Free Republic

As the director of the Easter Island Statue Project — the longest-continuous collaborative artifact inventory ever conducted on the Polynesian island that belongs to Chile — Van Tilburg has opened a window on one of the greatest achievements of Pacific prehistory on one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. She and her team of resident Rapa Nui have spent nine years locating and meticulously documenting the nearly 1,000 statues on the island, determining their symbolic meaning and function, and conserving them using state-of-the-art techniques. After spending four months over the last two years excavating two of the...

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed classified information at a 2011 awards ceremony attended by Zero Dark Thirty filmmaker Mark Boal, according to documents obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. The CIA allowed Boal, the screenwriter of Zero Dark Thirty, to attend a June 24, 2011 award ceremony celebrating the successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan that May. A transcript of Panetta’s speech that night obtained by Judicial Watch is labeled “top secret,” and significant portions of it are redacted. At the conclusion his speech, Panetta told the audience, “You have made me proud...

A Russian rocket crash yesterday (July 1) was likely caused by an emergency shutdown of the booster's engines 17 seconds into the flight, according to news reports. The unmanned Russian Proton-M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanat 10:38 p.m. EDT (0238 GMT). The crash of the 17-story booster destroyed three onboard navigation satellites, which were worth almost $200 million. Video of the rocket crash from Russian state-run Rossiya-24 television shows the vehicle veering off course shortly after liftoff, and then breaking apart in mid-air and exploding in a fiery blaze once it hit the ground. The rocket was...

The political world is a-twitter about the president's recent statements on the condition of the economy. You know, the one where President Barack Obama said the private sector is "doing fine." Well, that one was not received in the way it was intended. In fact, it generated so much ridicule that a few hours later the president again took to the public stage in order to correct his initial assessment. The subsequent damage control statement did little to calm the political waters, however. But it did a lot to illuminate this president's state of mind regarding job creation and the...

In the aftermath of the Glenn Beck “Restoring Courage” rally, questions have emerged about a U.S. State Department message released the day of the event that warned Americans to stay away. The timing and specifics of the event warning have led some to claim that ideological opposition to the Beck event– not just concerns for American safety– could have influenced the decision. The “Emergency Message” addressed to U.S. Government Employees and visiting citizens in Jerusalem is available on the Consulate’s website. The message posted to the site on August 24th stated the following: “The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem notes...

FULL Title - Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, is detailing a secret plan to "destabilize" the country. Specifically, the plan seeks to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government. The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.

Revealed The Left’s Economic Terrorism Playbook: The Chase Campaign for a Coalition of Unions, Community Groups, Lawmakers and Students to Take Down US Capitalism and Redistribute Wealth & Power

A new book about the closing days of WW2 chronicles how German civilians murdered many concentration camp survivors as they moved through their towns and villages on infamous 'death marches' back into the shrinking Reich. The violence shows how even with their nation in ruins, the Allies advancing on all fronts and the war hopeless, ordinary people were so indoctrinated with Nazi hate they were prepared to kill defenceless people in cold blood.

The Federal Government announced charges today against a ring of foreign corporations and executives who conspired to bring antibiotic-laden Chinese honey illegally into the US, in an attempt to avoid paying millions in fees. A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted top executives of German food conglomerate Alfred L Wolff GmbH, and several of its affiliated companies for allegedly importing more than $US40 million in Chinese honey, but saying it originated elsewhere in order to avoid paying duties of nearly $US80 million that were levied on Chinese honey.

If anyone thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim now, there is no one to blame but Barack Obama. In his speech in Cairo, Obama said that he had "known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Obama didn't say that he had come to the region where "Muslims believe that Islam was first revealed," or where Islam "began," or was "founded." Revealed. (Italics in original.)

A "galactic lens" has revealed that the Universe will probably expand forever. Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos. Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the Universe. Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding. It will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland, researchers say. The study, conducted by an international team led by Professor Eric Jullo of Nasa's...

Forces under the office of Prime Minister Maliki held hundreds of Sunni men at the facility. The U.S. fears that the news will stoke instability. Reporting from Baghdad Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in...

"Dino fuzz" pigment discovery in feathers may strengthen dinosaur-bird link. Pigments have been found in fossil dinosaurs for the first time, a new study says. The discovery may prove once and for all that dinosaurs' hairlike filaments—sometimes called dino fuzz—are related to bird feathers, paleontologists announced today. (Pictures: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed by Feather Find.) The finding may also open up a new world of prehistoric color, illuminating the role of color in dinosaur behavior and allowing the first accurately colored dinosaur re-creations, according to the study team, led by Fucheng Zhang of China's Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology. The team...

The first century B.C. was one of the most culturally rich in the history of the Roman Empire - the age of Cicero, Caesar and Virgil. But as much as historians know about the great figures of this period of Ancient Rome, they know very little about some basic facts, such as the population size of the late Roman Empire. Now, a group of historians has used caches of buried coins to provide an answer to this question. During the Republican period of Rome (about the fifth to the first centuries B.C), adult male citizens of Rome could be taxed...

Title only.

New photographs of the center of the Milky Way reveal the chaotic environment at the heart of our galaxy, where a supermassive black hole is thought to lurk. The close-up views come from two recent projects - one undertaken by an amateur astronomer. Stephane Guisard, an engineer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, used his personal 10-cm telescope to take 1,200 individual images over 29 nights during his free time. He then combined the photos, which took a total of more than 200 hours of exposure time, into a stunning mosaic image of the Milky Way's center. The...

When animals die, their corpses exude a particular "stench of death" which repels their living relatives, scientists have discovered. Corpses of animals as distantly related as insects and crustaceans all produce the same stench, caused by a blend of simple fatty acids. The smell helps living animals avoid others that have succumbed to disease or places where predators lurk.

8/10/2009 - BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (AFNS) -- Amid a hearty "welcome home" shout-out from Airmen and volunteers, an employee from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, fought back tears as he and his family saw their new, custom-built home for the first time Aug. 6 here. James Terpenning, a civilian computer specialist, received the house after being selected by producers of the popular ABC-TV series "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," which is an Emmy award winning reality television series that provides home renovations for deserving families. Mr. Terpenning, who is confined to a wheelchair, said the experience was a dream come true. "We...

Watch out when sipping the Obama kool-aid, The truth comes out!

Tutankhamun's true face to be revealed By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 2:55am BST 22/10/2007 The true face of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt 3,500 years ago, is to be revealed to the public for the first time. Only a handful of experts have ever seen Tutankhamun's true likeness To coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the treasures of Tutankhamun in London next month, Egyptian archaeologists are to put his mummified body on display in Luxor. Only a handful of experts have ever seen the 19-year-old pharaoh's true likeness. Though not the most important of...