Free Republic

39-year-old Marlon Scott Kautz of Atlanta, 30-year-old Savannah Patterson of Savannah, and 42-year-old Adele Maclean of Atlanta were arrested and charged with money laundering and charity fraud. On Tuesday, three people connected to the violent takeover of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center’s future site were arrested and charged with money laundering and charity fraud. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced that alongside the Atlanta Police Department, the three were arrested in connection with an ongoing investigation into the criminal acts undertaken at the site. . . . Kautz, Patterson and Maclean all work for the nonprofit the Atlanta Solidarity...

... Suggesting that climate scientists are pushing a line about global warming because their salaries depend on it is a popular talking point that deniers love to throw around. But why do so many “sceptics”, particularly those who form part of the organised machinery of climate science denial, feel comfortable in accusing climate scientists of only being in it for the money? Duke University history professor Nancy MacLean suggests some answers in her new book Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. The book documents how wealthy conservatives, in particular petrochemical billionaire Charles...

Day three dawns, and the crowds have thinned. Maybe a dozen spectators today, none of the protestors (pro-Steyn!) of the first day. Media is down to me and Brian Hutchinson of the National Post, whose fine piece on yesterday’s proceedings is definitely worth a read. (Where’s the Globe? Their office is across the street. Couldn’t they spare even one reporter?) Ian Mulgrew also offers a trenchant article in the Vancouver Sun. Further assigned reading, on the whole damn mess: Convenant Zone. First witness today is Faiza Hirji, an expert in “analyzing stereotypes in the media with regard to minorities,” with...

Meredith Gardner, who has died aged 89, was the American codebreaker responsible for breaking the ciphers that led to the arrests of the atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the break-up of the Cambridge spy ring.During the late 1940s, Gardner was the main cryptanalyst working on the Venona material, messages sent between the KGB’s Moscow Centre and its agent handlers abroad using the theoretically unbreakable one-time pad system.Fluent in French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Lithuanian, Russian and Spanish, Gardner joined the United States Army’s codebreaking organisation, the Signals Security Agency, early in the Second World War.He worked initially...