Free Republic

LOS ANGELES — Four California schools will be forced to change mascots after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation barring public schools from using the "Redskins" name for sports teams. It was one of three sports-related bills Brown approved Sunday. He also signed a measure that bans using or possessing smokeless tobacco on the playing field at professional baseball parks and another that recognizes competitive cheerleading as a high school sport. The mascot legislation will prevent public schools from using a term that American Indians regard as offensive. It goes into effect in 2017. Only four schools still use the name....

It has been 20 years since the O.J. Simpson murder trial, but Kris Jenner says she is still haunted by the red flags she said she missed at the end of Nicole Brown Simpson’s life. The reality-TV star and businesswoman, 59, and her late ex-husband, Robert Kardashian, were close to O.J. Simpson, so much so that Simpson was even one of the groomsmen at their wedding in 1978. But that relationship became strained after Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, who had divorced the retired football star, were both found slain in Los Angeles June 12, 1994. Though Simpson was...

California governor Jerry Brown gave signs in a Wednesday interview on CNN that he may be considering running for president. Brown, who has run for president three before, spoke with Wolf Blitzer about the current Democratic field. The Democrat said he has not yet endorsed a candidate, calling frontrunner Hillary Clinton "formidable" and refused to give advice about Vice President Joe Biden, who is reportedly mulling a run.

Jack Cashill spoke about his book Ron Brown’s Body: How One Man’s Death Saved the Clinton Presidency, published by WND Books. The book examines Ron Brown’s career as President Clinton’s fundraiser and commerce secretary. During his talk, Mr. Cashill attempted to answer questions surrounding the controversial death of Mr. Brown such as the details surrounding the plane crash and the purpose of his trade missions. After the discussion, the author answered questions from members of the audience.

Dr. Ben Carson has spent most of his professional career as a man of science, which is why the Republican presidential candidate’s recent remarks on climate change have been puzzling to many. In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, the neurosurgeon claimed “I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but then when you ask them to show the overwhelming science, they never can show it. There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused.” The comment soon drew a rebuke from Democratic California Gov....

Gangsta Rap’s Grim Legacy for Comptons Everywhere A hit movie about the rap group N.W.A. is a reminder: Glorified thuggery poisoned poor black communities. By Jason L. Riley Aug. 25, 2015 6:39 p.m. ET 242 COMMENTS For two weeks the top box-office draw has been “Straight Outta Compton,” a meandering biopic about the rise and disintegration of the Los Angeles-area rap group N.W.A., or Niggaz With Attitude. N.W.A. helped popularize “gangsta rap” in the late 1980s, and even this hagiography can’t hide the fact that its legacy has endured to the detriment of poor black communities. The most prominent members...

California Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., said Hillary Clinton's emails seem to have a "dark energy" which he compared to that of "a vampire." [Snip] Hillary's emails are a "big deal," admitted Brown, and they have "a certain buzz that keeps buzzing."

The new asphalt rectangle in the middle of the 2900 block of Canfield Drive, Ferguson, Mo., seemed like a scab formed over a deep wound. It was where the fallen body of Michael Brown lay for 4½ hours in 107-degree temperatures on Aug. 9, 2014. Stuffed animals had been piled oh, so tenderly upon the site. Our interracial group formed a circle around the memorial and prayed. Ten other women had joined me on a mini-pilgrimage to Ferguson I had envisioned and planned since May. It was our free day out of a one-week global assembly of women in religious...

Ferguson has been ordered to surrender two Humvees acquired through a controversial Defense Department program that transfers surplus military equipment to local police agencies. It’s not yet clear if the directive from the Pentagon — which was first reported Tuesday in the Guardian — was sparked by political pressure, a record-keeping snafu, or both. Mike O’Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said the Pentagon approved the transfer of two Humvees to Ferguson in June 2013 and then later gave permission for two more. But in August 2014, after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, St. Louis...

The Washington Post does its part to continue the collapse in race relations in the United States… and in the process diverts attention from the real issues facing Americans of all stripes such as an anemic economy, a disastrous Iran deal and a feckless administration that can’t seem to do anything right. On Sunday the paper ran a piece with the following title: A year after Michael Brown’s fatal shooting, unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire. It then proceeds to discuss the deaths of a number of unarmed black men who...

