Free Republic

Truth. Coretta Scott King is one of those figures in American life who is virtually immune from all criticism. To even hint that she might have done anything dishonest or untoward will immediately get you attacked as an enemy of minorities and of civil rights - so sainted and sacrosanct a figure is Mrs. King. Without a doubt, that is one of the reasons Elizabeth Warren tried to hide behind Mrs. King’s 1986 letter denouncing Jeff Sessions during the now-infamous Senate floor speech that saw her silenced by Mitch McConnell for violation of Senate Rule XIX.

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees. Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003. The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army...

Thomas Figures, an assistant U.S. attorney whose accusations of racial bias torpedoed Sen. Jeff Sessions' nomination to the federal bench in 1986, had a history of erratic and disturbed behavior, colleagues and estranged family say. New sworn statements obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation given by former colleagues allege Figures, who died in 2015, was a paranoid figure who, among other things, believed "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather was communicating with him through his television. An office loner with a flair for confrontation, Figures was later indicted by federal authorities for attempting to bribe a witness. 30 years...

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is about to face a wave of intense scrutiny as he seeks confirmation to become attorney general and head the Justice Department in President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming administration. Trump said Friday that it was an "honor to nominate" a "world-class legal mind" to the position. Sessions said, should he be confirmed, that he will give "all my strength to advance" its "highest ideals" and will be dedicated to "fairness and impartiality." But Sessions is likely to face heavy examination over his overall record, as well as decades-old allegations of racism that are now certain to...

HOUSTON -- A Texas oilman who's accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton's political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer, Peter Paul, who was convicted of defrauding Cuba. There's no indication that Clinton's campaign was aware of Lawal's legal problems when it...

Suspected dissidents disappear after midnight visits to their homes; chilling screams can again be heard from Idi Amin's infamous torture chambers, reopened after a quarter of a century of disuse. From the few that escape come tales of punishment beatings and even mass executions. Welcome to President Yoweri Museveni's Uganda. One of Britain's favourite African states in recent years has, almost unnoticed in the West, become a sinister land where a corrupt regime uses its secret police to rule through fear. The reasons for this transition are not hard to fathom. Mr Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986, when his...

CMS launches campaign to break the silence over atrocities in northern Uganda by Matthew Davies In an effort to raise awareness of the shocking realities of child abduction and the 17-year war in northern Uganda , the Church Mission Society (CMS) launched a campaign today (21 August) by delivering a petition to Downing Street. The petition asked Tony Blair to "help break what local churchmen have dubbed an 'international conspiracy of silence' over the Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) brutal reign". The Bishop of Kitgum diocese, the Rt Revd Benjamin Ojwang, accompanied an Acholi refugee child to Downing Street and...

While GOP presidential hopeful Bob Dole has been hammering President Clinton for failing to control illegal immigration, Clinton partisans have prepared ammunition of their own--Dole's long congressional voting record on the issue. (SNIP) For instance, although presidential candidate Dole has endorsed a congressional proposal to allow states to ban public schooling to illegal immigrant children, Dole once opposed such a move during his Senate tenure. In 1982, Dole voted against a similar proposal that had been advanced by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). Dole said that Helms' amendment came too soon after a 1982 Supreme Court decision that it was unconstitutional...

FAS | Nuke | Guide | Iraq | CW |||| Index | Search | Join FAS Chemical Weapons Programs Iraq started research into the production of chemical weapons agents in the 1970s and started batch production of agents in the early 1980s. At that stage, production was heavily reliant on the import of precursor chemicals from foreign suppliers. In 1982, early in the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqis used riot control agents to repel Iranian attacks. They progressed to the use of CW agents in mid-1983 with mustard, and in March 1984 with tabun (the first use ever of a nerve...

Take a Walk Down Memory Lane: The 1986 Amnesty Debate In this mini-film by FAIR we take a trip into the past to the 1986 amnesty debate and find that the same arguments being made today in support of (and against) amnesty sound very familiar to what we heard 27 years ago.

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

Maria Hernandez is one of six people Yahoo News has interviewed for our series on Americans who gained green cards under Ronald Reagan’s 1986 law that legalized 2.7 million illegal immigrants.

Yesterday, as Barack Obama called for a bipartisan immigration bill in Las Vegas and Senator Marco Rubio called for one on Rush Limbaugh’s program, the chances for passage looked surprisingly good. But from some quarters — mostly from the right, but also from liberals such as blogger Mickey Kaus — comes a complaint that deserves to be addressed. We tried this once already, they say, in the 1986 immigration act. We were told that in return for the legalization of illegal immigrants we would get tough border control and strict enforcement against employers who hired illegals. We got the amnesty,...

Law: A quarter of a century ago, a good and great man was slandered to maintain liberal judicial power. It was Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator, led the injustices committed against Judge Robert Bork. The Wednesday morning death of Bork, Ronald Reagan´s failed 1987 Supreme Court nominee, should make us think how much freer and better this country would be if Bork´s intellectual power and constitutional integrity had been present within the justices´ deliberations over the past 25 years. Had Reagan nominated Bork to replace retiring Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1986, when Republicans

Suspicions by Pakistan's powerful army that the country's civilian leadership is growing too close to the United States are fueling a political crisis that analysts here believe threatens the survival of the government and could divert attention from the battle against Islamic extremists. Military officials believe that secretly taped conversations between Pakistani President Asif Zardari and his ambassador in Washington, prove that it was at Zardari's insistence that a $1.5 billion U.S. aid package passed by Congress in September contained several provisions that angered the Pakistani military. The military publicly protested the aid package last month. "The reaction (from the...

The night before the 1986 explosion, Boisjoly and four others argued that joints in the shuttle's boosters couldn't withstand a cold-weather launch.

Picture Emerges of Teen Suicide Pilot CHARLES BISHOP: To some, he was a smart, humorous student, which makes his suicide flight all the more incomprehensible. By CURTIS KRUEGER, KATHERINE GAZELLA and ED QUIOCO © St. Petersburg Times published January 8, 2002 ----------- Charles Bishop was a teacher's dream. He read Shakespeare in class, pulled together a middle school literary magazine and enjoyed a good game of flag football. Friends and family members who knew him best described Charles as a patriot. The teen who flew an airplane into the Bank of America building, carrying a note sympathizing with Osama bin...

by John HillStand With ArizonaMore than 50,000 Americans have been killed by illegal aliens since 9/11.Think about that. More than 6,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since that same date. But nearly ten times that number have been killed right here at home as a consequence of the Federal government's failure to secure our borders and protect its citizens, in direct violation of the Constitution's Article IV Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application...

In 1986, the winning contestant of the Miss USA contest (Christy Fichtner) and the 8 Miss USA runner ups went on a USO tour. As I understand it, this tour took them to the Mediterranean. I also understand that they entertained on board the USS Coronado, the USS Enterprise, and the USS Truxtun (among many other places). I'm looking for pics and videos of this specific tour, but I've found only a few when there should be HUNDREDS of photos as well as many hours of video. For example, this one keeps on popping up as one of the only...