Free Republic

A 33-year-old Michigan woman and convert to Islam has been killed in Syria while fighting with opposition forces against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war, her family said on Thursday.

Charley Reese, a retired Orlando Sentinel columnist known for his conservative voice, has died, according to a Facebook post by his daughter. Reese, who was 76, died Tuesday after a long illness, according to the post. He was admitted to a hospital in February and later was transferred to a rehabilitation facility.

One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm...

Head of the NBC News Group Pat Fili-Krushel announced late Friday afternoon that the news magazine "Rock Center with Brian Williams" would be cancelled after its final airing on June 21. “I would like to thank Brian, Alex, David and the entire 'Rock Center' team for their efforts. The show will be missed,” Fili-Krushel wrote in an email released after a very busy news day heading into a weekend. The timing suggests the 4th place (and sometimes 5th place) peacock network was hoping to minimize the public relations black eye associated with the failure of such a high-profile show. The...

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - Bill Moser, who has been a scout leader in Clarksville for many years, has resigned his post Wednesday, May 8 after the Middle TN Boy Scout Council voted against allowing openly gay members. The following is Moser’s letter of resignation, obtained by ClarksvilleNow: "The Boy Scouts of America provides a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops personal fitness. I have been actively involved with scouting for over 50 years, and my personal experience with Scouting has reinforced my belief that helping youth is a key to...

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez slid into a coma the day before he died of respiratory failure after cancer spread into his lungs, sources say. Chavez's precise condition was one of the world's best-kept secrets since his cancer was announced in June 2011. Since his death this week, however, details have emerged of the 58-year-old president's battle with cancer and the last moments in the hospital with close family and senior aides.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of the country's presidential guard said. "He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips … 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," General Jose Ornella said. The general said he had spent the past two years with Chávez, including his final moments, as Venezuela's president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.

One of the deputies involved in a gun battle Tuesday afternoon with fugitive former police officer Christopher Dorner has died of his wounds, law enforcement sources told The Times. The San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, according to the sources. Another deputy was also wounded in the shootout near a cabin where Dorner was believed to be holed up in the snow-covered mountains near Big Bear. His condition was not immediately known. The afternoon gun battle in which hundreds of rounds were exchanged was part of a quickly...

While the title says it all, I thought a goodbye was in order. While I've been a FReeper for well over a decade, I must declare that it is time to part ways. While I have the greatest respect for a great many of you, the days where I can in good conscience remain silent about the issues that set me apart from the rest of FReeperdom have past. For clarity, or perhaps catharsis, I'm not entirely certain which, I'll lay them out on the table an call the ZOT™ down upon myself. The racism: I just can't handle it...

Tony Zerilli, alleged to be the underboss of Detroit's biggest crime family, is breaking his silence on one of the greatest unsolved crimes in American historyA man who federal agents say is a main character in the infamous unsolved mystery about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa is breaking his silence after decades of refusing to answer questions. The reputed gangster says the union leader was buried in a field in suburban Detroit -- about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen. Eighty-five years old and barely able to walk, Tony Zerilli never thought this day would...

A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote. “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not...

Former Democrat Joe Lieberman used his last speech on the U.S. Senate floor on Wednesday to call for bipartisanship and get in a last dig over the controversial result of the 2000 election, when he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Lieberman, 70, announced in January 2011 that he would retire when his fourth term ends next month rather than seek re-election. He reflected on his career in remarks that lasted for about 20 minutes, recounting landmarks in his career and changes in society since he became a U.S. senator in January 1989. “When I started here in the Senate,...

Team Obama's Justification For Killing A 16-Year-Old American In A Drone Strike Is StunningMichael Kelley | Oct. 24, 2012, 2:04 PM Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, recently became the first person on Team Obama to address the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Conor Friedersdorf of the The Atlantic reports. Abdulrahman was the son of New Mexico-born cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Alwaki. Both were killed in separate drone strikes last year. A reporter asked Gibbs: "Do you think that the killing of Anwar al-Alwaki's 16-year-old son, who was...

Police say an eastern Indiana man has been shot dead while trying to rob a pizzeria. Richmond police said 30-year-old Freddie McCoy of Richmond was shot by an employee of Mercurio's Pizza about 10 p.m. Saturday. Capt. Jim Branam tells the Palladium-Item that McCoy died at Reid Hospital after being treated by medical personnel at the scene of the shooting. It's not clear from the report if McCoy had a weapon.

As the GOP head to Florida, the literal poster boy for trial lawyers in Florida is endorsing Obama. It is not a surprise. Charlie Crist was Barack Obama’s favorite Republican for the longest time. They stood shoulder to shoulder in support of the stimulus. RedState played a great role in helping beat Charlie Crist. Marco Rubio is such an improvement But I do hope Charlie Crist gets a speaking role at the Democratic National Convention. They could use a refreshing voice such as Crist’s. See, Charlie Crist has long maintained Todd Akin’s abortion position — no exceptions except life...

KHARTOUM: Up to 31 people including at least one Sudanese minister were killed when a plane taking them to an Islamic festival crashed in the south of the country, an official and state media said on Sunday. The plane went down in mountains around Talodi, a town in the border state of South Kordofan, while taking a government delegation there to celebrate the festival marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, state news agency SUNA said. State television reported that 26 passengers were killed, among them Guidance and Endowments (religious affairs) Minister Ghazi al-Sadeq. Abdel Hafiz Abdel...

August 8, 2012 (MILWAUKEE) (WLS) -- Wade Michael Page died of a self-inflicted gunshot after opening fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday.

Did you know the government publishes a quarterly list of every individual who renounces his or her citizenship? The Wall Street Journal's infographics team decided to crunch the data and came up with a chart tracking the growth of how many Americans no longer wish to be so. The results are fairly striking:  WSJ.com The accompanying article by Laura Sanders notes that in 2010, Congress passed a law requiring foreign financial institutions to certify that U.S. taxpayers aren't hiding money in them as a condition for being allowed to do business here.

An announcement from Rep. Ron Paul indicates that the Republican presidential candidate will no longer actively campaign for the GOP nomination, but will continue to work to secure delegates at upcoming Republican state conventions. "Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted," said Paul, in a statement released Monday afternoon. "Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have."

The last surviving founder of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew Nicaragua's U.S.-backed right-wing dictatorship in 1979 has died. Tomas Borge Martinez was 81. First Lady Rosario Murillo said in a simultaneous broadcast on Radio Ya and other stations that Borge Martinez died late Monday.