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A report commissioned by Joe Paterno's family calls the July 2012 Freeh report that was accepted by Penn State trustees before unprecedented sanctions were levied by the NCAA against the school's football program a "total failure" that is "full of fallacies, unsupported personal opinions, false allegations and biased assertions." The Paterno family report, which targets nearly every conclusion and assertion the Freeh report made about Paterno in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, states that while former FBI director Louis J. Freeh has had an honorable past and good reputation, his investigation -- especially as it...

After being on FR for more than ten years I've finally had enough of the brown shirted fascism censoring valid conservative viewpoints. Enjoy your echo chamber of whining syncophants. I'm off to go help Mitt get elected while you bitch and moan about who is or isn't conservative enough.

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Marine Gen. James F. Amos, the face of opposition in the military to lifting the ban on gays serving openly, now acknowledges his concern has proven unfounded that repeal would undermine the war effort. In fact, he says, Marines have embraced the change. In an Associated Press interview, Amos called the repeal in September "a non-event."

Oprah Winfrey says America may "fall in love" with Sarah Palin as a TV star, but is dismissing the idea that the country would vote for the former Alaska governor in the future. Asked in an interview with Parade magazine if the thought of Palin's running for office scares her, Winfrey responded, "It does not scare me because I believe in the intelligence of the American public." Winfrey, who interviewed Palin shortly after her first book was released, said she was not sure if the former Republican vice presidential candidate would run for president in 2012. "I don't know her...

EDGARTOWN, Mass. -- President Barack Obama is wrapping up his vacation on Martha's Vineyard and heading for New Orleans to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

SAN FRANCISCO - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed legislation that would have legalized same-sex marriage, has surprised gay rights supporters by urging a federal judge to allow gay couples to resume marrying in the state without further delay. In 2005, Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill approved by the Legislature that would have legalized same-sex marriage. At the time, California had a law passed by voters in 2000 limiting marriage to a man and a woman. The governor said in his veto message he thought it was wrong for lawmakers to overturn a popular vote. He took the same position...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says President Obama went into "enemy camp" when he delivered his Afghanistan speech at West Point.

In after speech commentary, Chris Matthews notes the "lack of warmth" of the West Point crowd and likens it to an "enemy camp" for Obama. Video clip.

Evidence is piling up that the worst part of the recession has ended.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Friday morning applauded President Obama's video address to Iran. "President Obama's eloquent address to the people and leaders of Iran commemorating Nowruz can be a watershed moment in public diplomacy, with a unique president using the powers of persuasion to great effect," Kerry said in a statement.

In common parlance, the phrase “political general” is an epithet, the inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court disaster—so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the former. George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all “political generals” in the very best...

Last Friday, Barbara Walters embarrassed herself conducting a fawning interview with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Marxist budding dictator. This is a more serious mortification than Rosie O'Donnell spouting nonsense on ABC's The View, which Walters hosts and partly owns. Not since Herbert Matthews of the New York Times wrote about the Fidel Castro the humanitarian, just as his fortunes were flagging in the late 1950s, have we seen a major American journalist go so gaga over a would-be Latin dictator. Walters' offering on Hugo Chavez on ABC's 20/20 went far beyond the garden-variety media bias seen so abundantly in print news...

Anna Nicole Smith collapsed in her hotel room at the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino in Hollywood, Fla., and was rushed to a hospital on Thursday. A Hollywood, Fla., fire department spokesman told MSNBC TV that the actress was unresponsive when the rescue unit arrived on the scene. Sources confirmed to Access Hollywood that Smith was transported to Memorial Regional Hospital shortly after 2 p.m. EST on Thursday. Access Hollywood also is reporting that Smith was intubated at the scene. Officials told the Miami Herald, "it does not look good."

  THE (oops!) INADVERTENT ADMISSIONS OF BILL + HILLARY CLINTON part one FROM WHENCE COMES THEIR REPUTATION FOR BRILLIANCE, ANYWAY? AND WAS THEIR FAILURE TO TAKE OUT BIN LADEN WILLFUL?   by Mia T, 02.08.06 "You know... the job which we should have done 1... which should have been our primary focus, to find [you know] bin Laden and eliminate al Qaeda." hillary clintonSaturday, Jan. 28, 2006 Chitchat with Jane Pauley San Francisco, CA "Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan. We'd been hearing...

The Wellstone Memorial and Historic Site opened to the public Sunday, drawing an appreciative crowd of supporters -- and the late senator's famous green bus, of course -- to a remote, wooded area near Eveleth where the plane carrying the senator and seven others crashed in October 2002. For most of the crowd Sunday, it was their first glimpse of the area where Sen. Paul Wellstone; his wife, Sheila; their daughter, Marcia Markuson; three campaign staffers, and two pilots died. They read the markers and walked the grounds with a mix of sadness and smiles. "I didn't know how I'd...

SAINT-ETIENNE, France (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry thinks Lance Armstrong would make a terrific politician -- but fears he'd be running for the other party. Watching Armstrong during his warmup for Saturday's time trial, the Democrat from Massachusetts listed the Texan's winning qualities. Kerry rode in the team car, following Armstrong.

If the loving heart of the Great Emancipator found its natural amorous passions overwhelmingly directed toward those of his own sex, it would certainly be a stunning rebuke to the Republican Party’s scapegoating of same-sex love for electoral purposes. And a forthcoming book by the late Dr. C.A. Tripp — The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, to be published in the new year by Free Press — makes a powerful case that Lincoln was a lover of men.Tripp, who worked closely in the 1940s and 1950s with the groundbreaking sexologist Alfred Kinsey, was a clinical psychologist, university professor and author...