Free Republic

<p>Prominent Houston attorney John O'Quinn was one of two men who died this morning when their SUV slammed into a large tree on Allen Parkway after the driver apparently lost control, police said.</p> <p>"I'm stunned. The community lost one of its biggest assets," said Rick Laminack, who worked with O'Quinn from 1987 until 2006. "He was a great lawyer who shared a lot of his wealth with people who needed help."</p>

Another comic great has died. Dom DeLuise passed away at a Los Angeles hospital around 6:00 PM Monday, reports TMZ. A film and TV staple since the mid-1960's, DeLuise was an expert foil for other performers, including Dean Martin, Mel Brooks (in six of his films) and Burt Reynolds, with whom he starred in the "Cannonball Run" flicks. In 1980, he played the lead in "Fatso," a film written and directed by Anne Bancroft, the late wife of Mel Brooks. A noted gourmand, DeLuise authored two books of his Italian recipes, and wrote several children's books. He voiced numerous characters...

Marilyn French, a writer and feminist activist whose debut novel, “The Women’s Room,” propelled her into a leading role in the modern feminist movement, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 79 and lived in Manhattan. The cause was heart failure, said her son, Robert. With steely views about the treatment of woman and a gift for expressing them on the printed page, Ms. French transformed herself from an academic who quietly bristled at the expectations of married women in the post-World War II era to a leading, if controversial, opinionmaker on gender issues who decried the patriarchal society she...