Free Republic

One of those men was Henry Marshall, whose death—he was shot five separate times in the chest with a rifle—was ruled “a suicide.”.. June 3, 1961, Henry Marshall was found dead on his farm near Bryan in Robertson County, Texas. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. Marshall, 51, had worked as a clerk with the Robertson County office of the Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA), holding a senior post in the agency. In 1960, he was asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes, a wealthy benefactor of Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he found to have...

“Salaam alaikum, sister. I see you watched my video. It’s gone viral—crazy! Are you Muslim?” It was ten o’clock on a Friday night in April 2014. I was sitting on my sofa in my one-bedroom Parisian apartment when a terrorist based in Syria contacted me on Facebook. I’d been studying European jihadists in the Islamic State and was interested in understanding what it was that made someone give up everything and brave death for this cause.

Has been many years since i ubscribed to Readers Digest. Back in the 90s or 00s , i read an online article explaining the editorial staff changed to liberal hands. Do any FReepers out there still subscribe to or have a take on the Readers Digest magazine ?

<p>In a bid to slash $465 million of debt, Reader’s Digest parent RDA Holding Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over the weekend for the second time in less than four years.</p> <p>The media company said it has reached a deal with its largest creditor, Wells Fargo (WFC), and more than 70% of its secured noteholders on a financial restructuring plan that includes the Chapter 11 filing.</p>

When I was a young teenager, I would like to pick up Reader’s Digest and steal a joke from the digest to share with others. I imagined myself a Johnny Carson. Of course that was long time ago, and now I am excited about Jay Leno’s new show and have marked down the date so that I can record the show for a keepsake to share with others. Lately I heard that Reader’s Digest is going bankrupt. Not sure of all the details, but it this came to mind when I noticed a Reader’s Digest for sale at the check...

With annual revenue of more than $2 billion, the Reader’s Digest Association may be the largest magazine publisher to ever file for bankruptcy. But it probably won’t be the last this year. The private-equity frenzy of the past decade, combined with the unprecedented downturn, has caught up with the industry. So far in recent months, supplier companies including distributor Source Interlink and printer Quebecor World filed for protection, and publishers including the newspaper giant (and owner of Connecticut magazine) Journal Register Co. and Cygnus Business Media have as well. Summit Business Media is said to be in the process of...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The Reader's Digest Association Inc., which was taken private just over two years ago, said it reached an agreement with its lenders on a restructuring plan that it will likely complete under a prepackaged bankruptcy filing in order to reduce its debt. The company, which publishes the magazine of the same name and also has marketing operations, also chose not to make a $27 million interest payment due Monday on its 9% senior subordinated notes due 2017. It said it would use the 30-day grace period available to continue discussions with its lenders. Under the debt-restructuring deal,...

Reader's Digest Association Inc, publisher of the widely-read Reader's Digest magazine, said on Monday it would likely file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its U.S. businesses to cut its debt load. The media company, known worldwide for its family-friendly namesake magazine, been trying to slash costs and boost growth since it was taken private in 2007 by an investor group led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC. The bankruptcy would take the form of a so-called pre-arranged filing, Reader's Digest said in a statement. A pre-arranged filing comes after a company has already reached deals with its lenders to cut its debt.

Now comes this, according to the NYT: After years of trying to broaden the appeal of Reader’s Digest, the publishers are pushing it in a decidedly conservative direction. It is cutting down on celebrity profiles and ramping up on inspiring spiritual stories. Out are generic how-to magazine features; in are articles about military life. “It’s traditional, conservative values: I love my family, I love my community, I love my church,” said Mary Berner, the president and chief executive of Reader’s Digest Association.

I collaborated with the late James A. Michener on his South African novel, The Covenant and later went on to write my own epic on Brazil. My plan for A Novel of America is to follow the same plan Jim Michener and I used in crafting our books, with a key difference of letting these multilayered tasks unfold on the Web. Much of my work is presented blog-style: current entries reflect a search for ideas big and small that will inspire and shape my story of America. As I go along, I share "Working Notes," "Research Links," "Images" and "Maps"...

The best reason I've seen yet illustrating why it is not in America's best interest to elect Obama. If "the world" prefers Obama, it seems likely their reasons serve them, rather than the United States.~lsee ****************************************How the World Sees Us, by Carl M. Cannon It's a good thing for John McCain that only American citizens can vote in U.S. presidential elections. If the election were held overseas, or even in the rest of North America, the Republican nominee wouldn't stand a chance. This was just one of the remarkable findings in a new Reader's Digest Global Poll in which we...

