Free Republic

Here’s how African-Americans can and will play the same game everyone else is, even if the rules are stacked against them. Demanding new rules or a new game is unrealistic and demeaning. After the race-related events of the past few weeks and months, it’s clear that the people who speak for black America Have a Dream, in the wake of the one Dr. King so resonantly expressed. The idea is that the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s wasn’t enough, that a shoe still has yet to drop. Today’s Dream is that white America will somehow wake up and understand...

The left’s favorite presidential candidate defends his record on guns with the right's talking points—and even voted to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits. Bernie Sanders is the tell-it-like-it-is candidate of the left’s dreams: He takes on “the billionaire class” and wants Medicare for all. Thousands are drawn to his unapologetically liberal (even democratic socialist) message at events in Iowa and New Hampshire. In both states he’s closing in or even tied with Hillary Clinton in presidential polls. So why on the issue of guns is he parroting wholly inane, sometimes racist talking points from the National Rifle Association? “If somebody...

The Supreme Court issued an important ruling last month when it reminded state and local governments that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 bars them from spending federal housing money in a manner that perpetuates racial segregation. Last week, the Obama administration took an even more important step — one that has already changed the decades-long discussion about how to combat residential segregation. It rewrote the rules under the provision of the act that requires state and local governments to “affirmatively further” housing goals by making real efforts to cope with the cumulative results of the discrimination that confined black...

PHOENIX — Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and reality television star who has taken center stage in the race for the Republican presidential nomination this week, delivered a rambling monologue on Saturday, dismissing a long list of critics and rivals while rallying what he termed a new “silent majority” of voters. Mr. Trump had less to say about immigration, the topic on which his controversial comments have garnered so much attention, than about those who have criticized those comments. For more than an hour, he ticked through a list of businesses and fellow candidates who have tried to censure...

The Cherokee Nation is denouncing scholar-activist Andrea Smith for falsely claiming to be a member of the tribe. Beyond untrue, the ethnic fraud is a painful reminder of their past. “I have always been, and will always be Cherokee.” This is University of California, Riverside professor Andrea Smith’s official response to recent allegations that she is not Cherokee, an identity that she has claimed throughout her decades-long career as a prominent figure in Native American scholarship and activism. In a blog post on Thursday night, Smith maintained that she is Cherokee, that she has “consistently identified [herself] based on what...

SEATTLE — MOUNT RAINIER stands sentry over Seattle. On clear days, the mountain is the dominant backdrop, particularly in the city’s southeast, where its most racially diverse neighborhoods embrace their majestic setting with names like Rainier Valley and Rainier Beach. Michelle Perry lives in an adjoining neighborhood and travels to work on Rainier Avenue South. The looming mountain enchants and beguiles nearly the entire way. She knows she can keep driving south and visit Rainier and the national park that surrounds it. Ms. Perry, 58, an African-American, has an idea about what she’d find up there — mosquitoes, which she...

On Wednesday afternoon, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced with fanfare the closing of a June 23 homicide case in which the victim was found dead in a burning trash bin. One unsolved murder down, countless more to go. * Most pulling the triggers or wielding the knives are believed to be African American males, too. Unless sensational, like a quadruple murder in an upscale Northwest neighborhood, a prominent reporter’s slaying or a brutal stabbing on a Metro train with eyewitnesses, most murders don’t hit the headlines. Especially those that occur in neighborhoods...

Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people at a church in South Carolina three weeks ago, was only able to purchase the gun used in the attack because of breakdowns in the FBI’s background-check system, FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday. Comey said that Roof should have been prevented from buying the .45-caliber weapon used in a shooting that authorities have said was motivated by Roof’s racist views. The political repercussions of the June 17 massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston led South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from its statehouse grounds Friday....

Google has received tons of gushy press for its bubble-shaped self-driving car, though it's still years from the showroom floor. But for years John Deere has been selling tractors that practically drive themselves for use on farms in America's heartland, where there are few pesky pedestrians or federal rules to get in the way. For a glimpse at the future, meet Jason Poole, a 34-year-old crop consultant from Kansas. After a long day of meetings earlier this month and driving five hours across the state to watch his little girl's softball game, he was still able to run his John...

Michael R. Bloomberg’s gun-control group has started financing its own news website, only days after a shooting at a historic back church in South Carolina left nine people dead. The new site, The Trace, is being preliminarily financed by the former New York mayor’s group Everytown for Gun Safety, which was created after the 2012 shootings at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left more than 20 people dead, most of them young children. The site’s editorial director is James Burnett, and it aims to be an independent nonprofit site — legally it’s a separate entity. It went live on...

