Free Republic

Paul Samuelson, the dean of American economists, died last Sunday at 94. An MIT professor and Nobel Prize winner, Samuelson made one major venture into public policy. This was when he advised the John F. Kennedy campaign and economic transition team in 1960 and 1961 and thereafter consulted with the new president's Council of Economic Advisers. Obituaries have been quick to credit Samuelson's advice to JFK for launching the great 1960s expansion. The Boston Globe quoted Samuelson's recommendation to JFK in 1961 — "a temporary reduction in tax rates on individual incomes can be a powerful weapon against recession" —...

Law: American heroes are arraigned for allegedly punching a terrorist in wartime. What happens to Tiger Woods isn't vital to our country's future. What happens to Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe is. People are more likely to recognize the names of Tiger's alleged bimbo eruptions than the names of these three Navy SEALs we sent into battle. They are not household names in a nation consumed with Climate Gate, the public option and the antics of billionaire athletes. An administration consumed with apologies has said the architect of 9/11's massacre, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, must be given all the...

John F. Kennedy remains a beloved figure almost a half century after his death. Rush Limbaugh is still the main man to Republicans. Although polls show dramatically declining support for a government run health care system, the vast majority of Americans aren't sure what it is they dislike. Such are the results of a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair survey. JFK was the No. 1 response when Americans were asked which president they would like to see added to Mount Rushmore. Twenty-nine percent named the president assassinated 46 years ago. Ronald Reagan was next with the support of 20 percent of...

This Sunday the Discovery Channel is running two back-to-back documentaries -- "Did the Mob Kill JFK?" and "JFK: The Ruby Connection" -- exploring the role of the Mafia behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: New information and never before heard details of a startling confession raise new questions on just who was behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the subsequent killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. * * * "I had the little bastard killed. He was a thorn in my shoe" -- according to a secret FBI informant these were the...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

It’s been over two months since General McChrystal, our top commander in Afghanistan, put out the call for more troops. President Barack Hussein Obama continues to hem and haw and hold endless meetings to discuss the issue. Maybe he’s too busy having parties with J-Lo and friends, compiling his enemies list, pushing healthcare, playing B ball and campaigning for fellow Dems to worry about such trivialities as warfare. Meanwhile, things get worse abroad and more of our soldiers are paying the highest of price for an indecisive commander-in-chief. Obama’s stalling is a perfect example of his methodology: vacillate and ignore...

Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior. For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance. The files in question, some released under...

I'm watching a collection of old news footage from the JFK assassination on the History Channel right now, and was wondering if any Freepers have any theories about what really happened. I figure with the great wealth of knowledge here on Free Republic, there's got to be some pretty good theories waiting to be shared.

Is there anything left to be said—or seen—when it comes to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Just you wait. JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, a two-part, four-hour special airing on History [Sunday, October 11, 9/8c and Monday, October 12, 9/8c] takes viewers back to November 22, 1963 and tells the story via a timeline using only archival news footage, much of which will be new even to assassination buffs. There is no narration (sorry, Peter Coyote). There are no talking heads. The project’s exec producers Nicole Rittenmeyer and Seth Skundrick used a similar technique in last year’s...

On Sunday night, the History channel be gins a remarkable three-hour, two-part program on the assassination of JFK, perhaps the best on that subject you will ever see. And even if you think you've seen it all and can't bear to see it again, well, then think again.

Apologies for the tease (can you post pics here? I'm a FR noob...) but follow the jump for perhaps one of the rarest photographs in existence. Of the beloved Bella Pelosi. Prepare yourselves...

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi insinuated that Israel was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Speaking Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, Gadhafi implied that Israel may have plotted to kill Kennedy in 1963 because he allegedly wanted to launch a probe into its clandestine nuclear program. “Jack Ruby, an Israeli, killed Lee Harvey Oswald,” the Libyan leader was quoted by the translator as saying. “Why did this Israeli kill Harvey? Ruby later died mysteriously. The whole world should know that Kennedy wanted to investigate the actions of the Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona.”

Imagine writing hundreds of words about the death of Abraham Lincoln, without mentioning the name of his assassin. Or writing about 9/11 but putting the word "hijackers" in scare quotes... (Oh wait: if you endorse that kind of writing, you might actually earn yourself a short lived White House czarship. So scratch that...) Last night I stumbled upon a post at Media Matters -- or, as I like to call it, the George Soros Steno Pool. Media Matters is a leftwing "media watchdog" that monitors conservative talk radio and FOX News, then refutes their daily "lies."

HAVANA (AFP) – Cuban Vice President Juan Almeida Bosque, a revolutionary commander who fought alongside Fidel Castro to bring down a pro-American dictatorship, has died. He was 82. An official communique issued through state media said Almeida, the number three official in the Americas' only communist regime, died late Friday from cardiac arrest. Almeida was one of just three top Cuban leaders to hold the title of revolutionary commander. As a black man in racially diverse Cuba, Almeida was an important visual symbol of a break with the past, particularly in 1950s Cuba, when racism and discrimination were common. His...

