Free Republic

A city that was mollified for a brief instant when charges were brought against the officers who arrested Freddie Gray is now questioning its mayor. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has been a controversial figure since the unrest that followed Gray’s death, and city residents and politicians alike are questioning her ability to lead Baltimore out of its current strife. This week, Rawlings-Blake took action, firing Police Commissioner Anthony Batts for how his department handled the Gray arrest. But while some have applauded the decision, others are concerned that Batts wasn’t the problem; instead, the demise of Baltimore belongs to the...

A 39-year-old state lawmaker from Bethesda was arrested in late June and charged with indecent exposure and trespassing after a dispute at the home of her ex-husband, according to court records. A charging document said Del. Ariana B. Kelly (D-Mongtomery) was dropping off her children at her ex-husband’s house, in the 5300 block of Alta Vista Road in Bethesda, when she became upset that his fiancee was inside the residence. Kelly and Barak Sanford were divorced in November, according to court records. Sanford told police that Kelly started ringing the doorbell and banging on the door and that he asked...

An internal Veterans Affairs Department report states that about one-third of the veterans waiting to receive medical care from the agency have already died. ... as of April, 847,822 veterans were awaiting healthcare and that of those, 238,647 were already deceased. The report was handed over by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta He also sent copies to the House and Senate VA panels and to the White House. ... VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it's not a big deal. But VA...

Attorneys for Ingmar Guandique, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who murdered Washington intern Chandra Levy in 2001, will likely ask for Guandique to be released from jail while he awaits a retrial of his 2010 conviction. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Gunadique’s attorneys requested a new trial, asserting that evidence from a key witness against Guandique was false or misleading and claiming that a new trial would serve the “interests of justice.” In May, prosecutors agreed to a new trial despite the fact that they thought that Guandique’s conviction was justified. In June, a judge ruled that a...

The mother of Baltimore city state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby faced numerous disciplinary actions during her 20-year career as a Boston police officer, though the public wouldn’t know it based on the Freddie Gray case prosecutor’s public statements touting her family’s strong policing history. The 35-year-old Mosby has used her family’s police ties to rebut critics who say she rushed to judgement and overcharged the six cops involved in Gray’s April 12 arrest. The 25-year-old Gray died a week later, touching off rioting in Baltimore and nationwide protests. “Law enforcement is pretty much instilled within my being,” Mosby told MSNBC’s Chris...

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley lashed out at Donald Trump on Monday, arguing that the Republican presidential candidate's recent comments about Mexican immigrants were "hate speech" and that the GOP should do more to distance itself from a "hate-spewing character." The real problem isn't that the Republicans have such a hate-spewing character running for president," O'Malley told the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza in Kansas City, Mo. "The problem is that it’s so hard to tell him apart from the other candidates."

--SNIP-- In the tradition of many in the NAACP, she brought it when it was her turn at the podium. The audience, who not that much earlier had been watching a mini fashion show put on by Philadelphia Fashion Week, appeared spellbound as Mosby shared her personal journey to become Baltimore's state attorney. She described how, after graduating magna cum laude from Tuskegee University, she got wait-listed at every law school to which she applied because of her LSAT scores. Mosby managed to get around that by calling and requesting interviews with admissions officers to persuade them that "my LSAT...

Donors have given just $30,000 to Lincoln Chafee’s Democratic run for president, leading him to acknowledge that Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders is filling the role he hoped to play in the 2016 contest. Chafee lent his campaign $364,000, according to federal campaign finance filings. The former Rhode Island governor trails by a wide margin in fundraising. The campaign for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said it raised $45 million since mid-April, while Sanders, a Vermont senator, has raised $15 million since he joined the race in late April. “I always thought that there was fundraising potential for an honest progressive...

It was a deadly weekend on the streets of Baltimore City, with police investigating four homicides and ten shootings. Police say two people died of shootings Saturday: a 40-year-old found suffering from gunshot wounds in the 1800 block of N. Durham Street and an 18-year-old found in the 4300 block of East Wabash Avenue. Police say two more people died Sunday. There were five shootings on Saturday. Baltimore City Police also say two men shot on Friday have died.

A heckler was ejected from Hillary Clinton’s economic speech in New York City Monday after asking the former secretary of state about her position on investment banking regulations. Business Insider reported that Daniel Burke, a self-identified organizer for the LaRouche PAC which supports political activist Lyndon LaRouche, yelled at Clinton at the conclusion of her speech, “Senator Clinton, will you restore Glass-Steagall?” Clinton did not respond to the inquiry, and Burke was removed from the event location, the New School in Manhattan, by security. Passed in 1933 and then repealed 66 years later, the Glass-Steagall Act separates commercial banks from...

