Free Republic

[full title] “Look at the Tea Party: Some of the angriest, most hateful people on earth, and they’re backed by what they think is Scripture” Forgiveness has become a pursuit more important to me than almost anything. Because as I said in an old book, it’s not my strong suit. I always joke that I wasn’t one of those Christians who was heavily into forgiveness – that I was the other kind; that I was reform. But it’s so awful to be a person who doesn’t forgive; in my experience the willingness to change down deep always comes from the...

This past week Fox News regular contributor Juan Williams penned a column on the Ferguson situation questioning where the black leadership was.When I was reading through his column one particular comment written by Williams jumped off the page at me.In his column he wrote, “Incredibly, the best leadership on the scene has come from the family of the murdered teen”. My question to Juan Williams is, what “murdered” teen ?There was no teenager murdered as a result of the police shooting in Ferguson that I’m aware of.There indeed was a black teenager who lost his life while attacking a police...

Black Friday Brawl Videos Are How Rich People Shame The Poor Stop Gawking. By Luke O'Neil November 28 The biggest movie in the country right now is “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” a film in which the ostentatiously wealthy people of Panem’s capital rule over the poorer districts from which tributes are selected each year to kill each other in a violent media spectacle. It’s a grotesque display in which the lives of the impoverished are offered up as entertainment for the comfortable. It’s hard to see the film and not think of the way TV news has covered...

Do not accept the Ferguson police officer’s retirement. Just keep talking about his phantasmagorical fear of the black body – or else.It would be easy enough to call Darren Wilson a liar, as so many pundits have done, after reading the now-former Ferguson police officer’s testimony in the case of the killing of the 18-year-old Michael Brown. We could imagine this paragon of whiteness, soft-spoken and soft around the middle, as a rational actor, spending months after the shooting to carefully prepare for his grand-jury testimony, to repeat his performance in front of George Stephanopoulos for a television interview. Calling...

‘Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea-party controversy.” That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of e-mails over two years relating to the agency’s alleged targeting of political groups hostile to the president. But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators — Republican lawmakers — are outraged. Is it really so hard to imagine that if this were a Republican administration, the story wouldn’t be the...

In a sign of liberal panic, NPR's Diane Rehm Show spent its first hour Monday questioning President Obama's management style. As their website elaborated on the Healthcare.gov fiasco and the NSA spying on world leaders, "the latest embarrassments have even some of the president’s supporters questioning his management style." To insure that their comments weren't too upsetting to Obama-loving NPR listeners, several journalists -- Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post and David Gergen of CNN -- insisted the Obama administration has been "relatively scandal-free" in its operations: MARCUS: This is not a scandal in the traditional sense of scandal. And...

Over the weekend the New York Times carried a story on the front page about the IRS scandal. The subhead of the story proclaims: “Scrutiny went beyond conservative groups.” Want proof? “Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers,” writes the Times, “stalled by miscommunication with I.R.S. lawyers and executives in Washington and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with Tea Party in its name. But their review went beyond conservative groups: more than 400 organizations came under scrutiny, including at least two dozen liberal-leaning ones and some that were seemingly apolitical.”...

CNN is lying when they say Ferguson protests were ‘peaceful’ By Naomi Schaefer Riley November 29, 2014 | 7:15pm Here’s a quiz for you folks in the media: What happens if you’re out doing “man on the street” interviews but none of the men on the street fit your “narrative”? If you’re CNN, you stop interviewing them. It has been remarkable to watch the last few days as America’s self-styled “most trusted news network” has sent out teams of reporters to various areas of Ferguson, Mo., ostensibly to cover the protests there. While their cameramen are watching cars on fire...

The protests over the grand jury decision this week have captivated international attention. Ferguson protestors have gained the lead in TIME’s Person of the Year poll, with seven days to go in the voting. Unrest in Ferguson and around the country focused attention on race and policing, helping to lift Ferguson protestors into first place in the TIME reader poll with 10.7% of the vote. Thousands of demonstrators marched in solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was shot by the police, disrupting Black Friday shopping in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Seattle and other...

Even as activists are organizing against police violence, many Americans continue to see blacks as criminals—and want our police to act accordingly.Truth is stranger than fiction; it is also most certainly harder to accept. In a nearly hour-long interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday, a day after thousands of protesters took to the streets from coast to coast, expressing outrage that yet another white police officer got away with the murder of another unarmed black person, Wilson stuck to his story: “I just did my job. I did what I was paid to do. I followed my training…. That’s...

