Free Republic

A military judge ruled Wednesday that plea deals sparing accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other terrorists the death penalty must remain in effect. The stunning move comes three months after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin revoked the shocking plea deals handed out to Mohammed and two alleged accomplices by the Office of Military Commissions in July. ... The order, issued by Air Force Col. and Judge Matthew McCall in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ... Family members of the victims of the heinous terror attack, which killed nearly 3,000, were outraged by the judge’s ruling.

The senior was stretchered off the field during the Wolfpack’s game against Wake Forest on October 5 after taking a hit to the head. He has not played since the injury. “As you all know I have battled injuries my whole career, but this is one that I cannot come back from,” McCall said in an Instagram post. “I have done everything I can to continue, but this is where the good Lord has called me to serve in a different space. Brain specialists, my family, and I have come to the conclusion that it is in my best interest...

On this day in 1876, famous gunfighter “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot in the back of the head. He died on the spot without ever seeing his murderer, the young, up-and-coming gunslinger Jack McCall. Wild Bill, born James Butler Hickok, gained notoriety in the west thanks to accounts (often exaggerated) of his impressive gunfighting and accurate aim. Much of his shootouts took place during his sporadic career as a lawman, from 1865-1871. During an 1871 shootout with saloon owner Phil Coe, Hickok accidentally shot and killed Mike Williams, a Special Deputy Marshall who had run into the shootout to help Hickok. This event reportedly...

Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets. The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of...

On Feb. 2, the lobbyist and former senator Al D’Amato threw a fund-raiser at the 101 Club on Park Ave in support of “Andrew Cuomo 2010.” The office was not specified. “He’s a rising star,” said former mayor Ed Koch, who attended the fund-raiser but did not make a contribution. For his part, Mr. Koch said he would support Mr. Paterson in a potential primary against Mr. Cuomo, but he said the guests at the fund-raiser were “definitely” trying to build relationships with Mr. Cuomo, who he predicted would run for governor at some point in the future. For many...

The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, will announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor on Feb. 25, aides to his campaign and his administration said last night. He will face Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has a huge lead in early fund-raising, opinion polls and endorsements. As a moderate from the suburbs, Mr. Suozzi poses a counterpoint to Mr. Spitzer, who is a liberal from the city. Also yesterday, in another contested Democratic race, H. Carl McCall, the former state comptroller and 2002 Democratic nominee for governor, bypassed some better-known candidates in the race to succeed Mr....

In the celebrated case of Eliot Spitzer versus Dick Grasso, Exhibit A is the Webb report. Commissioned by former New York Stock Exchange Chairman John Reed and produced by former federal prosecutor Dan Webb, the report is the basis for the New York Attorney General's claim that Mr. Grasso manipulated the NYSE board into paying him too much money. Yet when Mr. Spitzer goes to court, he will have to grapple with material that Mr. Webb gathered but never included in his final report that was made public. These are the more than 1,000 pages of interviews that Mr. Webb's...

...Even though the Democrats will probably nominate two of the most controversial people in American politics, Hillary Clinton for senator and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for governor, they will probably face no serious challenge. Hillary and Spitzer got lucky. The two Republicans who might have given them fits — Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki — both have their eyes on the presidency and neither wants to go through a bruising, no-win battle in New York two years before making the big play for the White House. Pataki knows he is living on borrowed time. When 500,000 whites left New York...

Elliot Spitzer is running for governor. The attorney general who thinks he single-handedly cleaned up Wall Street now wants to clean up Albany. But the Spitzer model of corporate governance that worked so well for him in Manhattan won't work Upstate. Spitzer was able to "reform" Wall Street only because New York's financial luminaries care about their corporate and personal reputations. New York state's officials don't. Spitzer said Tuesday that he's running for governor to "make state government more responsive and accountable." That's a fine idea — and Spitzer's pithy diagnosis of Albany's woes is apt: "The system is broken....

We'd like to direct readers to Kimberley Strassel's scoop nearby on New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's suit against former New York Stock Exchange head Dick Grasso. The press has tended to present Mr. Spitzer's side of the Grasso pay package tale, but Ms. Strassel dissects a number of heretofore unexamined NYSE documents that tell a very different story. Mr. Spitzer's charge is that Mr. Grasso and former compensation committee head Ken Langone managed to dupe the Exchange's distinguished directors into paying Mr. Grasso millions. We've argued that this is none of the AG's business, the stock exchange being a...

