Free Republic

Two days ago, a federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit against Rep. John P. Murtha on the grounds that because he was acting in his capacity as a Member of Congress when he said -- incorrectly -- that U.S. Marines in Iraq had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," he could not be sued for libel or defamation. Specifically, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia cited a 1988 law that protects federal employees from being sued for things they say or do in the course of their official duties. And that,...

Forty-eight years ago today, 1,500 Cuban exiles landed on the beach of a desolate area of Cuba's southern shore known to the locals as Bahia de Cochinos -- the Bay of Pigs. Authorized by a young and inexperienced President John Kennedy -- who had been in office fewer than two months when he green-lighted the plan -- the Central Intelligence Agency had recruited and trained the exiles in the hopes that their landing would spark a nation-wide uprising. But Kennedy's insistence on reducing the U.S. military role in the invasion, in the hope of maintaining plausible deniability, doomed to failure...

Alan Keyes' former campaign manager Bill Pascoe jokes that if he ever writes a behind-the-scenes book about the wildest three months in state political history he will use the title, "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time." Bring in an intelligent, articulate, famous conservative from Maryland, Keyes, as a pinch-hit U.S. Senate candidate to battle an intelligent, articulate, famous liberal Democrat from Hyde Park, Barack Obama. May the best ideology win! Keyes went on to get only 27 percent of the vote in November 2004, then refused to make the customary concession call to Obama on the grounds...