Free Republic

Ben Affleck asked the producers of PBS’ Finding Your Roots television show to edit out details of an ancestor who owned slaves, according to a Sony internal email exchange leaked this week. In an email sent to Sony CEO Michael Lynton shortly before the show’s second season premiere, Harvard professor and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote that an unnamed “megastar” had asked producers to “edit out something about one of his ancestors – the fact that he owned slaves.”

Forrest's soldiers loved him. His fellow generals admired him. His enemies were terrified at the mere mention of his name. Gen. Robert E. Lee said of his finest subordinate commanders, the most remarkable was one he "had never met" — Forrest. And U.S. and foreign military officers alike have studied Forrest’s campaigns over the decades since the end of the war. It has even been speculated that some aspects of the German Blitzkrieg were patterned after some of Forrest's operations.

Man accused of holding stepdaughter captive. Brownsville police are seeking the community’s help in finding a 54-year-old man accused of holding his teenage stepdaughter captive for at least two months in a travel trailer on Thomas Street. Juan Miguel Medrano Jr., who is an undocumented immigrant, is sought on a warrant charging him with abandoning a child, ag-gravated sexual assault of a child, and unlawful restraint, police said. Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique said investigators depend on the public’s help in cases such as Medrano’s. “The public is our best resource to bring people in,” Manrrique said. Police have no clues as...