Free Republic

Mayor Ed Lee, the city’s first Asian American mayor and the man who presided over San Francisco’s rise to the top of the tech world, died early Tuesday morning after suffering a heart attack. He was 65. Lee collapsed while shopping at the Safeway grocery store on Monterey Boulevard near his Glen Park home at about 10:30 p.m. Monday and was taken by ambulance to San Francisco General Hospital. He died at 1:11 a.m., surrounded by his friends and family. The mayor’s office released a brief statement early Tuesday morning confirming Lee’s death, stating in part: “Our thoughts and prayers...

Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, died Sunday after nearly a half-century in prison. He was 83. Manson died of natural causes at 8:13 p.m. Sunday at Kern County hospital, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.

Gregg Allman, whose hard-jamming, bluesy sextet the Allman Brothers Band was the pioneering unit in the Southern rock explosion of the ‘70s, died Saturday due to currently unknown causes. He was 69. As recently as April 24, reports surfaced claiming Allman was in hospice. His manager previously denied those reports to Variety, which Allman then substantiated in a Facebook post. However, he had suffered a number of ailments in recent years — including an irregular heartbeat, a respiratory infection, a hernia and a liver transplant — and cancelled many scheduled tour dates in recent months due to undisclosed health reasons.

... This week there have been waves of online sympathy over the passing of actor Leslie Nielsen prompting many to quote their favourite and most memorable lines from films such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun. The only trouble is Nielsen actually died in November 2010 aged 84 ...

Palestinians leaders agreed Wednesday to exhume the body of Yasser Arafat after a television documentary suggested that he had been assassinated while being treated in a Paris hospital. Arafat was 75 and had long been ill when he slipped into a coma and died on Nov. 11, 2004. He had been suffering from a mysterious illness. The cause of the death was never determined and French medical officials would not release details of his illness because of privacy laws. The medical report was given to his family. The television network al Jazeera broadcast a documentary this week in which a...

Family Feud host Richard Dawson has passed away at 79

Whitney Houston might have passed away Saturday, but it’s clear her fans will always love the legendary singer. Not surprisingly, news of her death catapulted some of her greatest hits to the top of the music charts today. On iTunes, Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” is currently the No. 1 download, while “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is finding a place in the top 10.

Steve Jobs is dead. A tech genius has passed on. Sad. Certainly a devastating loss to Steve Jobs' close friends and family members, as well as to Apple executives and shareholders. The rest of you? Calm down. Among my Facebook friends yesterday, more than one wrote publicly that they were "crying" or "can't stop crying" or "teared up" due to Steve Jobs' death. Really now. You can't stop crying, now that you've heard that a middle-aged CEO has passed, after a long battle with cancer? If humans were always so empathetic, well, that would be understandable. But this type of...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

Had Ted Kennedy given a different response to a letter from a Packers head coach, it's possible Senator Ted Kennedy may have become Packers receiver Ted Kennedy. The senator's web site says that Kennedy, a senior right end for the Harvard football team in 1955, received a letter from Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn. "You have been very highly recommended to us by a number of coaches in your area, and also by our talent scouts as a possible pro prospect," said Blackbourn in the letter. Kennedy responded that he was flattered, but he stated he was planning on going...

The last statue of General Franco in Spain is to be withdrawn almost 34 years after the death of the dictator. The regional government of Melilla, one of Spain's North African enclaves along with Ceuta, said the bronze statue of General Franco would be removed "within the period of 15 days". The move means no more commemorative figures will stand in public streets to the man who ruled Spain between the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and his death in November, 1975. Daniel Conesa, spokesman for the Melilla regional government, said the statue, which shows Franco standing,...

"New York Police Department confirms actor Heath Ledger, 28, found dead in his New York City apartment, which was strewn with pills." | PHOTOS | VIDEO Live reports at 5:45 PM, Quoting TMZ Source, via Fox News: Actor Heath Ledger, 28, was found dead in his apartment bedroom by his housekeeper and masseuse at 3:30 PM this afternoon. Police are telling TMZ it was an accidental drug overdose and not foul play. Ledger was found with perscription pills strewn around the bed. TMZ also says the apartment is "not" owned by Mary Kate Olsen

FORTY-FOUR years ago today, a clothing company owner named Abraham Zapruder filmed the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. And for 44 years, most people have presumed that his home movie captured the assassination in its entirety. This presumption has led to deep misunderstandings.< > But what if Zapruder simply hadn’t turned on his camera in time?< >If the commission had followed up this insight, it would have conceivably been able to describe the duration and intervals of the shooting sequence: that Oswald fired three shots in approximately 11.2 seconds, with intervals of 6.3 seconds and 4.9 seconds between...

Three decades after his far from untimely passing, Spaniards dust off their memories of former dictator Francisco Franco. But this time he's coming back as a panto villain, in hopes of drawing a torrent of boos and hisses to distract a public that is becoming increasingly critical of Spain's ruling leftists. There's something stirring inside the tomb, and a whiff of nastiness sours the air. Should we fear the return of the undead - or is it a case of Resurrection Men digging up a corpse for their own nefarious purposes? The question is one that bears asking as...

Michael Schiavo is co-writing a book with author Michael Hirsh to tell his side of the end-of-life case that divided much of the country. Schiavo's wife Terri suffered a brain injury in 1990 that left her in what some doctors called a "persistent vegetative state." She died March 31 after a bitter court battle between her husband and her parents. Hirsh expects the 280-page book, "Terri: the Truth," to be available just before the first anniversary of Terri's death. Dutton Publishing publicity manager Jean Anne Rose confirmed that the company is publishing the book in March. Michael Schiavo's decision to...

Police may be on the brink of finally finding the remains of Judge Joseph Crater - and possibly solving the most enduring mystery in New York City history, investigators said yesterday. A letter probably penned more than half a century ago has pinpointed a spot under the Coney Island boardwalk where Crater - last seen leaving a Times Square watering hole 75 years ago - is buried, they said. The letter was written by an elderly woman who died of natural causes in June, they said. Upon her death, family members opened a safe-deposit box, where they found a letter...

Profile of Natalee Holloway Missing: Natalee Holloway participated in a trip with 125 seniors from Mountain Brook High School to Aruba in the Caribbean. In the early morning hours on May 30, 2005 Natalee was seen leaving a nightclub and getting into a vehicle. She failed to turn up Monday morning for her return flight home and she has not been seen since. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance. Profile: Natalee Holloway was born on October 21, 1986 to Beth and Dave Holloway. She grew up in the close-knit community of Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. She...

Lima, Jul. 26, 2005 (CNA) - The President of the Pontifical Council for Heath Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, recalled the Terry Schiavo case this week and said “they killed her” by denying her food and hydration.According to the cardinal, “Food and hydration are never considered medicine.”  “To remove them means euthanasia, it means killing, and so this woman was killed by hunger and starvation.  Let’s stop with the euphemisms—they killed her,” he stated.“Law consists of a rational ordering that seeks the common good and not the common evil,” Cardinal Lozano noted, “but many times there are laws that are...

Terri Schiavo, may she rest with God in Peace, was starved to death by the State of Florida, carried out by the so-called Hospice, to prove a point: her husband, who had moved on with his life 14 years 11 1/2 months earlier, wished it, got a lawyer (George Felos) who promotes "death", found a Judge (Greer) who would agree and would appoint a Dr. (whose brother belonged to the same pro-death organization as George Felos to declare her a vegtable, unworthy of life. Proving the point that people who are inconvenient can and will continue to be murdered by...