Free Republic

The screaming tabloid headlines harken a darker, scarier time in New York history. “Four more murders in one night,” the New York Post wrote under the grieving loved ones of a shooting victim. The front page of The Daily News blared “Subway Crime Soars.” In reality, the uptick in violence is small. But even the perception that New York is suffering any sort of backslide into the violence-plagued bad old days of the 1970s has empowered critics of Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio has assured the public that overall crime is down and that measures are already being put...

Two convicted murderers made a daring escape from a maximum-security prison by drilling through cell walls,stealing through plumbing tunnels and then climbing out a manhole, authorities said Saturday. A massive search is underway.

So now several of the largest corporations in the state, including Yankee mainstays such as insurance giants Aetna and Travelers, as well as General Electric, are threatening to leave and get out of this abusive relationship. GE's CEO Jeff Immelt told his thousands of Connecticut-based employees that he has put together a team to evaluate a move to another state with "a more pro-business environment." He says the company's state taxes have increased five times since 2011 and the new hike would impose "significant and retroactive tax increases for businesses." Aetna complained that it already pays $65 million a year...

Early-state Democrats are evenly divided over whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign should be worried about recent polls showing her highest unfavorability ratings in years. Exactly 50 percent say there’s cause for concern while the other 50 percent saw no reason for alarm. [Snip] “Twenty-plus Republicans beating her up, Elizabeth Warren talking about the working man issues that terrify her, a couple of candidates like Bernie [Sanders] and Martin [O’Malley] to fill in her policy blanks and a media that feels stiffed by her lack of access, so all we can focus on is emails and the notorious Clinton Foundation and newly...

Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to run for president, but the billionaire isn't budging. At the Yale CEO Summit this week, the talk was of "drafting Bloomberg" however possible. The former New York City mayor seems like the perfect solution for Wall Street's problems with the current field of presidential candidates. The Street sees him as a centrist technocrat who adeptly managed one of the most complex cities in the world. They think he understands the global business community. Rumblings about a Bloomberg run are especially strong at several bulge bracket banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Merrill once...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Rev. Al Sharpton took aim at Cleveland's 2016 Republican National Convention in front of a packed house at Cleveland's Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Friday night, speaking for nearly an hour. "Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and them think they are going to come in here and have four or five days of convention," Sharpton said. "We are going to have another convention outside."

<p>Despite 6-1/2 years of horrid governance and dozens of acknowledged scandals, several of which a few of the credible remaining outposts of liberal thought have actually agreed are scandals, David Brooks, the New York Times's resident fake conservative, asserted on Friday's PBS NewsHour, as if it's an indisputable fact, that "President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him."</p>

What’s a white person to do? Recently, I had the pleasure to participate in the Interplay Hip Hop Symposium at Lehigh University. The event was hosted by the inimitable hip hop theatre pioneer Kashi Johnson and keynoted by brilliant lyricist and hip hop educator Asheru. I gave a lecture about white appropriation of rap. My lecture led to a discussion about how white people fit into the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Together, we came up with these, the ten cracka commandments for 2015: 1. #AllLivesMatter won’t matter until #BlackLivesMatter. This commandment is a litmus test and the greatest commandment. 2. Always remember...

Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley are auditioning for the role of Eugene McCarthy. RFK has not yet revealed himself. Nor has HHH. One thing is clear - Hillary! is cooked. She just doesn't realize it yet.

Smash the patriarchy! New York police allegedly arrested two men for “manspreading” (sitting with their legs far apart) on the subway, according to a report entitled “That’s How They Get You” released by the Police Reform Organizing Project. “On a recent visit to the arraignment part in Brooklyn’s criminal court, PROP volunteers observed that police officers had arrested two Latino men on the charge of ‘man spreading’ on the subway, presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders,” the report states.

Activist calls for widespread reform as community reels from verdict that acquitted Michael Brelo for firing 49 shots at two people in car chase.When Al Sharpton got up to speak at the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland on Friday night, he was given a standing ovation. At what was billed as a “justice and reform revival”, attendees, mostly congregants of the church itself, had been primed by several hymns and scriptural invocations. Their pastor, reverend Jawanza Colvin, introduced the civil rights campaigner as “one of God’s trombones”. Sharpton proceeded to deliver a barn-burning speech that had the assembled on...

