Free Republic

An officer who has claimed that a classified military unit identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the 2001 attacks is facing Pentagon accusations of breaking numerous rules, charges his lawyer suggests are aimed at undermining his credibility. The alleged infractions by Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, 42, include obtaining a service medal under false pretenses, improperly flashing military identification while drunk and stealing pens, according to military paperwork shown by his attorney to The Associated Press. Shaffer was one of the first to publicly link Sept. 11 leader Mohamed Atta to the unit code-named Able Danger. Shaffer was one of...

How many stories has Newsweek written about the Bush administration allegedly "skewing intelligence" by relying on raw, insufficiently sourced data? How many times has it lamented that these mistakes have hurt the U.S. abroad? Too many to count. What would be funny if it weren't so tragic is that some of them were authored by reporters Michael Isikoff and John Barry, the very duo that has itself dealt the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan a blow by stretching poorly sourced information into a false report about the deliberate desecration of the Koran by U.S. interrogators. Isikoff and Barry wrote in the...

Here are some predictions. They are dead certainties. 1. Night will follow day. 2. Average temperatures in Florida will exceed those in Alaska – which, by the way, has nothing to do with the phony trumped-up alarm over "global warming." 3. After a steady drumbeat of leftist attacks on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (aided and abetted by the media), you will suddenly read about push "polls," whose purpose will be to see how effective the organized smear job has been. And sure enough, the charts will show the wolf pack has done its job. DeLay's "public approval" ratings will...

Intelligence analysts — like all detectives — find excitement in anomalies. An anomaly in conduct — action, reaction, and such — may be insignificant, but is often a clue to what is about to happen, or why something already has. In politics, as well as in intelligence, we ignore anomalies at our peril. Right now, the CIA is awash in them, and the president should be asking George Tenet some really tough questions about Joe Wilson. In the long buildup to the Iraq campaign, the Bush administration turned virtually all of our intelligence assets to gathering information about Saddam's WMD...

WEST PALM BEACH -- A former housekeeper for Rush Limbaugh claims she supplied the conservative commentator with thousands of doses of painkillers, some of which may have come from a mom-and-pop pill mill busted earlier this year in Lake Worth. The housekeeper and her husband, residents of The Acreage, told their story to a Miami lawyer, and then to the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office after a promise of immunity from prosecution. Then they sold the tale to The National Enquirer, which splashed the allegations across their front page in Thursday's edition under the headline: "Rush Limbaugh Caught In...

FRANKLIN, Tenn. - Relaxing on the verandah of a refurbished Victorian home turned tea room, Dot Fleming nibbled coconut pie and extolled the virtues of life in the South. "It's just an easier, more relaxed lifestyle, with friendly people, home-cooking and big families," said the 55-year-old Fleming, whose family has lived in this affluent town south of Nashville since the early 1900s. A new Vanderbilt University study found that the number of people like Fleming, who are fiercely proud to be called Southerners, is being noticeably diluted by newcomers and those who just plain reject the label. From 1991 to...