Free Republic

The Supreme Court Monday morning ruled in favor of a death row inmate in a case concerning race discrimination in jury selection.

In many states, extra punishment is meted out to those who commit crimes against others because of their race or religion. Such hate-crime laws elevate the heinousness of crimes in which people are targeted because of their identity, their belonging to a group. While hate-crime laws often refer to ethnicity or disability or gender, Louisiana is about to do something different. The state is poised to become the first in the nation where public-safety personnel will be a protected class under hate-crime law - a move that comes amid a simmering national debate about police shootings and whether that debate...

First, police fatally shot two minority suspects carrying knives. Then transcripts surfaced showing officers using racial slurs in text messages. Finally, a young black woman was shot dead as police tried to pull her from a stolen car. The woman's shooting death Thursday was the tipping point for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who forced Police Chief Greg Suhr to step down after months of mounting pressure. The new chief inherits the daunting task of turning around a troubled department in a city deeply divided by race — and doing it fast. "Reforms, reforms, reforms," acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin...

According to Census estimates, the number of blacks [in San Francisco] shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.

Author, founder of Salon.com, and Bernal Heights resident David Talbot recently made a speech at Stanford which was then published in 48HillsOnline.com decrying “Stanford douchebags”, gentrification, and Mayor Ed Lee. Talbot’s strong words for Stanford students have struck a chord up north in San Francisco, and his speech is rapidly going viral.

Unlike the butchery that bookended it, it merited no presidential statements, no saturation television coverage. But what took place at 6101 Prentice Street on Aug. 21 may say more about the nature of gun violence in the United States than any of those far more famous rampages. It is a snapshot of a different sort of mass violence — one that erupts with such anesthetic regularity that it is rendered almost invisible, except to the mostly black victims, survivors and attackers (...) “Clearly, if it’s black-on-black, we don’t get the same attention because most people don’t identify with that. Most...

Shaun King writes in the New York Daily News: Right now, the Democratic Party, which I have called home my entire life, is deeply in love with money. Consequently, its leaders have supported and advanced all kinds of evil, big and small, in devotion to this love affair.

We learned this week that Hizzonor Bill de Blasio has yet another plan to entrench the city in “transgender” warfare and make sure that business owners are made to toe the line on political correctness. Under this latest scheme, any business which greets someone using a pronoun not matching the gender (or lack thereof) the customer “identifies” as could face a stiff fine in court.

Police said a black University of Iowa student lied about being the victim of a racially motivated beating and that he instigated at last one of several alcohol-fueled fights. Marcus Owens told police that he was attacked April 30 by three white men who hurled racial slurs as they damaged his eye socket and knocked out his front teeth. The alleged hate crime stoked safety concerns and distrust among some minority students in the university. But police said Tuesday that his report was false. Investigators obtained surveillance video showing Owens had been a participant and instigator of fights that started...

A display created by Dartmouth College Republicans to honor fallen police officers was torn down by Black Lives Matter activists and replaced with a hateful message about honoring the "perpetrators" of anti-black violence. The Republicans reserved space on the campus bulletin board and followed all school regulations. But the BLM radicals removed the display without permission, saying that it was "offensive" to blacks and "white supremacist." Daily Caller: At the bottom, the display said in big letters, “BLUE LIVES MATTER.” This last part of the display appears to have outraged Black Lives Matter supporters at Dartmouth, several of whom vocally...

Milwaukee Public Schools has included nearly a half million dollars for "Black Lives Matter" in its list of expenditures included the 2017 budget proposal it published in Wednesday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Interestingly enough, the district plans to spend nearly as much on "Black Lives Matter" as it plans to spend on College Access Centers, Universal Driver Education, and Advanced Studies of World Languages. "We’re doing this work because national and local studies tell us young men of color in Wisconsin and Milwaukee are more likely to be represented disproportionally in the justice system and less likely to be represented proportionally...

Police say actor Wendell Pierce has been arrested at an Atlanta hotel where he was a guest. Atlanta Police Department spokesman Donald Hannah says in a statement that Pierce was arrested early Saturday morning at the Loews Atlanta Hotel. New Orleans native Pierce is known for his television roles as Detective William "Bunk" Moreland on The Wire and Antoine Batiste on Treme. TMZ earlier reported that Pierce allegedly got into a physical altercation with a man and woman, reportedly a couple, at the hotel after a political dispute. Citing hotel sources, TMZ reports that Pierce, an avowed Hillary Clinton supporter,...

Wendell Pierce of ‘The Wire’ Arrested After Fight Over Bernie Sanders The bitter Democratic primary has now led to a Hollywood actor’s arrest: Hillary Clinton supporter Wendell Pierce was detained by Atlanta police early Sunday after an alleged assault on two Sanders supporters. Politics ain’t beanbag but, if press reports are to be believed, a well-known Hollywood actor and producer may have thrown more than a multi-colored children’s toy at a couple in Atlanta. Wendell Pierce, who turned in standout performances for HBO’s The Wire and Treme, was arrested after an altercation early Sunday morning at an Atlanta hotel. A...

President Obama has pushed the "prepper movement" into high gear, sending millions to buy guns, survival gear and food to live through a "civil war," according to a nationally known survivalist who calls on Americans to prepare in a new book. Bryce M. Towsley, whose "Prepper Guns" details the best weapons and ammo to survive a political or natural disaster, wrote, "I have watched in horror as Obama has attacked America with the brilliance that has allowed him to succeed." The National Rifle Association field editor and a well-known survivalist said he is calling on Americans to be ready for...

These are the guns and knives Mayor de Blasio doesn’t want you to see. A surging tide of weapons — including loaded revolvers, 9mm handguns, meat cleavers and daggers — has been confiscated this year from students in city schools, most of which do not have metal detectors.

A Chicago man featured in a CNN documentary about the Windy City — talking about gang violence — was shot dead at the age of 22. Lee McCullum was featured in a 2014 episode of “Chicagoland" that focused in part on his desire to leave the high-crime Roseland neighborhood and go to college. He was previously pulled by gang affiliation, he said, but was eventually named to the honor roll and crowned prom king at his high school. The young man was found dead early Thursday morning with a gunshot wound to the head in the neighborhood just south of...

Standard anti-cop ideology, whether emanating from the ACLU or the academy, holds that law enforcement actions are racist if they don’t mirror population data. New York City illustrates why that expectation is so misguided. Blacks make up 23 percent of New York City’s population, but they commit 75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime, according to victims and witnesses. Add Hispanic shootings and you account for 98 percent of all illegal gunfire in the city. Whites are 33 percent of the city’s population, but they commit fewer than two percent...

Hillary Clinton is anxious to compete in the Democratic primary in Kentucky, particularly after suffering a humiliating loss in West Virginia. Now she is relying on the golden voice of Morgan Freeman, to help turn out black voters in the state. In a new, minute-long ad, Clinton begins by telling voters of what she calls “systemic racism” in the United States. “We have to face up to the hard truths of injustice and systemic racism,” she says, recalling the wrongs suffered by African American voters in the justice system and at the hands of police officers.

White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, creating the danger of “groupthink” that could put U.S. security at risk. Speaking at Florida International University’s commencement, Ms. Rice said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield “better outcomes” than a predominantly white one. Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is “white, male, and Yale,” Ms. Rice told the graduates, “In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected.” “By now, we should all...

'Pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don't realize they've been lucky.' Speaking at the Howard University graduation ceremony in Washington, D.C., President Obama told the graduates of the historically black college to "be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness." Obama also criticized people who are "successful and don’t realize they've been lucky."