Free Republic

Once upon a time (at the zenith of 20th century analog media), maintaining an on-site, in-house library crammed full of archived periodicals and rows and rows of hefty, solemn reference books, was all the rage at large media organizations. In 2009, not so much. Today, yet another bricks-and-mortar media bibliothèque fell victim to the digital age. This afternoon, in an email to his staff, David Westin, the president of ABC News, announced that ABC News will be converting its existing research library on the second floor of its 47th street building into a smaller, more cyber-focused "Digital Research Facility." "Our...

A massive amount of sensitive, national security-related information from the Clinton administration has gone missing from the national archives. The Inspector General of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) told congressional committee staffers Tuesday that a hard drive containing over a terabyte of information -- the equivalent of millions of books--went missing from the NARA facility in College Park, Md., sometime between October 2008 and March 2009. The Department of Justice and the Secret Service are conducting an investigation, but it's so far unclear whether the drive was lost as the result of a crime or an accident. That...

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

I had a document I had written pages and pages of material on. I plugged in a disk to save it, and made the horrible mistake of sending the OLD version over and replacing the NEW version. I am DESPERATE to get this work back. Does anyone know how to recover an old saved version? I am reasonably certain system restore will not work, that's not what it was designed to do. I have not saved over it in any other way, and I recall some tech geeks telling me it was possible to access old saved versions of a...

Washington, DC…The Office of the Federal Register has created an Electronic Public Inspection Desk to provide free worldwide electronic access to public documents. For the first time in the 72-year existence of the daily Federal Register, the documents on file are available for viewing anytime, anywhere. Every Federal business day, anyone with access to a computer now can read critical documents governing Federal regulations relating to business, health, and safety as soon as the documents are placed on file.

Footnote.com partnered with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to link the service records and casualty reports to each name on the Wall. “The records of the Vietnam War in the National Archives are essential resources for veterans to revisit their history and establish their rights,” explains Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein. “These extensive files are mined by scholars every day as they continue to interpret and understand this pivotal period in American history.” Footnote.com will also be digitizing National Archives photos from the Vietnam War. Footnote.com and the National Archives Launch an Interactive Vietnam War MemorialAbout...

What do you think? Suggestions, comments, complaints?

Hillary Rodham Clinton's daily schedules as first lady will be forwarded to former President Clinton by Friday for review, the first of two steps without a fixed time limit before any are released to the public, the National Archives said Wednesday. Former President Clinton will have 30 days — possibly longer, if he requests an extension — to review the 10,000 pages of his wife's daily schedules before they will be sent to the White House for its review, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives. The Bush administration does not have a time limit to review the...

After more than 60 years, Nazi documents stored in a vast warehouse in Germany were unsealed Wednesday, opening a rich resource for Holocaust historians and for survivors to delve into their own tormented past. The archive's index refers to 17.5 million people in its 16 linear miles of files. The treasure of documents could open new avenues of study into the inner workings of Nazi persecution from the exploitation of slave labor to the conduct of medical experiments. The archive's managers planned a conference of scholars next year to map out its unexplored contents. The files entrusted to the International...

Amazing: Bill Clinton complains media is not reporting Hillary's record - the same record that both he and Hillary are keeping hidden in the archives!Read it all here!

WASHINGTON - A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law. The White House is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government and the National Security Archive. The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White...

Let’s face it: the Clintons will say anything in their quests for the presidency. Just as Bill Clinton railed against Republican corruption in 1992, promising his would be “the most ethical administration in history,” Hillary Clinton now is presenting herself as the antidote of the Republican “culture of corruption,” and the antithesis of the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy. What makes this argument all the more laughable is that secrecy has always been their modus operandi, and their key method of their scandal damage control. It’s on display again. In the October 30 Democratic debate on MSNBC, Tim Russert asked...

Hillary Clinton’s top advisers charge that the presidential candidate was unfairly targeted by moderator Tim Russert during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia. Russert asked Clinton a number of tough questions during the MSNBC-sponsored debate, including one on Social Security and another on the release of documents from the Bill Clinton administration, as she sought to fend off attacks from her Democratic rivals. Mark Penn, Clinton’s senior strategist, said: “Russert made it appear that President Clinton had done something new or unusual� in regard to the release of documents. “I think there will be further clarification.� Penn and Jonathan Mantz,...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her experience as a compelling reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady.

