Free Republic

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died. McNamara, 93, died at home in his sleep Monday morning, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time. Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was president of the Ford Motor Co. when President John F. Kennedy asked him to head the Pentagon in 1961. McNamara worked for seven years as the defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, longer than any other person in that post. He headed the war department during the build-up of forces in...

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

Robert McNamara says he did not realise during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 just how close the US and the Soviet Union came to nuclear war. Forty-three years later, the controversial former US defence secretary is more concerned than ever about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Sitting in his Washington office, the subject of The Fog of War - the Oscar-winning documentary about his views on the Vietnam war - cautions, in a rare interview, that he does not want to talk about Iraq. The 89-year-old Mr McNamara - who served under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson...