Free Republic

Jim Florio, the former democratic governor of New Jersey, has died at age 85. Florio's death was announced by his law partner, Douglas Steinhardt.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Actress Dawn Wells, best known for playing Mary Ann on the hit sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” has died at the age of 82 after becoming infected with COVID-19.

Jerry Stiller, the comedian who was best known for his roles on "Seinfeld" and "The King of Queens," has died of natural causes, Ben Stiller, his son, announced on Monday. He was 92.

Don Larsen, the former Yankees great who threw the only perfect game in World Series history, died Wednesday at the age of 90, according to reports.

In every way, Rusty Staub, the beloved Mets' hitting icon, who passed away early Thursday morning at age 73, was bigger than life — a bigger-than-life baseball personality, humanitarian, gourmet chef, wine connoisseur, friend-to-all and, to the fans of Montreal, quite simply, "Le Grand Orange." snip Staub died at 12:30 a.m. Thursday at the Good Samaritan Medical Center in Palm Beach, Florida, due to multiple organ failure. He was initially admitted with pneumonia, dehydration and an infection and had spent the last eight weeks in the hospital. He would have turned 74 on Sunday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Rep. Anthony Weiner was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl in a case that rocked Hillary Clinton's campaign for the White House in the closing days of the race and may have cost her the presidency. Weiner, 53, dropped his head into his hand and wept as the sentence was announced by Judge Denise Cote.

Jersey City is mourning the deaths of Russell Maffei and Marie Tauro, two longtime fixtures on the local political scene who were killed in North Bergen last night. Maffei, 57, the chair of the Jersey City Republican Party, and Tauro, 80, were struck and killed as they walked across Paterson Plank Road outside the Coach House diner at about 8 p.m Sunday, friends of the two told The Jersey Journal. The driver of the SUV that struck the two fled the scene, according to media reports. The two were meeting up at the Coach House with other local Republicans to...

A pleasant and caring man, one who reveled in his mostly modest playing career in the big leagues, his receded -- not receding -- hairline and, it seemed, all facets and phases of his decades on the planet, has left us behind, behind and smiling. Joe Garagiola, a most entertaining, engaging and convivial sort, has died, bringing to an end a full, rich life and leaving the game without one its most enduring personalities, an energetic crusader and folksy humorist.

The logic of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the latest challenge to Obamacare is simple: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them,” writes Chief Justice John Roberts in his 6-3 majority decision in the case of King v. Burwell. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.” This is obviously true — and patently ridiculous. It’s true because of course the goal was to improve markets. It’s absurd because government policies often have the opposite effect of what is...

‘Lots of folks expected us to do something strange and break out in a riot. Well, they just don’t know us,” the Rev. Norvel Goff told the packed, multiracial congregation of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, on Sunday. It was the first service since the horrific slaughter of nine innocent souls by a racist fanatic. Not being a Christian, I can only marvel at the dignity and courage of the victims’ relatives who forgave the shooter. If I could ever manage such a thing, it would probably take me decades. It took them little more than a...

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who’s made her moral case against the Cuban embargo scathingly clear. In a letter to then-President Bill Clinton, she said, “Even if you despise Fidel and even if the Cubans should not have shot down the planes violating their air space. the embargo is wrong because it punishes people for being who they are.” As it happens, we have sympathy for the argument that opening up regimes to the world may well do more to fight oppression than boycotts and embargoes. But when it comes to Alice Walker, the same woman who has...

Jean Stapleton, a born-and-bred New Yorker immortalized in pop culture as the iconic Edith Bunker, died Friday in her Manhattan home at the age of 90. snipToday’s Queens is arguably America’s most diverse county. snipBut what of “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear? Well, according to the ZIP code listed on his political contributions, Lear lives in the Brentwood hills of Los Angeles — ZIP code 90049, to be exact. That neighborhood’s population? It’s 84 percent white, 1.4 percent black, 8.7 percent Asian, with the remainder “other” and multiracial. That almost looks like Archie Bunker’s dream spot.

BERLIN — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler's food taster. Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure it wasn't poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf's Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now...

<p>PAWLING, N.Y. (AP) — A New York state senator has spurred controversy online by asking in a tweet if the Boston Marathon bombing suspect arrested Friday should be tortured.</p>

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) The automatic cuts in federal spending known as sequestration could take a bite out of crucial medical research, such as the recently unveiled study in which a toddler was cured of HIV. The National Institutes of Health, which co-funded the study, stands to lose $1.6 billion of its $31 billion budget through September as a result of the sequester, which went into effect on Friday. As the largest supporter of biomedical research in the United States, it could slash funding for hundreds of research programs, such as the HIV case. The NIH, in conjunction with the Foundation...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — George S. McGovern, a proud liberal who argued fervently against the Vietnam War as a senator from South Dakota and suffered one of the most crushing defeats in presidential election history against Richard Nixon in 1972, died before dawn Sunday. He was 90. A spokesman for McGovern's family, Steve Hildebrand, told The Associated Press by telephone that McGovern died at 5:15 a.m. Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, surrounded by family and lifelong friends.

A ceremony was held in Krakow, Poland April 18, 2012 on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day honoring members of the Allied Forces who liberated the concentration camps during WWII. Along with Holocaust survivors and thousands of students, American veterans in their late 80s and early 90s traveled to Poland to participate in the ceremony along with one Canadian who took part in the campaign in Western Europe. They also participated in the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau. The annual March of the Living program brings thousands of young people from around the world each year on...

BLUFFTON, S.C. -- A woman is suing a Bluffton bar because a bartender didn't check her age before serving her on the night of the 2009 wreck that paralyzed her. The Beaufort Gazette reports that Chelsea Hess, who was then 20 years old, is a paraplegic because of the accident. Hess' lawsuit in 14th Circuit Court says she was served at Jock's Sports Grill, but the bartender failed to check her ID or to determine if she was already drunk.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 4) -- Nancy Pelosi may be moving out of her spacious office in the Capitol, but the woman who broke the marble ceiling to become the first female speaker of the House has already moved into the ranks of the most effective legislators in history. "While right now she is overshadowed by this thumping, she's going to rank quite high in the pantheon of modern speakers" of the last 100 years, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Only Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving speaker in history whose parliamentary maneuvers cleared the...

Robert Reboli — a basic skills and remedial English teacher at Madison Avenue Elementary School in Irvington who boasts a Master's degree — offers this enlightened advice: "Never trust a fat f---." Reboli, a role model, is one of the thousands of New Jersey teachers shaping young minds, and in his public post, part of the New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie’s Pay Freeze page on Facebook, Reboli is telling his students: Here are words to live by from a guy teaching you critical life tools. Write them down. There might be a quiz. Reboli’s words, and those...