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Washington, D.C. - Social media is ablaze with rumors that Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died. Iranian state-media has yet to confirm or deny such rumors. Cairo-based journalist Gamal Sultan wrote on social media that Khamenei died after suffering from a bout with prostate cancer, after surgery failed to alter the course of his demise, according to Rassd News Network. Daniel J. Levy of The Times Of Israel wrote on Twitter late Saturday: “Hearing unconfirmed reports from a usually very reliable source of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death today.” On Friday, Iranian media confirmed that “The commander of the Islamic Revolution,...

Nelson Mandela at the Communist Party’s first public meeting in post-apartheid South Africa, 1990. You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, so I figured I'd get a head start.One of the landmark events of my Gen X youth was the 11-hour, internationally televised “Free Nelson Mandela” concert in 1988. Because, come on: how could you not be anti-apartheid? It was a no-brainer, risk-free cause, the type you could support without having to think about it too much or inviting unpopularity or controversy, right? Actually, no. Lots of big-name musicians who now boast of being on that concert roster...

Death of a ProsecutorPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On January 21, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime...

The U.S. Marines who guarded the sprawling complex in northwest Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s 1980s war machine churned out some of the most deadly chemical and biological weapons known to man had a name for one especially mysterious bunker: The Dragon’s Egg.

Four Ronald Reagan historians have slammed the portrayal of former President Reagan in the movie "The Butler," saying that the 40th president's "attitudes toward race" as shown in the movie are inaccurate. They begin the article, "What 'The Butler' gets wrong about Ronald Reagan and race," published in The Washington Post, by recounting instances in Reagan's life when he decried racism and took a stand for the African-American community. While serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, for example, "Ronald Reagan called upon the entertainment industry to provide greater employment for black actors." That position was controversial at the...

When Earl Silverman was found dead, hanging from the rafters of his garage after an apparent suicide, those who knew him best said he had died from indifference. For the last five years, Silverman had owned Canada’s only shelter for men, taking battered husbands and their children into his own house in Calgary so they could escape abusive wives. A soft-spoken man in his late 50s, Silverman was inspired to start his shelter after leaving his own wife, who he claimed abused him physically and emotionally during their 20-year marriage, but he was unable to find a shelter that would...

On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech that horrified the liberal establishment of the time: his call for a Strategic Defense Initiative. Ronald Reagan was not your typical politician. The only president born and raised in Illinois (yes, Lincoln, Grant, and Obama moved to Illinois as adults, but only Ronald Reagan grew up there), he came to politics with a heartland sensibility: do what makes sense, do what’s right; don’t worry about what the elites from the Ivy League or Foggy Bottom insist upon. Reagan came to party activism late in life, running for public office for...

An embattled former Obama administration appointee -- who was part of a group of attorneys accused of being terrorist sympathizers for defending "enemy combatants" -- has been hired for a post at the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, officials confirmed today. Tali Farhadian was one of several private attorneys who created a rift between Republicans last spring when the Obama Administration assigned them to posts within the Justice Department. Although Farhadian was handling unrelated matters in Attorney General Eric Holder's office, a political watchdog group accused Obama of overloading the agency with officials sympathetic to enemy combatants. Their appointments even...

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

The fact that there's currently a new James Bond movie showing in the theaters prompts the pick for this week's feature. Nostalgia for a time period when we had far superior leaders(Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher, of course) on both sides of the Atlantic helps prompt this pick as well. The current 007 film "Skyfall" is good but OP has a high sense of old-fashioned fun that's lately been absent from the series. Plus, it's got a Soviet villain who wants to nuke a U.S. military base in West Germany to trigger World War III(great plot device).

President Barack Obama, in a bid to reconcile with the Teheran regime, has blocked legislation that would hold Iran accountable for the Hizbullah bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in 1983.

The people of South Kordofan have become caught up in the unresolved contradiction of the post-John Garang Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which is now leading South Sudan into independence; what happens when a national federalist political movement becomes an ethnic separatist political movement? This is the problem in several areas of Sudan outside the new borders of South Sudan, areas in which the then federalist SPLM/A recruited fighters to combat the Khartoum regime in the interests of creating a federal “New Sudan.” With South Sudan declaring full independence on July 9, a force of roughly 40,000 Nuba SPLA fighters...

A new camp has been opened in western Ethiopia as deadly fighting continues to displace tens of thousands of people in Sudan's Blue Nile, which lies on the border with the newly-independent nation of South Sudan, the United Nations said on Saturday. The new camp is located in the town of Tongo, from the border areas of Kurmuk, Bamza and Almahal. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards said 533 refugees have already been moved to the new camp. The camp has a capacity for 3,000 people and has the possibility of being expanded if necessary. Over...

Operation Urgent Fury Grenada President Reagan orders U.S. Marines, Army Rangers, Navy Special Warfare teams, and other military forces to invade Grenada, citing a takeover of the tiny Caribbean Island by "a brutal group of leftist thugs." U.S. troops, along with a small force from six Caribbean nations, overcome surprisingly strong resistance from Cubans, who support the island's new regime. A day after the invasion, the troops begin evacuating 1,100 U.S. citizens on the island.

The Obama administration finally highlights Iran’s key role in supporting al Qaeda On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important. “This network...

Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the Chicago Democrat who became the leading architect of congressional tax policy in the Reagan era but later went to federal prison for corruption, died Wednesday, a family friend said. He was 82. Mr. Rostenkowski, who served 18 terms before losing in 1994, died surrounded by family at his home in Lake Benedict, Wis., friend Ellen Tully said. He had been treated for prostate cancer in the 1990s. As House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Mr. Rostenkowski was known as a consensus builder and a master of legislative tactics. He is credited with leading a 1983...

HOUSTON (AP) - A federal judge threw out the conviction of a former CIA operative who has spent 20 years in prison for selling arms to Libya, saying the government knowingly used false evidence against him. Edwin P. Wilson, 75, was convicted in 1983 of shipping 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosives to Libya - something he said he did to ingratiate himself with the Libyan government at the CIA's request. In a scathing opinion released Tuesday, U.S. Judge Lynn N. Hughes said the federal government failed to correct information about Wilson's service to the CIA that it admitted internally...

A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals. Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism. Wilson, now 75, has been in prison ever since, serving a 52-year sentence. His...

WASHINGTON — In most administrations, "leaks" of classified information precipitate presidential ire. Nearly all such unauthorized disclosures are the consequence of disgruntled government employees deciding that a "leak" is the best way to stop some activity they have decided should not continue. To justify their unlawful actions, they call themselves "secret whistle-blowers." The so-called "mainstream media" love them. Most American presidents do not. That's what makes the current commander in chief's reactions to a whole series of "leaks" so unusual. President Barack Obama doesn't seem to be concerned at all. President Ronald Reagan was infuriated by the publication and broadcast...

Ted Kennedy's KGB Correspondence By Kevin Mooney on 6.22.10 @ 6:08AM Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's self-serving, secret correspondence with Soviet agents during the height of the Cold War included proposals for collaborative efforts designed to undermine official U.S. policy set by Democratic and Republican administrations, KGB documents show. With the media now reporting on the late senator's just released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file, now is an opportune time for a more expansive investigation into Kennedy's KGB contacts. The agency took a keen interest in a 1961 "fact-finding" trip the Massachusetts Democrat took to Mexico and other parts of...