Free Republic

(CNN)Michael Skakel could be headed back to prison after the Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday reinstated his conviction in the 1975 murder of a 15-year-old neighbor. Skakel, the 56-year-old nephew of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, had spent more than a decade in prison for the killing of Martha Moxley until a judge in 2013 decided he did not receive adequate representation in his trial and ordered a new one. On Friday, after Skakel had been free for three years, the state's high court overruled the decision. "Because we conclude that the petitioner's trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse...

On the 39th anniversary of the 1975 slaying of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley, the Kennedy scion accused of her murder is set to settle a slander lawsuit against television host Nancy Grace. In a stipulation of settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Wednesday, legal counsel for Michael Skakel agreed to drop his case against the HLN pundit and fellow legal commentator Beth Karas for comments they made in a 2012 broadcast about DNA evidence near the scene of the crime. HLN parent companies Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System were also named in the defamation suit and...

HARTFORD, Conn. — A divided Connecticut Supreme Court Friday reinstated the murder conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, rejecting a Superior Court judge’s finding that Skakel’s trial was tainted by ineffective lawyering and setting the stage for Skakel’s return to prison after three years of freedom. “Because we conclude that the petitioner’s trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse the judgment” of the lower court, a 4-3 majority of the Supreme Court wrote in a decision released Friday afternoon. Skakel was convicted in 2002 in the bludgeoning death 27 years earlier of Greenwich neighbor Martha Moxley, when she and...

Stand by for a torrent of slobbering stories about Robert F. Kennedy as the 50th anniversary of his assassination approaches Wednesday. The main speaker at the official ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery will be Bill Clinton. I kid you not - Bill Clinton! Look, of course it’s terrible that RFK was murdered at the age of 42, leaving behind all those kids and Ethel pregnant with the last of them. But since his passing, there’s been even more historical revisionism about Bobby than with almost any of the other liberal icons. So, as the gushing from his fawning biographers like...

I refer, of course, to the Bay of Pigs freedom-fight, 57 years ago this week. Given that Hollywood and the mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing the hideous truth about a Kennedy’s perfidy and how the media/Democrat complex helped cover it up (Teddy, Chappaquiddick)—who knows? Perhaps one day they’ll level with us about what REALLY happened at the Bay of Pigs?``I really admire toughness and courage, and I will tell you that the people of this brigade (Brigada 2506) really have that…you were let down by our country.'' (Donald Trump, addressing Bay of Pigs Veterans at Bay of...

So the producer of the new film about Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal says some “very powerful people” tried to kill his movie. What a surprise — NOT! “Unfortunately,” Byron Allen told Variety last week, “very powerful people tried to put pressure on me not to release this movie. They went out of their way to try and influence me in a negative way.” Byron Allen is a TV comedian from the ’80s who has become a successful Hollywood mogul. He just bought what’s left of The Weather Channel for $300 million. By the way, he’s also black, so you would...

923. Camelot Richard Harris “King Arthur” prop “Excalibur” sword. (Warner Bros., 1967) In Camelot, the romantic Lerner and Lowe musical telling of “King Arthur” (Richard Harris) and his beloved “Guenevere” (Vanessa Redgrave), the most important prop must be the Excalibur sword. This 40 in. long sword was made in Spain for production. Consisting of steel blade with an ornate 8.25 x 10.25 in. brass handle, grip and pommel. One side of the blade is engraved with, “Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword Of This Stone Is Rightwise King Born Of All England”. Excalibur is visible in three pivotal scenes in the...

We mark the centenary of John F Kennedy's birth at SteynOnline with a song central to his widow's instant mythologizing of her slain husband. But that focuses on the end of his short life, and I felt, on his hundredth birthday, I ought to say something about the pre-mythological Jack, the Kennedy of those formative years. I've met a handful of Kennedys in the course of my life, including, briefly, JFK Jr, and in no instance have I ever felt the slightest desire to prolong the acquaintance. All gave off a more than faintly obnoxious sense of entitlement, unredeemed -...

For over a year now, the mainstream press has attacked Trump for not being "presidential".  Even still, citizens are genuinely concerned that their president look the part of a president and carry themselves in a way that makes us proud.  So what exactly is meant when someone says a candidate looks or is "presidential"?  And why should we care?  This is the subject I'm going to explore and discuss in this vanity. JFK, Jackie and the Royalty of Camelot Well, to begin, I think our current notion of a "presidential" style was strongly influenced by JFK in the 1960s. ...

The political conventions seem to birth new political stars every four years and this year’s Republican National Convention was no different. In 2004, a virtually unknown senator from Chicago gave an electric speech at the Democratic National Convention that thrust him into the international spotlight and set him on a path to the White House. That man was President Barack Obama. This year’s GOP convention didn’t just produce a new rising star -- it birthed a whole dynasty of superstars. The world now knows why political pundits have been calling Donald Trump’s family members his secret weapon. Trump’s wife and...