The Reverend Al Sharpton used this week’s deadly flooding in Texas to ask his radio show listeners if the rains were due to “climate control or is it God’s rebuke?” At least 17 people died and 40 people are missing after rains that swept through Texas and Oklahoma. Flash flooding damaged over 2,000 vehicles and at least 500 water rescues were needed in the Houston area. Roughly 4,000 structures were damaged in Houston. One of Mr. Sharpton’s “Keeping it Real with Al Sharpton” listeners said Wednesday that God will “come like a thief in the night” to teach humanity a...

RUSH: A new Gallup poll out. Headline: "Americans Continue to Shift Left on Key Moral Issues." Now, before you go off getting depressed about this, let me tell you what the reason for this is, after we give you the details. "Americans are more likely now than in the early 2000s to find a variety of behaviors morally acceptable, including gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage and sex between an unmarried man and woman. Moral acceptability of many of these issues is now at a record-high level." It's a subtle message to the Republican Party, and...

Pro-adoption organizations should have the same speech rights as any other organization, said the attorney representing a group whose pro-life license plate has been denied for the past 13 or 14 years in New York. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday reversed a lower court ruling ordering the state to let an adoption advocacy group put the words "Choose Life" on its own plates. By a 2-1 vote, the court said the commissioner of the state Department of Motor Vehicles had "broad discretion" to decide which plates to permit, and did not violate the First Amendment free speech rights...

Murders are way up so far this year in Manhattan, The Post has learned. Sixteen people were killed around the borough between the first of the year and Sunday. Over the same period last year, the figure was 11. That’s an increase of about 45 percent. Shootings in the borough have also soared. There have been 50 “shooting incidents’’ since Jan. 1, compared with 31 in the same time period in 2014 — an increase of about 38 percent. Some of these “incidents’’ involved more than one victim. The number of shooting victims nearly doubled, from 33 to 61. ....

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Baltimore’s Black Democrats. They are in charge because – well they should be – it IS Baltimore. The town is a Black city and a Democrat vote harvesting plantation so what could go wrong for a young up and comer like Black female Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake? Of course she is not up to the job, but so what! Democrats never are. All she had to do is what Democrats always do, say whatever was necessary to get her base to the polls and then blame Republicans when the bottom fell out of...

This Sunday, Oprah is sitting down with the renowned Al Sharpton to discuss how his work as a Civil Rights leader has changed over the years, why he made the decision to get healthy and his beginnings as a preacher. Stuff we probably already knew or wouldn’t be too surprised to learn about Al Sharpton. But in a surprising revelation, Sharpton talks about the moment that changed his life: his father leaving his family, taking Sharpton’s older, half sister with him and having a child with her. Yes, you read that correctly. And yes it was a complete a hot...

If Kenan Thompson ever wants to host a late night show, Reverend Al Sharpton says he better drop some major poundage because nobody wants to fall asleep to a puffy porker. Our photog asked Sharpton which black comedian he'd like to see snag a hosting gig, when out of nowhere he begins blasting Thompson's weight. It's a strange response from Al -- who was once 305 lbs. himself, but now thinks Kenan is so big ... just seeing him gives people the munchies. Ooooh-weeee ... what up with that, Al? Check it out.

On Al Sharpton's MSNBC show today, former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell dared congressional Republicans to recall Hillary Clinton to testify about Benghazi. Calling her a "tough cookie," Rendell vowed that "Hillary will put them in short pants." Paging Camille Paglia . . . Rendell surely thought he was paying Hillary a compliment. But is this really the Hillary persona that Dems want to project: that of a woman who makes little boys out of grown men? View the video here.

New York City police chief Bill Bratton is worried about ISIS. So worried, in fact, that he's going to assign 450 New York Police Department cops to fight terrororism that may come from the Islamic State. “We need to be very concerned about terrorism … The significantly increased threat from ISIS using social media to recruit people not only to go to Syria to fight, but encouraging people … to attack police, to attack government officials, to basically brainwash them under their screwed-up ideology. That threat has expanded significantly in the now 16 months I’ve been police commissioner,” Bratton said...