Free Republic

Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard J. Evans (Brandeis University Press) As everyone knows, the supreme court 
ruled six–three for Al Gore in the great dispute over the Florida recount in 2000. As everyone also knows, Gore emerged as the ultimate victor in that recount, and with his poetic and moving inauguration address he managed to unify a badly divided nation. For a long period, the Gore years continued the peace and prosperity established under President Clinton, punctuated by the successful prevention of an apparent terrorist plot in 2001, by the enactment of health care reform in 2003 (mocked...

Leading astrologers say that Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky is destined for a future working on social justice and will enjoy a strong relationship with her proud grandparents, Hillary and Bill. After Chelsea Clinton and Mark Mezvinsky’s daughter was born at 7:03 pm at Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Friday, POLITICO asked astrologers to weigh in on what is written in the stars for the former first daughter’s first daughter.

The rationalizations for Obama’s failures are already beginning, and Tom Friedman employs the laziest of all strategies, tearing down a great man to make a small man look bigger. In his Sunday column in the New York Times, Friedman makes a number of highly dubious points. These days there is a lot of “if-only-Obama-could-lead-like-Reagan” talk by conservatives. I’ll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president. On the question of the domestic economy, there can be little doubt. Reagan inherited far higher unemployment and high inflation, and within a year or so had...

I was stunned by the anger and sarcasm Harry J. Mallory directed toward a dead teenager, Trayvon Martin, in the Sept. 17 letters. It was over the top and then some (“Cartoon comparing Putin to Zimmerman case went too far”). His reasoning seems pretty easy to understand: Trayvon was black; blacks are thugs; so all George Zimmerman did was create a “dead thug.” Sadly, this sort of (racism) seems pretty common among the far right these days. Here’s what I remember: Trayvon Martin was simply walking home. George Zimmerman targeted him because he was black. Zimmerman followed Trayvon, even after...

It's no secret that Whole Foods isn't the most cost-friendly of grocery stores, but a new survey shows just how much more customers pay at the natural food retailer compared to other regional supermarkets. New York investment firm Wolfe Research recently did a study, comparing baskets of groceries at the upscale organic market to other stores across the nation and confirmed that tags at Whole Foods are through the roof. In one instance, Wolfe totaled 60-72 items at Whole Foods and then compared them to prices for the same exact products at Houston's HEB, a Mariano's grocery store in Chicago,...

FULL TITLE: Enraged protesters in Ferguson take to the AGAIN streets and vandalize beauty supply store after fire destroys makeshift Michael Brown memorial Tensions were running high on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, Tuesday night after an early morning fire destroyed a makeshift memorial honoring the black teenager killed last month by a white police officer. The memorial for 18-year-old Michael Brown that caught fire was erected in a grassy area alongside the road where Brown died. A larger memorial, which runs down the center lane of the road, was untouched by the conflagration. Still, neighborhood residents who have been...

Assessing each other’s leadership qualities, Clinton said Bush did things he thought were right and “consistently benefited by being underestimated — and so did I for totally different reasons.” Bush said Clinton was empathetic and “an awesome communicator” who could “really lay out a case and get people all across the political spectrum.” Ending his comments, he asked Clinton: “Is that enough?”

George W. Bush was known – and often criticized – for being insular during his eight years in the White House, but he made regular calls to a surprising adviser during his second term: his predecessor. Bill Clinton revealed on Monday that the second President Bush picked his brain twice a year for 30-45 minutes, in wide-ranging conversations that no doubt set the stage for the surprising, "brother-from-another-mother" relationship that the two ex-presidents now share. Bush would call Clinton "just to talk," during his last four years in the White House, the Democrat said in a joint event at the...

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen. We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since. It was only a minute long. The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. But that’s all it took.

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

About how America became involved in certain wars, many conspiracy theories have been advanced -- and some have been proved correct. When James K. Polk got his declaration of war as Mexico had "shed American blood upon the American soil," Rep. Abraham Lincoln demanded to know the exact spot where it had happened. And did the Spanish really blow up the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the casus belli for the Spanish-American War? The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, involving U.S. destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, remains in dispute. But charges that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships...

FULL TITLE: Michael Sam was dropped by the NFL because 'no one wants the distraction', claims Buffalo Bills star as gay football player tweets upbeat message Michael Sam is no longer attached to an NFL team and none of them appear to want to pick him up because his sexual orientation causes too much distraction, claims a Buffalo Bills star. Offensive lineman Eric Wood goes on, more specifically, to blame the media for focusing on the personal life of the NFL's first openly gay draft pick. 'Blame that on espn,' Wood tweeted in response to Sam's inability to find an...

I am having trouble understanding the error the teacher in Selma, Ala., made that was serious enough to warrant suspension without pay (“Sixth-graders re-enact Missouri shooting; teacher suspended,” Reuters article, Aug. 23 Dispatch). It sounds like a good idea to give an assignment requiring students to act out a current event. If the students themselves chose the Ferguson, Mo., shooting and the Trayvon Martin incident, perhaps they gained a deeper understanding of racism, crime and other societal problems. It would be a great exercise in communication, teamwork and addressing emotionally charged issues. The principal at the school was quoted as...

FERGUSON, Mo. — Dorian Johnson had just moved from his mother’s house in St. Louis to a two-bedroom spot in the Canfield Green Apartments that he was sharing with his then-pregnant girlfriend and another roommate. Sometime in March, a buddy stopped by with a stranger. “Wow,” Johnson said, “that’s a big dude.” The dude, Michael Brown, was 6-foot-4, and he had brushed past Johnson with barely a hello as he headed to the video-game console and began to play. “I asked, ‘Why he don’t speak?’ ” Johnson recalled in a 90-minute interview with The Washington Post last week — his first...

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this...

The world finally knows how former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke views the 2008 financial crisis. “September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” said Bernanke in a document filed Aug. 22 with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, reports The Wall Street Journal. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

Fifty years after Julie Andrews starred as that practically perfect nanny, the character is still a role model for young women. Like all Disney movies, Mary Poppins is full of whimsy and adventure, good guys and, if not bad guys, at least shades-of-grey guys. And as we celebrate the film today, on its fiftieth anniversary, let’s not forget its feminist perspective.

f you’re paying attention to the events unfolding in Ferguson—and by God, you better be—then you probably already know there is a group of people in this country of ours who are determined to change the focus of the conversation about the murder of Mike Brown and the subsequent protests, attempting to shift the lens away from the Constitutional rights of US citizens and the murder of a black teenager. If you’re reading this, you probably already know the folks I’m talking about. But here they are. #Staywoke.

We Are All Complicit in the Warzone that Has Become Ferguson, Missouri The President, our Congresspeople, the governor, the police, and maybe even you. By James Joiner on August 19, 2014 14 5 0 View All Comments (5) Getty Images As I'm writing this, people are in the streets in Ferguson, Missouri for the sixth night in a row. Journalists are being threatened and detained—not arrested, so, God forbid, they will not have their day in court and force some semblance of legal reckoning—and therefore kept from performing their duties. These are duties which are, remember, firmly and unequivocally protected...

Reading the profile of Michael Brown by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times over the weekend, one paragraph stood out. He was heavyset and quiet, but not shy. He recorded rap music with his best friend and smoked marijuana with other young men. Hennessy-Fiske also points out that cigarillos, the kind that Brown allegedly stole from a convenience store, are “often used to smoke marijuana.” So, it should hardly come as a shock that Michael Brown had marijuana in his system when he was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. If anything, this...