Free Republic

Valor. When things were their darkest for the U.S. after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raiders gave the nation hope. Sixteen B-25s, each with a five-man crew, were lined up on the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. This had never been tried in war—sending heavy bombers off a carrier. Because the Japanese military had learned of the strategy, the planes had to take off from farther out in the Pacific than had been planned. Their mission was to hit Tokyo, but now they would lack enough fuel to reach safety beyond Japan’s borders. They went anyway. They bombed Tokyo,...

Filmmaker reveals new evidence Frank Marshall Davis was president's real father NEW YORK – Did Barack Obama’s mother pose nude for communist poet and journalist Frank Marshall Davis? Did Obama build his political career on a fairy tale that his father was a Kenyan who grew up herding goats? Was Obama’s goal in writing his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” to misdirect Americans away from a deeply disturbing family background and a Marxist political foundation? These are questions filmmaker Joel Gilbert poses in the full-length documentary “Dreams from My Real Father,” which argues Frank Marshall Davis is the president’s biological...

Does Bob Greene deserve redemption? Or should the renowned former columnist for the Chicago Tribune sit on the bench for the rest of his days, yoked by a scarlet letter? Greene was fired last fall after a fling with a teen girl in the 1980s surfaced when she e-mailed his bosses. Chicago magazine, itself owned by the Tribune Co., hints strongly in its March issue that Greene got what he deserved. ''The incident that brought down Bob Greene was not an anomaly but part of a pattern,'' Chicago writer Steve Rhodes says. ''What people here have known for years we...

Sept. 25 —  A sickly schadenfreude is pervading the coverage of Bob Greene’s swift demise. A little over two weeks ago, Greene was one of the country’s best-paid journalists, writing a four-times-a-week syndicated column for the Chicago Tribune. Then, on Sunday, Sept. 15, a 1988 hotel-room encounter with a teenager came to light.GREENE RESIGNED, apologizing for his “indiscretions.” The Tribune covered the story on its front page. Since then, Chicago’s been awash in gleefully salacious tales of Greene’s other purported extramarital affairs: Steve Dahl, a Chicago shock jock, invited women who were willing to divulge the details of their dalliances...

Readers of The Chicago Tribune ain’t too happy with their paper this week. Most of them, it seems, felt the paper went to far in canning popular columnist Bob Greene over some sexual byplay with a teenybopper some 10 years ago. Seems a high school girl came to the Tribune Tower way back then to interview the columnist as part of a newspaper journalism project. Greene, who has a long reputation of flirting with the ladies (young and old), invited her out to dinner. Later, according to Tribune reporters Jim Kirk and Monica Davey, “Greene and the girl met at...