Free Republic

...Altaif Hassan, a senior at the college, and freshman Giovanna Roberson were pulled over by police on Monday afternoon in the parking lot of the school's Mimosa Hall, according to NBC Philadelphia. Glassboro Police Department received a call about an armed robbery near the campus on Monday and a witness description of the suspect's car was similar to the car Hassan and Roberson were driving, according to Vice President of University Relations Joe Cardona. Because police believed there was a handgun in the vehicle Hassan and Roberson were in, the officers trained their weapons at them and ordered the students...

Now, as he departs office, those hopes have largely evaporated. Tensions between African-American communities and police departments have deteriorated following a slate of high-profile shootings of unarmed black men. ... A majority of Americans now say relations between blacks and whites have worsened since Obama took office. Obama has said he never believed his election could completely erase centuries of racial conflict in America. But the decline in racial ties is nonetheless an ironic legacy for the first African-American president, one Fareed Zakaria explores in the CNN Special Report "The Legacy of Barack Obama" airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET....

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres defended herself on Tuesday after some claimed that a humorous Usain Bolt tweet sent out from her social media accounts a day earlier was racist. “I am highly aware of the racism that exists in our country,” @TheEllenShow tweeted. “It is the furthest thing from who I am.” DeGeneres’ popular Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts often feature funny images that have been altered to include her. On Monday, her accounts sent out a picture of her riding on Bolt’s back during Sunday’s 100 meter semifinal with the suggestion she’d like to use the Jamaican sprinter’s...

When was the last time someone talked seriously about courting the Italian vote, or the Irish, in a national election? Kennedy–Nixon in 1960? “Italian” and “Irish” are no longer considered in pollsters’ demography. They melted into a pre-existing electoral block, ineptly called “white voters.” Pollsters talk a lot about the “white vote” — but what they really mean is the Italian-Irish-Polish-Hungarian-Romanian-Jewish-Russian-Swedish-Norwegian-French-Dutch-Scottish-Welsh-English vote. That’s the nature of the American melting pot. And before too long, that ethnically indistinct pot will include Latin-Americans too — Latin-Americans being the immigrant group that, after WW2, supplanted Italians as the largest. I don’t buy the...