Free Republic

DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flamethrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman. Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains. "There's no question, I'm sure that's what he...

THE SUICIDE of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture." "Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism. When a major representative of any dramatic...

AP News Alert ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

<p>"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau apologized on the strip's Web site for using an Internet hoax on presidential IQs as the basis for Sunday's strip.</p> <p>The strip, a purported conversation between an unseen President George W. Bush and an adviser in the White House, cites as fact a purported ranking of presidential IQs based on public statements and writings. In the "study," Bush is said to have an IQ half that of former president Bill Clinton and a little more than half the average presidential vocabulary.</p>