Free Republic

Just bizarre! Nearly 64 years to the day (July 19, 1969) since Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, just off Martha’s Vineyard, another bizarre drowning has taken place connected to a high-profile Democrat. The personal chef of Barack and Michelle Obama has drowned mysteriously in a pond on the property of their $12 million Martha’s Vineyard estate. He reportedly drowned after being out on the pond in a paddle-boat with another person in a paddle boat. Details are sparse. The Obama’s issued a statement saying they are “heartbroken.” The Obamas’ Martha’s Vineyard mansion...

A Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Hebrew University of Jerusalem students has found a new ally, the far-left group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The killer is Rasmieh Odeh. The Obama administration tried to deport her for lying about her terrorist past — and the saga is currently playing out in the US legal system. It all began in February 1969, when the 20-year-old Odeh, together with a fellow member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), set off a bomb in a Jerusalem supermarket. Two Hebrew University students who were shopping in the store, Edward Jaffe...

A female Palestinian-Arab terrorist who murdered two Israeli students is to be a featured speaker at a Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Chicago. […] More than half of the featured speakers listed on the Jewish Voice for Peace event’s website are Muslim or Arab. But perhaps the most significant speaker will be Rasmea Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who was convicted of murdering two Hebrew University students in Jerusalem in 1969. […] Odeh was released from prison in a prisoner swap after serving ten years of her (life) sentence. …

Warren Buffett is a philanthropist whose billions have been funneled to pro-abortion organizations for decades, including many behind the expansion of the abortion pill. While some of this is well-known among pro-lifers, what is less known is that Buffett was also instrumental in creating a “church” as a front for referring women for illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade — a “church” that eventually merged into Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. Warren Buffett’s abortion pill philanthropy Warren Buffett’s Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation was among the original investors in Danco Laboratories, the U.S. abortion pill manufacturer. In addition, the Washington Post...

... I went to see Interstellar mainly because I was tickled by the fact that the bad guy is called "Dr Mann". But I took along my kids, and I'm glad I did because it's a good film to see with children or parents. Underneath all the saving-humanity space-travel stuff, the only relationship that matters in the movie is between dad Matthew McConaughey and his daughter. I'm tiptoeing around the startling evolution of that relationship, but let's just say that the, ahem, role reversal of their final scene together had my boys talking all the way home. Interstellar is directed...

For more than 54 years, a Bay Area woman has wondered what happened to her husband, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot missing in action during the Vietnam War. Now at age 90, Joyce De Soto of Burlingame finally has answers. They were high school sweethearts at Balboa High School in San Francisco before tying the knot. "He had the most beautiful smile, and he was really sweet and really smart," De Soto said of her late husband Ernie De Soto. The De Sotos had three children and were married for 12 years before the family received devastating news: Ernie...

Gibraltar finally joined the official list of British cities on Monday (Aug 29), after 180 years in which its status, granted by Queen Victoria, had been overlooked due to an administrative error. The British overseas territory bid to become a city earlier this year as part of the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, but research in the National Archives established it had in fact been granted city status in 1842. "It is excellent to see official recognition given to the City of Gibraltar, a huge accolade to its rich history and dynamism," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in...

Barack Obama is in the final stretch of his time as President of the United States. It was announced on Sunday that Obama will make his first public appearance at a U.S. mosque to show solidarity with Muslims, whom many blame for all those terrorist attacks they commit. The White House announced that Obama would be visiting the Islamic Society of Baltimore, which is located in Woodlawn, Maryland, just west of Baltimore. The ISB started in 1969 as a prayer group at Johns Hopkins University, which is located in Baltimore, according to the mosque’s website. A little more than a...

A video posted on Chinese microblogging website Weibo by the Russian embassy of a party held today to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Vladivostok sparked online outrage with Chinese diplomats, journalists and users referring to the city by its old name ‘Haishenwai’. Vladivostok which once used to be part of China’s Qing dynasty and was known as Haishenwai was annexed by the Russian empire in 1860 after China’s defeat by the British and the French in the Second Opium war. Reacting to Russian embassy’s tweet, Shen Shiwei, a journalist working with the state-owned broadcaster CGTN, tweeted: “This “tweet” of #Russian...

Road to MoscowBill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow By Fedora SummaryDuring the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton’s student protests and Moscow trip generated much controversy, but few answers. While Clinton’s government files from that era seemingly remain unavailable even today, there is at least more information available than in 1992. The public record reveals that Clinton’s social network and views on Vietnam were influenced by a pattern of contact between Communist agents and sympathizers and Clinton’s academic and political associates. This pattern is documented here through an analysis of Clinton’s antiwar activity up through the time he left Oxford...

