Free Republic

Catherine Zeta-Jones got married almost 20 years ago, but she's reportedly only just seen her entire collection of wedding photos for the first time. According to the Daily Mail, the actress revealed that she'd never seen most of the official snaps from her nuptials. Zeta-Jones allegedly said, "I looked at the proofs and that was it - I never made an album. The photographer got in touch recently, so about three weeks ago I got to see all my wedding photographs. It was a wonderful day." While it's unclear why the Oscar-winning star had waited quite so long to see...

WASHINGTON — One lazy, sultry afternoon in 1947, two years after America helped trounce the Nazis, my father arrived at our family’s modest summer house on the Severn River near the Naval Academy. He had come from his job as a police detective in D.C., still wearing his suit and his service revolver. “Get your shoes on and come with me,” he told my 10-year-old brother, Martin, his Irish lilt edged with a steel that caused his son to scramble. “I have something to do and I want you to see it.” The town, Herald Harbor, Md., had its share...

I OFTEN wonder what Paddy would think......?

I don’t want closure. There is no closure after tragedy. I want memory, and justice, and revenge. When you’re dealing with a mass murderer who bragged about incinerating thousands of Americans and planned to kill countless more, that seems like the only civilized and morally sound response. We briefly celebrated one of the few clear-cut military victories we’ve had in a long time, a win that made us feel like Americans again — smart and strong and capable of finding our enemies and striking back at them without getting trapped in multitrillion-dollar Groundhog Day occupations. But within days, Naval Seal-gazing...

After supporting husband Michael Douglas through his battle with throat cancer, Catherine Zeta-Jones needed medical care for herself. After “the stress of the past year,” her representative said in a statement, the movie star “made the decision to check into a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her bipolar II disorder,” a condition similar to bipolar I disorder, characterized by mood swings from high to low. Zeta-Jones has been hit with a series of devastating events: In 2010, her stepson, Cameron Douglas, was sentenced to five years in prison on drug charges, and four months later, her...

A representative for Catherine Zeta-Jones confirmed Wednesday that the actress recently underwent inpatient treatment for bipolar II disorder at a Connecticut mental health facility. Booster Shots spoke about the disorder with David J. Miklowitz, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and author of "The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know." Bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic-depression, is typically lifelong and recurrent, Miklowitz said. Some people have their first episode in childhood, others later in life; the majority, during the teen years. Some people experience episodes every few years; others...

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women. I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders. How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination? I was puzzling over that one when it hit...

(LOTS OF GREAT PHOTOS) Catherine provided the entertainment - the Chicago actress performed dressed as a 1920s flapper as she showed off her dancing skills onstage. The 39-year-old, who has two children with Douglas, had earlier arrived hand-in-hand with her husband. On the red carpet she wore a flowing scarlet bustier dress, with a thigh-high split.

Hollywood, CA (BANG) - Catherine Zeta-Jones was paid a staggering $5,700 a second to star in a shampoo commercial. The Oscar-winning actress earned $2.5 million for the seven-minute TV advertisement for haircare product Lux, which will only be broadcast in China and Japan. An executive at Unilever, the firm behind the commercial, told Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper: "We wanted Catherine as we remember her in 'Entrapment, all slinky and mysterious." "That's why the advert was written as a mini spy movie. Pity you won't see it on British television. She looks pretty good in it, but that's the deal."...

She'd need to tone down her famous sex appeal - and seriously cultivate her eyebrows. Even so, Catherine Zeta Jones is said to be desperate to play Susan Boyle on screen. Miss Zeta Jones, 39, has apparently asked about the film rights to the singer's life story and sensational appearance on Britain's Got Talent. It is believed that Oscar-winning film director James Cameron, who was behind Titanic, has expressed an interest in a similar project. Miss Boyle, a shy church volunteer from West Lothian, Scotland, has become a star in the U.S. after her performance of I Dreamed A Dream...

Tropical Storm Zeta weakened and began to break apart on Friday, bringing a final and overdue end to the costliest and busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, U.S. forecasters said. By 4 p.m. EST, Zeta was a tropical depression around 900 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, with maximum sustained winds near 30 mph (45 kph). But the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Zeta was rapidly losing its tropical characteristics. "I suppose it is only fitting that the record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season ends with a record-breaking storm," wrote hurricane center forecaster Stacy Stewart in the Miami-based...

