Free Republic

Five former secretaries of Defense have signed a letter protesting the firing by President Trump of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C. Q. Brown, demanding the Senate refuse to confirm Trump’s nominee to replace Brown and for Congress to investigate the firing of Brown and other senior officers by Trump. Trump nominated retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to replace Brown. Caine will need a waiver from Trump on meeting the legal requirements for the chairman. The five who signed are Trump’s first SecDef, James Mattis, Biden’s AWOL SecDef Lloyd Austin, Obama SecDefs Leon Panetta...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk has died. Wouk was famous for his sprawling World War II novels, including The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and for his portrayal of Jewish-Americans in the novel Marjorie Morningstar. He died in his sleep today at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. Many people might remember Wouk for a certain incident in involving strawberries in The Caine Mutiny, which became a film in 1954. After having a breakdown at sea, the tyrannical Captain Queeg accuses his crew of stealing a quart of strawberries and becomes obsessed with finding the culprit. Humphrey Bogart...

On May 27, the American novelist Herman Wouk will attain the prodigious age of 100. Over his long career, Wouk has achieved all the wealth and fame a writer could desire, or even imagine. His first great success, The Caine Mutiny (1951), occupied bestseller lists for two consecutive years, sold millions of copies, and inspired a film adaptation that became the second highest-grossing movie of 1954. Wouk’s grand pair of novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, likewise found a global audience, both in print, and then as two television miniseries in the 1980s. Wouk won a Pulitzer...

This is a very curious press conference just conducted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. With his machine-gun delivery. He repeatedly flopped back and forth between saying that the “outing” of Valerie Plame, wife of discredited Ambassador Joe Wilson was a “serious matter,” and saying that he “reached no conclusion” whether she had been outed, and if so, when and by whom. The mood in the room among the reporters changed appreciably as the conference went on. Initially, the press was very interested in the charges made and reasons for them, and in the charges not made against other people, and...