Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) - In a speech at the NAACP convention Thursday, Sen. John Kerry offered a glowing portrayal of the group's chairman, Julian Bond, who only one month ago compared Republicans to terrorists. "Julian Bond sent electricity through this country when he burst on the scene when he was a young man," Kerry said. "I remember watching him set an example for our country, and he's still setting an example for our country. He is eloquent. He is powerful." Bond, a self-described militant, introduced Kerry to a rousing ovation. Kerry then proceeded to praise Bond, who became a well-known participant in...

COMMENTARY Why should Bush speak to a hostile group that has outlived its usefulness? Last week, for the fourth year in a row, President Bush declined the NAACP's invitation to speak at its annual convention. Predictably, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume railed that the Bush administration failed to recognize the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group as being significant or important in any way. The sad thing is, the Bush administration's attitude toward the group is justified. The NAACP is stuck in a mind-set that worked 30 years ago but makes little sense today. Mfume and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond...

Mayor: Don't like it? Go GOPBrothers & sisters are 'in charge'By RON GOLDWYNgoldwyr@phillynews.comAN UNREPENTENT Mayor Street wants to update the NAACP convention with some hot old news:In Philadelphia, the brothers and sisters are still in charge.Street, in welcoming remarks yesterday to the 8,000-delegate gathering at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, recalled how he "got myself in trouble" in 2002."I said in the city of Philadelphia the brothers and sisters are in charge," he declared. "They never let me forget it."Street apologized at the time. But yesterday he brought delegates to their feet roaring approval when he said he "will never apologize"...

NAACP Headliners in Philadelphia Bash Bush by KYW's Al Novack As the NAACP's 95th annual convention continues this week in Philadelphia, the organizations leaders are highly critical of President Bush's decision to skip an appearance at the convention -- the first president since the 1930s to do so. But that's not all. NAACP chairman Julian Bond (below right) urged members of the nation's oldest civil rights organization to increase voter turnout to oust President Bush, and condemned the administration's policies on education, the economy, and the war in Iraq: "They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division," Bond said Sunday...

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHILADELPHIA -- NAACP chairman Julian Bond condemned Bush administration policies on education, the economy and the war in Iraq on Sunday, imploring members of the nation's oldest civil rights organization to increase voter turnout to oust the president from office. "They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division," Bond said Sunday night in the 95th annual convention's keynote address. "They've tried to patch the leaky economy and every other domestic problem with duct tape and plastic sheets. They write a new constitution of Iraq and they ignore the Constitution here at home." Bond, a leader in the Student...

YORK, Pa. - President Bush said Friday that he declined an invitation to speak to the NAACP's convention in Philadelphia because of harsh statements about him by leaders of the venerable civil rights group. ''I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent,'' Bush told reporters. ``You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me.'' Bush added that he ''admired some'' NAACP leaders and said he would seek members' support ``in other ways.'' The decision not to speak was a far cry from candidate Bush's appeal to the NAACP four years ago when he conceded at...

WILMINGTON - In what has gotten to be a yearly event the NAACP leadership has taken a swipe at President Bush. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume is saying that President Bush is treating the Black community like prostitutes by claiming to want the Black vote while snubbing the NAACP's annual convention for four consecutive years. "We're not fools," said Mfume. "If you are going to court us, court us in the daytime, but not like we're a prostitute where you run around at night of behind closed doors and want to deal with us but not deal with us in the...

President Bush has declined for the fourth consecutive year to address the annual NAACP convention, which begins Sunday in Philadelphia.     The president's refusal to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has puzzled and angered leaders of the group, which has been critical of the president in the past.     "The truth of the matter is that he has turned us down four out of four times since he became president," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington office.     "We have 500,000 members across the United States as well as membership units in the military," the director...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - President Bush declined an invitation to speak at the NAACP's annual convention, the group said. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People expects more than 8,000 people to attend the convention opening Saturday.Democratic challenger John Kerry accepted an invitation to speak next Thursday on the final day of the convention, the NAACP said.Bush spoke at the 2000 NAACP convention in Baltimore when he was a candidate. But he has declined invitations to speak in each year of his presidency, the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention, John White, a spokesman...