What would John F. Kennedy have done? See below. Many people are scared. They are scared that Obama’s objective is to make this country into a socialist state with the government controlling more and more of our lives and with us having fewer and fewer personal liberties. Obama’s vision for America is not shared by many. How many? There are only two polls you can really believe. Rasmussen and PEW. These two polls have been right on the money for the last two election cycles while others, NBC, CBS, CNN, Time, FOX, etc. are not as reliable. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/ Get the...

The day his brother was shot in Dallas, Ted Kennedy had to tell his father the news, and wondered who was behind it. Case Closed: Oswald and the Assassination of JFK author Gerald Posner reports.It was 12:45 in Washington D.C. on November 22, 1963. Teddy Kennedy, who had been a senator for less than a year, was presiding over the Senate, a thankless clerical job assigned to junior members. The chambers were almost deserted, but a few senators were debating a mind-numbing bill about federal library services. It was nearly time to break for lunch when the Senate’s press liaison...

It is a clear homage to perhaps the most iconic White House photograph. Almost 46 years after the world first saw two-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr playing under the Oval Office desk as his father worked, the White House has released a picture of Sasha Obama, 8, hiding behind a sofa as President Obama reads briefing papers at the same desk. According to the White House, Sasha is sneaking up on her father as he nears the end of a working day behind the Resolute desk, which was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879....

September 3, 2009 Obama savours his own White House Camelot in photo homage to Kennedy Tim Reid in Washington [Pic in URL] It is a clear homage to perhaps the most iconic White House photograph. Almost 46 years after the world first saw two-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr playing under the Oval Office desk as his father worked, the White House has released a picture of Sasha Obama, 8, hiding behind a sofa as President Obama reads briefing papers at the same desk. According to the White House, Sasha is sneaking up on her father as he nears the end...

After nearly a week of incessant post-mortem vacuity, not a single commentator has hit upon the real legacy of the late Kennedy political dynasty. The Kennedys are largely responsible for making African Americans dependent on an alliance with liberal Democrats. The result--highly unstable in a democratic society -- 90% of black voters regularly pull the Democrat lever. The 90% solid black vote tips the balance in favor of Democrats in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Without these votes, Democrats would simply cease to function as a national party. Without the Kennedys around...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The young senator inspired a new generation of voters with his message of change and extended America's hand to the global community in an effort to promote a different kind of diplomacy. One magazine characterized him as having a "quick charm, the patience to listen, a sure social touch, an interest in knowledge and a greed for facts." A biographer recalled that he "had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation -- his message grounded on his own intuition of some...

That Senator Kennedy’s death was imminent could have been guessed from the statement issued earlier in the week that President Obama had no plans to visit him during his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Had the senator been in a condition to receive him, the president would almost certainly have gone to Hyannis, from personal affection, certainly, as well as from gratitude, but also in the knowledge (surely forgivable in a practicing politician) that a torch-passing ceremony would be useful just now in the struggle to get a health-care bill. The image of the old senator on his deathbed, the lion...

Chris Matthews has used the passing of Ted Kennedy to paint opponents of Pres. Obama as a pool of potential assassins. Participating in a panel discussion on Morning Joe today, Matthews asserted that there was a hateful environment in the Dallas of 1963 in which President Kennedy was assassinated that is "like the mood we're in now." View video here.

Here is video of Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley talking with Mike Huckabee about the fact that President Obama is now comparing himself with Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Brinkley believes Obama is running into problems because he is trying to pass a Health Care bill so soon after the huge Stimulus Spending Plan. The American people feel he is trying to do "too much too fast." . . . . (Watch Video)

Here are the news stories and opinion articles conservatives dugg today! Check out the list and hold the MSM accountable to ALL the facts! http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/

His lack of integrity was deeply troubling, but it was the world-class arrogance that did the real military damage. It should be evident to all that Robert S. McNamara, to paraphrase a line from the 1940 book Guilty Men, was among the worst selections for high office since Caligula chose to make his horse a consul at Rome. He died July 6 at age 93. TodayÂ’s officials can profit from studying his career. McNamara, the Pentagon chief in the Kennedy and Johnson years, showed sketchy character on many occasions, but nowhere did he do this more baldly than in his...

President John F. Kennedy had secret trysts with Marilyn Monroe in a loft above the office of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Ronald Kessler reveals in his new book about the Secret Service. "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect," released Tuesday, features startling disclosures about presidents from JFK to Barack Obama.

