Free Republic

I was digging into the batter's box one Saturday morning in San Pedro a couple of years ago when the catcher behind me muttered, "I'm a Vietnam vet, and I've been waiting for twenty years to say you should be dead or in jail for being a traitor." The umpire said nothing. I flied out to center. Later we talked. Then we became friends. It turned out that his hatred was toward my ex-wife, not me, because he believed certain website fabrications about Jane Fonda that circulate among veterans. Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my...

<p>Sen. John Kerry should not try to distance himself from Jane Fonda, who "was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam," says Tom Hayden, one of Miss Fonda's ex-husbands.</p> <p>Miss Fonda became notorious as "Hanoi Jane" for her 1972 propaganda trip to Hanoi. Last month she blamed "a narrow, extremely conservative, right-wing segment" for publicizing a photo of her and Mr. Kerry at a 1970 antiwar rally as part of an "attempt to smear" the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.</p>