Free Republic

HAVANA(Reuters)-Philip Agee, a former CIA spy who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday.Agee, 72, died on Monday night, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world.".His widow, German ballet dancer Giselle Roberge, told friends he had been in hospital since December 15 and did not survive surgery for perforated ulcers.Agee worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 12 years in Washington, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in...

Republicans fear a repeat of 1992, with a squishy Bush at the head of the ticket watching helplessly as some populist businessman/novelty act hands the election to a Clinton. But Democrats should fear the far more likely repeat of 1968. Ah, the 1968 convention … just thinking of it brings a smile to the face of every normal American. Let’s start with hordes of Chicago cops kicking the psychedelia out of dirty hippies. Footage of all-American flatfoots clocking VC-flag waving pinkos with nightsticks is more erotic than a hundred “Fifty Shades” books. Just thinking about it makes me want to...

Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley are auditioning for the role of Eugene McCarthy. RFK has not yet revealed himself. Nor has HHH. One thing is clear - Hillary! is cooked. She just doesn't realize it yet.

Frank Olivo, the Santa Claus who got pelted with snowballs at the Eagles game that winter day in 1968, died Thursday, April 30, at Kindred Hospital Philadelphia-Havertown. Mr. Olivo, 66, of Glenolden, had battled heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments for 25 years, and had been seriously ill since mid-January.

"When they called out his name he tried not to claim it, but the kids started cryin' 'cause theyd already named it".........

Startling evidence suggests that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was lifted, almost in its entirety, from Nazi legislation. snip... We are not the first to have seen this hearing record. But we appear to be the first to have recognized its importance. This hearing record suggests strongly that the late Senator Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) himself implanted the Nazi Weapons Law into American law, or, at very least, helped others to do so. snip... This original article appeared in Guns and Ammo Magazine May 1993

They just don't make them like this anymore.

As the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Chicago, thousands of antiwar demonstrators take to Chicago's streets to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. During the four-day convention, the most violent in U.S. history, police and National Guardsmen clashed with protesters outside the International Amphitheater, and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten by the Chicago police. The violence even spilled into the convention hall, as guards roughed up delegates and members of the press, including CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, who was punched in the face. On...

Michael Voris attended the March for Life and some of the pro-life gatherings in the past few days.  He interviewed a number of young people at the Capital Hyatt in Washington.  Just prior to the march, it is filled with pro-life people.  I believe one of the major pro-life groups has a convention there.  At any rate, Voris interviewed a number of the pro-life youth in attendance and obtained some very disturbing replies.  Ladies and gentlemen, please watch the video, then see my comments below it. (video at link) There are those who say that these young people point to...

In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his landmark encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (Latin, "Human Life"), which reemphasized the Church’s constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. Contraception is "any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all other such...

The Left, red or green (it's usually both), tends to have no moral objection to the normalisation of paedophilia, the next step after the normalisation of homosexuality. People on the Left, which includes "gay" activists, have in recent years kept this issue quiet without wishing to disclose their real intentions to the public to avoid the probable risk of jeopardizing their goal of normalising homosexuality, but, now that they have won that battle after achieving homomarriage, that acceptance of paedophilia is part of their agenda will become increasingly explicit. I want to clarify that I am totally for protecting the...

A few weeks ago, while pondering the upcoming sapphire anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) and the continuing controversy over the “birth control encyclical” throughout both Church and society, I came across the following, in an essay the Polish Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz wrote shortly before his death in 2004: “Increasingly the institution of marriage is being replaced by simply living together, which has followed upon the sundering of the link between sex and fertility. This is not just a revolution in the area of moral norms; it reaches much deeper, into the very definition of...

The illiberalism of student radicalism in the 1960s shaped the world we live in today.SDS leader Mark Rudd at a Columbia University protest, 1968It is now 45 years since that momentous year 1968, one of the turning points of contemporary world culture, if not quite of contemporary politics. Not unlike 1848–49 in Europe, 1968 was marked by events that involved student and political protests in several places. There was a dire sense of crescendo and momentum: the heightening of protest against the Vietnam War, the violent turn of the civil-rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the utopian libertinism...

Recently watching reruns of the classic TV series on the ME TV channel is the inspiration for today's feature, the hit comedy film which served as its basis. To quote the intro from the TV series: "Can 2 divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?"

Today being New Year's Eve Eve so to speak is the inspiration for this Sunday's feature. The triumvirate of Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini's only non-Inspector Clouseau comedy. It basically concerns a blacklisted Indian actor who gets accidentally invited to a swank Hollywood party and the ensuing chaos that occurs. It's a very loosely structured film but makes for an amusing time capsule of 1968 Hollywood. Worth watching if you're a fan of Sellers, Edwards and/or Mancini.

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, is surfacing as a leading contender for the director of national intelligence, sources say. The director oversees the nation’s intelligence activities and is the principal adviser to the president and his National Security Council. In addition to leading Pacific Command and filling several high-powered jobs within the military, Blair was the associate director of central intelligence for military support, coordinating intelligence and military operations during the Clinton administration. He retired from the Navy in 2002. Blair receives high marks from those in the defense and intelligence communities. “He...

If ever there were a moment for President Obama to learn from history, it is now, in the wake of Friday’s shootings at the elementary school at Newtown, Conn. The timely lesson for Obama, drawn from the experience of Lyndon B. Johnson — the last president to aggressively fight for comprehensive gun control — is this: Demand action on comprehensive gun control immediately from this Congress or lose the opportunity during your presidency. In the aftermath of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (just weeks after the fatal shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. and only a few years after...

Wednesday morning, August 27, between 11 am and 1:30 pm EST or 9 am and 11:30 am mountain time, I'll be chairing a New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force event in Denver at the Colorado History Museum. The keynotes are Senator JOHN KERRY (D-MA), Obama National Security Adviser GREG CRAIG, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, former Congressman and Obama Adviser MEL LEVINE, former German Foreign Minister JOSCHKA FISCHER, and Aspen Institute President (and former CNN Chairman and CEO and TIME Managing Editor) Walter Isaacson. Our panel will be former Israeli negotiator and New America Foundation Senior Fellow...

A Chicago police officer suffered a stab wound to the leg, Sunday, and three others were injured during a day of protests around the NATO summit. Chicago police Supt. Garry McCarthy did not know what was used to stab the officer and became emotional when discussing the crowd with which his officers dealt. "If you think it's easy to ask people to do what they did, it's not," he said, pausing to gain his composure. "Asking people to put themselves in harm's way, knowing that they're going to get assaulted, and to be able to stand there and take it,...