Free Republic

Security staff desperately tried to separate fighting groups at the Selfridges entrance on the lower level of the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. This is the moment a fight broke out in front of horrified shoppers at the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. Security staff at the store appear to come under attack from a group of men throwing punches near to the entrance to Selfridges. During the brawl the outnumbered security staff try bravely to stop the outbreak of violence, reports the Birmingham Mail. One man was arrested and has since been handed a police caution. The incident was...

MIAMI, - Authorities in Florida said they are investigating the alleged illegal importing of giant African snails for use in a religious healing ritual. A search warrant filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court said state and federal investigators raided the home of Charles Stewart, 48, in January after receiving information that he was keeping a large box full of the snails, which are only allowed in the United States with special permits for scientific research, the Miami Herald reported Thursday. Federal authorities said they began investigating Stewart in November after receiving complaints that he was feeding the juices from the snails...

Kenya Barris, creator of ABC’s “black-ish,” was motivated to write the comedy about an African-American family’s efforts to honor its heritage in part by the unreality of what he grew up watching on television. “I saw ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ and thought, ‘What part of New York is this?’” recalled Barris, who is black. “It’s not about being diverse. It’s about being true to the world.”His show comes 15 years after civil rights groups, galvanized by a lineup of new network series almost entirely devoid of minority characters, sought and ultimately won agreements from major broadcasters to put programs on the...

Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, and European governments' counter-attacks are more than just a passing news story. Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture. And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites' Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word "diversity." Generations yet unborn will still be paying the price, whether in large or small installments, depending on how long...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Responding for the first time to the firestorm of criticism over the lack of diversity in this year's Oscar nominations, film academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs says the all-white acting slate inspires her to accelerate the academy's push to be more inclusive. She also hopes the film industry as a whole will continue to strive for greater diversity. The first black president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spoke out Friday night in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press about the Oscar nominations and the widespread criticism that followed.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Responding for the first time to the firestorm that erupted over the lack of diversity in this year's Oscar nominations, film academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs says the all-white acting slate inspires her to accelerate the academy's push for more diversity. The first black president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spoke out Friday night in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press about the Oscar nominations and the widespread criticism that followed. All 20 of this year's acting contenders are white and there are no women in the directing or writing categories....

A student who was born female felt perfectly comfortable identifying as a man at Wellesley College — until people said he shouldn’t be class diversity officer because he is now a white male. Timothy Boatwright was born a girl, and checked off the “female” box when applying to the Massachusetts all-women’s school, according to an article in the New York Times. But when he got there, he introduced himself as a “masculine-of-center genderqueer” person named “Timothy” (the name he picked for himself) and asked them to use male pronouns when referring to him. And, by all accounts, Boatwright felt welcome...

For the last few decades, Western civilization has been attempting to avoid the difficult levels of thought-analysis,synthesis,and most of all,evaluation. No one wants to be the one to point a finger and say, “That’s just wrong.” For one thing, as we learned from Charlie Hebdo, doing so can get you killed. But we also know that repercussions can take other forms as well--job loss,lawsuits,public ridicule,and personal rejection(I don’t have as many friends as I used to). We have been basking in the luxury of sloppy, pseudo-intellectual mock thinking and it may cost us everything. The horrors of 9/11,the Boston bombing,the...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama praised the sportsmanship of the San Antonio Spurs as "a great metaphor for what America should be all about." Obama hosted the Spurs at the White House on Monday to celebrate their victory in the 2014 NBA Finals.

Two universal truths in the liberal universe are: #1 lefties hate democracy when it works against their wacko agenda and #2 white white men are to blame for everything. Proving these truths brilliantly, Arab American comic Dean Obeidallah wrote an extended bitch-fest for The Daily Beast complaining how the democratic process has cursed us with too many white people (and men) in Congress. The Unbearable Whiteness Of Congress starts with the fact that the newly sworn in Congress is the most diverse in history, but that’s not good enough for Obeidallah because in liberal land the will of the people...

Over the last year, Apple, Google and other big technology companies have faced mounting criticism by civil rights leaders about the lack of diversity in their work forces, which are populated mostly by white and Asian men. Now Intel, the giant chip maker, is taking more concrete steps to do something about it.

