Free Republic

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a handwritten apology following his remarks about the attack on her husband, Paul. A spokesperson for Pelosi confirmed to The Hill that Youngkin sent her a note apologizing for his remarks and that Pelosi accepts the apology. Youngkin made the comment about the attack at a campaign rally, during which he said, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

The 26-year-old was an avid campaigner for Mr Obama in 2008, getting T-shirts made and encouraging people in her neighbourhood to vote. She said: 'I campaigned for him hard. I got the shirts made, the Barack the Vote shirts made. We've done a lot.' It was about half way into the President's term that things took a downward spiral for her. Her third baby was born prematurely with health problems and with limited daycare options she could no longer work. Her partner also left around this time. With nowhere else to turn, she decided to write the President a letter....

Opening the handwritten letter from President Obama brought a glimmer of hope to her life as he promised her that things would get better for her and her family. And despite the fact Destiny Mathis, from Hobart, Indiana, treasured the letter, more than two years later she has no choice but to sell it as she and her three children face eviction from their home. The 26-year-old was an avid campaigner for Mr Obama in 2008, getting T-shirts made and encouraging people in her neighbourhood to vote.

Researchers create tool to automatically search handwritten historical documents Historians and researchers searching through handwritten documents, such as the 140,000 pages that make up George Washington’s personal papers in the Library of Congress, now have a new powerful tool to aid their work – a first-of-its kind manuscript retrieval system developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The search tool has been developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval in the computer science department at UMass Amherst. R. Manmatha, research assistant professor of computer science, along with graduate students Toni Rath and Victor Lavrenko, have created a demonstration of...