Free Republic

Bradley Manning proved that massive amounts of the government's most secret data was vulnerable to being dumped on the open Internet. A single individual achieved that unprecedented leak. According to the Washington Post, "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances." And this week, we learned that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unable to protect some of their most closely held secrets from Glenn Greenwald, Richard Engel, Robert Windrem, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras. Those journalists, talented as they are, possess somewhat fewer resources than foreign governments! So...

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

[Editor’s note: The following material was supplied to us by Dr. Richard Lindzen as an example of how research that counters climate-change alarm receives special treatment in the scientific publication process as compared with results that reinforce the consensus view. In this case, Lindzen's submission to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was subjected to unusual procedures and eventually rejected (in a rare move), only to be accepted for publication in the Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences creates virtual blacklists of scientists who dare to disagree with 'the consensus.' While most people understand that governmental entities are politicized, there are some we like to think maintain enough integrity to serve the public good. We hope, for example, that the Centers for Disease Control would be free of politicized determinations for what to do about swine flu. And we hope that the Food and Drug Administration were more concerned about whether a drug were beneficial than about how the cost of that drug might influence new healthcare legislation.One such entity we have relied...

A group of distinguished scientists has issued a report confirming the theory of man-made global warming. Many of those same scientists are now holding their breath, hoping that a major research project in Antarctica will, for the first time, prove the existence of man-made global warming. To the ordinary non-scientist, these two statements may seem a bit contradictory, but apparently not to the members of the National Academy of Sciences panel charged with reviewing the evidence for climate change and making recommendations for addressing its effects. These scientists, it would appear, are so committed to the ideology of man-made global...

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was intended to put the climate change debate to rest. After all, it was supposed to provide irrefutable evidence of global warming. Instead, some errors in methodology and data have reinvigorated the opposition. What’s a beleaguered global warming scientist to do? How about a new approach, such as one with a ‘Hollywood touch’? Some in the general scientific community see the erosion of public confidence in global warming science spilling over to other branches of science as well. Because of this, many scientists recognize that there needs to be a new approach...

By ALEX KAPLUN of Greenwire This story was updated at 2:54 p.m. EST. U.S. scientists are planning to counter criticisms directed at them during the "Climategate" scandal and congressional debates, saying conservatives and industry groups have waged a "McCarthyite" campaign, according to e-mails exchanged by the researchers. The e-mails obtained by E&E show the scientists are considering launching advertising campaigns, widening their public presence, pushing the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to take a more active role in explaining climate science and creating a nonprofit to serve as a voice for the scientific community. "We need to develop a relentless...

Piloted by Lockheed Martin F-35 Test Pilot Jeff Knowles, the third F-35B Lightning II short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., today. "Today, the third of our five STOVL test jets joined the F-35 fleet at the Test Center as our flight test program initiates the expansion of the F-35's flight-sciences envelope," said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration. "Our focus remains on fielding the F-35's tremendous capabilities to our warfighters, recapitalizing our nation’s aging fighter fleet, and meeting our commitments to the F-35 partner...

The National Academy of Sciences tries to predict America's energy future. Again.The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently dusted off its 30-year-old crystal ball and gazed into the future of American energy use. Its findings were released last week in report titled America's Energy Future: Technology and Transformation. The experts on the panel are slightly stoic and guardedly optimistic. In 10 to 25 years—"with a sustained national commitment"—they say, the U.S. will be able to achieve "energy-efficiency improvements, new sources of energy, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the accelerated deployment of existing and emerging energy-supply and end-use technologies." ...

Rapper NAS is calling for bosses at U.S. TV network Fox to end their "pattern of racist attacks against Black Americans" by delivering a 600,000-name petition at the media giants' New York headquarters. The outspoken hip-hop hero will join ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org activists in a protest outside Fox's Manhattan offices on Wednesday (23Jul08). Nas has been a long-time critic of the channel, and takes aim at conservative news broadcasters in his new song Sly Fox, the CM reported. Nas is particularly upset at Fox broadcasters' subtle jabs at African-American presidential hopeful Barack Obama. The rapper says, "Fox poisons the country...

