Free Republic

Before reading A Glorious Disaster my knowledge of the 1964 presidential election was shallow. I knew Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide, but I never really knew anything about the nuts and bolts of the campaign. The 1964 election is an odd one. Johnson had just become president after the Kennedy assassination (killed by a Marxist, go figure). As senator Johnson served as a conservative southern Democrat. He voted against every Civil Rights bill while he was in Congress. Johnson only shifted his opinion later because of the popularity of the measure. Johnson's ambitions were much stronger than any...

NBC News edited out a comment by Sen. John Kerry about his military records not being public after including it in a previous version of an interview. As noted by the blog Powerline, in an interview with NBC's Tom Brokaw last week on MSNBC, the following exchange occurred: Brokaw: Someone has analyzed the president's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do. Kerry: That's great. More power. I don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I don't know where you're getting that from. A transcript of...

A former secretary of the Navy is urging Sen. John Kerry to open up his personnel files to resolve the question of whether the Democratic presidential nominee received a less-than-honorable discharge from the Navy. William Middendorf, the Navy chief from 1974 to 1977, told WorldNetDaily today that Kerry, who began inactive reserve status in 1972, would have been issued a document three years later either for a reserve reaffiliation or a separation discharge. An "honorable discharge" from 1978 appears on the Kerry campaign's website, but a Navy lawyer who served under Middendorf believes that document is a substitute for one...