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...

Eva Peron, the former Argentine first lady, is believed to have kept Nazi treasures taken from wealthy Jewish families killed in concentration camps, according to a new book. ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Latin America’ aims to highlight a series of little known controversies about leading leftist figures in the history of the continent. It claims that Simon Bolivar, the hero of Latin America’s independence wars, was scared that blacks and indigenous Indians would seize power and that Salvador Allende, the Marxist Chilean president of the 1970s, considered a Nazi-inspired policy of sterilisation. Its authors, the Brazilian journalists Leandro Narloch...

Promises Obama kept, promises he brokeFrom NBC's Norah O'Donnell, Adam Verdugo, and Ariel Edwards-Levy We decided to go back and check what President Obama has achieved since last year’s State of the Union address. In that 2010 speech, Obama made a lot of promises, and he fulfilled many of them -- with high-profile, hard-fought successes like the passage of health-care reform, a jobs bill, the New START treaty with Russia, and the repeal of "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell." He also saw the last combat troops leave Iraq, cut out the middlemen from college loans, championed credit for small businesses, and...

Pre-Incas kept detailed records too Jude Webber Wednesday, 20 July 2005 This inhabitant of the ancient Peruvian city of Caral would have used knotted string to communicate sophisticated concepts as long as 5000 years ago (Image: Reuters/ Pilar Olivares) A sophisticated arrangement of knots and strings, found on the site of the oldest city in the Americas, indicates ancient Peruvians were skilled at conveying detailed information much earlier than once thought. Archaeologists say the string arrangement, known as a quipu or khipu, indicates ancient Americans were expert communicators thousands of years earlier. Until now the oldest known quipus, often associated...

Throughout the 1990s, Turkish foreign policy analysts had an easy job. After all, Turkish foreign policy was predictable. Ankara cooperated enthusiastically with Washington, whether in the Middle East or in the Balkans. Turkey aligned itself with Israel and kept at arms length from Middle Eastern neighbors such as Syria and Iran. In Europe, Ankara traded heavily with the European Union (EU) but did not allow the EU to dictate foreign policy. The European Union's frequent allegations and criticism of human rights abuses in Turkey, especially with regard to Turkey's fight against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK, Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan) terrorists, soured...

By PETER PORCO Anchorage Daily News November 26, 2004 ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sixteen-year-old Rachelle A. Waterman would appear to be any parent's ideal child - an honor student, an athlete, a gifted singer. But for months, she planned her mother's murder with two of her former boyfriends who are eight years her senior, according to Alaska State Troopers. Two weekends ago on Southeast's Prince of Wales Island, their plot ended in the death of 48-year-old Lauri Waterman of Craig, according to court papers. Lauri Waterman, a teacher's aide and community activist, was killed by one of the men using a...

Three weeks ago, San Jose's city council got its latest big-ticket surprise from Mayor Ron Gonzales -- this time, an additional $11.7 million he said was needed for the city's garbage hauler to pay higher labor costs the company didn't expect when it submitted its low bid. Here's what Gonzales didn't tell his colleagues. In order to keep the contract with eventual winner Norcal on track, the mayor's office offered Norcal assurances of his support for higher compensation than the contract would call for. This promise was made not years later, as the mayor has said, but before the council...

I didn't know, sez gov's ex 2 hours, 43 minutes ago BY MAGGIE HABERMAN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER The first wife of New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey said yesterday she didn't know her ex was gay until last week. "He told me just before he went on TV," Kari Schutz said in a phone interview from British Columbia. Schutz described the call from her ex-husband as "difficult," although she declined to give details. But asked if she had any idea of her husband's sexual identity during their marriage, she said, "I never knew." The governor's second wife, Dina Matos McGreevey,...

Uzbekistan's best kept secret By Monica Whitlock BBC Correspondent, Uzbekistan Kampyr-Tepe, in southern Uzbekistan, was built at the time of Alexander the Great's empire and occupied for about 500 years until it fell into decline. The fortified city controlled a key route from central to south Asia Since it was discovered, a generation ago, it has been closed to the public because it stands in a sensitive and tightly guarded military zone, right on the Afghan border. The city perched on a high shelf of land - cut into clay walls that dropped sheer into the plains below. Caught in...

Top Food and Drug Administration officials admitted yesterday that they barred the agency's top expert from testifying at a public hearing about his conclusion that antidepressants cause children to become suicidal because they viewed his findings as alarmist and premature. "It would have been entirely inappropriate to present as an F.D.A. conclusion an analysis of data that were not ripe," Dr. Robert Temple, the Food and Drug Administration's associate director of medical policy, said in an interview. "This is a very serious matter. If you get it wrong and over-discourage the use of these medicines, people could die." Dr. Temple...

Veteran’s Day   by Roger W Hancock   We honor you, who fought for us, for country’s sake of freedom’s plight. You kept the greatest country great, by sacrifice of you who served.   Honor to military, soldiers served. There seems no risk in peace to serve. When war breaks the silent peace, no peace when security cease.   Sacrifice of civilian life, careers succumb to enlist, or draft. Families wait in fear, in prayer, for loved ones return alive, not dead.   Returned Heroes and those deceased, we honor, thank, though insufficient. Parades, programs, our pride convey, We honor...