(CNSNews.com) - In remarks to hundreds of cheering liberal activists Wednesday, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond singled out Republicans as enemies of black Americans and compared conservatives to the terrorist Taliban who once ruled Afghanistan. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side," Bond told a cheering audience. "They've written a new constitution for Iraq and ignore the Constitution here at home. They draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics. Now they want to write bigotry back into the Constitution." Bond's remarks came at an opening of...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - In remarks to hundreds of cheering liberal activists Wednesday, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond singled out Republicans as enemies of black Americans and compared conservatives to the terrorist Taliban who once ruled Afghanistan. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side," Bond told a cheering audience. "They've written a new constitution for Iraq and ignore the Constitution here at home. They draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics. Now they want to write bigotry back into the Constitution." Bond's remarks came at an opening...

<p>The Bush administration is controlled by a "right-wing conspiracy," and the prospect of President Bush's re-election is "almost too dire to bear," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told a gathering of liberal activists yesterday.</p> <p>Mr. Bond's remarks came in his opening address to the three-day "Take Back America" conference at Washington's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, which will also feature presentations by billionaire left-wing financier George Soros, failed Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.</p>

<p>This weekend, the NAACP announced the winners of its 2004 Image Awards. But when interested viewers get to see the winners on Fox television on Thursday, they won't see controversial singer R. Kelly picking up an award for album of the year.</p>

WASHINGTON – He did it again, but this time on national TV. Aaron McGruder, a black syndicated cartoonist who's getting his own prime-time TV series on Fox, called National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice "a murderer" for her role in the Iraq war. He made the remark as a guest on the nationally syndicated TV show "America's Black Forum," hosted by syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Juan Williams. The creator of the popular "Boondocks" comic strip reportedly caused some discomfort at an anniversary dinner for the Nation magazine here last month when he told the mostly anti-war audience, "I've met...

HAMPTON, Va. - At Jefferson Davis Middle School, a civil war of words is being waged over a petition drive to erase the name of the slave-owning Confederate president from the school. Opinion is mixed, and it's not necessarily along racial lines. "If it had been up to Robert E. Lee, these kids wouldn't be going to school as they are today," said civil rights leader Julian Bond, now a history professor at the University of Virginia. "They can't help but wonder about honoring a man who wanted to keep them in servitude." That argument isn't accepted universally among Southern...

Educators Debate Efforts to Rename Schools HAMPTON, Va. - At Jefferson Davis Middle School, a civil war of words is being waged over a petition drive to erase the name of the slave-owning Confederate president from the school. Opinion is mixed, and it's not necessarily along racial lines. "If it had been up to Robert E. Lee, these kids wouldn't be going to school as they are today," said civil rights leader Julian Bond, now a history professor at the University of Virginia. "They can't help but wonder about honoring a man who wanted to keep them in servitude." That...

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said over the weekend that he agreed with political cartoonist Aaron McGruder's characterization of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as "a murderer." Appearing with Bond on the television show "America's Black Forum," McGruder, whose cartoon strip "The Boondocks" has portrayed Rice as a spinster who takes out her personal frustrations by launching carpet-bombing attacks on Iraq, explained his disdain for the highest-ranking woman in U.S. government. "I don't like Condoleezza Rice because she's part of this oil cabal that's now in the White House," McGruder said, as ABF hosts Armstrong Williams and Juan Williams looked on....

Over the weekend, Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, agreed with cartoonist Aaron McGruder’s assessment of Condoleezza Rice as a murderer. McGruder, who writes The Boondocks, is well-known for his constant derision of conservatives, and conservative blacks in particular. Julian Bond, on the other hand, is the chairman of a professed non-partisan civil rights group, which claims to foster diversity, equality, and unity. Both appeared on America’s Black Forum, and McGruder made this statement: "I don't like Condoleezza Rice because she's part of this oil cabal that's now in the White House. Let's put aside the fact that she's...

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said over the weekend that he agreed with political cartoonist Aaron McGruder's characterization of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as "a murderer." Appearing with Bond on the television show "America's Black Forum," McGruder, whose cartoon strip "The Boondocks" has portrayed Rice as a spinster who takes out her personal frustrations by launching carpet bombing attacks on Iraq, explained his disdain for the highest ranking woman in U.S. government. "I don't like Condoleezza Rice because she's part of this oil cabal that's now in the White House," McGruder said, as ABF hosts Armstrong Williams and Juan Williams...

