Free Republic

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. “On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. “On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged...

Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in 2017, once President Barack Obama’s term ended. You can read the full letter here. The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic constitutional facts about how treaties work. (snip) If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages...

Supporters of the “Affordable Care Act” have been rather glum of late. Since the Supreme Court agreed to hear King v. Burwell, a lawsuit that challenges the Obama administration’s decision to funnel insurance subsidies through federal exchanges established in the 36 states that refused to create PPACA “marketplaces,” they have rather ironically bemoaned the possibility that five unelected justices could do irreparable damage to the law with one “wrong ruling.” Consequently, they have desperately grasped at a thin straw tossed their way by Justice Anthony Kennedy during Wednesday’s oral arguments about the case. In an exchange with Michael Carvin, who...

The Office of the Inspector General of the State Department found in its latest investigation that Clinton aides had “created an appearance of undue influence and favoritism” in a number of cases including that of Ambassador Howard Gutman. The investigation is largely a whitewash. There is no mention of the fact that one whistleblower related to the case, Richard Higbie, had his emails deleted by a hacker. Or that the main whistleblower, Aurelia Fedenisn, was harassed at home and had her law firm burgled.It goes almost without saying that Richard Nixon went down for much less than that.There is also...

Dear Justice Kennedy,June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage.I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of us children...

The most influential figure in the Republican presidential contest just may be a Democrat who died more than 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy. When Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer recently predicted Marco Rubio as the eventual 2016 winner, Krauthammer praised the senator from Florida with a label encapsulating political vigor, pro-growth ideas, and a robust foreign policy of peace through strength: “Kennedyesque.” The former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, another Republican with eyes on the White House, is, as Kennedy was, a Catholic from a wealthy and politically active family with bases in both New England and Florida. Jeb...

A Delta flight that was headed to Spain from Kennedy Airport turned around in the air and made an emergency landing after some cut wires were discovered in the plane's bathroom, sources said. Delta Flight 126 took off for Madrid at about 8:10 p.m. When an air marshal on board was alerted to some cut wires in a lavatory on the plane, officials decided to bring the plane back to Kennedy.

Before I came to dislike the movie “Selma,” I was deeply moved by it. Twice it brought me to tears. A crane shot of Martin Luther King Jr. leading thousands of demonstrators over the Edmund Pettus Bridge was one such moment, and so was the vicious attack on John Lewis — bravely, steadfastly walking into the beating he knew was coming. Today, Lewis is a member of Congress. Forever, he’ll be an American hero. Too bad, though, that the movie had to go Hollywood on Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, as if from the grave, has bellowed his protest. In its...

In early December, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration. The move has raised hopes in many quarters – not only in the United States but around the world – that the embargo itself is now destined to disappear. This does not detract from the fact that Cuba is still a dictatorship. The...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow greeted last week's release of the so-called Senate torture report with her skewed telling of the tale of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US and was subjected to years of harsh treatment and interrogation before the CIA concluded he was not a double agent. As you'd expect from the marquee host at America's version of Pravda, Maddow left out a significant and embarrassing detail in her December 9 report -- Well in 1964, Yuri Nosenko finally decided to defect to the United States and that is when things started going horribly wrong because...

22 November 1963. 51 years ago. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing that day? I was in phys ed class and had just finished running the cross country course. As I walked up the locker room door, Coach Waite was sitting on the steps with his face in his hands. He was crying. I asked what was wrong and he told me that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. That was a bad day for me.

--SNIP-- Gruber said during an event at Simmons College in February. ”Ted Kennedy had managed to figure out a way to rip off the federal Medicaid program to the tune of about $500 million a year through a series of strange manipulations. “Here was Mitt Romney’s dirty little secret that we don’t like to talk about in Massachusetts, which is the way we passed our law is the federal government paid for it. “George Bush said why am I sending this Democrat $500 million a year, I’m taking it back,” Gruber explained, adding “Mitt Romney to his credit went to...

On the 39th anniversary of the 1975 slaying of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley, the Kennedy scion accused of her murder is set to settle a slander lawsuit against television host Nancy Grace. In a stipulation of settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Wednesday, legal counsel for Michael Skakel agreed to drop his case against the HLN pundit and fellow legal commentator Beth Karas for comments they made in a 2012 broadcast about DNA evidence near the scene of the crime. HLN parent companies Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System were also named in the defamation suit and...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/10/23/why_is_mary_landrieu_in_so_much_trouble_124397.html

A convicted white-collar criminal once connected to some of America’s most prominent political families pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to stealing more than $1 million from multiple south Louisiana car dealerships over a three-year period, billing them for advertising services never rendered and sweeping the fees into his own bank accounts. Raymond Christopher Reggie, a Mandeville businessman who previously worked on many high-profile Democratic campaigns, including those of former President Bill Clinton, agreed to a guilty plea in Baton Rouge federal court to five counts of mail fraud related to the illegal billing scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office...

It has been widely reported that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, widow of President John F. Kennedy, shared with family members she was certain that Kennedy’s Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, arranged to have her husband murdered. Soon that conclusion will be heard in the late First Lady’s own words, because audio tapes, recorded of discussions with historian and close family associate, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., between March and June 1964, will be released and excerpts featured on an upcoming ABC News program in November marking the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) The tapes, which insiders describe as...

(Joseph Miller is the pen name for a ranking Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic planning.) The war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is not a continuation of Operation Iraqi Freedom, nor is it Gulf War III: This is President Barack ObamaÂ’s Vietnam.Early on in the Iraq War, political pundits on the right and the left began to draw comparisons to the Vietnam War because at that point, it appeared as though Iraq was on a glide path to becoming...

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: RFK Jr will be deposed in bitter divorce battle by the husband of his 'mistress' - weeks after he wed Cheryl Hines Robert F Kennedy Jr. is set to be quizzed over the exact nature of his relationship with his alleged mistress Chelsea Kirwan, MailOnline can reveal. The Kennedy scion, who only married actress Cheryl Hines just weeks ago, will be dragged into the bitter divorce battle between Mrs Kirwan and her estranged husband, plastic surgeon to the stars Laurence Kirwan. Dr Kirwan’s lawyers have informed Chelsea's legal team that they plan to depose both her and...