Free Republic

Previously undisclosed FBI documents suggest that the Kent State antiwar protests were more meticulously planned than originally thought and that one or more gunshots may have been fired at embattled Ohio National Guardsmen before their killings of four students and woundings of at least nine others on that searing day in May 1970. As the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State antiwar protests Tuesday, a review of hundreds of previously unpublished investigative reports sheds a new — and very different — light on the tragic episode. The upheaval that enveloped the northeastern Ohio campus actually began three...

CLEVELAND - A tape recording of the 1970 shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier, a newspaper reported Friday citing the work of a forensic audio expert. The finding lends support to a theory that the guardsmen thought they were being shot at during a campus Vietnam War protest. Witnesses said at the time that an FBI informant monitoring the protest fired warning shots because he felt threatened.

BOISE — On a quiet street south of downtown Boise, Michael Dick has festooned his front yard with homemade signs, including a large yellow placard that facetiously thanks President Biden for a growing list of grievances — $4-a-gallon gas, inflation, Afghanistan, covid-19. In capital letters in black marker, Dick, 59, recently added "dead civilians" and "dead U.S. soldiers" to his bill of particulars. In another part of town, alongside a “No trespassing” sign, Michael Schwarz, 60, used black spray-paint to scrawl “Joe Blows” across an electric-pink poster board. And that’s mild compared to the sentiments some people — largely in...

An article about the practice sparked outrage over income inequality. Luxury yachts in St. Tropez. Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images People who own yachts have lots of things to worry about. Is a yacht a good financial investment? (Usually not.) Will a group of class-warfare-waging rascals untie the boat from its dock, causing thousands of dollars in damage? (If you're Betsy DeVos, yes.) And then there's the latest concern plaguing superyacht owners: Is a yacht really a good place to store an art collection, which is worth more than the yacht itself? A growing number of billionaires -- at least...

We live in a weary age of fable. The latest Hollywood mythology is entitled "Truth." But the film is actually a fictionalized story about how CBS News super-anchor Dan Rather and his "60 Minutes" producer supposedly were railroaded by corporate and right-wing interests into resigning. In reality, an internal investigation by CBS found that Rather and his "60 Minutes" team -- just weeks before the 2004 election -- had failed to properly vet documents of dubious authenticity asserting that a young George W. Bush had shirked his duty as a Texas Air National Guard pilot. The fabulist movie comes on...

After a gunman takes advantage of open carry and then goes on a killing spree, it's time to face tough truths

While the beatdown on Jesse Myerson’s communist advocacy will continue — compelled by the impersonal forces of history — we can take a brief detour to examine what he wrote after Jared Loughner’s deadly January 2011 shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona. Beyond Blood Libel: A Refudiation of Sarah Palin’s Lone Gunman TheoryYou can read the whole thing, if you have a masochistic appetite for bad writing, but here’s a sample paragraph: "But even if it cannot be demonstrated that Loughner’s act grew out of the right-wing violence-glorifying culture, there remain critical pieces of context for understanding how culpability for violence...

The Left has a new martyr. Rosanell Eaton is a 92-year-old black woman with a compelling story about the harm done to vulnerable people, especially members of minority groups, by North Carolina’s new voter-ID law. But none of it holds up. Rosanell Eaton isn’t a martyr at all, in fact. The law, signed by Republican governor Pat McCrory a week ago, ends same-day voter registration, pre-registration of high-school students prior to their 18th birthday, and straight-ticket voting. It also reduces the number of days of early voting by a week, from 17 days to 10 (though early-voting hours and locations...

This bogus story pushed by the media since Saturday continues to have holes punched in it, which is no surprise to us, there isn't anyone who can produce audio about the story..2 more videos of Lewis

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear,...