Yet another side effect of the Ferguson unrest was the inevitable calls for how we really need to have a national conversation on race. (You can read some of my previous thoughts on the value of what the media considers a national conversation here.) As I watch the attempts at such debates taking place not only on the small screen, but on blogs and comment sections around the web, I detect a growing sense of frustration on both sides. There are sizable groups of progressives who seem sincerely interested in convincing everyone that pretty much all of these problems –...

Glenn Kessler is The Washington Post's laughably biased fact checker, and when you think of Kessler, remember this -- remember the "fact" checker who called Romney a liar for saying a president who didn’t go to Israel didn't go to Israel. This guy is utterly shameless, and this morning he's having a full-blown tantrum. Back in July, Kessler did everything in his power to protect Obama from his unbelievably revealing "you didn't build that" moment. At the time, Kessler awarded Romney three of his childish Pinocchios for the unpardonable sin of, you know, holding the president accountable for his words....

The Rev. Al Sharpton says Rand Paul’s efforts to engage black voters could present a strategic challenge for Democrats: If the Republican senator runs for president, fewer African Americans may be motivated to show up and vote against him. The civil rights activist and TV host had breakfast with the Kentucky senator last week, and the pair discussed the need for criminal justice reform before disagreeing over how to deal with the immigration system.

Where is the black leadership now that a grand jury has decided not to indict the police officer that killed Michael Brown? Where is Al Sharpton? He advertises himself as a spokesman for the best interests of black America. But he is absent. Where is Jesse Jackson, another popular media personality who says he speaks for black America? He’s missing in action, too. It breaks my heart to see televised images of violence from Ferguson, Missouri juxtaposed next to President Obama, the first black president. The president represents black power beyond anyone’s imagination just a few years ago. President Obama...

The Johnson County moderate, a fixture of Kansas politics for decades, is an increasingly endangered species. Republicans and analysts on both sides of the moderate-conservative divide say the Nov. 4 election results confirm that conclusion. The centrist bankers, lawyers and businessmen who once defined the county’s politics are giving way to younger, more socially oriented conservatives who now play the major role in determining the county’s approach to government. “The old guard just doesn’t have the weight they used to have,” said Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican just elected to a second term. “The fact that the elites...

As Republicans challenge the legality of President Obama's unilateral action on immigration, Democrats are firing back with a challenge of their own. "It is clear that they can complain, they can threaten, they can talk about lawsuits, cutting off funding, shutting down the government, in the extreme, even impeachment. But the real question is: Can they govern? Can they govern?" asked Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday. The GOP is weighing their options to undo the president's moves - "a bit of a threat to our democracy," as House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas,...

Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat, said Tuesday that Republicans don’t have a mandate after a midterm election cycle in which they took back control of the Senate and picked up about a dozen seats in the House — pointing to low voter turnout and successful ballot initiatives on raising the minimum wage as evidence of a nuanced electorate. Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” Mr. Ellison was responding to comments from Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, that the American people have spoken and President Obama can listen to them on issues like immigration. “Well, you know, we had a 72-year low...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Looky here. Looky here, ladies and gentlemen. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN has just finished explaining that it is prosecutorial discretion that Obama will use to justify what he's doing tonight. Ashleigh Banfield said, "If the president's actions effectively nullify federal law, then they're unconstitutional. But if they're merely channel enforcement resources to other areas, then it's within his discretion to do so, right? Is the layperson's version of that, if you're going 70 in a 55 zone, the policeman might pull you over. But if you're going 60 he might use that discretion and say, 'I'm gonna...

Tommy Chong, star of such films as Up in Smoke and until this week a contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, was the #OneLuckyGuy on Fox News’ Outnumbered (for some reason) Wednesday, and while he was there he weighed in on issues like marijuana legalization (naturally), health care, and immigration. But when the issue of Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber’s controversial comments came up, Chong surprised the show’s co-hosts by comparing it to another hot topic on Fox: Benghazi. Andrea Tantaros and Harris Faulkner were expressing outrage over Gruber’s comments and the Obama administration’s reaction to it when Chong decided...

--SNIP-- The finances of the Rev. Al Sharpton have a somewhat troubled history. He was indicted on charges of income tax fraud and stealing from charitable donors in 1989, but was eventually acquitted at a trial. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to file a tax return for 1986. His eponymous promotional company has no official documents on record with the state. As recently as two years ago, he drew no salary, but he still manages to send his daughters to an expensive and respected private school. Mr. Sharpton has always been studiously circumspect when...