Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Officials in the federal agency that oversees American Indian trust assets had an improper social relationship with an accounting firm and pressured subordinates to give the firm preferential treatment, a government investigation found. Senior managers in the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians based in Albuquerque, N.M., golfed, drank and partied with the executives of the New Mexico accounting firm Chavarria, Dunne & Lamey, which won $6.6 million in contract work over eight years, according to the report by the Interior Department's inspector general. The investigation, first reported this week by U.S. News & World Report,...

Even as the evolution wars rage, on school boards and in courtrooms, biologists continue to accumulate empirical data supporting Darwinian theory. Two extraordinary discoveries announced this week should go a long way to providing even more of the evidence that critics of evolution say is lacking. One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin -- the iconic "missing links." If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - It's healthy and tasty, for those with expensive tastes. Farmers in northern Sweden are milking moose and making cheese, which they sell for a lot of dough — nearly $500 a pound. The buyers include upscale hotels and restaurants in Sweden. AP Photo Christer Johansson and his wife, Ulla, started their 59-acre dairy farm "Moose House" seven years ago in Bjursholm, 404 miles north of the capital, Stockholm. They claim it is the only moose dairy farm in Europe. The Johanssons currently have 14 moose in the fields but only three — "Gullan," "Haelga" and "Juna" —...

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...