The incoming 114th Congress is much more Christian than the national population. Despite deep divides in political ideology, lawmakers in the 114th Congress share other important beliefs with their colleagues in the previous Congress. These beliefs aren't rooted in the tangible, rough-and-tumble world of Capitol Hill, though—they're in the spiritual realm. When the incoming GOP-controlled Congress is sworn in Tuesday, the ranks will remain overwhelmingly Christian. That's a continued divergence from the American public, which includes more religious minorities, such as Hindus and Buddhists. According to a Pew survey released Monday, 91.8 percent of the 114th Congress subscribes to varying...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BEDFORD PARK (WABC) -- William King has lived in his Bronx neighborhood for 40 years, and since 1974 he has felt safe - that is until Saturday afternoon when he was brutally beaten in broad daylight. The vicious encounter was caught on home surveillance camera. "I got a cut above over my eyelid, and the side of my face is numb - I can't open my mouth that well and I had a lump the size of a baseball on the side of my head," says King. The incident happened near the corner of Briggs Avenue and East 197th Street...

Bobby Jindal is Indian-American, but you’ll never hear him describe himself that way. Marco Rubio insists he’s an “American of Hispanic descent.” And Ted Cruz “certainly” identifies as Hispanic, but he didn’t run for office as “the Hispanic guy.” These Republican lawmakers, along with African-American conservative favorite Ben Carson, look poised to make the 2016 GOP presidential field the party’s most diverse ever. They are all mulling over White House runs as the GOP continues to struggle with minority voters and as racial tensions over police conduct have captivated the nation. But none is planning to play up his race...

As we have reported, contrary to current wisdom, studies consistently show that there are more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors than there are STEM jobs. Nevertheless, those with a vested interest in perpetuating the legend not only still claim that there is a STEM major shortage but declare that women are uniquely qualified to fill it. Recently, here in Washington, D.C., at George Washington University, Linda Rosen, CEO of Change the Equation (an organization geared toward more STEM education at the pre-K12 level and above), said, “Employers…are having difficulty finding the STEM talent they need.” For example, she...

For the proud liberal, a quick thought experiment—or, rather, litmus test. Is the following group diverse? Four college students: one white, one black, one Asian, and one Hispanic. “Yes, of course,” you reply. But what if I were to also note that these young adults hail from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Stamford, Connecticut; Brentwood, California; and Highland Park, Texas—towns located within what political scientist Charles Murray termed “SuperZips,” ZIP codes that rank highest based on a combination of income and education? Specifically, all four of our hypothetical subjects grew up in spacious suburban homes. They took tennis and golf lessons at...

Delegates from some of the valley’s most powerful companies gathered Wednesday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson to tackle a problem far more nuanced than battery life, traffic growth or user engagement: the lack of diversity in their ranks.

  Service Birth     Name, state Assoc. Justice Chief Justice Yrs Place Date Died Religion Antonin Scalia, DC 1986–   — N.J. 1936 — Roman Catholic Anthony M. Kennedy, Calif. 1988–   — Calif. 1936 — Roman Catholic Clarence Thomas, DC 1991–   — Ga. 1948 — Roman Catholic Ruth Bader Ginsburg, DC 1993–   — N.Y. 1933 — Jewish Stephen G. Breyer, Mass. 1994–   — Calif. 1938 — Jewish John G. Roberts, DC   2005– — N.Y. 1955 — Roman Catholic Samuel A. Alito, Jr., N.J. 2006–   — N.J. 1950 — Roman Catholic Sonia Sotomayor...

The Minneapolis City Council’s decision to cut money for a $300,000 disparity study from Mayor Betsy Hodges’ budget won’t prevent officials from launching the project, the city’s civil rights director said Tuesday. The planned study, which will look at the success of minority and women-owned firms in winning contracts, was part of a package of cuts tentatively approved Monday by the council. The 7-6 vote, which also targeted spending on the convention center, home ownership and clean energy programs, would allow the city to reduce a proposed tax levy increase from 2.4 percent to 2.2 percent. The budget for the...

U.S. taxpayers shelled out nearly a quarter-million dollars in November, so Vice President Joe Biden could trumpet “diversity” to world business leaders in Morocco and boast that in 2017, “for the first time, Caucasians of European descent like me will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America.” “I’ve … come here to an ancient Muslim nation at the crossroads of Africa, the Arab world and Europe to talk about what it takes for all nations to succeed in the 21st century” the vice president told the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, explaining that educational opportunities, the rule of...

