Free Republic

When Clay T. (Tom) Whitehead arrived at the Old Executive Office Building on August 7, 1974, dressed as a cowboy, he surely didn’t want to run into Henry Kissinger. Whitehead was supposed to be on vacation in the Rockies, but a last-minute emergency meant he had to stay in D.C. “Well, you know, I got tied up for a little while,” he explained to President Richard Nixon’s powerful National Security Advisor. Kissinger, ever paranoid about being out of the loop, protested: “What is going on here? Something is going on here.” What was going on had started three months earlier...

Henry Kissinger, the toweringly influential former secretary of state who earned a reputation as a sagacious diplomat but drew international condemnation and accusations of war crimes for his key role in widening the American presence in Vietnam and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, died Wednesday. He was 100. Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, reached the pinnacle of the American political establishment and in turn became an unlikely household name. He was secretary of state and national security adviser under two Republican presidents, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and advised powerful leaders in both American political parties for decades.

Breaking News Israel: #Iran is now moving "Strategic Weapons" to #Syria for a potential offensive against #Israel according to an Israeli Intelligence officer.The Gerald Ford Aircraft Carrier group is stationed nearby and the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group is en route from the… pic.twitter.com/NVgmMeaD25— Jim Ferguson (@JimFergusonUK) October 15, 2023

Interesting old news video involving the cdc.

There is some speculation floating around social media (mostly, but not totally, from the right) that Democrats may try to pull the 25th Amendment card on Biden to push him aside and bring Kamala Harris forward in an effort to save face in this moment of geopolitical crisis. It is some of the same speculation you saw several times when the Left called for members of the Trump administration to turn on Trump and invoke the amendment. However, the Democrats have put themselves into such a terrible position that they absolutely cannot get rid of Biden through this means, or...

The new job is nepotism at its finest. The same day that former Vice President Dick Cheney, her father, retired from the board of trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the board unanimously voted to appoint her to the panel. Cheney, who was recently ousted from her role as House Republican Conference chair for constantly siding with Democrats and ignoring the will of her voters, says that she is honored to take on this new role. “It’s a great honor to follow in my father’s footsteps and to have the honor of serving on the Foundation that President...

WHAT was President Ford's MOST REPEATED WARNING? - "Government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to..." President Gerald Ford stated in Rockford, IL, March 11, 1976: "People say ... why don't you expand that program, why don't you spend more Federal money?... I don't think they have understood one of the fundamentals ... I look them in the eye and I say, 'Do you realize that a government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take from us everything we have?'" Gerald Rudolph Ford was the 38th U.S....

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has died at the age of 99, ABC News has confirmed. Stevens was nominated to the high court by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975 and retired in 2010 after serving more than 34 years on the court. He is survived by his children, Elizabeth Jane Sesemann and Susan Roberta Mullen, nine grandchildren: Kathryn, Christine, Edward, Susan, Lauren, John, Madison, Hannah, Haley, and 13 great grandchildren. His first wife Elizabeth Jane, his second wife, Maryan Mulholland, his son, John Joseph, and his daughter, Kathryn, preceded him in death.

This meeting is part of the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall... Kissinger (now 94) reflects on the events, personalities, and thinking that characterized the United States and Soviet Union's leadership.

Ina Garten plans to cook up something special, should she ever have the opportunity to host some of Washington's top politicians. The Food Network's "Barefoot Contessa" star was asked by New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni what she would serve political figures. For Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, Garten would prepare lobster macaroni and cheese. For Senate hopeful Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, an avowed BBQ lover, she would serve pulled pork shoulder with maple beans, cornbread, and a kale salad. Former Vice President Joe Biden would receive "something fun, like a lobster and clambake," Garten said. And President Trump? "A...

I am very pleased to sign Senate Joint Resolution 23, restoring posthumously the long overdue, full rights of citizenship to General Robert E. Lee. This legislation corrects a 110-year oversight of American history. It is significant that it is signed at this place. -- Gerald R. Ford, President

Amid all its upgrades and advances, the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is lacking one feature: urinals. Every bathroom on the Ford is, for the first time, gender-neutral, equipped with flush toilets and stalls, according to Navy Times. Bathroom-design experts have said sit-down toilets are less sanitary and take up more space, and most of the Ford's crew members are men. (Women are only about 18% of the Navy.) But the Navy has said getting rid of urinals has advantages for current and future operations. Making every bathroom accessible to all of the ship's sailors...

BREAKING: law enf source: Hillary Clinton just left 9/11 ceremony w/medical episode, appeared to faint on way into van, helped by security @RickLeventhal

MARK LEVIN: FACT:Reagan never endorsed Gerald Ford at any time during the 1976 GOP convention or campaign The Reagans were furious at how the Ford campaign had attacked them. Paul Manafort will know this as he was a top delegate counter for Ford and against Reagan at that convention. Ford won the nomination, of course, then lost to Jimmy Carter. Four years later, Reagan won the nomination, won the general election in a landslide, and the rest is history.

The political scientist who applies the ‘rational choice’ theory of economics to voters says there was a method to the GOP’s primary madness. Go to the source:

In the wonderfully funny movie “Mom and Dad Save the World,” one of the heroes admits that his people are not so bright. “But what we lack in brains,” he says, “we make up for in ...good intentions.” Gentle mocking here of the frequent appeal of the incompetent for tolerance of their mistakes: How can you blame us if our intentions are good? The trouble is that much of what's really rotten in the world is due to people who thought that their good intentions would ensure a favorable result. Maybe the best example of this: former president Jimmy Carter....

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday evening, and protested remarks made by the latter during his election campaign against the establishment of a Palestinian state and Israel's Arab citizens. Obama did not accept the explanations Netanyahu provided during an interview with NBC, in which he backtracked on some of the statements he made during the final days of the election campaign. According to a senior White House official, Obama told Netanyahu that the U.S. will need to reassess its options regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in light of the prime minister's new...

The supposedly unprecedented step taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his plan to speak directly before Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat on March 3, rather than working exclusively with the White House on the issue, actually has an interesting precedent—established in 1975 by none other than Yitzhak Rabin and America’s Democratic Party. That spring, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger undertook a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The negotiations quickly ran into trouble, when Egypt refused to offer anything more than a brief a period of “non-belligerency” in...

Over the summer, the 40th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon and President Gerald FordÂ’s pardon of him passed, not, unfortunately, without the usual clangorous outburst of self-righteous claptrap and exercises in pseudo-historical mind-reading and amateur psychoanalysis. Many years ago, I happened to have dinner with the former president a few days after the New York Times had run another speculation about his psychological make-up and, when I volunteered that he probably didnÂ’t enjoy these pieces, though he must by then have been used to them, he replied that the first such published insight into his psyche was...

It was President Ford’s biggest and most courageous decision.  It probably hurt the GOP in the 1974 midterm elections. In fact, I was a college volunteer on some campaigns in that election. The party people that I was listening to agreed with the pardon but screamed the same question: "Why didn't he do it after the election"? Many in the GOP correctly felt that the new Ford presidency would spare them the Watergate backlash and 6th year losses.   And it probably cost him the very close presidential election of 1976. The pardon was used by the Carter campaign to promote their campaign of...