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...

A Depression-era mural depicting white children playing outside in the winter was removed from Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park because school officials said it failed to represent the school’s diversity. While some said the mural was upsetting to students of color who felt it excluded them from the school, a local historian likened the removal to a “modern-day book burning.” Cynthia Brito Millan, a coordinator for the middle school’s Social Justice Club, said the push to remove the mural began in February at a district school board meeting. Students expressed frustration about an atmosphere of exclusion for students...

My favorite quote is from legendary attorney Clarence Darrow. “History repeats itself. That’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.” Want proof? Consider the perpetual shouting match between President Trump and the news media where they scream “Fake news!” and “Collusion!” at each other. It’s unpleasant, undignified, and unseemly. It’s also unoriginal. Because their tiff is nothing compared to the rocky relationship shared by America’s longest-serving president and the reporters who covered him. Journalists of the 1930s and 40s willingly hid the extent of President Franklin Roosevelt’s physical disability. True, Americans knew he’d been paralyzed by polio. But news...

While Republican presidential candidates are looking forward by proposing variations of a flat income tax, President Obama’s tax-the-rich campaign strategy is looking backward—to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 reelection campaign. FDR won his reelection, but the American people lost: Roosevelt’s new taxes on business and the “economic royalists” gave us the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937-38. By August of 1935, Roosevelt had achieved some of his signature pieces of legislation: a new entitlement program known as Social Security, banking reform, pro-union reform, infrastructure expansion and massive transfers of wealth to the poor and middle classes. Sound familiar? FDR also ran up federal spending...