Free Republic

Fresh off her tour of Asia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) touted China as “one of the freest societies in the world.” While speaking with NBC “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, Pelosi emphasized the importance of her bipartisan trip to Taiwan, that was met with threats from the Chinese Communist Party. The speaker also described China as a “strong democracy.”

Last month, America lost a great defender of freedom, Michael Novak.Novak was committed to rightly ordered liberty and cared deeply about the principles and practices that produce it. His enormous body of work emphasized the cultural prerequisites for political and economic freedom, as he stressed that economic conservativism and social conservatism are indivisible.In the words of Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner, “Michael forced those of us trained in the dismal science of economics to explain that we should be more than ‘free to choose’—rather we should be free to make good free choices.”Last year, I was the recipient of the...

Wild bottlenose dolphins bond over their use of tools, with distinct cliques and classes forming over decades as a result of their skills, scientists have found. The communities, which have been compared with societies such as the Bullingdon Club in humans, mean the aquatic animals share their knowledge only with those in their own circle, passing it down the family line. The findings mean the traits of “inclusive inheritability” and culture are no longer considered exclusive to human beings. Observing wild dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, researchers from Georgetown University used hunting tools as a marker of dolphin societal habits....

Spiders are not famous for their caring, sharing nature. Unlike insects such as ants, it is virtually unheard of for arachnids to live in societies that employ tactics and team work. So the discovery in Ecuador of spiders nesting in family-based communities and hunting in packs was a surprise find for Leticia Avilés, an arachnid expert at the University of British Columbia in Canada. According to Avilés, there are over 39,000 identified spider species. While she has seen just over 20 species cooperate, she has never encountered any species quite like Theridion nigroannulatum. The spiders live in nests that house...

Making sacrifices in Stone Age societies Bruce Bower From San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the Paleoanthropology Society and Society for American Archaeology meeting Double and triple burials at 23,000-to-27,000-year-old sites in Europe and western Asia suggest prehistoric human sacrifices, says Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa in Italy. Of 30 known burials from that time period and area, 6 held more than one person. These graves contain two or three children, adolescents, or young adults apparently buried at the same time, positioned in curious ways, and accompanied by unusually valuable objects, Formicola says. Most of the multiple burials include...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2006 – Vice President Dick Cheney today praised U.S. servicemembers and vowed victory in the war against terror, calling the global conflict a struggle between civil societies and barbarism. "The war on terror is a battle for the future of civilization," Cheney told servicemembers gathered at the U.S. Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "It's a battle worth fighting. It's a battle we are going to win," he said. Cheney recalled his pre-Christmas trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he thanked deployed U.S. servicemembers "for all they've done to bring freedom, stability and peace to...

It turns out your real estate agent was right. In determining the historic reasons why societies thrived and conquered, while others stayed backward, the answer is: location, location, location. At least that's the persuasive theory advanced by Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor, MacArthur "genius" grant winner and author of the best-selling book "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Now, Diamond's book has been adapted into a three-part television series by National Geographic that begins tonight at 10 on Maryland Public Television (Channel 22) and tomorrow at 9 p.m. on WETA (Channel 26). The shows strive for an epic feel, hopscotching the continents...

For decades, neuroscientists have recognized that the brain has three distinct systems. One is derived from primitive reptiles that were adept at survival strategies. Another includes the limbic system – often called the “seat of emotions.” The third includes the neocortex and prefrontal lobes (comprising the right and left hemispheres of the brain) that account for thinking, verbal abilities and other “higher” functions. My theory is that Terri’s putative husband Michael, his attorney George J. Felos, and Judge George Greer – who ruled for years against Terri’s right to life – have highly developed reptilian brains and prefrontal lobes, but...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

WELCOME TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH, U.S.A. by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher March 2, 2004 The homosexual lobby can say what they like, but the fact remains these so-called 'gay marriages' are neither legitimate nor lawful, despite what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or New Paltz, New York Mayor Jason West may think. Newsom cites the equal protection under the laws clause of the California State Constitution as his justification for violating Proposition 22, the ballot initiative overwhelmingly passed by California voters in 2002 that specifically prohibits marriage between two persons of the same gender.I recently spoke with an attorney...