Free Republic

Dan Fuchs said business was just starting to pick up at his kiosk in the Mall at Johnson City. Fuchs’ business, the Graphic Edge, printed slogans and pictures on items such as coffee cups, bumper stickers and T-shirts. He said more than half of his business came from the sale of anti-Obama merchandise. Bumper stickers with slogans such as “SOS: Stop Obama’s Socialism,” “Nobama,” and “Chicago got the party, but the country got the hangover” were displayed around the small stand. Now it appears Fuchs is out of business at the mall, but mall officials say this decision was not...

Opponents of the US-led invasion of Iraq nearly came to blows in Berlin Saturday with pro-US demonstrators accusing them of supporting "terrorism" and tolerating Saddam Hussein. About 200 people, mainly German pacifist and left-wing activists, attended an unofficial meeting called to condemn the war against Iraq and demand the withdrawal of American troops. But the gathering was interrupted by hecklers blaming anti-war demonstrators for supporting the wave of extremist violence in Iraq. Outside, about 20 people demonstrated against the conference, saying it was indirectly supporting the old Saddam regime. "We don't hate the Americans and we condemn suicide bombings against...

Meredith Gardner, who has died aged 89, was the American codebreaker responsible for breaking the ciphers that led to the arrests of the atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the break-up of the Cambridge spy ring.During the late 1940s, Gardner was the main cryptanalyst working on the Venona material, messages sent between the KGB’s Moscow Centre and its agent handlers abroad using the theoretically unbreakable one-time pad system.Fluent in French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Lithuanian, Russian and Spanish, Gardner joined the United States Army’s codebreaking organisation, the Signals Security Agency, early in the Second World War.He worked initially...