<p>WASHINGTON — Rep. Nancy Pelosi made history Thursday when House Democrats elected her as the next House minority leader. Pelosi will be the first woman leader of a party caucus on Capitol Hill.</p> <p>The vote, conducted by secret ballot, was 177-29.</p>

With less than 48 hours before the election, Carl McCall again criticized the national Democratic Party yesterday for not doing enough to help him oust Gov. Pataki. McCall - who trails by a wide margin in his effort to become the state's first black governor - said during a live radio interview that he was disappointed with the Democratic Party's efforts. Asked specifically whether national Democratic leaders have left minority supporters in the lurch, McCall said: "Let's get down to the bottom of it: I think that I'm not happy with what the party's done for me." Last month, Rep....

New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Carl McCall picked up an unlikely ally last week, none other than conservative radio megastar Rush Limbaugh, whom the black Democrat publicly thanked on Sunday for staging an impromptu on-air fund-raiser on his behalf. "I have never met him. Don't know anything about him," McCall told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg. "But he made an appeal last week on his radio program - they told people to send us dollars. "Well, you should see," McCall continued. "We've been flooded with dollars from all over the country from people who say, 'I heard from Rush Limbaugh and...

H. Carl McCall's Democratic gubernatorial campaign got a much-needed boost yesterday as former President Bill Clinton stumped for him at a Manhattan rally and then hosted a fund-raiser on Wall Street to replenish McCall's near-empty campaign war chest. At the rally at a church in the Dominican stronghold of Washington Heights, Clinton told the crowd that the bad fiscal policies of Republicans in Washington made it all the more important to elect McCall, the state comptroller. "He knows how to keep the books," Clinton said. "He'll take care of your money and send it where it ought to be sent."...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- The chairman of the Democratic National Committee said the party would not provide gubernatorial candidate H. Carl McCall with large sums of money unless he closes the double-digit gap in his campaign, a newspaper reported Thursday.</p>

<p>JUST two weeks to Election Day, Rochester billionaire Thomas Golisano has transformed Upstate into "Golisano Country" with an audaciously expensive media campaign and a tough anti-Pataki message widely seen as right on the mark.</p> <p>It's a breathtaking transformation for a region that George Pataki set on fire in 1994 with a stark set of conservative proposals that produced the massive voter turnout that enabled him to defeat then-Gov. Mario Cuomo.</p>

Statewide Poll Shows Pataki with Comfortable Lead 10/23/2002 5:00 PM (AP) A statewide poll released today has Governor Pataki leading Democratic challenger H. Carl McCall 44 percent to 25 percent in the gubernatorial race. The poll from Siena College-New York Report shows Independence Party candidate B. Thomas Golisano at 12 percent. An October fifth poll from the group had Pataki leading McCall, 43 percent to 26 percent, with Golisano at 11 percent. The telephone poll of 1,210 registered voters was conducted October 16th and 17th and has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Other...

Bill and Hillary Clinton backstabbed former Clintonoid Andrew Cuomo to endorse Carl McCall for governor of New York. Now McCall is repaying the favor by running such a poor campaign that he's already damaging Hillary's future presidential run. McCall could finish a humiliating third in the Nov. 5 election, behind Republican Gov. George Pataki and Independence Party zillionaire Tom Golisano, "who has been surging in recent polls," the New York Post reported today. "A third-place finish by McCall would plunge state Democrats - who outnumber Republicans by 2 million voters - to Row C on the ballot for the next...

<p>SYRACUSE -- George Pataki's ethics came under attack Sunday as Democratic challenger H. Carl McCall and billionaire businessman B. Thomas Golisano sought to link the Republican governor to scandals involving his administration. McCall, the state comptroller, started the fireworks when he charged that Pataki's idea of economic development "is to provide contracts to relatives," a reference to an architect, who is a relative by marriage of the governor's wife, getting a lucrative State University of New York contract.</p>

NEW YORK -- Gov. George Pataki leads Democratic challenger H. Carl McCall by 11 points _ 39 percent to 28 percent _ among likely voters, according to a statewide poll. Independence Party candidate B. Thomas Golisano has 16 percent of the vote, with 15 percent undecided, according to The New York Times poll published on the newspaper's Web site Thursday. When undecided voters who lean toward one candidate or another are included, Pataki leads McCall, 42 percent to 31 percent, with Golisano at 17 percent and 8 percent undecided.