Free Republic

The recent pardon of the late world heavy weight champion Jack Johnson by our president was a gracious act long overdue. A previous motion had passed the House but died in the Senate in 2008. Johnson’s racially motivated conviction for violating the Mann Act after he had married a white woman resulted in his beginning a year term in Leavenworth prison in 1920. It was not a salutary place; I buried one of its inmates who had done much more than a year there. Johnson skipped bail and spent several years in Europe via Canada. In Barcelona, much in need...

The Roman emperor Commodus might have cultivated the skills showcased in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster film “Gladiator” in a personal miniature Colosseum on his estate near Rome. Archaeologists from Montclair State University, in New Jersey, believe that a large oval area with curved walls and floors made of marble is, in fact, the arena where the emperor killed wild beasts, earning the nickname “the Roman Hercules,” as recorded in historical writings. Found in Genzano, a village southeast of Rome which overlooks Lake Nemi, a crater lake in the Alban Hills, the oval structure measures 200 feet by 130 feet and dates...

Ex-president Bill Clinton sounded confident on Monday when he told a Philadelphia crowd that John Kerry would win the White House and "make America the comeback country." But yesterday in Florida, the recuperating heart patient sounded a little less certain. "I think it is slightly more likely that he will win, but this thing is tight as a tick," Clinton told the Magazine Publishers of American gathering in Boca Raton. One reason for the uncertainty: Dubya enjoys "negative campaigning" in a way his father, who Clinton defeated 12 years ago, never did. "It was a pretty negative campaign, but I...