Stockholm is the world's greenest, most livable city, according to a survey carried out by the Reader's Digest magazine. Using a range of sources, environmental economist Matthew Kahn, from UCLA's Institute of the Environment, ranked 72 major international in terms of how 'green and livable' they are. Environmental legislation, energy prices, waste production and disposal and available parkland were among the factors considered. Stockholm was ranked number one, followed by Oslo in second place. "You shouldn't boast, but Stockholm is the world's most beautiful city," said mayor Kristina Axén Olin . "I get happy every time I come back to...

Scandinavia has been rated as the best place to live, that’s according to a ranking by Reader’s Digest. Using a range of environmental and social indicators based in part on the UN’s Human Development Index, the survey rates countries on care of the environment and quality of life for their citizens. Finland tops the 141-nation list, followed by Nordic neighbours Iceland and Norway, with Sweden coming in at fourth place. And the Swedish capital comes top of the Reader’s Digest ranking of 72 world cities when it comes to quality of life. Cities were rated according to quality of public...

The DA lied. Their school denounced them. And the media had a field day. The untold story behind a shocking rush to judgment. Accused At about 9 p.m. on March 16, 2006, Dave Evans was napping in his room at his rental house on 610 North Buchanan in Durham, North Carolina, when “I woke up to thundering knocks on my door like it was going to be broken down.” The Duke University senior, one of four co-captains of the school’s highly ranked lacrosse team, had just finished a grueling practice. Dave and co-captain Matt Zash, who also lived in the...

There's probably no agreeing on precisely when Reader's Digest took a turn for the worse. There was the move last year to stick a celebrity photograph on the cover of every issue, rather than the picture of an ordinary American whose story of heroism would inspire readers. Two years earlier, there was the magazine's redesign, which elevated graphics and visuals to a place of importance that previously had been reserved for the power of the written word. Around the same time, the mag azine dropped its familiar slogan promising "Thirty-one articles each month . . . Each article of enduring...

Wafa Sultan and her husband, David, were jolted awake by the sound of a ringing telephone. It was just before dawn on a summer morning in 2005, and Wafa couldn't help feeling nervous as she hurried to take the call. Two of their three children had moved to a nearby suburb of Los Angeles to attend college. Were they okay? A voice on the line identified himself as working for Al Jazeera television, the Arabic-language network based in Qatar which, in ten years, had become the most influential news channel in the Middle East. -snip- Sultan woke up to the...

Something was wrong. It was a blistering June morning in 2005 when Marine Maj. Christopher Phelps led his team into the center of Saqlawiyah, a small Iraqi city ten miles from Fallujah. The place normally teemed with vendors hawking cucumbers, tomatoes and a hodgepodge of goods, but in front of the soldiers now stretched a chaotic pile of dusty rubble and thatched roofs. Fellow Marines, who thought the market a perfect place for insurgents to hide homemade bombs, had demolished it overnight at the request of the Saqlawiyah city council. Phelps noticed groups of Iraqis quietly glaring at them. He...

Few publications are as American as Reader’s Digest. Somewhat incongruously, however, RD feels compelled to bestow a “European of the Year” Award. Yesterday the magazine announced that this year’s European of the Year Award goes to the Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. According to RD “Hirsi Ali is the person who best embodies the contemporary expression of Europe’s values and traditions.” Bob Low, RD’s European Bureau Chief of Reader's Digest, commented: “It has taken a young woman born outside Europe to show Europeans the sort of courage and determination that is needed to confront extremism and to uphold...

The "Listen Carefully" joke started on FR a few years back. I know, it's been posted a lot, but I figured it was cool that it got listed on the "50 funniest" of one of the most popular magazines in the world. Here was where the joke originated. (If I have no other claim to fame in my humdrum life, I can at least take credit for a few silly jokes.) It's interesting how it evolved: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/597015/posts (I don't think any DU joke ever made it to Reader's Digest top 50 list. Unless they think "Bush is not just evil--he's...

The old news: PBS is still a liberal monstrosity transforming the hard-earned dollars of many Bush-loving taxpayers into fire-breathing Bush-loathing programming. The new development: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has plans to get serious about seeking a better balance of political views on PBS. From the sound of a New York Times front-page story May 2, they must have been waving smelling salts in the face of liberal reporters. Kenneth Tomlinson, the "Republican chairman" of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was said to be pressing aggressively to correct "what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias." The Times approach, pretending...