Free Republic

Vladimir Putin's commanders are forcing his conscript soldiers at gunpoint to remain at the frontline. They are using a brutal Stalin tactic to prevent Russian reservist troops leaving their positions, say men who have seen the horror of the cannon-fodder killing fields. 'People are abandoned in the trenches as if homeless and littered with corpses,' complained Russian reservist draftees in a new video appealing directly to Vladimir Putin. 'Retreat-blocking detachments were set up against us and they did not let us out of positions.' They are forced at gunpoint to remain in position, a tactic used by Stalin's cruel SMERSH...

Batiste wrote that her and Harris's mothers were some of the 'early activists' who shaped Berkeley, California's ultra-liberal, artistic reputation into what it is today. 'We were a happy, loud, and vibrant crew, led by mothers who were both petite, but who loomed large,' she wrote of her earliest memories meeting Harris and her sister. DailyMail.com obtained an exclusive excerpt from the upcoming book, published November 16 by 12 Books. She said their mothers enrolled them in Berkwood Hedge School, a private school that Batiste described as 'very progressive, even for that time and place' and encouraged 'freedom of expression.'...

2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton wowed the crowd at a pre-nomination breakfast in Buffalo Wednesday morning with a story about how she had befriended the maid who cleans her hotel room. With just hours to go before she accepts the nomination for a second term as New York's junior senator, Clinton huddled with party faithful in a downstairs banquet room at Buffalo's convention center. The former first lady recalled how, during her first Senate run, she began staying in a downtown hotel when she traveled to Buffalo - claiming that as time went by she and the maid became good...

<p>February 18, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The government will order airlines to install a system to reduce the chance of fuel-tank explosions like the one that downed a TWA Boeing 747 off the Long Island coast in 1996.</p> <p>The decision affects about 3,800 Boeing and Airbus aircraft operated by domestic airlines, Federal Aviation Administration chief Marion Blakey said yesterday. In the last 14 years, there have been three fuel-tank explosions, including the TWA accident, resulting in 346 deaths.</p>

There are two aspects to Hillary’s book deal that need examination. The obvious one is the clear conflict of interest that the deal involves, not that such niceties ever cut any ice with the Clintons and their rabid supporters, particularly in the media. The second one is a historical perspective that exposes not merely the Democratic Party’s double standards but its inherent viciousness, a fact the recent election vividly illustrated. But first, Hillary’s remarkable windfall. To recover its $8 million dollar investment in Hillary publisher Simon & Schuster would have to sell more than 3 million hardback copies. That would...