Free Republic

[Author's Note: This story originally published 25 years ago about the Vince Foster "suicide." I thought it might be appropriate to republish now with the current cocaine scandal in the White House. Notice how the White House videos at the time went conveniently missing?](President Clinton is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A voice is heard on his intercom. It is his secretary.) SECRETARY: Mr. President, Lieutenant Columbo is here to see you.(The Oval Office door opens a bit. Columbo peeks in tentatively.)COLUMBO: I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. President.CLINTON (smiling broadly): Not at all! I heard...

(CNN)In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, another former classmate of Brett Kavanaugh's denies attending a party like the one described in the allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually assaulting her three decades ago when they were teenagers.

A third high school student Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford claimed attended a party more than 35 years ago where the future Judge Kavanaugh attacked her denied any memory of the alleged incident in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, CNN reported Tuesday. CNN obtained a letter from Patrick J. Smyth, a Georgetown Prep alum who graduated in Kavanaugh’s class, to Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The letter was penned after Ford apparently identified Smyth as “PJ” – another teenager who was one of around five people at a drunken gathering...

We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That's an important accomplishment, because we're the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, "Let there be self." If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this yourself. That's not to say we're a selfish generation. Selfish means "too concerned with the self," and we're not. Self isn't something we're just, you know,...

The airman killed in a helicopter crash on Okinawa was a decorated para-rescue veteran whose effort to recover a wounded soldier was captured in one of the most iconic combat photos to come from the war in Afghanistan, the Air Force said Saturday. Tech. Sgt. Mark A. Smith, a flight engineer with the 33rd Rescue Squadron who had deployed twice to Afghanistan, died in the Aug. 5 crash of his HH 60G Pave Hawk helicopter while on a training mission at the Central Training Area on the Marine base at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, the Air Force said.

CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan — The Afghan boy lay naked and trembling beneath a woolen blanket in the dimly lit helicopter cabin, bleeding from a gunshot wound. The smell of fuel and dirt hung in the air as the deafening sound of the engine and rotors churned around him. His father crouched nearby, watching with curiosity and fear as three pararescuemen worked methodically to save his son’s life. Though warlike in appearance, their calm, gentle demeanor reassured the father. As the helicopter tore through the night sky on its way to the military hospital at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, a...

November 1989, Moscow During the Polish anti-Communist revolt, spearheaded by the workers, a joke swept through Poland. According to the story, the Communist dictator couldn’t figure out what to do in order to put down the uprising. So he went to Moscow to visit Lenin’s tomb for inspiration and the Soviet authorities closed it down to let him meditate there. “Oh Lenin,” said President Wojciech Jaruzelski, the situation is terrible. Thecountry is in turmoil; the economy is collapsing; counterrevolutionaries are everywhere, the imperialists are subverting Poland, and the church is backing the revolt. What should I do? Suddenly, Lenin, mummified...

Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another. They all give off the same skunk whiff. Would-be chief executives and their staffs shovel madly in the manure pile of foreign and domestic policy. Rhetorical flatulence renders their positions on the global warming debate moot. And the smell gets worse as the recycling center that is the 2008 election approaches. Or am I wrong? This campaign has been going on forever. The flipping and flopping and spin is making me bandwagon-sick. Electoral nausea causes everything...

Persian Jews break with tradition to break through in Hollywood By Karmel Melamed, Contributing Writer Actress Bahar Soomekh The generation of Iranian Jews who escaped Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution with their parents and traded a fearful existence for lives in New York and Los Angeles are now emerging in the entertainment industry. Whether it's producing Oscar-winning films, appearing on prime-time network television series or performing stand-up comedy, young Jews of Iranian heritage have been breaking with their community's traditional norms and leaving their imprint on Hollywood. Perhaps the most notable success came last year when Iranian Jewish film producer...

Has anyone heard from PJ? I didn't see him mention that he was taking some time off from the DUmmie FUnnies in his last one. It's been well over 24 hours - should we contact the local police? FBI? Perhaps he's been detained in one of those Walmart detention centers...I'm so worried.Truth be known, I'm worried for purely selfish reasons - I'm going through the DUFU Withdrawls.

NEW YORK "The Family Circus" reached its 45th anniversary today. Or maybe it will reach its 45th anniversary tomorrow. That's because the comic panel started on a leap-year day -- Feb. 29, 1960. Bil Keane created "The Family Circus," and now does it with his son, Jeff Keane, for more than 1,500 newspapers via King Features Syndicate.

0202 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2560633 in which the flatulent DUmmie “William Pitt” asks why a company is using a porn star as a model in advertising http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2560737 in which the DUmmies discuss the “hardest thing” they ever had to do, outside of looking for, and holding down, a job http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2560575 in which the DUmmies discuss the best sherry to use in an enema (really) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2552856 in which the DUmmies discuss a really weird “vegetarian issue” (too complicated to summarize here, but really really really really odd) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2560191 in which the boryborygmous DUmmie “Andy Stephenson” gets really ill in Washington, and needs antibiotics

See the following articles: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_10.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/203200_armor10.html http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m998.htm From those articles and webpages, here's some facts: 19,400 Humvees in Iraq 5,900 were shipped from factory with armor 9,000 upgraded with kits in theater TODAY 77% of Humvees in Iraq are armored Unarmored Humvees aren't supposeed to go off base. Unarmored Humvees travel between bases on a flatbed truck. Of 9,386 armor kits shipped to Iraq, 9,143 have been installed. That's 97% installed, only 3% to go. There are at least 16 varients of the Humvee: M998 cargo/troop carrier without winch M1038 cargo/troop carrier with winch M966 TOW missile carrier, basic armor,...

I hitched a ride back to Saudi Arabia on a New Zealand Air Force C-130. The members of the flight crew were all in their twenties and filled with leftover joy of combat. They let me stand on the flight deck as they brought their 132-foot wingspan, 100,000 pounds of an airplane down to a hundred feet and began chasing camels and goats across the desert at 300 miles an hour. The scattered tamarisk bushes were coming at us like uncountable fastballs in a batting-cage nightmare. The camels gave out pretty quick but the billies and nannies and kids were...

The Next ReelBy Nina RehfeldDecember 18, 2002 - 3:00 AM PST Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens For all the talk in the current cultural climate about how the wall between the highbrows and the lowbrows fell, or rather, was deconstructed decades ago, it's still a rare film that's as enthusiastically lauded, embraced or even just plain loved by critics and audiences alike as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Sure, there are critics who cloud their praise with anti-populist grudges but even most of those cave in by their last sentences to the sheer movieness of...

<p>SAN ANTONIO -- Air Force recruiters will soon be dropping by at Columbia, Harvard and other schools hitherto off limits to the military, to the apparent distress of some administrators. University heads who banned on-campus recruitment on the grounds that the military services' "don't ask, don't tell" policy was discriminatory have begun to reassess this principled position. But let the dean of Columbia law school explain.</p>

ArmyTimes.com April 18, 2002 Fierce Battle Produces Heroism On A Legendary Scale By Sean D. Naylor, Times staff writer BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - They call it the Battle of Roberts Ridge. The 15-hour firefight cost more American lives - seven - than any other engagement in the war against terrorism. It was named after the first American to die amidst the snowy, 10,000-foot mountains of eastern Afghanistan. But so many troops performed with such extraordinary courage during that long night and day that it could just as easily have been named after any one of at least a dozen...