Free Republic

Score one for Joe Scarborough. The Morning Joe host today unleashed a tirade against the FBI for treating as a case of "workplace violence" the beheading by a fanatical Muslim convert of a fellow worker in Oklahoma. Scarborough lashed out at the FBI's political correctness in claiming that there was "no indication" that the suspect, Alton Nolen, was copying the recent ISIS beheadings. Said Scarborough: "how stupid does the FBI really think we are? Who exactly are they afraid of offending?" Political correctness, in its more innocuous manifestations, can be good fodder for humor. But when our government becomes so...

Paging the MSNBC PC police! On his All In show this evening, Chris Hayes used some decidedly un-PC language to dismiss concerns that ISIS or other terrorist groups might be infiltrating across our porous southern border. Huffed Hayes: "in the years since September 11, there have been occasional stories of this type. Sort of, a kind of girl talk mash-up of the fear about the border and the fear about terrorism being fused together." The fear of terrorists coming across the border is "girl talk?" Off to the re-education camp with Chris! View the video here.

When Pepsi-Cola President Walter Mack recognized his company could sell more product to black Americans in the 1940s, he initiated a racially-targeted marketing effort to increase sales. It worked and the company’s market share rose dramatically in just a few years. The strategy was so successful, some inside the company were concerned it might be off-putting to white consumers, prompting Mack to declare that Pepsi would not, “become known as a n----r drink.”This infamous racial slur, unapologetically stated in the presence of African-American ad executives, ran through my mind after reading media reports about the racist emails from Atlanta Hawks...

A Home Office researcher whose report into child sexual exploitation problems in Rotherham was ‘suppressed’ more than a decade ago has claimed she was threatened by two police officers. The researcher claims she was approached by two officers while she was in her car at night, to be told it would be a ‘bad thing’ if the abusers she was investigating found out her home address. The researcher, who has not been named, gave evidence in a private session to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday, and said she ‘feared for her life’ as a result of harassment in...

Social worker chiefs, police and council bosses ignored the plight of child victims as 1,400 young victims as young as 11 were targeted.Raped, beaten and abused by paedophiles, child victims of the vile monsters deserved the full support from the authorities whose job was to protect them.[snip] As the report highlights the majority of the perpetrators, though not exclusively, were of Pakistani heritage. All of them will have been brought up in Muslim households.[snip]Prof Jay’s report said almost all the offenders were of Pakistani heritage but not all the victims were young white girls. And senior people in the council...

Here is a snapshot of a series of truly ridiculous things that happened in a small New England town this week, followed by an extended examination of how it represents a deep societal pathology. In Winooski, Vermont, a small town northeast of Burlington, a restaurant was awarded a sign placement for its participation in a beautification project. Proud of its bacon (among other things, I’m sure), Sneakers Bistro chose a sign that said “Yield for Sneakers Bacon.” A Muslim woman, fond of neither pork nor free speech, complained online, garnering a sufficient contingent of busybodies to pressure the restaurant...

ROTHERHAM, England (AP) — Rotherham is a working-class town that is remarkable in its ordinariness — a collection of charmless discount stores, betting shops and kebab counters, surrounded by sleepy residential streets lined with brick houses that have seen better days. But below the drab surface, shock was evident Wednesday as the people of this northern English town learned that for 16 years, girls as young as 11 in their community had been subjected to sexual exploitation on a vast scale. The number of victims — 1,400 — was terrifying enough for a community of just 250,000. But that wasn't...

On his Friday program, Keith Olbermann called on ESPN to "officially" ban the use of "Redskins." Citing Greg Gumbel, Tom Jackson, Peter King, Phil Simms, Mike Caray, Tony Dungy and others who have expressed concerns about using the team's name, Olbermann said that ESPN is the "conduit of sports" in the country while also being "loathe to be the news." Olbermann said that list of the words he and his colleagues cannot say on the air is "justifiably long" and "way less offensive than the name of the Washington team." He said he personally felt that "it is time for...

Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We call it “Political Correctness.” The name originated as something of a joke,...