MOSCOW. July 8 (Interfax) - The Federal Security Service has been assisting the United States in investigating crimes against humanity. "Since 1994, 60,000 pages of documents dealing with Nazi crimes during World War II, kept at the FSB's Central Archives, have been handed over to the United States," Vasily Khristoforov, the head of the FSB's Register and Archives Department, said in an interview with Interfax. Cooperation between American and Russian law enforcement and judiciary agencies led to a court ruling to deprive a Nazi accomplice in the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto of American citizenship, he said. Copies of trophy...

(snip) From 1940 to 1975, the F.B.I. carried out an intense campaign of covert surveillance against the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in 1937 and long associated with the labor movement and liberal causes. As Colin Moynihan reports in The Times, the F.B.I. turned over copies of some 400,000 pages from its files on the group under a 1977 lawsuit. In 1997, the copies were donated by the guild’s lawyers to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University with the understanding that they could be made available to the public this year.

His own collection reportedly numbers over 20,000 volumes, but that didn't keep the book-loving B16 -- who's compared sitting in his own library to being "surrounded by friends" -- from soaking up his trip to the Vatican Library and Archives yesterday. Sure, Benedict spoke of his thwarted desire to retire at 70 and "dedicate [him]self" to being a "passionate scholar" of the texts and manuscripts contained in the Vatican's vaults... but a shot like this goes a long way toward reinforcing that the Pope's confession to the staff was much more than just words on a page.PHOTO: L'Osservatore

Thank you to all our Hall of Famers and to all of you who have become part of our Finest Family ... as regular contributors and supporters who drop in every day to say hello.? We wouldn't be here without you. : ) It's been ALMOST 5 YEARS since we started The Finest, and every quarter I've posted a thread with links to all of our threads of the past three months. This one, Hall of Fame #19, brings us up to date through yesterday's Military Monday, but it will be the last one; so if you're interested in...

The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movement’s soundtrack. Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University. The cache contains decades of party history including founding documents, secret code words,...

I thought Washington area Freepers would get a kick out of this tidbit attached near the end of today's very disturbing article about Berger's document theft and subsequent investigative bungling by archive staff. "Judge Deborah A. Robinson imposed a stiffer penalty in the case than the Justice Department sought, fining Berger a total of $56,905, canceling his security clearance, and requiring monthly reporting to a probation officer for two years. Breuer said Berger has also picked up trash in Virginia parks for 100 hours to fulfill a community service requirement, and he criticized the renewed attention to Berger's case."So Sandy,...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

In fact, a 1999 Clarke after-action memo - the one top Clinton aide Sandy Berger later stole from the National Archives - identified national-security weaknesses so "glaring" that only sheer "luck" prevented a cataclysmic attack back then. And, as Clarke told the 9/11 Commission publicly, there was nothing the Bush administration could have done that would have prevented the attacks. Sure, he tells a different story now. But that, he admitted, is because of his opposition to the Iraq war, which he believes distracted from the War on Terror. Secretary Rice was a lot more honest, explaining yesterday that there...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

An al-Qaida-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were "doomed," as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified. The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross"...

The Vatican opened its secret archives on the papacy of Pius XI between 1922 and 1939 on Monday and said "unjust opinions" concerning its relations with Jews in the pre-World War Two period would be overturned.A source said some 60 people had come to the archives on the first day asking to consult the mass of documents, which consist of some 30,000 files totaling millions of pages.While the archives are for the papacy of Pius XI (born Achille Ratti), much of the attention by Jewish scholars will be concentrated on the figure of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who succeeded Pius XI...

The Royal Society has made every paper submitted to it since 1665 available free of charge on the internet, opening one of the greatest storehouses of scientific knowledge to the public. Readers will be able to browse through countless papers of incalculable historical importance, including Halley's description of his comet, Watson and Crick's unravelling of the double helix structure of DNA and the first paper published by Stephen Hawking. Prof Martin Taylor, the Royal Society's vice-president, said the archive documents "the foundation of the modern scientific method". He added: "It puts you in touch with the great scientific masters in...

