Free Republic

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. ... I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS...

The day Gil Levin says he detected life on Mars, he was waiting in his lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, watching a piece of paper inch out of a printer. Levin snatched the sheet and scrutinized the freshly inked graph. A thin line measuring radioactive carbon crept steadily upward, just as it always did when Levin performed the test with microbes on Earth. But this data came from tens of millions of miles away, where NASA's Viking lander was — for the first time in history — conducting an experiment on the surface of Mars. "Gil, that's life,"...

Lately I have seen a lie circulated by the left, and by people still enamored by Ted Cruz: That Reagan neither endorsed Ford at the Convention, nor went on to endorse him later.I present to you proof that the latter is simply a lie.Reagan for Ford ad '76

Political journalists dream of a contested convention every presidential election. This year, it really seemed possible that Republicans would go into their convention without a nominee. Alas, it was not to be. In 1976, though, it actually happened. Republican President Gerald Ford, who ascended to the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned, faced a primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. What ensued was great political theater. Ford and Reagan traded victories during the primaries, and neither received a majority of delegates. Both entered the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, unsure of the outcome. Then the loser (Reagan) ended up getting...

Donald J. Trump, girding for a long battle over presidential delegates and a potential floor fight at the Cleveland convention, has enlisted the veteran Republican strategist Paul J. Manafort to lead his delegate-corralling efforts, according to people briefed on Mr. Trump’s plans. Mr. Trump confirmed the hire in a brief telephone interview. “Yes,” he said, “it is true.” Mr. Manafort, 66, is among the few political hands in either party with direct experience managing nomination fights: As a young Republican operative, he helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford in his showdown with Ronald Reagan, the last time...

HAVANA(Reuters)-Philip Agee, a former CIA spy who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday.Agee, 72, died on Monday night, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world.".His widow, German ballet dancer Giselle Roberge, told friends he had been in hospital since December 15 and did not survive surgery for perforated ulcers.Agee worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 12 years in Washington, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in...

It’s an ancient story: An innocent idealist sets out to change the world and in the process becomes what he hates most. “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche advised. That’s probably the best spin one can put on Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Hillary Rodham Clinton aide and confidant. But it would be just that — spin — given that Blumenthal was never an idealist, never mind an innocent. He has remained the same man he was in 1976, when he co-edited Government by Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from...

The second of three convicts in the infamous Chowchilla kidnapping is a free man and believed to be in the Bay Area. James Schoenfeld, 63, who was among three convicted in the 1976 kidnapping of 26 children and their school bus driver, was released on parole Friday after nearly 40 years in prison. Schoenfeld was freed from the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo after Gov. Jerry Brown allowed the parole to go ahead a week ago, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. He is expected to join his brother, Richard, who was paroled last year....

A convicted kidnapper who kept 26 children and a school bus driver in a buried trailer has been granted his freedom - after the governor of California didn't object to parole.  James Schoenfeld, 63, kidnapped the bus carrying the group then buried them alive in a chilling heist inspired by the film Dirty Harry. Schoenfeld confessed to carrying out the 1976 crime with his brother Richard and his friend Fred Woods. He was originally given a life sentence, which was commuted to allow the possibility of parole. This will now be granted to him after almost 40 years in prison....

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business. Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

J.C.X. Simon—one of the so-called "Zebra Killers" convicted of multiple murders of white San Franciscans in the 1970s—has died...The random killings of whites [14 people were killed and at least seven wounded] occurred between 1973 and 1976. The suspects were named for the police channel used to try to identify and capture them.

Justice has been served. After fighting a murder conviction for more than 30 years, Cathy Woods has finally had the charges against her dropped. She has been living with her brother since having her conviction overturned last September, but she still had murder charges against her, and was supposed to have a trial this summer. That changed on Friday, March 6, 2014. Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks announced he is filing a motion to dismiss the case against Woods because DNA evidence has made it clear that Woods didn't kill 19-year-old Michelle Mitchell in 1976. It's a day Cathy...

The documents kept by the Iraqi Intelligence Service were meticulous in detail and sweeping in scope. In some, Iraqi intelligence officers in the United States are directed to use informers to track the "criminal'' actions of one current and one former Chicago area resident, both Assyrian Christians from Iraq who founded an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Another accuses the group of being influenced by "imperialists'' and "Zionists.'' Others include the exact dates of the group's meetings and conventions in Chicago and elsewhere, the names of the people who ran the events, those in attendance and what statements were made. Trips...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Workers are preparing to enter one of the most dangerous rooms on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation — the site of a 1976 blast that exposed a technician to a massive dose of radiation, leading to him being nicknamed the "Atomic Man." Harold McCluskey was working in the room when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode. He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard. Hanford, located in central Washington state, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room...

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

Egyptian authorities fearful of a monopoly on Nile waters received agreement from Khartoum to build an airbase in Sudan, to launch attacks on Ethiopian damming facilities, claims the anonymous media outlet; Wikileaks. Wikileaks has leaked files allegedly from the Texas-based global intelligence company, Stratfor, which quote an anonymous "high-level Egyptian source," claiming the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said in 2010 his nation would do anything to prevent the secession of South Sudan because of the political implications it will have for Egypt's access to the Nile. The Nile is vital in providing fresh water to the people and agricultural projects...

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 18, 2002 Pg. 5 Despite Son's Pleas, Scientist's Death Remains A Cold War Mystery Given LSD, he died in a fall from hotel room; government later promised to tell all, but didn't By Frederic N. Tulsky, Knight Ridder News Service San Jose, Calif. -- The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history. Only in 1975 did Olson's family learn that the CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death. President Ford apologized...

1976"Human Rights Internet reporter," 1987, vol. 12, p. B-107 In 1970, during 'Black September,' Jordan itself killed 3,400 Palestinians in just 10 days. In 1976, the Syrian army killed more than 23,000 Palestinians. 2011-2012Mathieu Rabechault: US says Iran forming pro-regime militia in Syria," AFP, August 14, 2012 Rights groups say more than 23,000 people have been killed in 17 months of fighting between troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel forces, including civilians killed in the regime's brutal crackdown.

I had a "front row seat" in the "cradle of liberty" 35 years ago today. It was my good fortune to have been invited by family members living in an apartment three blocks from Independence Hall in Philadelphia for the festivities. The week before and week after were filled with numerous events, official and unofficial. At 6am on the morning of the 4th, I ate breakfast at a center city restaurant, then walked to see that large crowds were already gathered outside the police lines and areas closed off around Independence Hall. A landing zone had been set up for...

Who could have guessed that 4.3 billion Internet connections wouldn’t be enough? Certainly not Vint Cerf. In 1976, Mr. Cerf and his colleagues in the R.& D. office of the Defense Department had to make a judgment call: how much network address space should they allocate to an experiment connecting computers in an advanced data network? They debated the question for more than a year. Finally, with a deadline looming, Mr. Cerf decided on a number — 4.3 billion separate network addresses, each one representing a connected device — that seemed to provide more room to grow than his experiment...