Free Republic

He didn't introduce himself. He didn't have to. President Obama simply stuck out his hand and asked for my name as he stepped toward me amid a bone-chilling drizzle in the Gardens of Stone. This was Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. I wasn't there as a reporter, but to visit some friends and family buried there when Obama made an unscheduled stop - a rare presidential walk among what Lincoln called America's "honored dead" - after laying a Veterans Day wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. What I got was an unexpected look into the eyes of a...

Ken Taylor, Canada's ambassador to Iran who sheltered Americans at his residence during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis has died. He was 81. Taylor's wife, Pat, said Ken died Thursday after a two-month battle with colon cancer. Taylor kept the Americans hidden at his residence and at the home of his deputy, John Sheardown, in Tehran for three months. Taylor facilitated their escape by arranging plane tickets and persuading the Ottawa government to issue fake passports. Born in 1934 in Calgary, Taylor was heralded as a hero for helping save the Americans -- a clandestine operation that had the full...

A shortage of spaces in long-term care facilities for veterans will mean an unlikely reunion at an Ottawa hospital room this weekend for a group of Canadians and Americans whose lives intertwined 30 years ago during the Iran hostage crisis. John Sheardown, who was the Canadian Embassy’s chief immigration officer in Iran during the hostage crisis, is hobbled by an injured hip, suffering from dementia and unable to get a bed in a long-term care facility for veterans. So when his former colleagues gather to mark the 30th year since they took six U.S. officials into their homes and helped...

Ken Taylor describes journalism in Iran as 'high-risk' game Even as a United Nations special envoy for freedom of expression prepares for a mission to their country, Iran's fundamentalist regime arrested and jailed a reform-minded journalist on unspecified charges yesterday. Iraj Rasteghar, managing editor of the outlawed Tavana weekly magazine, was summoned to the public prosecutor's office when he failed to post bail of about US$8,000, the country's student news agency reported. Another reformist paper, the daily Hambasteghi, was added the list of at least 85 banned media yesterday, reportedly for not publishing the name of its manager. These attempts...