Free Republic

<p>June 19, 2003 -- FIFTY years ago on this day, I stood with a few thousand largely Jewish and left-wing New Yorkers on a street off Union Square, vainly hoping that our vigil would call off the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.</p>

Dear Robert: It has been fifty years since your parents’ execution, and it is understandable that as the son whom their actions betrayed --along with their country--you should still cling to the idea of their innocence. But in the decades since 1953, we have learned much about your father, Julius Rosenberg, and the contributions he made to the Soviet Union as an active espionage agent. We also know, contrary to what you claim in your new book An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey, that your mother -- Ethel Rosenberg -- was not an innocent housewife as many of...

I HAD NOT HEARD of the rapper Raymond "Boots" Riley until earlier this week, when the May 22 Washington Post Style section ran its feature front page article about the self-proclaimed "rapper communist," a man journalist David Segal describes as someone "better known as a bomb thrower;" and as lead vocalist and longest standing member of a hip-hop group called "The Coup." That I did not know of him is hardly surprising. Rap music is not exactly my beat. I tend to prefer bluegrass, alternative country, blues and traditional folk music. But according to the article, the group’s fourth album,...