Free Republic

When military leaders describe the bond between those who serve, they often speak in terms of brotherhood and family. But for several members of Tucson's 162nd Fighter Wing, the family connection is more than symbolic. A handful of Air National Guardsmen serving in the unit based at Tucson International Airport are following in the footsteps of fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins, and siblings, with many of them performing jobs similar to those of their forebears. While members of the unit say it's not unusual for children to follow their parents into the military, it's not common to have them nearly replicate...

In spring 2005, the Rev. Carol Solovitz, pastor of Zumbro Lutheran, had the honor of preaching the English service for two weeks in Wittenberg, Germany, in Martin Luther's church: the Stadtkirche (city church). Inspired by her visit, members of Zumbro met in April 2006 with the prospect of forming a tour to Germany. By September 2006 -- a year in advance -- the trip was sold out. On Sept. 10, 2007, a full bus left the church parking lot on its way to the Minneapolis airport, flying Iceland Air to Frankfurt. On our first day, we toured the Wartburg, where...

Long but worth it Something quite a few need to read ! WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, majoring in marijuana at the university, hanging out with the Progressive Labor Party, and skipping through the clouds of tear gas on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I was convinced that any war that would send my long-haired, sensitive, poetic and acid-tripping self off to wade through rice paddies in Vietnam just had to be wrong, wrong, wrong . Then it was easy to see the United States through red-tinted glasses. All you had to do was roll up a Chillum , roll another...

Though America got where it is today by following a pattern of freedom and prosperity followed, Americans at a present political crossroads may be in danger of choosing instead a path that leads to inevitable demise, said Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson Monday in Marshalltown. Thompson, however, advocated adhering to the country’s foundational principles and doing what is right. “How often, when you do the right thing, it turns out to be good politics too?” he said to a full room at the Tremont on Main. At the core of his campaign, Thompson said he stands behind a federalism based...

WHERE DO FINNS COME FROM? Not long ago, cytogenetic experts stirred up a controversy with their "ground-breaking" findings on the origins of the Finnish and Sami peoples. Cytogenetics is by no means a new tool in bioanthropological research, however. As early as the 1960s and '70s, Finnish researchers made the significant discovery that one quarter of the Finns' genetic stock is Siberian, and three quarters is European in origin. The Samis, however, are of different genetic stock: a mixture of distinctly western, but also eastern elements. If we examine the genetic links between the peoples of Europe, the Samis form...

U.S.-Born Students Are Going Back to Their Family Roots As the first day of school approached this month, Brian Agugoesi, 13, packed his bags with pens..He also included Honeycomb cereal, which is impossible to get at his school, and tablets to fend off malaria...The Randallstown, Md., boy was packing for his second year at Grundtvig International Secondary School in...Nigeria, an institution that, according to its Web site, boasts a water borehole and "network of tarred roads" on a 10-hectare campus... Brian's parents, Rita and Charles Agugoesi, chuckled at that story on the recent eve of Brian's flight to Lagos. It...

European and American countries that enslaved African people and scattered them in the African Diaspora should pay reparations for their slave crimes. This came out at the historic African Union (AU) conference in the Caribbean Island of Barbados, set to tackle the integration of the African Diaspora and the continent. Leading scholars, ambassadors and government ministers from Africa and beyond are examining economic relations and the responsibility of the slave masters in undoing the slave trade damage they inflicted on Africa and her Diaspora. With song and the beating of drums, the African people in the Diaspora of the Caribbean...

New book claims Merlin had Scottish roots By David Sapsted Last Updated: 1:52am BST 28/08/2007 Merlin the magician - hirsute confidant of King Arthur and the architect of Camelot - was, in fact, Scottish, according to a new book. The English, Welsh and French have laid claim to Merlin the magician Not only Scottish but, to be precise, hailing from Ardery Street, just off the Dumbarton Road, in the Partick area of Glasgow. While the English, Welsh and even the French have laid claim to the wizard with the peaked hat for centuries, this is the first time that anyone...

LOS ANGELES, June 11, 2007 – One of TV’s biggest names, Don Bellisario -- creator of “Magnum PI,” “JAG” and, most recently, “NCIS” -- credits his own Marine Corps experience with giving him the background he needed to break into the television industry. Actor Mark Harmon (right) joins other cast members on the “NCIS” set during the “Vanished” episode, in which a Marine Cobra helicopter is found abandoned in the middle of a mysterious crop circle in a Virginia cornfield. Don Bellisario, who created the program, said Defense Department support adds realism to the production. Photo by Danny Feld/CBS/Paramount,...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's strategy for winning the Democratic presidential nomination against better funded and more famous rivals includes a focus on his Hispanic roots and leadership of a Western state. That explains why he chose to officially launch his presidential campaign Monday in California, a state with newfound prominence in the 2008 campaign. Richardson is hoping changes to the primary calendar that give new clout to several states with large Hispanic populations can increase his chances of victory. Among those new powerhouses are Nevada, Florida and California, the most delegate-rich state which will hold a primary Feb. 5....

