Free Republic

What’s a white person to do? Recently, I had the pleasure to participate in the Interplay Hip Hop Symposium at Lehigh University. The event was hosted by the inimitable hip hop theatre pioneer Kashi Johnson and keynoted by brilliant lyricist and hip hop educator Asheru. I gave a lecture about white appropriation of rap. My lecture led to a discussion about how white people fit into the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Together, we came up with these, the ten cracka commandments for 2015: 1. #AllLivesMatter won’t matter until #BlackLivesMatter. This commandment is a litmus test and the greatest commandment. 2. Always remember...

Smash the patriarchy! New York police allegedly arrested two men for “manspreading” (sitting with their legs far apart) on the subway, according to a report entitled “That’s How They Get You” released by the Police Reform Organizing Project. “On a recent visit to the arraignment part in Brooklyn’s criminal court, PROP volunteers observed that police officers had arrested two Latino men on the charge of ‘man spreading’ on the subway, presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders,” the report states.

In the past few years, the New York City Police Department has discovered that younger drug dealers are more likely to be armed with guns and dangerous. As a result, the NYPD narcotics department issued a new rule to their narcotics division: stop arresting drug dealers over the age of 40. As much as we’d like to joke that this is age discrimination, it’s actually the result of the NYPD’s desire to focus their resources on dealing with criminals in the 18-40 demographic. According to the New York Post, which got their hands on a memo from top officers, there’s...

The city’s narcotics cops are being told to stop arresting suspects over the age of 40 — a major strategy shift designed to target younger dealers, who are more likely to carry guns and use them, The Post has learned. Top brass issued a directive that makes it all but impossible for cops to bust older drug suspects, in order to combat a spike in shootings — which are up 7 percent in 2015 compared with the same period last year and 12 percent over the last four weeks, police sources said. The new policy was laid out in a...

Wary Of Police-Community Relations, City Council Says Idea Deserves Consideration.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is behind a controversial proposal to grant amnesty to more than 1 million people with open warrants for low-level offenses. But some experts worry it could cause crime to skyrocket. First he called for reduced penalties for smoking marijuana. Now, Bratton wants to explore granting amnesty to 1.2 million city residents with open warrants for low-level offenses, people who run the risk of being arrested for failing to resolve tickets for drinking in public, disorderly conduct and the like, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday. There is one...

New York City police chief Bill Bratton is worried about ISIS. So worried, in fact, that he's going to assign 450 New York Police Department cops to fight terrororism that may come from the Islamic State. “We need to be very concerned about terrorism … The significantly increased threat from ISIS using social media to recruit people not only to go to Syria to fight, but encouraging people … to attack police, to attack government officials, to basically brainwash them under their screwed-up ideology. That threat has expanded significantly in the now 16 months I’ve been police commissioner,” Bratton said...

A video first posted on Facebook on Friday of NYPD officers driving away from an arrest after an angry confrontation with bystanders is starting to get some attention. Video here from the Free Thought Project. In the video, police officers from the 30th precinct in Harlem are seen questioning a reported 14-year-old girl over a false alarm on a police call box. It looks like the officers were about to leave the scene after questioning the girl without taking any action, but an argument between the girl, bystanders and the cops ensued and at the 6:15 mark, the driver of the unmarked police...

City Comptroller Scott Stringer laid out the grim facts last week on how the most progressive law in decades means disaster for New York City. The bottom line of Stringer’s report: Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, Uncle Sam will cut more than $800 million in payments to the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp, by Fiscal Year 2019. The president’s signature law slashes federal payments that long helped out hospitals serving lots of patients who lack insurance. The idea was that the law would boost coverage so dramatically the aid would be unnecessary. Except that illegal immigrants don’t...

Make sure your smoke alarms work: The FDNY may be about to get a lot less reliable. As The Post’s Michael Gartland reportedThursday, the department is tweaking its fitness exam for recruits in ways that will make it easier to pass. This raises fears that new firefighters might be less fit — and less qualified for the grueling task of fighting a New York City-size blaze. Trainees, for example, won’t be asked to complete as many exercises meant to simulate pulling down a ceiling. And a reordering of the tasks on the test — supposedly to better represent actual firefighting conditions...

A rapper was shot multiple times and killed and his passenger was critically wounded as he drove a Porsche down a Queens boulevard early Sunday, a police source said. Lionel Pickens, who goes by the stage name Chinx, was shot several times in the body and his 27-year-old passenger was hit twice in the back about 4 a.m. as they traveled on Queens Blvd. at 84th Dr. in Briarwood, cops said.