Former US president John F. Kennedy had an affair with a Swedish flight attendant, according to a new book based on interviews with current and former Secret Service agents. According to ex-agent Robert Lutz, President Kennedy took a liking to a Swedish Pan Am Flight attendant who was riding on the press pool airplane which typically follows US presidents while they travel. While Lutz, who was assigned to the press plane, had initially planned to ask the good looking Swede out for dinner, members of the Secret Service detail assigned to President Kennedy told Lutz to back off. “She’s part...

Lyndon Johnson "Johnson would come on the plane and the minute he got out of sight of the crowds, he would stand in the doorway and grin from ear to ear and say, 'You dumb sons of bitches. I piss on all of you,' " recalls Robert M. MacMillan, an Air Force One steward. Richard Nixon One evening, Nixon built a fire and forgot to open the flue damper. Two agents came running. "Can you find him?" one of the agents asked the other. "No, I can't find the son of a bitch," the other agent said. From the bedroom,...

Several weeks ago, the press was full of stories that pointed out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's absence from important international confabs. Even the most "mainstream" of publications suggested that America's real foreign policy was being forged from the same epicenter as healthcare reform, energy policy and virtually every other major initiative -- the White House. Of course Secretary Clinton had suffered a nasty injury to her elbow not long ago, which could explain some of her absence from the limelight. And in recent days she has made major statements regarding both Iran and North Korea, and has picked up...

July 27, 2009, 4:00 a.m. McNamara’s FollyThe road to failure in Vietnam. By Conrad Black The recent death of former U.S. defense secretary and World Bank president Robert McNamara, at 93, has raised again, in editorials and obituaries, the hoary head of the Vietnam War. Geeky in his thick, rimless glasses and slicked-back hair, expressionless, desiccated, fast-talking, and mechanically confident, McNamara was at the cutting edge of the managerial revolution—a business administrator, statistician, and efficiency expert. He was a mesmerizing figure for a time, especially after the Kennedy public-relations apparatus confected the myth of calibrated crisis management in the...

NEW YORK – A runway at New York City's Kennedy Airport was shut down Wednesday morning after 78 turtles emerged from the bay and crawled onto the tarmac. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says grounds crews rounded up the wayward reptiles in about 35 minutes and deposited them back in the water, further from airport property. The shutdown disrupted flight schedules, though, with delays climbing to nearly 1 1/2 hours. Pilots reported the first turtle sightings at around 8:30 a.m. The Port Authority identified the turtles as Diamondback Terrapins. They appeared to be about 8 inches...

NEW YORK – A runway at New York City's Kennedy Airport was shut down Wednesday morning after 78 turtles emerged from the bay and crawled onto the tarmac. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says grounds crews rounded up the wayward reptiles in about 35 minutes and deposited them back in the water, further from airport property. The shutdown disrupted flight schedules, though, with delays climbing to nearly 1 1/2 hours.

A warning to President Obama from John F. Kennedy. President Obama has denounced the actions taken by the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military, all actions taken under the rule of law -- Honduran law -- in the nonviolent arrest and removal from office of strongman (caudillo) Manuel Zelaya. President Obama's denunciation was based, using Jay D. Homnick's apt phrase, on "standard collegiate peacenik rhetoric." Joining in this shame are the UN General Assembly that approved a resolution by consensus without a formal vote on June 30 (p The General Secretary of the OAS is José Miguel Insulza. He is...

Rather than absolving him of his sins, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s pseudo-mea culpa, “In Retrospect: Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” is a self-indictment. His lesser crime is self-indulgence. His arrogance and duplicity during the Vietnam conflict is echoed throughout his book as he recounts his mismanagement of the war. If as he admits, ignorance was his guiding light, then, it has grown to be a beacon today, proving that he has learned little about Vietnamese communism in the almost three decades that it took him to write his book. Besides the war, another tragedy is that McNamara seems...

LONDON: Former US defence secretary Robert S. McNamara, who has died in Washington aged 93, wanted America to attack China with nuclear weapons if it invaded India for a second time. Although he became a hated figure among the world’s Left for his role as an architect of America’s war on Vietnam, one of his chief aims when he became the head of the World Bank in 1968 was to leverage the Bank’s aid to persuade India to tackle poverty more effectively. McNamara was key to plans discussed by US President John F. Kennedy in May 1963 to defend India...

Jackie Kennedy had a steamy four-year affair with Bobby Kennedy after JFK's assassination, according to a new book. The married senator was the first lady's "true love" and the couple was openly affectionate at family get-aways and social gatherings, according to a new book "Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story." The book also claims it was Jackie who asked doctors to pull the plug on Bobby after he was shot -- not his wife, Ethel....

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died. McNamara, 93, died at home in his sleep Monday morning, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time. Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was president of the Ford Motor Co. when President John F. Kennedy asked him to head the Pentagon in 1961. McNamara worked for seven years as the defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, longer than any other person in that post. He headed the war department during the build-up of forces in...

