Free Republic

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - “We’ll never have this opportunity again,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, taking to the streets for what appeared to be an emergency cross country tour in September. He hopes to rejuvenate the Obama excitement that some say has waned since the Democratic National Convention last month. “What we’ve got to tell people is what’s at stake; that we’re dealing now with the new unemployment. Unemployment is higher than it’s been in four years, we are seeing the education and health care of our people as worse than it ever was. We cannot afford to not vote,” Rev....

Governor Paterson, delivering a speech today at the NAACP's 99th annual convention at Cincinnati, suggested that the defeat of Senator Obama in the presidential election would be a victory for racism in America. Mr. Paterson, a former lieutenant governor whose sudden rise to power following the resignation of Eliot Spitzer has led the press to dub him the "accidental governor," said he is offended by the label and suggested that it was motivated by racism.

By Brian Koonz THE NEWS-TIMES DANBURY - After blasting President Bush and the nation's immigration policy Sunday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he plans to get arrested in New York on Wednesday as part of a civil disobedience demonstration to protest the Sean Bell verdict. Sharpton, the Brooklyn-born civil rights activist, said he plans to get arrested at One Police Plaza at 3 p.m. to protest last month's acquittals of three New York police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed Bell, who was unarmed. Sharpton revealed his arrest plans, the cornerstone of a six-site demonstration, at New Hope Baptist...

May 4, 2008 -- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's loose cannon of a spiritual adviser, stole the wife of a parishioner - after the man sought Wright's help in saving his troubled marriage, the former husband told friends. Delmer Reed, 59, confided to pals that he believed the minister moved in on his wife while Wright was counseling the couple at his Chicago church in the early 1980s, The Post has learned.

Shame on every enabler who has aided and abetted Al Sharpton’s campaign to mainstream, enrich, and advance himself as a “civil rights leader” for decades despite his lying, poisonous, police-hating, crime-coddling, race-hustling agenda.Shame on the Democrat Party, which has embraced him and honored him with the stage at the Democrat National Convention, and every Democrat presidential candidate who has flocked to kiss his ring.

NEW YORK (AP) - Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends. "We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going...

Maybe, just maybe, it’s now worth at least asking whether Hillary Clinton might wind up as the Democratic candidate for vice president. When the chatter about a Democratic “dream ticket” began last year, it was easy to dismiss. Either Clinton or Obama would win a clear victory in the primaries and, after what inevitably would be a contentious campaign, each would want as little to do with the other as possible. Clinton, if she emerged victorious, would instead choose some kind of national security graybeard to her political right, a retired general perhaps, or maybe even a Republican. Likewise, Obama...

When Democrats contemplate the apocalypse these days, they have visions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugging it out à la Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter at the 1980 convention. The campaign's current trajectory is, in fact, alarmingly similar to the one that produced that disastrous affair. Back then, Carter had built up a delegate lead with early wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and several Southern states. But, as the primary season dragged on, Kennedy began pocketing big states and gaining momentum. Once all the voting ended and Kennedy came up short, he eyed the New York convention as a...

WASHINGTON -It is already easy to imagine the Republican attack ads against Barack Obama. They open with video of his wife, Michelle, saying she was proud of America "for the first time in my adult lifetime" because of her husband's presidential candidacy. Cut to the Illinois Senator explaining that he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it is a "substitute for true patriotism." Then flash a clip of Obama explaining that his Caucasian grandmother was a "typical white person" because she uttered racial epithets and was afraid of black people. Finally, the coup de grace, pictures of Obama's...

Watching the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a horny peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America truly inspired my religious faith. Once Wright pointed out that he was “still in Bible country,” I began to “love the hell out of” rich, white people just as much as Wright does. How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world’s problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it’s so. I’m not sure what verse actually says that, but I’m now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my...

The Rev. Al Sharpton is backing Barack Obama, but he's made the strategic decision to keep his support quiet. That's the message Sharpton delivered to his flock last Saturday as he boasted of talking to Obama "two or three times a week" - and insisted the Democratic front-runner knows the rev is in his camp. "I said, 'I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to help you. Hillary Clinton has never done nothing for us,'" said Sharpton, recounting a conversation with Obama for his followers at his group's weekly rally. "'I won't either endorse you or not endorse you,'" Sharpton...

