Free Republic

Exclusive: Jack Cashill reviews skullduggery surrounding official's death 17 years ago Seventeen years ago yesterday, Hillary Clinton got her first practice in publicly blowing off the death of a government official she had dispatched on a dubious mission to a war-torn corner of the world. In the weeks and months that followed, Hillary honed her arts of deception, delay and double-dealing and tested the media’s tolerance for the same. What she and Bill had to conclude was that in a year in which a Democrat was running for re-election, a sycophantic media could be very tolerant indeed. Some background: On...

“The Hillary-in-2016 buzz has hit overdrive,” the New York Times reported last week, and the awed Times reporter wondered what candidate, Republican or Democrat, “would dare to come up against a world heroine like Hillary.” “World heroine”? Please. Those of us who have followed Ms. Clinton know that she is no more a heroine of the real Clinton story than Lady Macbeth was the heroine of “Macbeth.” Like Lady Macbeth too, Hillary has her own ghosts, none more potentially troublesome than former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. On April 3, 2016, as Hillary moves inexorably toward the Democratic nomination, she may...

OMAHA, Neb. -- Nebraska assistant coach Ron Brown says he'll keep speaking out against homosexuality even if it costs him his job. "To be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn't win enough games," Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I haven't lost any sleep over it. I realize at some point, we live in a politically correct enough culture where that very well could happen." Brown earned national acclaim for leading a prayer at midfield before the Cornhuskers' game at scandal-torn Penn State six months ago. He...

Dear Commerce employees, Today at the Department of Commerce, we remember the contributions of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, a committed public servant who dedicated his life to strengthening America’s prosperity and making a difference. As you know, 16 years ago today, we suffered the tragic loss of Secretary Ron Brown, 11 Commerce employees, and 23 other U.S. and Croatian citizens, who perished in a plane crash while on a trade mission to Croatia. The trip was planned to help the recovering economy of the war-torn Baltics – a mission consistent with Secretary Brown’s legacy as a strong supporter of developing...

(Reuters) - Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was in critical condition after doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta on Saturday, the State Department said. The 69-year-old veteran U.S. diplomat was a key figure in forging the 1995 accord that ended the Balkans war. Holbrooke fell ill at the State Department on Friday. The department issued a statement saying Holbrooke was admitted to nearby George Washington University hospital on Friday. "This morning, doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta," the statement said. "He is in critical condition and...

Attorney General Holder heads to Zurich, Switzerland tomorrow to lobby to bring the World Cup to the U.S. in 2022.Justice Dept. says Holder is making the trip to Zurich at the request of Pres. Obama to show US commitment to host World Cup in 2022. Pres. Obama lost U.S. effort in '09 to host 2016 Summer Olympics. WH hopes Holder's mission to Zurich doesn't end up a Swiss miss.Perhaps we'll find out more about the World Cup mission from Holder's cables in the next WikiLeaks document disclosures.

ACLU Nebraska cautioned state school districts Wednesday against inviting speakers who proselytize to students under the guise of anti-drug and anti-alcohol messages. In letters sent to school superintendents, ACLU Nebraska legal director Amy Miller said there have been complaints about Christian messages during student assemblies. Miller singled out two speakers in particular, Keith Becker and Ron Brown. Becker speaks about the death of his teenage brother in a drunken-driving crash. His group's Web site notes the talk incorporates Scripture. Brown is an assistant football coach at Nebraska who helped found a nonprofit that spreads a Christian message.

(Aug. 11) -- Caution! Your Vice President approaches. On Wednesday, Air Force Two was involved in what is being described as a minor accident at Long Island, New York's Francis S. Gabreski Airport. According to the Associated Press, no one was injured after the "jet wash" from Biden's plane damaged the wing of a smaller plane as it passed close by. The Vice President was on-board the plane, which took off, apparently unaware of the damage left behind.

The approach of the new year might be an appropriate time to summarize what I have learned in researching the several books and articles that I have written this decade. That I came to own -- or even break -- many of the stories involved, although satisfying to me, should appall any ordinary citizen. These stories were too big for a responsible media to miss.  They became mine as a result of what I call the "ABETTO Syndrome."  For at least the last generation, the left in general, and the media in particular, have been turning A Blind Eye To...