Just in. I am looking at a picture of the WTC with smoke pouring out of the western tower. Looks like a huge amount of damage. Debris raining down on people in the street.

Here are some links from the FR archives in observance of the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001 - Threads list of several breaking news items - Latest Articles The first post reporting the attacks by OldEconomyBuyer - World Trade Center Posted on the first anniversary - Associated Press newswire - September 11, 2001 - Chronology of news alerts, bulletins and flashes

The head of the National Archives said that most of the thousands of historical documents withdrawn by government agencies because of secrecy claims since 1999 would be made publicly available again. In an update to a group of researchers, Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, said the secret removal of documents had been virtually “stopped in its tracks.” The Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, which had withdrawn the largest number of documents, will declassify 95 percent of what they withdrew, though some will still have deletions, Mr. Weinstein said. Archives officials are devising an initiative to streamline...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say. Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath. The US defence department considered various non-lethal chemicals meant to disrupt enemy discipline and morale. The 1994 plans were for a six-year project costing $7.5m, but they were never pursued. The US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals".

Toshiyuki Shimada was looking for inspiration as his tenure at the Portland Symphony Orchestra came to a close. He has found it as a Yale University professor in pursuit of long-forgotten musical treasures at the Vatican.The mild-mannered maestro believes that deep within the Vatican Library's archives are pieces of music that have not been heard in modern times.Under a licensing agreement, Shimada hopes to bring some of this music to the masses through a series of compact discs carrying the library's seal."We know that there's a lot of music that has not seen the daylight," said Shimada, his eyes lighting...

During the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean volcanic island of Thera erupted violently, spreading pumice and ash across the eastern Mediterranean and triggering frosts as far away as what is now California. The Theran town of Akrotiri was completely buried. Tsunamis up to 12 meters high crashed onto the shores of Crete, 110 kilometers to the south, and the cataclysm may ultimately have sped the demise of Crete's famed Minoan civilization. For nearly 30 years, archaeologists have fought over when the eruption took place. Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

In a joint press release today, Google and the United States National Archives announced the immediate availability of 104 films (well, they announced 103, but forgot about one WWII clip) from the Archives on Google Video. This collection of movies constitutes a pilot program for what is anticipated to become a much wider cooperation, and future expansions could also include Google helping the archivists make portions of their massive collection of texts available online. The partnership is non-exclusive, so the archive is free to find more channels through which to distribute its materials.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies have been secretly removing from public access at the National Archives thousands of historical documents that were available for years, The New York Times reported on Monday. The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the CIA and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton, the Times said on its Web site.

<p>Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world.</p>

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

Browse through 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.

Anyone know a good source on the web for political quotes, transcripts, etc? Specifically I want to find Joe Biden's comments to Condoleeza Rice during her confirmation hearings.

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

Earlier this year, executives at Dell Inc. tried to shut down DellComputersSuck.com, a Web site promoting an obscure brand of computers. Dell's lawyers dispatched a stern letter, and within a few days, the site's owner revamped it into an online discussion group about computers. The old version disappeared from view. The PC giant still wanted to seize the address, a move permitted under rules governing the use of domain names. But Dell had to prove to an arbitration panel it had been used in "bad faith." So Dell's legal team turned to the Wayback Machine, a massive archive of Web...

Dreams as big as Texashttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1367601/posts How to Build a Lunar Base:Part 1: The Launch Issuehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1364382/posts Democrat Voter Intimidationhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1373668/posts Griffin leaves door open for shuttle flight to Hubblehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1382376/posts Close encounters on rise as UFOs seize imagination of Chinesehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1396576/posts Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm - honestly.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1408647/posts Scientists to make 'Stuart Little' mouse with the brain of a humanhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1356862/posts Sex Offender caught at Denny's with little girl, was a bloggerhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1435841/posts War Inside CBS News (Drudge Siren Alert)http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1344068/posts "THE RULE OF LAW" VS MORALITYhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1373310/posts $1 billion price tag of saving rare toadhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1364065/posts 'Extreme' judicial activismhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1340496/posts...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...