Free Republic

In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday the Senate should apologize for slavery and segregation, calling them “dark chapters in our history.” McCain said he would support a planned resolution by fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who is also seeking the presidency, to apologize for racist laws, some of which ended more than a century ago. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe on Monday. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of the day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.” McCain agreed...

Crossing the cafe, I felt the hard stares of Saudi men. A few of them stopped talking as I walked by and watched me pass. Them, too, I ignored. Finally, coffee in hand, I sank into the sumptuous lap of an overstuffed armchair. "Excuse me," hissed the voice in my ear. "You can't sit here." The man from the counter had appeared at my elbow. He was glaring. "Excuse me?" I blinked a few times. "Emmm," he drew his discomfort into a long syllable, his brows knitted. "You cannot stay here." "What? Uh … why?" Then he said it: "Men...

ORLANDO, Fla. - Walt Disney Co.'s 1946 film "Song of the South" was historic. It was Disney's first big live-action picture and produced one of the company's most famous songs _ the Oscar-winning "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." It also carries the story line of the Splash Mountain rides at its theme parks. But the movie remains hidden in the Disney archives _ never released on video in the United States and criticized as racist for its depiction of Southern plantation blacks. The film's 60th anniversary passed last year without a whisper of official rerelease, which is unusual for Disney, but President and CEO...

'Song of the South' pits art vs. cultural sensitivity http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=136791&pubDate=3/31/2007 http://tinyurl.com/2w5vty BY RON MENCHACA The Post and Courier Talk of a possible re-release of the 1946 Walt Disney film 'Song of the South,' which is criticized for its plantation-era depictions of blacks as the happy servants of wealthy whites, already is sparking a debate. The film was reshown in theaters as recently as 1986, but it never was released on video in the United States. Its cultural and cinematic significance have been the subject of scholarly debate for decades, and bootlegged copies of the film are popular on the black...

In both of our political parties, activists talk about fighting for the "soul of the party." Do parties have a soul? Political parties are messy things -- coalitions, fueled by people of great ambition, scarred by the corrupt and the petty, lifted by those with vision. How could they possibly be said to have a "soul"? In the fall elections, candidates will run in different ways. Some Republicans will line up with President Bush; others -- many after voting his way nearly 100 percent of the time -- will run away from him, now that his poll numbers are down....

"For the past century-and-a-half, the Republican Party has proven to be the most effective political organization ever to champion equality and human rights in the United States and around the world."-- Michael Zak This weekend marks a proud milestone for Republicans, the 150th anniversary of the first Republican National Convention. Founded in 1854, the Republicans, distinct from Democrats, grounded their party on two noble convictions: that America was truly one nation, not a polyglot of regions, races, or classes, and that American identity was based not on blood or soil, but on its founding ideal -- the dignity, worth, and...

in my never-ending pursuit of "higher education" , I'm taking a civil rights history class. does anyone know some good books on the matter of Jim Crow laws and gun rights as it pertains to the matter of US civil rights movement from the turn of the 20th century till now? I believe Kopel has a book on the subject. Also , any insights/articles about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and who voted for what and why would be appreciated. I recall something about Al Gore's pappy being a racist and know some of the history of "KKK" Byrd....

White supremacists plotted an insurrection in one North Carolina city in 1898, historians now say. RALEIGH, N.C. - As a horse-drawn machine-gun regiment fired into crowds and frightened blacks fled into the cold swamps, the dream of a Reconstructed South died on the streets of Wilmington, N.C., on Nov. 10, 1898 - more than 30 years after Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox ended the Civil War. The uprising began a day after the election in Wilmington, then North Carolina's largest city. The city's Democrats, who regained power from the Republicans, proceeded to wrest control of the government immediately....

Rosa Parks and history Oct 27, 2005 by Thomas Sowell The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly plenty of racism...

Any day now the Justice Department will render judgment on one of the single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation of recent years: a Georgia state law requiring voters to present one of only six forms of photo identification before they can exercise their right to vote. Before enforcing this statute, Georgia must get Justice Department approval by proving that the law will not put minority voters in a worse position than they were in before the requirement was instituted. The facts surrounding Georgia's voter identification requirement cannot be disputed. Virtually every black legislator opposes the legislation, and most black...