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot. Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are...

When seeking to extricate himself from the tight spot in which he has been placed by his long association with the spiritual leadership of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama hauled in his (living) maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Obama has previously characterized Mrs. Dunham as a "trailblazer of sorts, the first woman vice-president of a local bank." She had a direct hand in his upbringing when Obama chose to live with his maternal grandparents rather than his mother, who was then in Indonesia. Today Obama brought Mrs. Dunham into his speech for a cameo appearance as a white counterpart to the fulsome...

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama in a speech Tuesday addressed the controversy surrounding his former minister, using it as an opportunity to challenge Americans to take a closer look at race relations. Speaking to supporters at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, the Democratic presidential candidate said he rejected racially charged comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but he tried to explain the root of those remarks. Wright formerly preached at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the senator from Illinois worships. Some of Wright's old sermons came under fire after an ABC News report last week,...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright thinks that, given their treatment by white America, black Americans have no reason to sing "God Bless America." "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America," he told his congregation. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human." I'm not a believer in guilt by association, or the campaign vaudeville of rival politicians insisting this or that candidate dissociate himself from remarks by some fellow he had a 30-second grip'n'greet with a decade...

Referencing the recent uproar over his former minister's controversial sermons, Barack Obama on Saturday denounced the "forces of division" that he says have become part of the Democratic race for the White House. Speaking to a sold-out crowd in Plainfield, Indiana, Obama again said he sharply disagreed with the some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's past statements, saying they remind him of the country's "tragic history when it comes to race." "I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships but clearly had – if all I knew...

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I...

Apparently Jeremiah Wright has offered controversial analysis of 9/11 more than once. Courtesy Sweetness & Light, a column from Wright: In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just “disappeared” as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns. The hundreds of thousands who have been killed in Rwanda, in Angola, in Zimbabwe, in Mozambique and in Kenya are still invisible. There has been no international uproar about the...

This nation faces a clear choice this September. President Bush will insist that Congress continue the war in Iraq and demand another $50 billion for the occupation. That is on top of the $147 billion already pending for Iraq and Afghanistan this year, and that's on top of the $460 billion annual military budget. The United States will spend about as much as the rest of the world combined on its military this year. At the same time, the president vows to veto any spending on domestic programs that exceed his budget. He has threatened to veto any increases for...

The International Relations Center describes Linda Chavez as “George W. Bush's first choice for labor secretary, Linda Chavez is a right-wing pundit, anti-union demagogue, and foreign policy hawk. She has supported or worked for a string of rightist outfits, including the Manhattan Institute, the Independent Women's Forum, and the Center for Equal Opportunity.” Well, we can add traitor to that description. On May 25, Linda Chavez wrote a piece called, “Latino Fear and Loathing.” Chavez also wrote a book called, “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal." From the words in her latest column, she may be reverting back,...

I have always held Linda Chavez in high regard. But this kind, rational, and (until now) honest commentator, has fallen in my estimation by resorting to scurrilous argument in favor of the deeply flawed immigration "compromise." Of course, she has plenty of company among the GOP elites, but somehow I expected better of Linda. Consider this sample form her latest column: Some people just don't like Mexicans - or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that...

Some people just don't like Mexicans -- or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans. No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of...

The Rev. Al Sharpton is due in South Carolina today to stand up for comic Chris Rock's mama. Rose Rock, who helped inspire Rock's sitcom, "Everybody Hates Chris," has called in the Rev to demonstrate outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant where she alleges staffers ignored her. Mrs. Rock says that, for more than 30 minutes after she and her 21-year-old daughter sat down at a Cracker Barrel in Murrells Inlet, S.C., in April, no one would take their order. She says they were the only black customers. After she complained about the wait, she says, the manager offered to comp...

Seeking Felony Indictment for Puppy’s Torturous Death Target: Paul Howard, DA, Fulton County District Attorney Joshua Molder, age 17, and brother Justin have been accused of Aggravated Cruelty to an animal and two other charges, and are currently jailed without bond. This petition, however, is focused on the Aggravated Cruelty charge. ATLANTA -- Two Atlanta brothers are in custody at the Fulton County jail charged with the torture death of a five-month old puppy and trashing a local apartment complex. Seventeen-year old Joshua Molder and 18-year old Justin Molder are being held without bond. The Molder brothers stand accused of...

