The Daily Mail reports that Rogers confessed to the killings after he was jailed in 1995 for the murders of four women. Rogers sits on Florida’s death row for the murder of Tina Marie Cribbs in Tampa. He also is under a death sentence in California for the murder of Sandra (Sam) Gallagher.

The Rogers story is the subject of a forthcoming Kindle Edition of Glen Rogers, Road Dog Serial Killer, by Stephen Combs and John Eckberg. The authors were interviewed for the film and provided background information and photographs; Eckberg appears on camera.

Road Dog was first published in 2003. Combs had covered the Rogers trial in Tampa for Gannett Newspapers in Jackson, Miss., and Shreveport, La. Eckberg, then a reporter for Gannett’s Cincinnati Enquirer, investigated the Rogers story in Ohio and reported on how poor co-operation between law enforcement agencies allowed Rogers to roam free as a killer. Combs is editor of the Federalist Review.

A new Kindle Edition (Amazon) titled Glen Rogers – Road Dog Serial Killer -will be available later today. $5.99.

A note to our readers: Steve Combs will resume writing his column as a monthly essay, First Friday. It will publish the first Friday of December.

This is the first Friday in nearly four years, since January 1, 2009, that I or somebody has not written a Friday Letter. I am truly saddened at this, but the realities of publishing dictate that we look in a new direction when something is not working. Frankly, the Friday Letter was not working. We simply were not able to build the level of readership required to support our advertisers, who in turn pay the bills.

It’s not that we needed the money. I personally needed the money no more than the phampleteer I emulate — Thomas Paine — needed the money. What we needed were readers — by the tens of thousands, at least. We had some wonderfully loyal readers — suppoprters and critics alike — who made this effort worthwhile. But after four years, I had to step back, reflect, and figure how to best use my time.

Simply stated, we did not have enough readers required to sustain the effort. We needed them by the thousands. We had them by the hundreds. And still, I am grateful for those of you we have. When I wrote the final weekly column last week, I was happily astonished at the email responses encouraging me to continue this fight against tyranny that is, unfortunately, overwhelming us.

I did not quit because of our loss in the election last week. Our readers know I announced this decision long before the election. I had to give up the weekly column because I could not find surrogates — folks who could fill in a couple of times each quarter. It was too much because, frankly, I must keep working for a few years, and these columns were taking up half my work week.

I will continue to manage this website as a monthly journal with the hope that I can attract young and previously never published writers — emerging deep thinkers who can contribute to our national discourse as we try to push back the tyranny that is upon us. I must tell you this won’t be easy. As a community college professor I have tried to identify young activists who are intererested in shaking the bonds of their lifelong indoctrination, mostly without success. As I refuse to prostelisize within my classroom — something my leftist colleagues do as a badge of honor — I find the mission difficult to say the least.

But I do encourage them to think independently and not to accept the propaganda they have been fed since kindergarten.  This, you might imagine, is more difficult than one might expect.

Stephen M. Combs / The Federalist Review

First, there was anger.

You do not have moral authority to steal our sacred rights endowed by God. You do not have authority to destroy our children and grandchildren’s future as free citizens.

Is this a message for Barack Obama? In a way, perhaps, though it’s a sure bet he isn’t listening. In his mind he now has a mandate to initiate the next phase of turning our nation into a Marxist state. We know this about Barack Obama. He may not have been adequately vetted for 2008, but dozens of books and Dinesh D’Souza’s indicting documentary film reveal all we needed to know about him for 2012.

No, this message is not for Barack Obama. This message is for the three million McCain voters from 2008 who decided, for whatever reason, that Mitt Romney did not pass their purity test. Romney lost by 2.8 million votes. He got three million fewer votes than McCain got in 2008.

Election deconstructionists may wonder if Romney suffered from the Bradley Effect, but we will likely never know.

The late Tom Bradley, you may remember, led the polls when he ran for California governor in 1982, then lost to Republican George Deukmejian. Some attributed this to an untested hypothesis that voters are embarrassed to tell pollsters that they wouldn’t vote for a black candidate.

Obama didn’t suffer this effect in either 2008 or 2012. But Romney may have. He may have lost this election owing to the silent bigotry of some supercilious, self-righteous Christian fundamentalists who are so contemptuous of Mormons that they would never vote for one.

Three million Republican voters from 2008 sat this one out. Romney lost by 2.8 million votes.

The other major factor was single women, 68% of whom voted for Obama. Their prevailing issue was not 23 million Americans looking for work; not the emasculation of our military, especially our Navy; not the coming financial crisis and collapse of the dollar; not the growing role of government in our daily decision-making; not the lost opportunity of becoming energy self-sufficient; not the punishing regulation and tax increases that will kill business; not the almost certain weakening of our First and Second Amendments. It was none of this; it was free birth control.

Now, I invite the following people to kindly disappear and not let us hear from you any more: Carl Rove, Dick Morris, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Michael Barone, George Will.