A California academic whose criticisms of science behind the nation’s most expensive diesel emissions rules has won a legal victory and effectively erased his termination. James Enstrom, an epidemiologist and researcher at UCLA for 35 years, learned last week he had won $140,000 and retains his ability to keep an office and use laboratory facilities on campus. He’ll also have the ability to gain an appointment to perform additional research. “It’s gratifying to get any kind of decision against the university,” Enstrom told Land Line Magazine by telephone Monday. “It’s really a brutal process. They go out of their way...

'Whitney will haunt you from the grave': Fight breaks out at Bobbi Kristina's funeral after Bobby Brown's screaming sister has to be 'escorted out by Tyler Per Last song played at funeral for Bobbi Kristina Brown in Atlanta, Georgia was 'Jesus Loves Me' by Whitney Houston Bobby Brown wrote a special message in the funeral's program which read, 'I also will always love you.' Feud between Brown and Houston families spectacularly erupted during the funeral Her aunt, Leolah Brown launched a tirade at Pat Houston during the eulogy and was escorted out by Tyler Perry Members of Brown's family...

Sen. John McCain is right. Code Pink protesters are low-life scum as he called them Thursday morning when the group disrupted a Senate hearing to protest former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban. These are some of the terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism Code Pink has given political, financial and/or material aid to since the group’s founding in late 2002. All that time Code Pink has also worked with and funded the Democratic Party,...

Three armed men in masks forced their way into a Los Angeles home owned by Chris Brown, locked the R&B singer's aunt in a closet and then ransacked the place for valuables, police said.

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he will travel to Vatican City later this month to discuss climate change and modern slavery with dignitaries including Pope Francis as the governor seeks to burnish his legacy as a climate change activist. Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian, plans to attend a two-day event starting July 21 hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences. The focus is on two issues highlighted in the pope's recent teaching document, called an encyclical, in which he chastised international lawmakers for failing to adopt effective, long-term policies that would protect the environment and...

--SNIP-- Three months ago, Brown’s Department of Transportation, fulfilling a 2009 legislative mandate, began circulating a draft of a California Transportation Plan, aimed at setting policy for the next quarter-century. Citing California’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gases and improving access to non-automotive transportation, the CTP proposes to reduce automotive travel by increasing motorists’ taxes, flatly rejecting “road capacity enhancing strategies,” and urging the state to “avoid funding projects that add road capacity.” Implicitly, therefore, it contends that increasing traffic congestion and the cost of driving would compel Californians to abandon their cars in favor of transit, bicycles and other non-automotive...

  Back in 1995 Philip Howard published a book called "The Death of Common Sense." It was about government smothering people with regulations. Today we might write another book- The Death of Personal Responsibility. Personal responsibility has been murdered- smothered by the same liberals who ended the life of common sense. In what has to be a monumental embarrassment, it has been disclosed that Rachel Dolezal, the head of the Spokane NAACP, is as white as Barack Obama's mother. Dolezal's father said that she is "clearly as white as we are." Rachel's mom added "She has not explained to us...

Gov. Jerry Brown is worried that the Golden State will eventually have too many people for the state’s water supplies to support. Brown made the comments before the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Board and also warned that global warming was exacerbating California’s drought.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is attempting to implement the state’s first-ever mandatory water cutbacks, among voluntary measures, and he is leading by example: “I didn’t take a shower this morning,” he told reporters in San Jose last week. Brown also said that he has cut back on drinking water, though he continues to enjoy coffee.

An unusual schism has opened up on California’s politically dominant left flank, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime favorite of the state’s environmentalists, has refused to give in to the climate change movement’s demand for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing. His stance comes despite the growing clamor in the aftermath of fellow Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision in December to allow a similar statewide ban of the revolutionary oil and gas drilling technique in New York. Hollywood stars and environmental activists badly want California to be next. The irony, of course, is that there may be no greener governor...