Oh, how exciting… Now you can be a good little liberal, even when shopping for fresh produce and certain off-brand whiskies. According to a politically obsessed hack over at the Washington Post, some other politically obsessed hack has developed an app so you can wander through your daily life without ever losing sight of partisan political squabbles. The new smartphone app allows users to scan the barcode of consumable products in the grocery store, and it divulges the corporation’s political leanings. (I just found out that Fiji Water has switched from heavily Republican, to entirely Democrat… Ugh.)It’s so nice to...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

Remember when you could have fun at someone else’s expense? Not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way. Ribbing your friends, your enemies, and just about anyone you had a funny comment about was a time-tested way of having a little fun in life. It wasn’t personal, and nothing and no one was off limits. That day is done. The political correctness movement ruined honest political discourse, funny movies and decent sitcoms, and now it’s sucking the joy out of everyday life for people uninvolved in any of those things. It may seem like a lifetime ago, but...

(Offensive Language Warning) Sunday on HuffPost Live, comedian Joan Rivers and host Marc Lamont Hill were discussing the country getting too politically correct in our race descriptions when the 81-year old said the "n-word" and then attempted to balance it out by racially with a Jewish insult, who is Jewish. Lamont Hill looked stunned by Rivers using the word and balked when Rivers said "get over it." Lamont Hill shot back, "It's tough though," and moved on to the views questions segment. ...more (w/video)...

Couple Avoids Jail: Will Keep Record Store Open by Judith Schumann Weizner Back Issues of Heterodoxyhttp://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=337(April/May 2000)The Musikants Today, Ernest and Sylvia Musikant are breathing easy for the first time in many months , having won an eleventh-hour reprieve of the prison sentence they were to begin serving this morning for a violation of the Racial Equity in Employment Act.The couple, whose classical record store, We’ll Get Bach To You, has been a fixture on Manhattan’s West Side since 1968, had been ordered to report to the Federal Race and Hate Crimes Correctional Facility on Ward’s Island to begin their...

Political Correctness: Despite the latest example of word-use insanity, naming a helicopter after the Indian nation that handed the U.S. Army one of its most ignominious defeats is a sign of respect, not racism. In 2012, military blogger Crispin Burke reports, American Indian leaders were on hand to bless two brand-new UH-72 Lakota helicopters, named after the Lakota Sioux, the tribe that gave Col. George Custer a final exam on the proper use of light cavalry in combat at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. The two choppers, christened Eagle and Turtle for prominent Indian symbols, have honor feathers...

The audacity of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in canceling the trademark of the Washington Redskins is frightening. When the government is in charge of deciding what is offensive and what is not, and has the power to punish the "offenders," we move further away from a free society and closer to a tyrannical nanny state. We are not talking about a political issue that should have Democrats and Republicans coming down on different sides, but rather the fundamental freedom to express oneself, which is a part of the fabric of America. In the case of Dan Snyder, who...

Who cares about the Redskins? Probably not first lady Michelle Obama, who turned her sights on insulting the Romani minority community Monday. While describing her struggles as a working mother, the usually politically correct first lady used the racial slur, gypped. “The first thing I tried to do, which was a mistake, was that I tried the part-time thing… I realized I was getting gypped on that front,” Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts at the White House Summit on Working Families. “What happened was I got a part-time salary but worked full time.” The term “gypped” is a racial slur...

The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s cancelation of federal trademark registration for the name Washington “Redskins,” after ruling it disparages Native Americans, puts pressure on team owner Daniel Snyder and the National Football League (NFL) to change the name but falls far short of settling the issue. The split, 2-1, decision by unelected trademark board members shows the increasingly heavy hand that politics is playing in the activities of the private sector, since the ruling followed recent public calls for a name change from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The team counters that the long-standing “Redskins” name...

I apologize in advance for some of the terminology in this column. Much of it may make you angry, upset or downright sick to your stomach. It’s not that I use the name “Washington Redskins,” it’s that I talk about the Internal Revenue Service on page 2. Again, apologies. This week the American people were taught a valuable lesson – never underestimate the willingness of white progressives to be offended on behalf of people who aren’t and to impose their will on those who didn’t ask for it. (What tribe do you suspect these protesters are from?) The U.S. Trade...

Poll: Should the Washington Redskins change their nickname? Results # of votes % of votes Yes 1219 51% No 1191 49% Total Votes 2410