intact after 70-million years. University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi said the hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago), was found close to a river bed near Grande Prairie, Alberta. The area has a robust "bone bed" but Barbi is not yet sure why the fossil preserved so well. "As we excavated the fossil, I thought that we were looking at...

After House Speaker John Boehner was unable to muster enough support for his “Plan B” proposal, the Congress has adjourned for the holidays. At this point, Republicans should stay home until the new Congress convenes in 2013. A deal like “Plan B” that raises taxes on those making over $1 million per year and offers limited spending cuts over 10 years will do nothing to solve our underlying fiscal problems.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Signaling new movement in "fiscal cliff" talks, House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising the top rate for earners making more than $1 million, a person familiar with the negotiations said. President Barack Obama, who wants higher top rates for households earning more than $250,000, has not accepted the offer, this person said. The proposal, however, indicated progress in talks that had appeared stalled. The person would only discuss the plan on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The former senior vice president for public policy at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure said Thursday that the charity’s decision to stop awarding grant funding to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which led to a media firestorm and her resignation, was a planned attack by the nation’s largest abortion provider. “(Komen) was the subject of an unprecedented, premeditated, Mafia-style assault, all because Susan B. Komen for the Cure tried to do what was in the best interest of its mission in the fight against breast cancer,” Karen Handel said in remarks made at the Family Research Council in...

Exactly 40 years ago, India won a famous victory over Pakistan due to its brilliant soldiers, an unwavering political leadership, and strong diplomatic support from Moscow. Less well known is Russia’s power play that prevented a joint British-American attack on India. Washington DC, December 3, 1971, 10:45am. US President Richard Nixon is on the phone with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, hours after Pakistan launched simultaneous attacks on six Indian airfields, a reckless act that prompted India to declare war. Nixon: So West Pakistan giving trouble there. Kissinger: If they lose half of their country without fighting they will be...

Farmers in Michigan and six other states are harvesting a bumper crop of tart cherries. But the bounty is turning out to be the pits for farmers whose fruit is rotting in orchards instead of bubbling in cherry pies. Under a Depression-era federal program designed to keep prices from plummeting, tart-cherry farmers are being told by fruit processors to leave up to 40% of their crop unharvested. "It's kind of heartbreaking," said Rob Manigold, a tart-cherry farmer near Traverse City, Mich. Michigan grows about 75% of all the tart cherries in the U.S.