Free Republic

Mexico is our next-door neighbor but it seems many Americans are not well-informed about it. Wrong and outdated impressions of Mexico affect our policymakers as well. This is particularly true regarding border and immigration policy. Americans think of Mexico as a poor country. And it is, compared to the United States. But Mexico is wealthier and has a higher standard of living than most countries in Latin America and Africa. There are, of course, many poor Mexicans. But doesn’t Mexico itself, with all its wealth, have a responsibility to help its own poor people? In the U.S., any meddling perpetrated...

On this date in 1601, Queen Elizabeth’s last great favorite became the last man beheaded in the Tower of London. Vain and dashing Robert Devereux rolled into the royal court in 1584 around age 19 and immediately established himself as the new favorite of the monarch, 30-some years his senior. They spent long walks and late nights in enchanted private company, and Devereux “commeth not to his owne lodginge tyll the birdes singe in the morninge.” Ye olde walke of shayme. In becoming the (presumed) lover* of the aging Virgin Queen, the Earl of Essex was only following the family**...

On or about this day in 1629, one John Dean, described in court documents as “an infant between eight and nine years,” was hanged in Abingdon, England for setting fire to two barns in the nearby town of Windsor. According to Historia placitorum corone: The history of the pleas of the crown, Volume 1 by William Axton Stokes and Edward Ingersoll, this juvenile felon was indicted, arraigned and found guilty all on the same day, February 23, “and was hanged accordingly.” The actual date of his execution is not known, but it can’t have been long afterward. The wheels of...

On this date in 1942, 200-plus Australian and Dutch prisoners captured after the Battle of Ambon earlier that same year were summarily executed near Laha Airfield on present-day Maluku, Indonesia. It was the last and the largest of a series of POW executions in the days following the February 3 conclusion of the battle; collectively, they’re known as the Laha Massacre.* The individual incidents, timelines, and body counts of the several incidents are reported with a good deal of variance and conflation in the sites describing these horrible days, but the evening of February 20 as the consummating atrocity appears...

On this date in 1951, the first of two batches comprising the “Martinsville Seven” — black, all — went to the Virginia electric chair for gang-raping a white woman. (The remainder were executed on Feb. 5) Somewhat forgotten today, the Martinsville Seven were in their day the locus of radical activism against Jim Crow in the South — very much like Willie McGee, who was put to death in Louisiana later that same year. In fact, this case generated a bit of a legal milestone: a month before the executions began, the U.S. Supreme Court declined an appeal seeking relief...

On this date in 1949, Syrian President Husni al-Za’im and his Prime Minister Mohsen Berazi were seized in a military coup, conducted to a court martial, and immediately put to death. An ethnic Kurd, al-Za’im had cut his teeth in the armed forces of two different empires — the Ottoman and the French — before Syria attained independence following World War II. The ambitious al-Za’im had got out from under a Vichy-era prison sentence for corruption and established himself as army chief of staff in time for the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Syrian forces’ underwhelming performance in this campaign set the...

Welcome to Your Weekend. Your Anchorman as El Rushbo put it indeed. Your Anchorman for these times El Rushbo spoke being on the: "Cutting Edge Of Societal Evolution" Sometimes as I see things going on all around us and also when I'm out being the clean-up guy outdoors it comes off as being on the: "Cutting Edge Of Societal Collapse"... Mitt Romney the Republican Senator from Utah Richard Blumenthal the Democrat Senator from Connecticut both of them touting the notion that Americans aren't dying in Ukraine... The warfare the US government and allied nations are waging against Russia and China...

Ruby Keeler was born into a catholic family in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on this date in 1909. She worked hard in tough times: "Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning." She supported Eisenhower's campaign in 1952. In the movie “Dames”, Ruby Keeler’s character Barbara Hemingway said, “I’m free, white, and 21. I love to dance AND I’m going to dance.” Those...

On December 1921 at 22 Hans Place in Knightsbridge, a treaty was signed between a provisional Irish Government and the British to create what was called the Irish Free State. However only six months later, a few hundred yards away in Eaton Place, an assassination occurred, the reverberations of which could be said to have helped start the Irish Civil War in 1922. At around midday of 22 June 1922, Field-Marshall Sir Henry Wilson unveiled a war memorial at Liverpool Street Station. He made a speech, quoted some relevant Kipling poetry and soon after returned by taxi to his home...

I always loved Wings Wild Life, Mumbo was and is sexier than John Lee Hooker or Elmore James. Tomorrow - a beautiful little bit of pop. Dear Friend - an enigmatic hymn to yearning for reconciliation with John Lennon. It was recorded for Ram but I'd be guessing the intense emotions of the breakup delayed it. The Lovely Linda underpinned both albums. A marriage that lasted. Ram on. Read on ........ for more ...... please .......

Who can make sense of Greta Garbo? She was born Swedish and became a movie star at home before she also found cinematic glory in America? But did she become truly American?