Free Republic

The 2010 midterm elections are shaping up to be a Democrats nightmare. But the problems for the Democrats and Obama won’t end there. Indeed, the fallout from the 2010 elections will likely carry over into 2012 which may well feature Hillary running against Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s retirement. Here’s why: 1. Republican’s Political Carpe Diem. It appears more everyday that Congressional Republicans are coming to grips with the tide sweeping the Country – Tea Party and otherwise. If Republicans rekindle their successful strategy of 1994, by setting a clear, practical and limited fall election agenda, then they can successfully frame...

In the leak scandal that led to five indictments for a top-level White House official, reports this week cite that former US Central Intelligence Agency employee Valerie Plame was allegedly following Iran's nuclear activities before her identity was revealed. Democrat Party Senator Frank Lautenberg, in a letter to CIA Director Porter Goss, asked for an evaluation of the harm outing Plame has caused. In the letter, the Senator reminds Director Goss of recent news stories which report that before Plame was outed, she participated in intelligence works on the Iranian nuclear dossier, and her subsequent outing gravely jeopardized the US’...

Week of March 4, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 9 , p. 133 Smoldered-Earth Policy: Created by ancient Amazonian natives, fertile, dark soils retain abundant carbon Ben Harder Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, a research expedition encountered a group of Confederate expatriates living in Brazil. The refugees had quickly taken to growing sugarcane on plots of earth that were darker and more fertile than the surrounding soil, Cornell University's Charles Hartt noted in the 1870s. The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon....

Research team finds new evidence of Amazonian civilization (Kyodo) A joint Japanese-Bolivian research team has completed the first stage of a three-year investigation that aims to shed light on a little-known high culture that existed in the present-day Bolivian Amazon. The investigation, named "Project Mojos," is headed by Katsuyoshi Sanematsu, a professor of anthropology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. In an interview Wednesday, Sanematsu, 56, told Kyodo News that the team, composed of four Japanese researchers and four Bolivian researchers, succeeded in finding hundreds of archaeological artifacts during a month long excavation that ended earlier this month. "It is very...