The U.S. attorney's office on Tuesday charged a 20-year-old St. Paul woman with misusing a passport, ostensibly for travel to join an international terrorist organization in Syria. According to the criminal complaint, Yusra Ismail stole a friend's passport on Aug. 18 and, three days later, took a flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Amsterdam and then Oslo, Norway. On Aug. 24, Ismail reportedly contacted her family and said that she was in "Sham," which is a term commonly used to describe the area within Syria and Iraq where Islamic State militants are attempting to establish a caliphate, according to a statement...

The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks is my bestselling book considered definitive by many. It offers my "Unified Field Theory of Liberalism" which Bill Whittle declared has "forever changed and clarified" the way he views the world. This is an excerpt from VOLUME II, to be released in 2015.

A scene at a Florida school between a large, intimidating black student and a seemingly unprovoking white student drew references to Ferguson this week. A video of the teens at Vanguard High School in Ocala, was posted toLiveLeak.com, showing the abhorrent behavior. An unidentified student, began aggressively verbally assaulting and pushing another as the much smaller kid sat quietly, ignoring the behemoth ruffian. The instigator became more agitated, even pushing the head of his victim, while his voice hit Celine Dion like octaves. “This is what leads to things like Ferguson,” wrote the unidentified person who uploaded the video.

Nearly a century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s...

Bank Robbery Suspect Who Fatally Shot Himself During Chase Was Former Atlanta Police Lieutenant Police said Dodd was a former lieutenant with the Atlanta police and was visiting Matteson from Georgia Wednesday, Nov 19, 2014 • Updated at 4:05 PM CST A man suspected of robbing a bank Friday morning and leading police on a car chase through the south suburbs before fatally shooting himself has been identified as a former lieutenant with the Atlanta Police Department. Maurice Chester Dodd, 44, died of a gunshot wound to the head and his death was ruled a suicide, according to the Cook...

The Fox 9 Investigators learned that of three men recruited from Minnesota to fight for either ISIS or al-Shabaab all once held jobs at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and each hold security clearances that gave them access to parts of the airport a traveler will never see. When exactly these men were radicalized is unclear. The good news: It doesn't appear the airport was ever their intended target. The bad news: Experts fear that scenario may be just a matter of time. Side-by-side with a future terrorist It's like a small city that never really sleeps. It's in constant...

A hardworking father of two was killed Sunday when a stranger shoved him off a Bronx subway platform and into the path of a train — as his horrified wife looked on, family and police sources said. A suspect was spotted minutes later boarding a city bus — and then hopping off to coolly smoke a cigarette. --SNIP-- Police released surveillance video of a middle-aged, balding man dressed in a black leather jacket, black pants and white sneakers calmly sauntering outside the station after the crime.

(CNN) -- A Sikh student at Hofstra University filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the United States Army, claiming the service refused to grant him a religious accommodation that would allow him to enlist in his school's ROTC program without shaving his beard, cutting his hair and removing his turban, according to court documents. When Iknoor Singh requested a religious exemption from the military's grooming policies to enlist as an ROTC cadet in April 2013, his request was first denied on the grounds that his noncompliance would have "an adverse impact on the Army's readiness, unit cohesion, standards, health, safety, or...

The White House is planning to focus on improving the lives of girls and women of color, after months of complaints that they were left out of the "My Brother's Keeper" initiative for young men. White House aides planned Wednesday to convene a Working Group on Challenges and Opportunities for Women and Girls of Color, an offshoot of White House Council on Women and Girls, which is chaired by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. The administration will also release a report on the work it has done to help minority women and girls.

Two Philly women were upset when they missed the breakfast cutoff at a local McDonalds. The women tore up the place and beat a patron with a broomstick. (Warning on Language and Violence)video at page Having crawled out of bed just a bit too late, two women were recently caught on tape throwing a super-sized adult hissy-fit because they’d been told that they missed the McDonald’s breakfast time. When a man stepped in to tell the woman to relax, they went berserk. As reported by My Fox Philadelphia, the incident took place in a Philadelphia McDonald’s, where an onlooker decided...