By creating a filament that glows bright enough to be seen by the naked eye, a team at Columbia may have finally found a use for graphene—and it could change the future of computers. It’s a finding that may change the way computers function in the coming decade. Scientists at Columbia University have created a graphene filament that glows bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. It’s a massive step in finding a practical use for the material, which could make its way into microchips, displays, lightbulbs, and optical networks with everyday application. James Hone, who leads the...

It was the summer of 2011 in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan, and mission after mission, Sgt. Ben McCullar of Third Battalion, Second Marines, would insert with his eight-man sniper team into the berms and dunes north of the volatile town of Musa Qala. Sometimes they would fire at a group of enemy fighters, sometimes the enemy would fire at them first, but almost immediately, McCullar explained, their team would be pinned down by machine guns that outranged almost all of their sniper rifles. “They’d set up at the max range of their [machine guns] and start firing at us,” McCullar...

ON Saturday mornings, I love to watch reruns of the TV Western “The Rifleman.” Each show is a little moral fable, with Chuck Connors’s widowed rancher and crack shot, Lucas McCain, teaching his son, Mark, about actions and consequences. If you neglect to do this now, you will pay a penalty later. If a corner is cut here, you will regret it there. The president might want to catch some shows, as the lame duck’s chickens come home to roost. At this pivotal moment for his legacy at home and abroad, his future reputation is mortgaged to past neglect. Like...

The fascinating Rachel Dolezal story has more layers than one of those flaky Pillsbury biscuits. She’s the president of the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the NAACP and a professor of African American studies at Eastern Washington University, who was outed as not actually being African American. Her years of deception came to an end after her inability to answer a simple question at the end of an interview with KXLY television reporter Jeff Humphrey. “Are you an African American?” he asked. After a long, blinkless and blank stare, Dolezal said, “I don’t understand the question.” Chil’, please! Dolezal most definitely...

Of the many unnerving aspects of the future of the Middle East, a nuclear arms race would top the list. And to feed that unease, Saudi Arabia has been periodically dropping hints that, should Iran’s nuclear ambitions go unchecked, it might just have to get nuclear weapons itself. This week, the Saudi ambassador to London made yet another explicit threat, warning that “all options will be on the table.” Oh, please! Saudi Arabia isn’t going to build a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia can’t build a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia hasn’t even built a car. Where would Saudi Arabia train the...

Female scientists were jumping on Twitter on Thursday to voice their views on the controversial comments by a Nobel Prize-winning British scientist, who spoke about his "trouble with girls" when working in laboratories. * Female scientists lampooned his sexist remarks, using the hashtag #distractinglysexy, which for anyone following the thread was distractingly funny.

A small white casket positioned near the pulpit held a little boy dressed in a white suit and bow tie. A Power Rangers DVD rested on his chest. A Spiderman action figure sat nearby. The innocence the scene invoked only made reality that much harder to stomach for the roughly 150 relatives and friends who came to a south Kansas City church on Monday morning to say their goodbyes to 3-year-old Amorian S.L. Hale. Eight mornings earlier, a bullet killed Amorian as he slept in his bedroom. Since then, family, friends and strangers have struggled to deal with grief and...

In discussing the scandal engulfing former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who is due in court this week, one thing must be made absolutely clear. What he is alleged to have done to young boys has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or gay rights. * Almost immediately after the news broke of Hastert’s indictment, folks looked to Congress for signs of hypocrisy. Former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, made an assertion during an appearance on Huffington Post Live last Monday that was flat-out inappropriate. “Dennis Hastert twice as speaker tried to get the house to pass a...

As a member of Congress, Dick Gephardt often spoke passionately about the need for the United States to recognize as genocide the mass deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians under the Turkish government that began one century ago. But as a lobbyist for Turkey since leaving Congress in 2005, Gephardt, a Democrat, has taken the opposite side. His behind-the-scenes work has been cited as a factor in the annual failure of Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide. Justice Department records show that Gephardt’s lobbying firm has been paid more than $8 million since 2008 to fight the declaration...

A key ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi this month. The Benghazi panel announced Friday that Sidney Blumenthal will appear before the committee on June 16 to answer questions about memos he drafted on Libya when Clinton ran the State Department. The interview will be closed to the public. “This appearance before the Select Committee on Benghazi involves a witness deposition, which is typically done in private,” according to an advisory from the committee. “The session will be closed to the media.” Blumenthal came to the attention of Republican...