You know how it is: Your family is super-rich, your older brother was president, and someday it'll be your turn. But you also like to party a little too much, and one night, wellll... Maybe you kinda-sorta make a little oopsie. Maybe a secretary ends up drowning, and okay, okay, it may or may not be all your fault. Is that really the sort of thing that should follow a guy around for life, when he spends all his non-partying time helping leftists get what they want? Is one woman's life really that much to pay for open borders and...

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words… (Proverbs 1:20-21)I believe that God speaks to us in current events and in the workings of history , that is if we have ears to hear. The challenge is to try to interpret just what it is that God is saying in the twists and turns of daily events. Because of the assassination of President Kennedy, November 22, 1963 is a day in history that has gone down as one...

RUSH: To the audio sound bites we go, and I'm gonna go ahead and use this as a transition. Grab sound bite number six. Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a sound bite from C-SPAN Washington Journal today. The guest is the Democratic Socialists of America executive director Maria Svart, S-v-a-r-t, and during the viewer call-in segment a guy from Pennsylvania named Roger says this... ROGER: Ronald Reagan successfully brainwashed about 45% of the nation's people with the help of Rush Limbaugh. And if you use keywords like "socialist" and "demagogue," they right away think "communist," and they...

The November 17 edition of People magazine includes a promotional article for Timothy Shriver’s new book Fully Alive, focusing on “The Forgotten Kennedy,” the lobotomized Rosemary Kennedy, sister to Jack, Bobby and Teddy. "Why are we hiding from this story?" he asked himself, according to People’s Liz O’Neil. "There's nothing to fear here. It's a human story. It's a heroic story.” Heroically lobotomized and institutionalized? Apparently, this fiasco was “the true inspiration for his famous family’s love of service.”

EXCLUSIVE - 'She couldn't wait and allowed him to seduce her in a creaky French elevator': Bombshell book reveals Jackie Kennedy's secret lovers, her revenge on JFK with William Holden, her steamy night with Brando and her forbidden affairs with Bobby AND Teddy New book reveals that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a passionate woman who had many men--before, during and after her marriage to JFK Authors say she bedded Hollywood actors Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra, among others Confessed Brando, 'She took matters into her own hands and popped the magic question, ‘Would you like to...

The Tradition: Geoffrey of Monmouth and other medieval Arthurian writers tell us that Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds after the Battle of Camlann. Later tradition assumed that he died and was buried there and identified the place as Glastonbury in Somerset. The Theory & Discovery: Blackett & Wilson claim that one of the two figures who went to make up "King Arthur" is to be identified with the Emperor Magnus Maximus's son, King Anwn of South Wales. This man, who occasionally may have spelt his name Arthun, they identify with both...

Author Adam Ardrey claims that instead of the romantic English king of legend who lived at Camelot – which is often said to be Tintagel in Cornwall or in Wales – Arthur was actually Arthur Mac Aedan, the sixth-century son of an ancient King of Scotland, whose Camelot was a marsh in Argyll. He also suggests that Arthur pulled the sword Excalibur from a stone at Dunadd near Kilmartin, died near Falkirk and was buried on the Hebridean island of Iona, which he declares to be Avalon. Ardrey, an amateur historian who works as an advocate in Edinburgh and previously...

The day John F. Kennedy was assassinated is still fresh in the memories of those of us who lived through it. We all remember where we were when we first heard the news that he'd been shot and how we waited for word that he would survive. We remember the sound of news anchor Walter Cronkite's voice breaking as he delivered the news that the president was dead. But for millions of Catholics, it had a special meaning. It was lunchtime, and I was in the girls' bathroom putting on lipstick -- a new privilege for a 16-year-old in Catholic...

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Few events and people have had more words written about them than that day and that man. But, and I have to be honest here, I don’t get it. In fact, I’ve never gotten it. Yes, losing a president to an assassin’s bullet is a traumatic national event, something we’ve fortunately not been through again since – although there have been some close calls. And it’s the one event where everyone over the age of 55 seems to recall exactly where they were when they heard the...

Later this week, the where-were-you-when-you-first-heard crowd will be putting on a full court press for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy. As the years go by I grow less and less interested in grassy knolls and all the rest, but I am struck by one genuine, non-conspiracy-theorist feature of the event: It's the only assassination with a musical score. Garfield doesn't have one, nor does Lincoln, although he was shot at a theatre. I twice had the misfortune of sitting through tryouts for something called JFK The Musical. Aside from any other problems, the concept suffered...