Posted: July 28, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister who agreed to the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany, is known to history as an appeaser. Munich, where his infamous conference with Hitler was held, has become an international synonym for craven appeasement. Chamberlain's defenders argue that he had no real choice. The British were unprepared for war and could not stop Hitler's seizure of the Sudetenland in any event. Moreover, the Sudetenlanders were a Germanic people who had never lived under Prague rule until 1919, should never have been ceded to...

<p>There's nothing quite like a vacation to recalibrate that ol' B.S.-O-Meter. For constant exposure to buncombe and intellectual inanity tends to produce inurement instead of the outrage it should. All work and no play makes for one dull Sunday columnist.</p>

<p>The president "should have spoken to the NAACP — it is the nation's oldest civil rights group — but I am glad he is doing this," Mr. Cummings said. "I don't know what his rationale is with regard to speaking with the Urban League ... but by not speaking to the NAACP, it seems inconsistent." The White House declined to comment. Urban League President Marc Morial also refused to comment yesterday.</p>

(excerpted, full text below) ...Governor Jeb Bush's notion of school reform is to send black children to reform schools. His exit tests threaten to bar third-graders from advancing to fourth grade and high school seniors from graduation. Florida loses nearly half of its Black and Hispanic students before they graduate. Which brings us to Jeb Bush's One Florida Initiative - the first time any state's governor abolished affirmative action in higher education, government employment, and state contracting. Maybe that's why he's not here - this time, the Supreme Court didn't bail him out. The Bush brothers are big on preemption....

"An interesting thing is happening," said Kevin Pritchett of the Center for New Leadership, and African American political think tank, on "Hannity and Colmes." "Blacks are becoming more conservative." Wait a second. Can a black man say that on national television? And is he talking about the same group of people that listen to the propped-up chairman of the NAACP – Julian Bond? Maybe you missed the comments by the chairman of the NAACP: Republicans appeal to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality. They preach racial neutrality and practice racial...

A spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles criticized NAACP chairman Julian Bond on Thursday, saying he used "over-the-top" rhetoric to smear Republicans during a speech last weekend at the civil rights group's 94th annual convention. Reacting to Bond's allegation that "[the Republican Party's] idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side," Center spokesman Rabbi Abraham Cooper told NewsMax.com, "The mixing of two images, 'Confederate swastika,' I think it's over-the-top rhetoric and a disservice to the memory of the victims of slavery as well as to the victims of the Nazis."...

BLACK GROUP WANTS TO REMOVE NAACP HEAD Los Angeles- Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, today called for the removal of Julian Bond as Chairman of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) because of statements he made this week at the civil rights group’s 94th annual convention in Miami Beach, Fla. In his speech Bond portrayed Republicans as Nazis and compared them to the Ku Klux Klan. “Julian Bond’s statements show that he’s the real bigot. His attacks only incite hatred of Republicans amongst blacks. He...

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said Tuesday that the civil rights organization's chairman, Julian Bond, should explain why he portrayed Republicans as Nazis over the weekend while speaking at the group's 94th annual convention. "He has to explain why he did that," Mfume told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," adding, "I don't do that and I don't believe that." Addressing the Miami gathering on Sunday, Bond compared Republicans to members of the Ku Klux Klan, then complained, "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side." Asked if Bond should step down...

Posted: July 15, 2003 5:00 p.m. Eastern Editor's note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions no one else will ask. And each week, WorldNetDaily brings you the transcripts of those dialogues with the president and his spokesman. If you'd like to suggest a question for the White House, submit it to WorldNetDaily's exclusive interactive forum MR. PRESIDENT! By Les Kinsolving © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Today, on Scott McClellan's first day as the new presidential press secretary, the Washington Post reported that this reporter started the applause yesterday at the beginning of Ari Fleischer's final press...

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People executive director Julian Bond warned Sunday that conservative Republicans were just a more sophisticated version of the Ku Klux Klan. But he failed to note that the only genuine ex-Klansman in Congress happens to be Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. "The average KKK member may be stupid, but the well-financed forces of the radical right are not," Bond told the group, which gathered in Miami for it's 94th annual convention. The head of the allegedly nonpartisan civil rights group continued the attack, claiming that Republicans appeal "to the dark...

