Free Republic

NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday. The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public...

PBS revealed yesterday that it would be postponing the third season of Finding Your Roots after it was discovered that producers succumbed to pressure from Ben Affleck last year to leave out details of his slave-owning ancestors. According to emails released in the Sony hack by WikiLeaks, Affleck urged producers and host Henry Louis Gates not to include these relatives in his episode of the show, which traces back the ancestry of celebrities. While Mr. Gates claimed, after WikiLeaks, that these ancestors were only left out to make room to include more interesting ones—a Revolutionary War soldier and a mystic—most...

PBS says an episode of "Finding Your Roots" that omitted references to Ben Affleck's ancestor as a slave owner violated public TV standards. In a statement Wednesday, PBS said it's postponing the show's third season and delaying a commitment to a fourth year until it's satisfied with improvement in the show's editorial standards. The public TV service launched an investigation after it was reported that Affleck requested the 2014 episode not reveal his ancestor was a slaveholder. The review found that co-producers violated PBS standards by allowing improper influence on the show's editorial process and failed to inform PBS or...

Hollywood movie star Ben Affleck has two additional slaveholding ancestors. S.L. Speisseger, who owned 3 slaves in Chatham County Georgia in 1840, according to 1840 U.S. Census, and Georgia A. Speissegger Cole, who owned 1 slave in 1863 and 1864, according to Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia tax digests found by the Daily Beast. This brings the total number of Affleck’s known slaveholding ancestors to 14, and the number of slaves either owned or “held” as a trustee or on behalf of an estate by these ancestors to 242.

Movie star Ben Affleck has another nine slaveholder ancestors from Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, according to publicly available Census records and genealogy research conducted by Breitbart News. Last week, Affleck admitted that he successfully pressured Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to edit his Georgia slaveholding ancestor, Benjamin Cole, out of an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” that featured his family history. This brings the number of Affleck’s known slaveholder ancestors to 12, who owned a total of 214 slaves. The relative ease with which Breitbart News was able to find these nine additional slaveholding...

Washington, DC: --- As Black History Month draws to a close, the web site The Root has chosen to publish a hateful article that demeans black conservatives solely for their political views -- grouping them with brutal dictators, convicted criminals and self-centered celebrities. This has drawn a stinging rebuke from Project 21 member Bob Parks. "It doesn't take much for liberals to call black conservatives 'self-hating,'" noted Parks, "but what is it called when someone decides that blacks deemed inappropriate should be wholly removed from history? What kind of egos are we talking about here?"The Root is operated by The...

Ben Affleck has at least three ancestors who owned slaves including a wealthy landowner who bought a young boy who he appears to have set to work in his tanning business. The Batman star's distant family can be traced to Connecticut and in 1728 they paid 80 pounds for a slave called Tobe who they kept until he was grown up. The bill of sale refers to Tobe as a 'negro boy' which the previous owner 'sold as my proper estate'. Tobe's owner was called Nathaniel Stanley and was known as a smart man of 'respected piety and evangelical sentiments'...

Ben Affleck went searching for his roots and ended up finding more than he bargained for. And he admits it. "After an exhaustive search of my ancestry for Finding Your Roots, it was discovered that one of my distant relatives was an owner of slaves," Affleck wrote on Facebook Tuesday, breaking his silence on the controversy kicked up by a leaked Sony email that revealed the actor specifically requested that that limb of his family tree be left out of his episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots. "I didn't want any television show about my family to include...

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed. In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to...

The film star Ben Affleck asked television chiefs to hide the fact that one of his ancestors was a slave owner, according to a newly published batch of hacked emails involving the media giant Sony.

Ben Affleck asked the producers of PBS’ Finding Your Roots television show to edit out details of an ancestor who owned slaves, according to a Sony internal email exchange leaked this week. In an email sent to Sony CEO Michael Lynton shortly before the show’s second season premiere, Harvard professor and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote that an unnamed “megastar” had asked producers to “edit out something about one of his ancestors – the fact that he owned slaves.”

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules. The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal. Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution. Daily Mail Online has reviewed a transcript of the show...

Here is video in two parts of conservative Ann Coulter and the Rev. Al Sharpton debating the whole "Beer Summit" / Harvard Professor arrest case, and the larger subject of racial profiling. . . . . Ann Coulter said no racial profiling even took place in this case. Coulter said there is no "epidemic" of racial profiling in America, but there is an epidemic of false claims of racial profiling. . . . . (Watch Video)

Ann Coulter discusses racial profiling and the Gates arrest.

Ann Coulter and Rev. Al Sharpton debate racial profiling and the arrest of Professor Gates by Sgt. Crowley.

Here is video of conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham on The O'Reilly Factor last night where she said it was ridiculous the way the media has covered Obama's "Beer Summit" as if it was the "Yalta or Potsdam Conferences." Ingraham noted that some networks even used satellite imagery to set the scene for the "Beer Summit," and a "Countdown Clock to the Beer Summit." Ingraham said the whole thing was a "cover-up for Obama," to cover for his huge mistake in saying the police had "acted stupidly." . . . . . (Watch Video)

Call it damning with fat praise . . . After James Crowley did a good job at his post-beer press conference, a condescending Chris Matthews—apparently surprised that a policeman could handle himself well in such a situation—said "I think we've got our Susan Boyle here."

Were you, like me, surprised to see that Biden turned up at the beer fest? I hadn't picked up any prior indication he was going to be there. To the contrary, check out what Pres. Obama said just before the event: A short time earlier from the Oval Office, Obama had done what his aides had been doing for days: lowering expectations. "I noticed this has been called the 'Beer Summit.' It's a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys," Obama told reporters. "This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day."

Here's the latest from the Photo-op at the White House designed to bring Obama's poll numbers back up (Video)

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama was arrested for DUI this afternoon after taking a Harvard professor and a Cambridge police officer on a harrowing barhopping tour and subsequent high-speed police chase through the city. What started as a beer picnic outside the Oval Office to clear the air over the president’s embarrassing comments last week after the arrest of Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates turned ugly, when the president, having quaffed one Bud Light and four plastic bottles of water in 15 minutes, stole a Secret Service SUV and demanded Gates and Sgt. James Crowley continue their party throughout the District...