California Democrats were unable to regain their two-thirds legislative supermajority in the state Senate and lost ground in the Assembly, at least in part due to the victories of two Republican candidates from Orange County — both women, both Asian-American. The victories of Janet Nguyen in the 34th state Senate District and Young Kim in the 65th Assembly District over Democratic rivals could signal a shift in the Orange County political landscape – and more broadly, in the GOP’s relationship with Asian-Americans. University of California, Riverside political scientist Karthick Ramakrishnan said the victories represent a nuanced picture of an electorate...

Danica Patrick has revved up some controversy, questioning whether NASCAR needs its Drive for Diversity program, which aims to increase female and minority participation in the racing car series. “I have never benefited from the Diversity program,” Patrick said on Friday after a reporter from the Danville (Va.) Register and Bee asked her about diversity in stock car racing. NASCAR honored Wendell Scott, the only African-American to win in its top-level series, at its event in Martinsville, Va., this past weekend. Scott, who was born in Danville, won a Grand National (predecessor to Sprint Cup) race in Jacksonville, Fla., in...

Ryan Meryhew wanted to be an air traffic controller.  He went to school for it, completed a College Initiative Training (CTI) degree, and applied with the FAA.  The FAA wouldn’t even interview him.  Because, diversity. “In school I did very well. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. I passed the AT-SAT exam with a 99.5 percent, a near perfect score on the test that the FAA said you’ve got to pass,” said Meryhew. “I knew I had a passion for the position. It’s something that I wanted to do. I dedicated and put everything I had into the program.” It’s...

Newser) – Three teenage girls from Denver flew overseas in a bid to join ISIS in Syria before being stopped, reports the Denver Post. The girls, ages 15 and 16, apparently were lured by a "slick" online campaign to join militants with the Islamic State, an FBI official tells ABC News. They made it as far as Frankfurt, Germany, before being detained, and all three have been returned to their families in Denver. It's unclear whether they will face charges. The Voice of America first reported the incident, saying that two of the girls are of Somali origin, while the...

UNCW officials have decided to move forward with hiring their first ever Chief Diversity Officer. This is happening despite recent revelations that one of their current diversity officers had been involved in illegal political campaigning using university property. Last year, a task force suggested replacing an associate provost position with a Chief Diversity Officer to promote diversity and inclusion on the campus and in the community. The former chancellor who was run off campus initiated that task force. Now the North Carolina taxpayers are about to pick up the bill for his bad decision to expand UNCW’s already bloated administration....

Ebola appeared out of nowhere. A delayed diagnosis, a patient’s death and two infected nurses reflected a cascade of mishaps while “Presby,” as the hospital charmingly is called, became linked to a fearsome disease and global exposure of the worst kind. This has been a hospital under siege. Ever since the night when a man from Liberia entered the emergency department — one that, as few know, is run by an outside contractor, not the hospital — a new reality has altered Presbyterian’s course.

The death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman and mother of five children, was upheld by the Lahore High Court in Pakistan on Thursday. Bibi has been convicted of blasphemy for drinking from the same bowl of water as Muslims and making derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad. "The case against Asia Bibi is a great example of how Christians and other religious minorities are abused in Pakistan by fundamentalists wielding the controversial blasphemy laws. The blasphemy laws were originally written to protect against religious intolerance in Pakistan, but the law has warped into a tool used by extremists...

Some stories you have to read 10 times before deciding: ’Yes: What I thought was too crazy is really true.’ This is one of those stories. Here goes, believe it or not: A black Baltimore bus driver organized a mob of 20 black people to assault a white family of three on her bus, which they did with gusto and pepper spray. All the while, the other black passengers hooted and hollered in encouragement. All while the bus driver waited for the beating to finish so the attackers could get back on the bus. With her thanks. The bus company...

<p>Once upon a time, the liberal position was to reject the old discriminatory branding of people by the color of their skins rather than by the content of their characters.</p> <p>Not now. Political and career advantage is found in trumpeting — or occasionally making up — genealogies.</p>

A group of teenagers vandalized a Brooklyn deli on Saturday night after leaving a raucous party nearby, said police. Surveillance footage of the event shows the teens storming the entrance of Gourmet Butcher, a deli in crown heights at just after 9pm. The young vandals can be seen knocking over shelves in the front of the store and grabbing armfuls of candy as they threw storage on the ground.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN 6) — Oregon First Lady Cylvia Hayes admitted she had a third marriage to an Ethiopian man to help him get his citizenship, and said Gov. John Kitzhaber had no idea about this event in her life until Wednesday afternoon. At a press conference Thursday, Hayes, 46, apologized to “John, the person I love above all others.” She said she needs to take some “personal time to reflect and look at my relationship with John.” Kitzhaber, 67, and Hayes announced their engagement earlier this summer. A Willamette Week story questions whether the marriage to the Ethiopian man...