Michael v. the NAACP on televisionWell, I guess it's time I went big league.I'm set to be on "Scarborough Country" tonight at 10P ET on MSNBC to talk about the NAACP in general and their vindictiveness when it comes to conservatives in particular. Roland Martin is a syndicated columnist in Dallas who will also be on during that segment (and provide the distinguished opposition to my position).Over the weekend, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond described the GOP as being associated with a "dark underside," whatever that's supposed to mean. I'm sure it ties to the notion of being "evil." Pretty pathetic...

<p>MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Republicans appeal "to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said yesterday at the civil rights group's 94th annual convention.</p> <p>"They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division ... their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon," Mr. Bond said during his welcoming remarks. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."</p>

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) - NAACP executive director Julian Bond urged states that have abandoned affirmative action policies for higher education to "come back into the Union" Sunday while criticizing President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, for challenging race-conscious admissions. Speaking at the 94th annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Bond praised the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the use of race as a factor in university admissions policies. The Bush administration filed one of the briefs opposing the policy. The court, however, ruled against the use of a point-based...

Martin Luther King Jr.'s image has been used to protest a potential war on Iraq, denounce a gay rights law and sell wireless phone service. The trouble, of course, is that the civil rights leader "is not here to speak for himself," said the Rev. Richard Bennett, executive director of the African American Council of Christian Clergy in Miami. On the eve of the holiday commemorating King's birth, some scholars and civil rights leaders say that while it's not much of a stretch to assert that King would have opposed war with Iraq -- he was an advocate of nonviolence...

Filed at 6:11 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans yanked a radio ad Thursday that was aimed at black voters in Kansas and Missouri comparing Social Security benefits to slavery reparations -- except paid to whites by blacks. It was the latest skirmish in a multistate war over Social Security ads pegged to November's congressional elections. The commercial was paid for by a Republican interest group and aired in the Kansas City area on an urban contemporary station whose listeners are predominantly black. GOPAC, which is headed by Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, said the ad was a mistake and withdrew...

For Release: July 8, 2002 Old Guard NAACP to Young Black Politicians: Get to the Back of the Bus NAACP Chairman's Remarks Threaten Black Political Independence Black conservatives are independent thinkers and not the "ventriloquist dummies" that NAACP chairman Julian Bond called them during his keynote address at the NAACP's national convention on July 7. Members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are outraged that the leadership of the venerable civil rights organization is casting aspersions on fellow African-Americans explicitly because they do not share the same political views. Bond, a former Georgia state legislator who is 62 years...

<p>HOUSTON (AP) --  In a speech that criticized President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, NAACP board chairman Julian Bond lashed out at the way federal authorities have handled civil rights.</p> <p>Two years ago, President Bush "promised to enforce the civil rights laws," Bond said. "We knew he was in the oil business -- we just didn't know it was snake oil."</p>

<p>HOUSTON — The right-wing conspiracy is operating out of the Department of Justice and the office of White House Counsel, Julian Bond said last night in a keynote address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.</p> <p>The NAACP chairman, speaking at the commencement of the 93rd annual national convention of the group, also ridiculed black conservatives, calling them "ventriloquist dummies." Mr. Bond, 62, a former Democratic lawmaker from Georgia and a vehement opponent of Republicans, gave the keynote speech last night to a ballroom packed with 4,000 people — most of them over 40 — at the George R. Brown Convention Center.</p>

Veteran civil rights leader Julian Bond opened the 93rd annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Sunday night with an uncompromising attack on the Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft and what Bond called "a right-wing conspiracy." "We have a president who owes his election more to a dynasty than to democracy," said Bond, chairman of the NAACP board, in an ardent opening address at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "When he spoke to our convention in Baltimore in 2000, he promised to enforce the civil rights laws," Bond said. "We know he...

When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last convened in Houston 11 years ago, white Americans were retrenching and blacks were in crisis. Rodney King had been beaten by Los Angeles police that spring. Liberal stalwart Thurgood Marshall was being replaced on the Supreme Court by the conservative Clarence Thomas. Congress was debating civil rights legislation under threat of executive veto. And still unknown to members of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, a train wreck was barreling toward them. Near-bankruptcy, sexual scandal, catastrophic mismanagement and almost wholesale abandonment by foundations and corporate backers all...