Free Republic

CNN) -- A portrait is beginning to emerge of Joseph Andrew Stack, the man officials believe set his house on fire and then intentionally crashed his small aircraft into an office building in Austin, Texas.

A disgruntled private pilot flew his airplane into an Austin IRS office this morning. His farewell rant, which I won't link here, explains that he did it out of hatred of the rich, the politicians, the rich politicians, and most of all the IRS. This man, whose name was John Stack, was not a Muslim. Neither was he a Christian (he rails against the Catholic Church in his parting note), a Republican (he singles out George W. Bush by name as a bad guy), or a member of the Tea Party. So what was he? Simple: he was a terrorist....

There is an interesting quote at the end of Joseph Stack's suicide note: The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.. This quote is from a book by Henry Fairlie titled Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations The Amazon.com description of this book is:A native British wit expresses an adopted American ebullience in this sparkling collection of political journalism and commentary. Fairlie (1924–1990) migrated from London to the U.S. in the 1960s, where his writings in the Washington Post, the New Republic and elsewhere both celebrated and pilloried the American...

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to...

Eric LaForest delivers a crash-course on modern stack computing, the Forth programming language, and some projects of his own. Stack systems have faster procedure calls and reduced complexity (shorter pipeline, simpler compilation) relative to their conventional counterparts, as well as more consistent performance, which is very important for real-time systems. Many consider stack-based architecture's crowning feature, however, to be the unrivalled price-to-performance ratio.

The final hours of 2003 are an appropriate time to reflect on some of the people who left us over the past year. Numerous showbiz types went to that great stage in the sky. Bob Hope, who combined a love of entertaining with an unadulterated patriotism, passed on at 100. Art Carney, Ed Norton of the fabled Honeymooners, will be remembered as the ultimate pal. Sure, he often realized that Ralph Kramden’s latest get-rich-quick scheme was fatally flawed, but he hung in there anyway. Just out of pure, unquestioning friendship. Bee Gee Maurice Gibb died in January. Whether one loved...

<p>LOS ANGELES — Robert Stack, whose granite-eyed stare and menacing baritone spelled trouble for television's fictional criminals in The Untouchables and real ones in Unsolved Mysteries, died at his home. He was 84.</p> <p>Stack's wife Rosemarie found him slumped over at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. He died of heart failure, she said. The actor had undergone radiation treatment for prostate cancer in October.</p>

Just heard on WLS, Robert Stack passes away at his home in Hollywood.