Free Republic

This year those of us who cherish the phrase “Merry Christmas” have started to say “Merry Christ-mas” to reinsert the name Christ into the greeting. Here’s a reminder of how we started to lose “Merry Christmas” 40 years ago. On the day before Christmas in 1971 the New York Times ran an article about a new “holiday” called Kwanzaa that was invented by an America hating Black separatist named Ron Everett. Everett now uses the made up “African” name Maulana Ron Karenga to show the world he wants nothing to do with White America. That Mr. Karenga was in a...

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...