Ten minutes to open storage blissFind out how to eradicate 99.7% of spam Having been worked over by the rise of Linux servers, Sun Microsystems wants to capitalize on what it sees as the next major "open systems" movement. The company believes that storage systems - or more specifically storage software - will transition to favor lower-cost, less proprietary plays. Sun this week took what feels like a rather minor step in the open storage direction with the release of two "how-to-guides" meant to help with the creation of a storage server and a NAS (network attached storage) appliance. The...

Nas spoke exclusively to MTV News on Wednesday, dismissing his detractor. "It's what he's supposed to do. He has an image to uphold," Nas said initially, laughing it off. But the conversation took a more serious turn when Nas described O'Reilly's stance against him — and previous outbursts against peers such as Snoop Dogg and Ludacris (see "Ludacris Barks Back At Pepsi, O'Reilly; P-Roach Antics Not An Issue For Soda Giant") — as being prejudiced and outdated. "He's a racist," Nas said. "Everybody has a marketing plan; his marketing plan is racism.

HUMANS are just one of the millions of species on Earth, but we use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants - the most of any species. The human dominance of this natural resource is affecting other species, reducing the amount of energy available to them by almost 10 per cent, scientists report. Researchers said the findings showed humans were using "a remarkable share" of the earth's plant productivity "to meet the needs and wants of one species". They also warned that the increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be...

FreeNAS is a small, powerful, full-featured implementation of FreeBSD as a network-attached storage device. (It also happens to be January's Project of the Month at SourceForge.net.) If you're a Linux user like me, the BSD-speak used for devices and such might give you pause, but other than that small caveat, installation and usage shouldn't be a problem. It's powerful enough to be used in the enterprise, but it's friendly enough so that even a typical home office user can take advantage of it. Here's how I created an easy-to-use NAS device for rsync backups and FTP server on my LAN.

FLOUR BLUFF - A truck packed with 10 illegal immigrants pulled up to the Flour Bluff gate of Naval Air Station - Corpus Christi Saturday morning. They said they were lost. When a security officer told them to pull over, they took off. The truck driver drove through the security gate and left the truck near a vacant housing area. All 10 inside bailed out and started running. Security personnel quickly apprehended the seven men and three women. Base officials saud they don't think the illegals had any idea they were actually approaching a Navy base. "I think what happens...

A study warns that the Earth's temperature is approaching a level not seen in a million years, implying that we are getting close to "dangerous" levels of human pollution. The study finds that, while the world warmed slowly during the century to 1975, it has warmed at a more rapid rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade thereafter. The researchers say the global mean temperature is now within one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of the maximum mean temperature of the past million years. Based on a 0.2-degree-Celsius increase per decade, that high point could be...

Low doses of dioxin may not be as carcinogenic as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states in its draft risk assessment, according to a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In an analysis released today, the panel called on EPA to clarify uncertainties and better justify some assumptions about the danger of dioxin. Historically found in herbicides and industrial waste, today dioxins come mainly from incineration of municipal trash. Emissions have dropped by about 90% since 1987, yet the compounds have contaminated soils and water worldwide and have made their way through the food chain by accumulating in...

According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we live now. Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is...

Sun Microsystems has announced the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance, the first NAS solution based on the AMD Opteron processor model 252. The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance builds on the Sun StorEdge 5000 NAS Appliance family, and also delivers investment protection via a data-in-place upgrade. Key features include iSCSI support, Microsoft Windows Hardware certified for Windows and Exchange environments; Gateway Support, for the midrange Sun StorEdge 6130 and 6920 systems and Sun's high-end disk portfolio, as well as Sun's FlexLine systems; Integrated realtime file system data protection against computer viruses certified with multiple scanning engines including Symantec AntiVirus Scan...

NAVAL AIR STATION PENSACOLA, Fla. (NNS) -- The last F-14 Tomcat to fly a combat mission over Iraq made its final flight from USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) to Naval Air Station Pensacola April 13. The Tomcat will be immortalized at the National Museum of Naval Aviation here as the final decommissioning stages close and training for its replacement, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, continue. “Bittersweet,” is how Lt. Cmdr. Mark Stufflebeem, the aircraft’s pilot, referred to the final mission. “We were the last aircraft from our squadron to leave, because we’ve had aircraft go to a lot of museums around...