While the Confederate battle flag is coming down from the State House grounds in South Carolina and around the nation, it continues to fly here in St. Mary's County, at the center of a privately owned monument next to the largest burial site of rebel soldiers in Maryland. Clinton Cole took pictures of the private monument last week and shook his head. "That flag stands for nothing but hate," said the 49-year-old Longview Beach man, who is black. "This is 2015, and we're still dealing with this?" But Jim Dunbar, who heads the group that built the monument, says the...

Violence continued in Baltimore as three people were killed late Saturday and early Sunday. In all, as of Sunday evening, at least 17 people had been shot since Friday, including six who died. Among them is a man shot in the head in the Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park area early Friday morning who died over the weekend.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore police are investigating four separate shootings late Friday and early Saturday. Friday at around 10:30 p.m., there was a shooting in the 2000 block of N. Payson Street. When police arrived, they found a 35-year-old man with gunshot wounds to the head, back and arm. At approximately 1:15 a.m. Saturday, a 48-year-old woman was shot in the chest in the 3-hundred block of Franklintown Road. She’s in stable condition. At 1:50 a.m., police were called to the 2-hundred block of Conkling Street. A 25-year-old man was shot in the shoulder. He is in stable condition. At...

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was greeting people at the Mondawmin Festival, an event with food, entertainment and representatives from Baltimore's non-profit organizations, when a woman ran up and threw what police said was water on the mayor, ... "I didn't know what it was that she threw at me. I hope it was water," Rawlings-Blake told the Baltimore Sun. "It was more shocking than anything else." The bizarre incident didn't stop the mayor from enjoying the festival. She later tweeted photos of herself with Baltimore residents and community partners, calling it a "fantastic day."

A woman dumps water on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake during a One Baltimore event this morning at the Mondawmin Mall. Amy Yensi has more.Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake feeling upbeat as she dances at the Mondawmin Festival Saturday morning.The One Baltimore event happening at the mall now notoriously linked to April’s unrest.But the gathering aiming to connect the community and city agencies goes from festive to frantic in an instant.A bystander, later identified as 37-year-old Lacheisa Pailin-Sheffer, of Baltimore, throws water on the mayor as she speaks to the crowd.Pictures from our media partner The Baltimore Sun, show shocked on-lookers trying their...

Third annual 300 Man March held in wake of recent violenceBALTIMORE —Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Baltimore Friday night calling for an end to the violence that has plagued the city in recent months.Those who marched are the dedicated foot soldiers of Baltimore's constant war on violence. Friday night marked the third annual 300 Men March, a shoulder-to-shoulder showing of Baltimore unity against what has plagued the city for years. "This year's march is simply about the 12 young children that have been murdered in our city this year," said Baltimore City Councilman Brandon Scott, D-District 2.

The Detroit Police Department is suffering from its worst manpower shortage in nearly a century. There are currently fewer officers patrolling the city than at any time since the 1920s. At one point, the Detroit police force was over 5,000. Today, the force is just 1,590 officers strong — and not all of those are on the street. The city has lost nearly half its patrol officers since 2000 and ranks have shrunk by 37 percent in the past three years alone, according to the Detroit News. It’s so bad that precincts are reportedly left with only one squad car...

Bernie Sanders will never be president. But unless Hillary changes her strategy – and soon – he can still wind up toppling her. Something remarkable is happening in American politics. For the first time in our history, a socialist is running a close second and gaining ground on the frontrunner in a presidential race. Anyway you look at it, Senator Bernie Sanders is making history and may very well play a deciding role in who will be the next president. How real is the Sanders movement? Well, at this point in his campaign in 2007, Barack Obama had 180,000 donors...

BALTIMORE (AP) — Gunmen jumped out of two vans and fired at a group of people a few blocks from an urban university campus, killing three and adding to Baltimore's growing list of homicides. Police said Wednesday that the shooting wasn't random, but no arrests had been made. The two vans — one burgundy and one white — pulled to the side of a road near the University of Maryland, Baltimore, campus Tuesday night, police said. One gunman got out of each and began firing, campus police said....

The Washington Redskins lost the biggest legal and public relations battle yet in the war over the NFL team’s name after a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the cancellation of its federal trademark registrations, opposed for decades by Native American activists who call the moniker disparaging. The cancellation, hailed by the activists as a “huge victory,” doesn’t go into effect until the team has exhausted the appeals process in the federal court system. And Redskins President Bruce Allen vowed Wednesday that the team would appeal. “We are convinced that we will win on appeal as the facts and the law...