The Voting Rights Act, whose 40th anniversary we celebrate this month, has helped minorities elect 81 sitting members of Congress and thousands of local officials. But the rally civil rights groups held in Atlanta earlier this month to push for extension of the act's key temporary provisions downplayed those gains and instead pushed wild claims that some state laws requiring an ID to vote are the functional equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes. Both Judge Greg Mathis, the star of a syndicated courtroom TV show, and California Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the last two presidential elections had been "stolen."...

Shari'a Swimtime Mark Steyn's latest article in The Spectator, on the western liberal idiocy of celebrating the sociopathologies of foreign cultures, reminds me of a recent Seattle incident I've been meaning to blog about: government-funded Islamic apartheid. Steyn: [quoting steyn] By pretending that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism doesn’t ‘preserve’ traditional cultures so much as sustain them in an artificial state that ensures they’ll develop bizarre pathologies and mutate into some freakish hybrid of the worst of both worlds. [end qoute] Last month there was an article in the Seattle Times on a program where city public swimming pools have...

During a discussion with minority leaders and journalists on Monday, Howard Dean declared that Republicans are “a pretty monolithic party. They all believe the same. They all look the same. It’s pretty much a white Christian party.” He further stated that “the Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people” and Democrats are “more welcoming to different folks, because that’s the type of people we are.” Dean continued to defend his remarks as recently as Thursday. Dean’s comments clearly suggest that the GOP is, if not hostile to a demographic broader than white Christians, at least cool toward...

Tell me What I Say Department The Lord condones Retaliation and Divorce! "Hang all the Law and the Prophets." -- Jesus of Nazareth. We are forever in debt to Dr. diLorenzo. In his efforts to show that Lincoln was actually a not-so-crypto commie, he has provided us with a new exegetical technique which sheds light on, well, on just about everything! The left wing of the Supreme Court will soon be using diLorenzian interpretation to show that the Constitution mandates ex post facto law when it states, "Ex post facto law shall be passed." (It's in there, believe us: Article...

3/7/2005 GOP senator Graham rankles some over comments on Lincoln By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor Senator Lindsey Graham has ignited a new furor in Washington over comments he made over the weekend referring to his state’s difficulty in “getting over” President Abraham Lincoln, with apparent reference to Lincoln’s role in the civil war and the freeing of American slaves, RAW STORY has learned. “We don’t do Lincoln Day Dinners in South Carolina,” Senator Graham told a Lincoln Day gathering in Tennessee Saturday. “It’s nothing personal, but it takes awhile to get over things.” According to a Knoxville News...

Group trying to block building name change: NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- A state appeals court heard arguments Wednesday over whether Vanderbilt University can remove the word "Confederate" from a dormitory the United Daughters of the Confederacy helped build in the 1930s. The Tennessee chapter of the group claims the university's effort to drop the first word from Confederate Memorial Hall violates decades-old contracts, but Vanderbilt claims the contracts are no longer valid. The judges, who did not say when they will issue a ruling, had strong words for both sides. "You're arguing social values and making the courts be the tough...

This was a CSPAN televised event given by someone who has written the only book on this subject.

Bush Administration Files Another Partial-Birth Abortion Lawsuit Brief Email this article Printer friendly page by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com Editor February 12, 2005 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Bush administration on Friday filed another brief defending the federal ban on partial-birth abortions. The brief comes in an appeal of a Nebraska judge's decision overturning the ban in one of three lawsuits filed against it by abortion advocates.The brief is part of an appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging a September ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf saying the ban was too vague and would prohibit other types of abortions.The...

John Kerry's Jim Crow America... "The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigated these allegations over a six-month period beginning in January 2001. Its 200-page majority report, Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election, excoriates Florida's election officials for various acts of misfeasance. But the conclusions drawn by the report often bore little relationship to the facts contained therein. And media descriptions of the report did little to dispel the widespread belief among the black electorate that blacks had been systematically targeted for harassment, intimidation, and disenfranchisement."