Free Republic

Penn Museum, Philadelphia Janet Monge of the Penn Museum examines some of the Morton collection skulls with her colleague, Alan Mann. Scientists have often been accused of letting their ideology influence their results, and one of the most famous cases is that of Morton’s skulls — the global collection amassed by the 19th-century physical anthropologist Samuel George Morton. In a 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man,” the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Morton, believing that brain size was a measure of intelligence, had subconsciously manipulated the brain volumes of European, Asian and African skulls to favor his bias that...

<p>Long before his administration went into federal court to fight 27 states that are now challenging the constitutionality of the federal government forcing people to buy health insurance, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told Ellen DeGeneres that—unlike his opponent Hillary Clinton—he opposed forcing the uninsured to buy health insurance, saying that it would be like forcing the homeless to buy homes.</p>

Catholic officials have launched a fresh initiative to influence secular law according to the religious teachings of the Catholic Church, with marriage equality firmly in their sites. Church officials in Maine, the fifth and most recent state to offer marriage equality to gay and lesbian families, seek to bring those families’ rights to a popular vote, in hopes of seeing marriage equality repealed, as happened in California last year when, after a bruising and extremely expensive campaign to rescind family rights for gays and lesbians, voters narrowly passed Proposition 8. An Associated Press story from May 10 quoted Maine’s Secretary...

with the exception of abstinence. So said Erica Jong on CNN ten minutes ago, and her remarks went unchallenged by host Paula Zahn. Per Jong, partial birth abortion ban is the first step towards that end. I'm afraid the lies about the GOP coming from the left are reaching critical mass, and we haven't even officially hit election year yet.

Robert Mistretta, the supervisor of the child-abuse investigation of 2 1/2-year-old Alfredo Montes, learned he'd been fired from his job of two months from his wife, who heard the news on television. Gov. Jeb Bush's televised comments Friday about the firings of a caseworker who falsified reports and her supervisor at the Department of Children & Families, caught Mistretta by surprise. "My wife actually heard before I did," said Mistretta, 29, who supervised a six-person team of child-abuse investigators, including Erica Jones, who officials said lied about visiting Alfredo at his home near Winter Haven. Mistretta said Saturday that he's...