Darrell Issa (or somebody) for Speaker of the House

Republicans in Congress had better start running out of patience, quickly. We like Darrell Issa or even Paul Ryan, given that real budget reform has no chance of passing with or without his leadership, and given that losing vice presidential candidates do not become President. By his weak leadership, especially his willingness to capitulate on tax increases, John Boehner has overstayed his welcome as Speaker and needs to go.

There they go again

Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about the situation in Libya:

“The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney.”

Long after the entire nation (except for the 52% of voters who elected Obama) learned that the film had nothing – zero – to do with the act of war perpetrated on our diplomatic outpost, the AP is still towing the White House line.

The only way to deal with news and entertainment media conjoined with the Obama White House is to stop patronizing it. The Associated Press, like most of its clients, is a propaganda machine and not a news organization. The sooner we come to understand that, the better.

Thanks for reading the Friday Letter.

This is the last weekly edition of the Friday Letter. Our plans are not yet certain, but this will column will probably continue to issue monthly and will be posted to the website. We’ll let you know. I want to say thanks to you folks who supported Ron and me over the last four years. WE still have a few things to say, but it’s time now to reflect on how to do it better.

Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. – Benjamin Franklin

Stephen M. Combs / The Federalist Review

In a World Net Daily commentary today, Patrick J. Buchanan charts the timeline of events in Benghazi that paint a vivid picture of several damning facts, two of which show with unassailable clarity the corruption and dishonesty of the Obama Administration: The State Department knew about the assault as it was occurring, and Vice President Joe Biden lied about it in his debate with Paul Ryan.
            Of major media, only Fox News Channel is covering this story which dwarfs Watergate in its threat to U.S. security. The New York Times has run only stories favorable to the administration’s denials of a certain cover-up.
            The Times has tried to keep alive Obama’s lie that he has always considered the attacks acts of terrorism, referring to a Rose Garden speech on Sept. 12 in which he vowed that “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.” He did not and to this day has not specifically labeled the Benghazi attack one of Islamic terrorism.
            Out front on this story are Fox News reporters Catherine Herridge and Jennifer Griffin, the Woodward and Bernstein of their time.
            As Buchanan explains, Ambassador Chris Stevens’ Aug. 16 cable to Hillary Clinton begging for protection and warning of imminent danger is what Herridge calls “a smoking gun.” That State Department executives watched the attack live in a video feed from overhead drones – and ignored the urgent pleas for help – is indefensible.
            Scrambling planes from Italy would have been a prima facie admission that Obama’s claim of Al Qaeda’s demise is bogus. He turned tail and ran off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas rather than confront his responsibility as commander-in-chief.
            The Times, meanwhile, continues to deliver the White House propaganda line as truth. On Monday it said that “Interviews with American officials and an examination of State Department documents do not reveal the kind of smoking gun Republicans have suggested would emerge in the attack’s aftermath such as a warning that the diplomatic compound would be targeted and that was overlooked by administration officials.”
            Only liars like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and their propaganda press mouthpieces, could utter such unction with a straight face.
            What else could we expect from a President whose administration is indistinguishable from its re-election campaign? With David Axelrod the de facto foreign affairs minister whose sole criterion for any decision is its effect on the election, we should expect nothing more, or less. 

Will ACORN decide this election?

A frightening prospect emerges this week that the election may hinge on the success of massive voter fraud engineered by the Democrat Alliance.  A new documentary aired Thursday on The Blaze claims Department of Justice involvement.
            News reports over the last two weeks have described voting machine rigging in North Carolina and Nevada, where ballots cast for Mitt Romney in early voting have come up with Obama’s name.
            Human Events reported last week that two witnesses say two busloads of mostly non-English-speaking Somalis were brought to an early-voting station in Columbus, Ohio, and provided with interpreters who showed them how to mark all-Democrat ballots.
            The Democrat Alliance loosely consists of the White House, Obama’s Chicago organized crime unit, the Service Employees International Union, and ACORN. Only one antidote to this corruption is possible until a Romney Justice Department can start sorting things out: Massive voter turnout for Romney and Republican Senate candidates that will so overwhelm the vote count that fraud becomes impossible. These votes count even in leftist states like California and Texas. It’s time to deliver a message.

A personal note

With amazing astonishment and disappointment I watch as some people continue to sit back and think that voting is enough. It is not.
            A friend has often asked what I am doing to save this great nation from serfdom. He says that writing on these matters isn’t enough – or for that matter, much of anything. Fair enough.
            But as I walk my neighborhood planting Romney signs and encouraging conservatives to vote early, as I send in my pathetically small checks to folks like Josh Mandel in Ohio, as I engage with brainwashed yet curious young students who solicit my opinion, as I stood in line 45 minutes in order to plow through Florida’s ridiculous maze of lobbyist-inspired constitutional amendments, as I write these columns, I am struck with the thought that we should not have started this conversation three weeks before an election. This conversations needs to start in the home when children are old enough to understand our nation’s exceptionalism, when we can begin to teach them to distinguish propaganda from truth, good from evil, right from wrong.
            It is in this spirit that a week or so after the election, or maybe a couple of more weeks after that, I will turn my attention away from the crowded arena of commentators whose writing consists of reacting to events of the last 48 hours, and toward one of more thoughtful reflection in essays that will take some time to develop. Mostly, I plan to spend more time helping my own grandchildren with their education. There is no higher calling, in my view.
            So that this missive does not end on the negative tone that began it, I am also encouraged by the tremendous enthusiasm some folks have for this election and their understanding of its importance. Nothing – nothing – in our nation’s history ever presented an election as critical as this one, for its outcome determines whether we survive as a free society or continue walking down the dark road to serfdom.
            Getting people to take a Romney yard sign is easier than teasing my 12-year-old granddaughter. A Democrat took one. So too did people who had never hosted a sign. I just tell them that a yard sign has two purposes: It discourages the opposition, and it lets their neighbors know that they are not alone. We conservatives have this affliction of thinking that we are the only patriots in the neighborhood. After the first sign goes up, the patriot-neighbors fall like dominoes.