I just finished reading Eugene Robinson’s article “We find trouble when we go looking for it.” Robinson seems to leave out some factual analysis. Robinson says that 85 percent of stops in New York City under the stop and frisk policy were blacks and Hispanics. The fact is 95 percent of murders in New York City are committed by people of color.

The man who attacked several women with a hammer on Monday was fatally shot in midtown on Wednesday morning. Before being shot by police officers, he reportedly tried to attack a female police officer with a hammer when approached for questioning shortly before 10 a.m. There is a heavy police presence at the intersection of 37th Street and Eighth Avenue near Penn Station, which has been closed to traffic.

He’s on the road again. As violent crime soars in the Big Apple, Mayor Bill de Blasio has far more pressing matters to deal with — touting his progressive agenda in two more out-of-state locales. Hizzoner will be heading off Tuesday for his 11th trip outside New York in the last 12 months to address national or international issues. After speaking in three Midwestern states last month on income inequality, de Blasio is headed to DC to unveil details of his progressive agenda.

NBC announced on Sunday they were starting a new series called "Meet the Money: The Billionaire Donors." They started with GOP-backing Sheldon Adelson. When will they get to George Soros? In an effort to revitalize and unify the far-left Democratic party, progressives have relied on the very thing they often criticize -- the deep pockets of a billionaire supporter. Agenda supporters were linked to at least $159 million dollars in donations or political contributions from Soros. Many of those self-proclaimed progressives will gather on the steps of the U.S. Capitol May 12 at 3 p.m. to celebrate a new, far-left...

RUSH: This is from the "Monkey Cage" section of the Washington Post: "Blacks Die Sooner than Whites. How Many Votes Has This Cost Democrats?" This is an honest-to-God story by Dean Robinson. "Black people in the United States continue to be sicker and die sooner than whites. ... [T]hey suffer from 'excess mortality' -- that is, black deaths that would not have occurred had the death rate among blacks been the same as that among whites." So we have here, as now documented in the Washington Post, yet another terrible inequity that is distinctly American: The death rate inequality. So...

On Saturday, a few dozen misguided marchers straggled across the Brooklyn bridge, demanding that more Americans be disarmed. Notice the widely debunked "120" school shooting meme in the sign. When you have to resort to easily disproved lies, your "movement" has no moral validity. Consider, in a city of 12 million, in the heart of the densest support for citizen disarmament in the country, in a legal regime that has stifled the right to bear arms with numerous infringements for a century, this morally bankrupt astroturf organization is able to attract, pay, or bully only a few dozen marchers.

First Lady Michelle Obama urged students at Tuskegee University, a historically black university in Alabama, to remain involved in civic life during a time of tension regarding race relations across the country. At the school's commencement address, the First Lady listed scenarios in which African-Americans feel they encounter systemic discrimination, such as "nagging worries that you're going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason." She said those feelings are "real," but disengaging is not an option. "I want to be very clear that those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give...

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul will host a meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus next week to discuss criminal justice reform. The libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky has long been an outspoken advocate for changing how the American criminal system prosecutes and sentences. Now he’s teaming up with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), and other black lawmakers, to craft a strategy for advancing legislation as law enforcement issues have taken center stage following the death of several unarmed black men at the hands of police. “Not only is Senator Paul the [S]enate co-sponsor of the Justice Safety Valve Act, which...

Everyone from Susan Sarandon to Van Jones is helping draft and push de Blasio’s new “Contract with America,” which will push for paid sick leave and free, universal pre-K.First New York City. Then America. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is heading to Washington, D.C. next week to present a progressive “Contract with America,” a 13-point agenda intended to push the Democratic Party leftward. According to a draft of the document provided to The Daily Beast by someone asked to join the effort, de Blasio will call for a number of measures for which he has already pushed in...

Obama Sent 3 Officials to Criminal Freddie Gray’s Funeral – No One to NYPD Officer Brian Moore’s Funeral Posted by Jim Hoft Obama sent three White House officials to criminal Freddie Gray’s funeral. How many should we expect for decorated Officer Moore’s, murdered by a criminal? CNN reported: The White House sent Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, chair of the Obama administration’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force; Heather Foster, an adviser in the White House Office of Public Engagement; and Elias Alcantara from the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.