One-fifth of people in the U.S. speak a foreign language at home, according to a report being released Monday by the Center for Immigration Studies, which found Arabic and Urdu — the national language of Pakistan — among the fastest-growing. The report found that nearly half of all California school-age children speak a language other than English at home, as do a third of Texans and Nevadans, according to the report, which is based on Census Bureau numbers.

Ebola has reached our shores from Africa. Dozens of children are reportedly suffering paralysis from a deadly virus with unknown origins. Medical providers across the country have warned of a looming public-health crisis as communicable diseases spread unmonitored and uncontrolled. Other countries are cracking down. But America is stuck on open-borders stupid. The Diversity Visa (DV) program, to take just one glaring example of government insanity, is still going. On October 1, the State Department opened the annual DV random lottery to applicants from around the world. Yes, it’s completely random, like a Powerball drawing. Up to 55,000 lucky winners...

The National Geographic Magazine, a publication heretofore not noted for satirical excellence, has published an article that easily could have appeared in The Onion. In fact, it begins by quoting that satirical publication as an authority. In Colorful World of Birding Has Conspicuous Lack of People of Color , author Martha Hamilton engages in hand-wringing and navel-gazing (yes, they can be done simultaneously, and for all I know, this might be good exercise) over the relative lack of “people of color” (as opposed to the colorless majority) out looking for exotic avian life. I kid you not: According to the...

How many times have we heard laments such as "women are 50 percent of the population but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs" and, as the Justice Department recently found, "blacks are 54 percent of the population in Newark, New Jersey, but 85 percent of pedestrian stops and 79 percent of arrests"? If one believes that people should be represented socio-economically according to their numbers in the population, then statistical disparities represent injustices that demand government remedies. Before we jump to conclusions about what disparities mean and whether they are indicators of injustice, we might examine some other disparities...

(CNN) -- Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry is taking an indefinite leave of absence, the NBA team's CEO announced Friday, days after a report surfaced about comments Ferry allegedly made about a free agent player. Ferry made the remarks about Luol Deng during a June conference call about prospective players, according to a letter obtained by CNN affiliate WSB. J. Michael Gearon Jr., a minority owner of the Hawks, wrote that in that letter that Ferry described some of Deng's negatives, stating that "he has a little African in him. Not in a bad way, but he's like a...

A Home Office researcher whose report into child sexual exploitation problems in Rotherham was ‘suppressed’ more than a decade ago has claimed she was threatened by two police officers. The researcher claims she was approached by two officers while she was in her car at night, to be told it would be a ‘bad thing’ if the abusers she was investigating found out her home address. The researcher, who has not been named, gave evidence in a private session to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday, and said she ‘feared for her life’ as a result of harassment in...

U.S. Army sociologists are worried that a lack of black officers leading its combat troops will have detrimental effect on minorities and lead to fewer black officers in top leadership posts.

During the summer months most rational hard-working citizen taxpayers were aghast at the huge amount of "refugee" & "unaccompanied minors" and illegal alien family units being dumped upon their communities in buses often under cover of the night. But not the City of Houston, this was a platform for "diversity" spewing propaganda, internationalism,and third world celebrations.Houston welcomes "more than 2,000 refugees every year"! All of the enablers,communists,"charitable organizations" and amnesty advocates coming together for the WORLD REFUGEE DAY during the month of June.

People from immigrant backgrounds are massively under-represented in Germany’s police forces and security agencies, which are not making enough effort to track the problem, a study published on Monday found. Migration information service Mediendienst Integration asked all 16 state police agencies, the Federal Criminal Police (BKA), the Federal Police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution about their workers’ origins. Most states do not collect figures on the backgrounds of their entire police forces, and neither do the federal agencies. In the states which do record such figures, numbers were low. […] Rainer Wendt, head of the German...