Free Republic

The U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission. John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission and Navy Secretary during the Reagan Administration, says a reluctance to cause offense by citing...

Dedham, Mass -- A dominatrix was acquitted of manslaughter Monday in the death of a man who prosecutors say suffered a heart attack while strapped to a replica of a medieval rack. Barbara Asher, a 56-year-old woman who called herself Mistress Lauren M, was also cleared of dismemberment. Prosecutors said that 53-year-old Michael Lord suffered a heart attack in 2000 during a bondage session in a "dungeon" in Asher's condominium and that Asher did nothing to help him for five minutes for fear authorities would find out about her business. Asher had her boyfriend chop up the body of the...

LITTLE ROCK -- The case of the spanking strippers has been settled with a plea deal. A patron of the Sensations Night Club Three in Jacksonville, Ark., complained he was spanked with a big wooden paddle on his birthday. And it hurt. Three dancers and two other employees of the club have pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Second-degree battery charges against the dancers were dismissed. The patron, a truck driver, said the paddling left his backside bruised. The judge in the case has now ordered the paddle destroyed, so it can't be sold for a profit. The prosecutor suggested the...

TELEVISION It's not pretty, but 'Animal House' defines a generation BY GLEN GARVIN ggarvin@herald.com LOS ANGELES -- Dean Wormer: Who dumped a whole truckload of Fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween the trees are filled with underwear; every spring the toilets explode. Marmalard: You're talking about Delta, sir. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. It was rebellious, it was anarchic, it was gross. It had kids getting wasted and puking and being promiscuous, sometimes all at once. Its heroes were drunks and slobs and Peeping Toms; its villains...

<p>Tuesday, November 19, was truly [1] a black, black day for this nation and one I never dreamed would happen here.</p> <p>I remember vividly as a child watching Nikita Khrushchev standing at the UN beating his shoe against the podium and shouting that they (the then Soviet Union) would take us over without firing a shot. Little did we know or ever dream then that the Soviet Union would fall but that a truly [2] evil man from Texas and his equally evil regime from Cheney on down would take us over from within and that the Democrats would completely collapse before our eyes and help him do it. This truly [3] began with the stolen election of 2000.</p>

The Inter-Fraternity Council at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, voted Monday to accept the Alpha Psi chapter of national gay fraternity Delta Lambda Phi, according to a press release from Delta Lambda Phi. The Kent State chapter of Delta Lambda Phi met with resistance in the spring when the chapter first petitioned for membership on the council, even though the group had been on campus since February 2000. "We're very pleased with the IFC's decision," said Joshua Dudeck, president of the Alpha Psi Chapter. "I wasn't sure how the vote was going to go, to be honest. This is...