I’m going to Question The Patriotism™ of Democrat politicians. Let’s suppose you’re Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha. You believe, in your heart of hearts, that America, the world, and your constituents, would be better off if the United States were to - in Murtha’s euphemism - “immediately redeploy” from Iraq. Do you not then have an obligation to act upon your convictions? If you believe that immediately withdrawing from Iraq is the best, the most prudent, the most principled course of action, is it not your patriotic duty to do everything you can to enable that course of action? Yet,...

PERHAPS the biggest weapon in the arsenal of the US's critics is carefully selective amnesia. Conveniently forgetting important historical facts enables tactical amnesiacs to make claims about US policy that seem to support their contention that the country's Government is uniquely evil. The latest evidence that George W.Bush is a war criminal has apparently come this week with the acknowledgment that the US military used white phosphorus (WP) on enemy positions in Fallujah. This is deemed an outrage. And the discovery that US soldiers refer to WP cavalierly as "shake and bake" seems to have come as an additional shock...

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.We might also add, it was the same information that you were hearing from the same sources the President had. We might also add that the British Intelligence, French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, Italian Intelligence, and Israeli Intelligence all believed exactly the same...

DNC CHAIRMAN HOWARD DEAN REFUSES TO APPEAR ON SET WITH RNC CHAIR DURING TOMORROW 'MEET THE PRESS', SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEAN ONLY AGREED TO BACK-TO-BACK INTERVIEWS ON NBC WITH RIVAL... DEVELOPING...

Powerline notes the outlandish claims being made by Michael Scheuer, formerly of the CIA: The pathetic Michael Scheuer claims that, “in the war against al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein was one of our best allies.” And the selectively pathetic Chris Matthews gives Scheuer a free pass on his big lie. Thomas Joscelyn has the details. JOHN adds: That’s an interesting change of heart on Scheuer’s part. Scheuer was the head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit in 1998, when Clinton’s Justice Department indicted bin Laden. Here is a paragraph from Count 4 of the indictment: Al Qaeda also forged alliances with...

RUSH: Okay, gotta hear this. We got a lot more sound bites of this, but this is the money sound bite. Brian Ross today talking to Mary Mapes of CBS says, "After 12 years of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents, Bill Burkett's documents, and that they should not have been used and the story should not have aired. Do you," Mary Mapes, "still think the story was true?" MAPES: The story? Absolutely. ROSS: This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still...

Al Franken says he loves to perform for U.S. troops overseas. "I love and honor our troops," he insists. Maybe he does while on the USO tours and amid the avalanche of goodwill publicity those tours generate for him when he returns. But consider this parody, called "Sorry," included on Franken's CD "The O'Franken Factor": Sorry 'bout the prisoners Sorry they got raped Sorry they got tortured Sorry it got taped ... Believe me when I say their apology is sincere I'm awfully sorry for that broomstick up their rear ... That's just one of the revelations of a new...

Former Marine's claims falseBy Ron HarrisSt. Louis Post-DispatchWASHINGTON — For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.Among his claims:• Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.• Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.• Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian...

"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace says he "hammered" his father Mike Wallace on the bias at CBS News during a taped interview set for broadcast on his own show Sunday morning. "I hammer my father about the mainstream media," Wallace told WRKO Boston's Howie Carr on Friday. "I hammer him about Dan Rather and the fake memos." Wallace said he told his Dad: "Isn't the reason that Dan Rather and '60 Minutes,' they were so quick to believe those memos is because they and others like you, card-carrying fellow travelers - isn't it a fact that they are quick...

In yesterday’s (Saturday) Washington Post is a brief article in its Metro section, responding to well-attended press conference the previous day in front of the newspaper’s offices. The press conference accused the Post of violating the privacy rights of certain individuals on the website FreeRepublic.com This exchange, printed by the Post, explains the charge, and the newspaper’s response to it, so far: "How in good faith could The Washington Post access a private Internet account without the express permission of the account holder?" Kristinn Taylor, a spokesman for the conservative FreeRepublic.com, asked in a morning news conference in front of...