Free Republic

Her campaign barely three weeks old, Hillary Clinton already has been attacked by Republicans on everything from donations to her family’s charitable foundation, to her tenure as secretary of state and her ties to Wall Street. But her rivals, and the political action committees that support them, are treading more carefully on one incendiary subject: her age . If elected in November 2016, Clinton would be, at 69, the second-oldest person to take the presidential oath for the first time, behind only Ronald Reagan, who turned 70 weeks after being sworn into office in 1981. Questions of health and fitness...

Fidel Castro shares at least one belief with the majority of Americans: He is convinced that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not the work of a lone gunman, but was the culmination of a broad conspiracy. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in Dallas 50 years ago. But Castro suspects that Oswald might not have been involved in the assassination at all.

President Bush's decision to nominate Condoleezza Rice received widespread praise from both Democrats and Republicans. But longtime White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas, now a syndicated columnist with Hearst, had nothing but contempt for Rice's nomination. The feisty 84-year-old reporter who started at the White House during the Kennedy administration had some unkind words to describe Bush and Condi. NewsMax bumped into Thomas in the lobby of New York's Waldorf-Astoria as she waited for a lunch date. Asked about the election result, the sharp-tongued reporter simply put her hand on her face and said, "My God, the man is a...

Texan faces trial for castrating alcoholic mayor in row over beer By Sam Leith in New York (Filed: 08/08/2002) A man is on trial for castrating the mayor of a remote Texas town in a vicious knife attack following a dispute over a bottle of beer. Few residents of Lajitas, in West Texas, see it as any sort of mitigation of the alleged crime that the victim is an alcoholic goat. Police said they found a testicle belonging to Mayor Clay Henry III in Jim Bob Hargrove's refrigerator, and plan to introduce it in evidence when Hargrove goes on trial...

LAJITAS -- Strange tales have always sprung from the Big Bend -- the Marfa lights, the discovery of an alligator in the Rio Grande -- but none stranger than the growing epic of the assault on the mayor of Lajitas. It's a story with larger-than-life elements: a millionaire and a movie star, an irate stone mason and a stealthy act of violent revenge in a border town, the castration of a magistrate in the dark of night. Added is the singular nature of the victim: Clay Henry III, a duly elected figure who happens to be a red and...