Douglas pushes for tighter gun control 02/12/2005 - 10:28:39 Fatal attraction star Michael Douglas is planning to lobby the US government for tighter gun control, because he's still haunted by rocker John Lennon's 1980 shooting death. Lennon was murdered outside his New York City apartment building by Mark Chapman, and the event is one of the major reasons why Douglas wants to use his position as a United Nations Messenger of Peace to lobby for disarmament. He says: "I was there the night John Lennon was shot, three blocks away. It left a lasting impression on me. "It motivated me...

President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course. Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can't talk enough about how important their rights are. And in the administration's diplomacy-free foreign policy, five of its top spokesmen on the Muslim world are women: Condi Rice; Laura Bush; Liz Cheney, No. 2 in the Near East bureau of the State Department and head of the Middle East democracy project; Karen Hughes, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and...

Catherine Zeta-Jones' stalker is neither famous nor infamous, the Oscar-winning star hissed Friday. "You are just a criminal." Zeta-Jones' comments were read aloud at the Los Angeles sentencing of Dawnette Knight. The 33-year-old Beverly Hills woman pleaded no contest Feb. 25 to stalking Zeta-Jones and threatening to cut the actress' throat, shoot her in the head and "slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs"--allegedly all in the name of what was termed a "girlish crush" on Zeta-Jones' husband, fellow actor Michael Douglas. Knight was hit with a three-year prison sentence, $200 restitution fine...

I love chimeras. I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery. So when chimeras reared up in science news, I grabbed my disintegrating copy of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" to refresh my memory on the Chimera, the she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail: "A fearful creature, great and swift of foot and strong/Whose breath was flame unquenchable." Bellerophon, "a bold and beautiful young man" on flying Pegasus,...

It was a move so smooth and bold, accomplished with such backstage bureaucratic finesse, that it was worthy of Dick Cheney himself. The eminence grise who had long whispered in the ear of power and who had helped oversee the selection process ended up selecting himself. In Cheneyesque fashion, he searched far and wide for a pope by looking around the room and swiftly deciding he was the best man for the job. Just like Cheney, once the quintessentially deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name “Back Seat,” the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has clambered over the back...

It was a move so smooth and bold, accomplished with such backstage bureaucratic finesse, that it was worthy of Dick Cheney himself. The éminence grise who had long whispered in the ear of power and who had helped oversee the selection process ended up selecting himself. In Cheneyesque fashion, he searched far and wide for a pope by looking around the room and swiftly deciding he was the best man for the job. Just like Mr. Cheney, once the quintessentially deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name "Back Seat," the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has clambered over the...

In the free fall of TV news, ABC's attempt to create a successor for Ted Koppel's Nightline will go down as one of the most hilariously embarassing moments.One show tested recently, according to reports, was set in a nightclub. It had while tablecloths, candles, a jazz quintet, a live audience at little tables -and this is not a joke-faux fog.The nightclub segments that were tested had Gen X hosts and guests, red-blue debates on Michael Jackson, the Olen twins 'dumpster chic' and 'mad as hell' rants.ABC decided not to go with the fog machines. Still, Ted Koppel-who vowed to leave...

When Dick Cheney tells you that you have gone too far, you know that you are way over the edge. Last week, the Vice President told the New York Post's editorial board that Tom DeLay should not have jumped on the judges who refused to order that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted.He said he 'would have problems' with the DeLay plan to get revenge on the judges: 'I don't think that is appropriate.'There's some skittishness in the party leadership about the Passion of the Tom, the fiery battle of the born again Texan to show he's being persecuted on...

March 24, 2005 OP-ED COLUMNIST DeLay, Deny and Demagogue By MAUREEN DOWD h my God, we really are in a theocracy. Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated about not having any power, that they are willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church? The more dogma-driven activists, self-perpetuating pols and ratings-crazed broadcast media prattle about "faith," the less we honor the credo that a person's relationship with God should remain a private matter. As the Bush White House desperately maneuvers in Iraq...