Bless them. These are patriots who fly under the radar, patriots who will bring us victory on Tuesday. They heard Ronald Reagan when he asked, “If not now, when? If not us, who?”
 

Help a worthy cause in our fight for survival

Josh Mandel needs your help to push him over the top in his race against the farthest-left member of the U.S Senate, Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. Mandel is Ohio’s state treasurer, a war veteran staff sergeant in the Marine Corps, and a bona fide conservative. A Jew and a native of Cleveland, he will likely deliver some Jewish votes to the Romney ticket as well. But he needs cash in order to but some TV time over the weekend.

Support him by making a donation through his website at Josh Mandel.

If this won’t make your blook boil, nothing will.

Ending its 36-year streak of backing only Democrats for President, the Des Moines Register endorsed Mitt Romney with the conclusion that he is the best choice to fix the economy. The newspaper last endorsed a Republican in 1972.

“The former governor and business executive has a strong record of achievement in both the private and the public sector,” the Register editorial said on Saturday. “He was an accomplished governor in a liberal state. He founded and ran a successful business that turned around failing companies. He successfully managed the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.”

In its announcement the newspaper said the endorsement resulted from “vigorous debate” of its editorial board. The anguish of abandoning its solid support of liberal Democrats was clear, the newspaper calling Obama “superbly qualified” to be President because, like Romney, he is a Harvard Law School graduate with “distinguished” public and private-life service.

The Register once endorsed only Republicans, beginning with William Howard Taft in his 1912 loss to Woodrow Wilson. It shifted to Democrats with Johnson in 1964 and veered only once, backing Nixon in 1972 against George McGovern.

– Stephen M. Combs

A guest essay, in which Dr. Coatoam argues that this election has more important issues than Big Bird, Bayonets and Binders, issues that may be difficult for the entitlement classes to grasp.

Gary Coatoam / For the Federalist Review  

Lost in the rhetoric of things like the birther issues, or if a candidate paid too little in taxes, is the sad fact that whoever inherits this presidency is likely to be vilified because of the onerous task that lies before him. Few people realize that every single tax dollar now being collected is consumed by those things that we call entitlements, and we borrow to fund everything else like roads and the military. Added to that is the fact that a health care bill that deep down in our hearts we all secretly want is going to substantially increase those entitlement demands.
            We voters hear proposed solutions from the candidates ranging from raising taxes on the rich to lowering taxes overall in an effort to increase tax revenues, neither of which will work to cover the entitlement expenditures of our country. And sadly we remember that we paid for those things that everyone continues to label as entitlements, and we remember that it was promised that those things would be there for us.
            This year a huge number of us will vote based on issues with such questions as “Will the president protect my union, or my religion, or my right to bear arms, or my right to an abortion” or a myriad of other social issues.
            In fact, as important as those issues are, they pale in the light of the fiscal crisis confronting us. It is not really just about the economy, since improving the economy simply lessens the burden on our already bankrupted system.
            We probably have one of two choices: We can continue to party until the lights go out, or we can suffer through an excruciating extradition from the mess that previous Administrations and Congresses have chosen to perpetuate and ignore. Either course is going to be painful, and all anyone can say when it comes to voting this year is, “Choose wisely, my friend.”  

Dr. Coatoam, DDS, MS, is a periodontist in Altamonte Springs, Florida. He wrote this piece for the Federalist Review

ACORN-Democrat Party voter fraud update

Hit the road, Jack: America doesn’t date losers

Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, writing about the real Barack Obama that Americans saw at the presidential debates: 

“Which gets us to Bob Woodward’s The Price of Politics, published last month. The portrait it contains of Mr. Obama – of a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact – hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Throughout the book, which is a journalistic history of the president’s key economic negotiations with Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating – in fact doesn’t know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.”

To our Central Florida readers:

Romney and Rubio will be in Kissimmee at the Ranger Jet Center on Saturday for a rally that begins at 4:15 p.m. Having joined 14,000 fellow conservatives at a Romney rally earlier this month, I can tell you the experience is invigorating, one that will make you want to go out and work the cause in these last 10 days.

Tickets are free but required, but the good news is you’ll be able to meet some mostly well-behaved TSA agents. Follow this link: Mitt Romney.