They also warned that the move could worsen the already fragile human rights situation in the easternmost region of the country, amid accusations of numerous incidents of violence.Papua officially became a part of Indonesia in 1969, following a plebiscite in which representatives of various Papuan tribes voted in favor of joining the republic. As their votes were cast under a heavy military presence, Papuan separatists, including the Free Papua Movement (OPM), have since called for a fresh vote on self-determination, prompting military operations and retaliatory attacks against Indonesian personnel.

NEW YORK -- Tom Seaver transformed a franchise and captivated a city, setting enduring standards as he whipped his powerful right arm overhead for the Miracle Mets and dirtied his right knee atop major league mounds for two decades. A consummate pro and pitching icon, he finished fulfilled after a career remembered with awe long after his final strikeout. "It is the last beautiful flower in the perfect bouquet," Seaver said on the afternoon he was inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame. Seaver, the galvanizing force who steered the New York Mets from the National League cellar to a stunning...

Last week, I posted an item about a Psychology Today article titled "The Ideological Animal" (now fully available at the website). The article purports to explain what motivates those of us who made the post-9/11 shift from left to right and it uses my story, as well as the discussion group I started, the 9/11 Neocons, as an example. As I indicated at the time, I have no serious complaints about the article's take on me, which I found to be generally fair. Mostly, I objected to the inaccurate use of the term "pro-war rallies" to describe my days as...

The presence at the European Parliament this week of a Palestinian who hijacked planes in Europe last century — and whose organization is on the E.U.’s terrorist list — continues to make waves, with some lawmakers and others calling for an investigation. Leila Khaled, a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a guest speaker at an event at the parliament complex in Brussels on Tuesday night. In 1969 and 1970, Khaled hijacked two aircraft — one Israeli, one American — in European airspace. She was arrested during the second attempt, but was soon...

Patti Mulhearn Lydon, 68, doesn’t have rose-colored memories of attending Woodstock in August 1969. The rock festival, which took place over four days in Bethel, NY, mostly reminds her of being covered in mud and daydreaming about a hot shower. She was a 17-year-old high-school student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when she made the trek to Max Yasgur’s farm with her boyfriend Rod. For three nights, she shared an outdoor bedroom with 300,000 other rock fans from around the country, most of whom were probably not washing their hands for the length of “Happy Birthday” — or at all. “There was...

Yes, I remember Woodstock when I was in high school.  Worse than that, I have the 3-disc L.P. somewhere in a box.  I listened to it one time and wished I had sought a refund. Woodstock was awful in more ways than one.  It was dirty, and people behaved very strangely. My mother, who turns 91 today on Mother's Day, looked at the TV news back then and said in Spanish that all of those people were going to get sick so close to each other.  Then she added that it was a natural place for some pandemic to break out. Well,...

Don McLean, the 74-year-old singer best known for his 1971 hit “American Pie,” says he is not impressed with the music of today. The singer-songwriter believes times have certainly changed since his early days in the music industry, and he’s claiming there is no longer music of substance when he turns on the radio. The folk-rock singer sat down with Tom Cridland for his YouTube series “The Greatest Music of All Time” to reflect on his musical career highlights. During the candid conversation, McLean partially discusses his political views, claiming that politics no longer “really mean anything,” and he likened...

As 1968 began, Paul Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University, known to his peers for his groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies but almost unknown to the average person. That was about to change. In May, Ehrlich released a quickly written, cheaply bound paperback, The Population Bomb. Initially it was ignored. But over time Ehrlich’s tract would sell millions of copies and turn its author into a celebrity. It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked. The first sentence set the tone: “The battle...

Nuns Perform Hindu Ritual During Doxology at Cdl. Cupich Mass ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Catholics all over the world have been scandalized by nuns performing a distinctive Hindu ritual during the elevation of the Holy Eucharist at a Mass celebrated by Cdl. Blaise Cupich in Rome.       The "arati" ritual is one of twelve Hindu symbols, rituals and ceremonials approved by the Vatican for the "Indian Rite Mass" and has led to widespread syncretism, liturgical abuse, confusion among the laity and a moratorium on evangelization in India.  A trio of Indian nuns, who had completed their diploma in safeguarding at the Gregorian Pontifical University's Center...