Former U.S. president John F. Kennedy's wife Jacqueline had an affair with movie legend Marlon Brando the year after her husband was assassinated, according to a new book. Brando is reported to have bedded the iconic socialite on two occasions in 1964. The Godfather star is said to have written about their romance in an early draft of his 1994 memoirs Songs My Mother Taught Me - but the revelations were edited out by a friend of JFK's widow prior to publication. In a new book - titled Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story author C. David Heymann claims to...

On Today's Show...   Inexplicable: Gov. Mark Sanford Admits to Affair with the Girl from Ipanema I guess they all think they'll get away with it. He could have been our JFK (without the mob ties).   Where's the Outrage? Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in Fat City They ripped AIG's bonuses, but bonuses at Democrat-run Goldman are fine. Note the government didn't bail out Lehman Brothers, Goldman's main competitor. (Rush 24/7 Members:  Listen) » NY Times:  Citigroup to Fatten Salaries » WSJ:  All Aboard the Goldman Sachs Bonus Train   "Big payouts at Goldman Sachs and Citibank? I guarantee, folks, this...

Two Pakistani men are being held in Seattle after an airline employee at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport found one of their names on a terrorism-related no-fly list Saturday night. One of the men, 36, carrying a British Columbia driver's license, paid cash for a one-way ticket to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. After the airline employee called 911, the man left the counter, abandoning his ticket.

MIAMI – Bernard Leon Barker, one of the five Watergate burglars whose break-in led to America's biggest political scandal, died Friday in suburban Miami. He was 92. The Cuban-born former CIA operative who also participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion died at his home after being taken to the Veteran's Administration Medical Center the night before, said his stepdaughter, Kelly Andrad. He appeared to have died from complications of lung cancer, and he had also suffered from heart problems. Barker was one of five men who broke into the Watergate building in Washington on June 17, 1972. A piece...

It seems it will always be John F. Kennedy's deathday in Dallas -- not his birthday -- that we will observe, and that which, even now, almost 46 years later, still fills a dark, anguished corner in the national psyche. JFK, the most famous initials of our lifetime. Strange that Lincoln's deathday goes by with barely a whisper. But today is Kennedy's birthday, born 92 years ago at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. Can you imagine, a 92-year-old Jack Kennedy?

Mimi Beardsley Alford may get a seven-figure sum for her story, Philip Sherwell reports from New York. A FORMER White House intern who had a 17-month affair with president John Kennedy is to tell her story for the first time. Mimi Beardsley Alford, now 66, a retired New York church administrator, will receive an advance believed to be worth nearly $US1 million ($A1.3 million) from publisher Random House for her memoir. Mrs Alford, who is breaking her silence after more than 45 years, maintained the secret about her relationship with the womanising president until a new Kennedy biography was published...

Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator who had an affair with John F. Kennedy while she was an intern in the White House, is breaking a silence of more than 40 years to tell her story in a memoir to be published by Random House. Ms. Alford’s secret was initially divulged six years ago when a biography of Kennedy was published with portions from a 1964 oral history that described the president’s 18-month sexual affair with a young intern named Mimi Beardsley. The Daily News tracked her down and discovered that she was Marion Fahnestock, who was...

Too many American lawyers remained silent while the United States conducted illegal torture and the Constitution was violated by disregard for the rule of law, Ted Sorensen told law graduates Saturday. In a commencement address at the University of Nebraska College of Law, his alma mater, Sorensen urged the graduates to act with courage and embrace integrity in their professional pursuits. “Most of you as new lawyers will soon find it easy to make a buck but find it hard to make a difference,” he said, according to an advance copy of the speech obtained by the Journal Star. Sorensen,...

Wednesday May 6, 2009 Notre Dame's 40+ Year History of Unfaithfulness to the Church by Patrick B. Craine SOUTH BEND, Indiana, May 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) -The University of Notre Dame's invitation of President Obama to deliver their 2009 graduation commencement address on May 17th has generated great controversy in the North American Church and shocked many Catholics who have looked to Notre Dame as the very model of Catholic higher education in America.  This invitation, however, is by no means an isolated incident, and, in fact, is merely a continuation of Notre Dame's progressive self-detachment from the Catholic Church...

Ex-gang member shows no reaction when he gets maximum for tying couple to anchor, throwing them overboard. SANTA ANA A former Long Beach gang member-turned-youth-minister showed no emotion today when he was sentenced to death for his role in the murders-at-sea of a Newport Beach couple who were tied to an anchor and thrown overboard. The presidentially-named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 43, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder by an Orange County jury in January for the Nov. 15, 2004 deaths of Thomas and Jackie Hawks. The jury also found that he committed multiple murders for financial gain, which...

Isn't this scene in the movie, JFK from official government documents?