As late as the Woodward-Bernstein era, people who chased down good stories and reported the facts were called “reporters.” Today, they are called “conspiracy theorists.” In trying to bust out the increasingly obvious story that Bill Ayers played a major role in the writing of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, I have found myself hindered by my reporting on Clinton-era mischief. Consider the following post on Powerline by its respected and halfway sympathetic editor, Scott Johnson: “Cashill's apparent penchant for conspiracy theories -- a look at his Web site suggests he believes that former Clinton administration Commerce Secretary Ron...

On April 4, 1996, the subject of my radio show in Kansas City was Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. He and 34 others had died the day before when their Air Force plane crashed into a Croatian mountainside. Not one to shy from exploitation of a tragedy, President Clinton was busily profaning the memory of Martin Luther King – who had been killed on April 4, 1968 – by comparing King's mission to Brown's. What Clinton did not say was that Brown had gone to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the neo-fascist strongman who ran Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, and...

DeMint: Senator Clinton, just who Is Zdenka Gast? Clinton: Zdenka Gast? Help me out here. DeMint: Let me refresh your memory. Gast played a key role in Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's fatal trip to Croatia in April 1996. Ostensibly at least, Brown went to Croatia to broker a deal between the Croatian government and a certain American corporation. Gast served as liaison between the two. Clinton: Why is this an issue? DeMint: For starters, it was a sweetheart deal the White House coerced Croatia to sign. For another, the White House's Croatian client was President Franjo Tudjman, a notorious anti-Semite....

Although his colleagues on the U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be content to throw Hillary Clinton softballs during her confirmation hearing, I suspect Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has moxie enough to throw the would-be secretary of state a nasty curve as follows: DeMint: Senator Clinton, just who Is Zdenka Gast? Clinton: Zdenka Gast? Help me out here. DeMint: Let me refresh your memory. Gast played a key role in Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s fatal trip to Croatia in April 1996. Ostensibly at least, Brown went to Croatia to broker a deal between the Croatian government and...

In the contemporary circle-the-wagon school of mainstream journalism, reporters look for some perceived weakness in those who might challenge their anointed candidate and attempt to discredit. In my own case, while probing the real authorship of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, Obama’s media supporters ignored my research into the book and largely steered clear of my research into TWA Flight 800, a sign in itself, and zeroed in instead on my work on former commerce secretary Ron Brown. One accused me of “insinuating” that Brown had gone to Croatia on his final mission to broker an Enron deal. No,...

I was wondering when you were going to call me," so said the irrepressible Nolanda Butler Hill when I phoned last week. She knew precisely what item of news had prompted me to call: the revelation that Barack Obama had selected Clinton deputy attorney general and Ron Brown protégé Eric Holder to help vet his vice presidential candidates. As the confidante and business partner of the late Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Hill knows from personal experience that Holder's sins go well beyond his seamy role in the Marc Rich pardon scandal.

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” Hillary Clinton told the editorial board of The Sioux Falls Argus Leader last week in explaining her reason for staying in the presidential race. This comment evoked predictable outrage from the Obama-happy media. “The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton,” wailed MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in higher dudgeon than usual. “You cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!” Unfortunately for an earlier black rival of the Clintons with presidential aspirations of his own, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, the then Clinton-happy media...

Nearly 12,000 readers weighed in on an online poll that asked: Do you think Hillary's reference to the RFK assassination was appropriate? The results: YES = 16% NO = 84%

While Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers insist that she is determined to win the Democratic nomination, friends of the couple say that former President Bill Clinton, for one, has begun privately contemplating a different outcome for her: As Senator Barack Obama’s running mate. The reports about Mr. Clinton’s musings surface as the Obama camp has quietly begun the process of searching for a partner on the Democratic ticket. The prospect of an Obama-Clinton ticket has been fodder for political gossip for months, with some Democratic leaders pushing the idea as a way to unify the party. The Obama...

(CBS) O.J. Simpson's girlfriend, who had been hospitalized in February after a fall, was back in the hospital, this time with two broken legs and other serious injuries, CBS4 in Miami reported. Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Pat Santangelo said Christie Prody was injured early Saturday morning on the Don Shula Expressway near Miller Drive after she pulled over to an emergency lane because she had two flat tires on her 2-door Mitsubishi. Police say she rode on the flat tires for quite a distance because one of the tires was completely shredded and the other had come off the rim...