Free Republic

It’s an oft-told tale that, given Friday’s developments in Washington, bears repeating. As Joe Califano describes it in “Triumph and Tragedy,” his revealing memoir of his time in Lyndon Johnson’s White House, the president summoned civil rights leaders during racial unrest in the explosive summer of 1967. Detroit and Newark were burning and Democrats were sharply divided over several issues, including how to respond to the ­rioters. LBJ was using his famous arm-twisting methods with NAACP leader Roy Wilkins and Urban League executive director Whitney Young, but without much success. Frustrated, he launched an attack on the left-wing of his...

Schumer loses cool with Trump supporter at swanky restaurant Sen. Chuck Schumer caused a scene at a Manhattan restaurant when he began yelling at a wealthy and well-connected Donald Trump supporter that the POTUS is “a liar.” Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, lost his cool on Sunday night at Upper East Side restaurant Sette Mezzo, according to witnesses. He was dining with friends when he encountered Joseph A. Califano Jr. — the former US secretary of health, education and welfare under President Jimmy Carter and domestic policy adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson — and his wife, Hilary, who were...

On Saturday they would appear before the convention’s Credentials Committee and ask to be seated as the official Mississippi state delegation... Shortly after he signed the Civil Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson told his aide Joseph Califano, "I think we’ve delivered the South to the Republican party for your lifetime and mine." Maybe so, but he was determined to hold onto the region long enough to ensure his own re-election; the opinion polls might show him leading the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, by an enormous margin, but he was desperate not to stoke the fires of sectional conflict. Only one...

Retired Army Col. David Hackworth, a decorated Vietnam veteran who spoke out against the war and later became a journalist and an advocate for military reform, died Wednesday in Mexico, where he was receiving treatment for bladder cancer, his wife said. He was 74. "He died in my arms yesterday morning," his wife, Eilhys England, said Thursday. Hackworth, a syndicated columnist for King Features, advocated a streamlined military and improved conditions for troops.

Not very (First) Lady-like As New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton has proved herself a paragon of poise - and one of the Democrats' brightest stars. She rivals President Bush in her ability to raise cash and is frequently touted as a future President herself. But the charismatic Clinton was not always so polished. New York attorney Joseph Califano Jr. - a longtime Democrat powerbroker who worked for Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter between stints as a corporate lawyer - remembers quite a different Hillary. In his soon-to-be-published memoir, "Inside: A Public and Private Life," Califano recalls the first...

What Was Really Great About The Great Society The truth behind the conservative myths By Joseph A. Califano Jr. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there is a prize for the political scam of the 20th century, it should go to the conservatives for propagating as conventional wisdom that the Great Society programs of the 1960s were a misguided and failed social experiment that wasted taxpayers' money. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line...