Genetic roots of manic depression revealed By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:24am BST 08/05/2007 The genetic roots of bipolar disorder - manic depression - have been revealed by the first scan of the entire human genetic code, revealing a new target for treatments. Bipolar disorder affects one person in every 100 inducing mood changes from extremes of depression to irritation, elation and mania. However, the likelihood of developing the disorder, which usually occurs in young adults, depends in part on the combined, small effects of variations in many different genes in the brain, none of which is powerful...

Early Humans Dug for Food, Study Suggests Ker Than Staff Writer LiveScience.com Tue May 1, 9:25 PM ET Early humans might have turned to plant roots and underground storage organs when fruit was scarce, a new study suggests. A 1999 analysis of teeth belonging to two species of hominids, Australopithecus aferensis and Paranthropus robustus, living 2 million years ago found chemical evidence that one-third of their diet consisted of grasses and sedges, or the meat of animals that ate such plants. The finding puzzled some scientists because the hominids had flat, thickly enameled molars best suited for chewing hard, brittle...

Here again, with the right link - the other was not right. The Custer legacy - Custer division in World War II, the 7th cavalry in Ia Drang and Baghdad, Custer's Civil War veterans... It's an American legacy.

It's 30 years since the TV drama Roots first screened. The show had a profound impact on black people in the US and UK, recalls Kwame Kwei-Armah, right, who spoke to others about their memories of the programme.Thirty years ago I was an 11-year-old growing up in West London. One evening I sat down with my family to watch a new television programme called Roots. It was a moment that changed my life. By the end of the series I had told my mother that I would one day trace my heritage back to Africa and reclaim an ancestral...

To see the DNA results of some of the ancient people click here. You'll have to scan around to find this exact page but it contains many links of interest. A compilation of DNA haplotypes extracted from ancient remains Cheddar ManIn 1903, skeletal remains were found in a cave in Cheddar, England. The remains of a 23 year-old man, who was killed by a blow to the face, were discovered to be at least 9,000 years old. Ninety-four years after the discovery of "Cheddar Man", scientists were able to extract mitochondrial DNA from his tooth cavity. Name Haplo Haplotype Cheddar...

Roots of Human Family Tree Are ShallowRoots of the Human Family Tree Are Remarkably Shallow - All Alive Today Share 1 Common Ancestor By MATT CRENSON AP National Writer Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die. Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the...

Where It All Began The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting]rom the inception if the human race until the coming if Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion which was already in existence began to be called Christian. -ST. AUGUSTINE, Retractiones THIS ASTOUNDING STATEMENT by St. Augustine, one of the most brilliant thinkers in the earliest centuries of the Church, utterly refutes the traditional view that Christianity, though of obvious Jewish roots, virtually fell from the skies as a radically new, unique, all- surpassing religion...

Richard M. Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, published in 1948, was among the founding documents of contemporary conservatism. The title phrase has become something of a cliché, and overuse has stripped it of the interesting meaning it once had. Nowadays most people assume that what Weaver was saying was that how we think is bound to affect how we act, and that the intellectual trends that prevail in a society will determine its moral and political character. To be sure, that was part of his meaning, but if that were all he had in mind his message would have been a...

MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO (Jan. 13, 2006) -- The Marine Corps is a cornucopia of people. It's an array of black, white, brown, red and yellow, and its varied folk practice a plethora of religions. In the last year, two recruits, who happen to be brothers, came separately from perhaps the Corps' most uncommon origin - the Amish Order. "It's a very small world within the Amish community," said Pvt. Abner A. Miller, Platoon 1152. "Usually it's a 20-mile circle. We go as far as the horse and buggy take us." Miller grew up in a sheltered environment....

Study traces Egyptians’ stone-age roots Dec. 17, 2005 Special to World Science Some 64 centuries ago, a prehistoric people of obscure origins farmed an area along Egypt’s Nile River. Barely out of the Stone Age, they produced simple but well-made pottery, jewelry and stone tools, and carefully buried their dead with ritual objects in apparent preparation for an afterlife. These items often included doll-like female figurines with exaggerated sexual features, thought to possibly symbolize rebirth. Details from a tomb painting from Hierakonpolis, from prehistoric Egypt's Naqada culture. A new study suggests the Naqada people, the earlier Badarians and the later...