Pat Buchanan says illegal immigration from poor and developing countries will overwhelm the United States and other Western countries in the next 50 years unless something is done. "We've already won the battle with the public," Mr. Buchanan tells The Washington Times. "The question is, when will the government respond?" In his book, however, Mr. Buchanan saves his strongest criticism for President Bush, writing: "Concerned about his legacy, George W. Bush may yet live to see his name entered into the history of his country as the president who lost the American Southwest that James K. Polk won for the...

Indianapolis -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Friday blamed racism and government bureaucracy for hamstringing his city's ability to weather Hurricane Katrina and recover from the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast nearly a year ago. In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, Nagin said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different...

The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.” In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods. “You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and...

NEW YORK — Several weeks after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, HBO documentary executives were stumped. How to respond on film to something so monumental? "We were in a meeting one day and I said, `I guess we'll have to let Katrina go,'" said Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary and Family. "Then, literally within the hour, Spike called. It was like, `Eureka!'" Spike Lee was quickly signed to chronicle the storm and its aftermath in New Orleans. The first half of Lee's heartbreaking film, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," debuts Monday. The four-hour documentary marks...

We're headed in the wrong direction. Americans across lines of race and region, in red states and blue states -- moderates, independents, liberals and increasing numbers of conservatives -- have now come to understand that. In Washington, the Bush administration and the DeLay Congress stagger from scandal to failure, adrift when we need direction. We have lost a sense of common purpose -- a sense of the better angels of our nature. I remember immediately after Sept. 11, when Americans asked what they could do for their country. "Go shopping," the president recommended, as he pushed for another tax cut...

A city official has asked Geno's, one of Philadelphia's best-known cheesesteak joints, to take down a sign......"This is America: When ordering, speak English." Councilman Jim Kenney noted some residents of linguistically diverse South Philadelphia find the sign offensive. .....Geno's owner, Joseph Vento, a grandson of Sicilian immigrants....(said) "I don't see much of a big deal about learning to say, 'Cheez Whiz.' "

The Rev. Jesse Jackson announced Saturday that he and his organization want to pay for the accuser in the Duke University rape allegations to finish school. Speaking from the headquarters of The Rainbow PUSH Coalition in Chicago, Jackson said in a telephone interview Saturday that he had learned through various conversations that the woman, a 27-year-old student at N.C. Central University, has aspirations to go to graduate or law school.

Sharpton: Don’t let whites redefine usMarch 12, 2006 By Andy Grimm / Post-Tribune staff writer Reverend Al Sharpton arrives at a party to celebrate the 24 American Idol semi-finalists at Cinespace in Hollywood February 18, 2006. REUTERS/Max Morse GARY — A New York teenager named Al Sharpton left the 1972 Black Political Convention here believing that blacks could win any elected office. Nearly 30 years later — and two years after a failed run for a presidential nomination — Sharpton returned to Gary’s West Side High School as Saturday’s keynote speaker for the 2006 National Black Peoples Unity Convention. Though...

Bank of America insists it can't find slave profits in its past April 30, 2005 BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter Under fire from the City Council's champion for slave reparations, Bank of America stuck to its guns Friday: The bank has hired a researcher to dig deeper but has so far has uncovered no evidence that a predecessor bank invested in or profited from the slave trade. To the contrary, Bank of America said its research suggests that the predecessor, Providence Bank, "distanced itself from and declined to support slavery-related activities." That's even though John Brown -- Providence Bank's...

NEW YORK A syndicated newspaper column by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, which slammed Ohio's handling of the recent presidential election, is being accused of "blatant inaccuracies" by the Ohio Secretary of State's office. Carlo Lo Paro, press secretary for Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, claims that Jackson's column, distributed earlier this week through Tribune Media Services, contains numerous inaccuracies that hint at improper behavior by Blackwell's office. "We expect someone writing an op-ed and a syndicate distributing that op-ed would fact-check information and have a responsibility to the facts," Lo Paro told E&P Wednesday. "We believe someone can have...

Rev. Jesse Jackson has joined the move by the Kerry campaign and state Democratic Party officials to press for a recount in Ohio, telling supporters that the race there "has not yet been [decided] because of so many irregularities 26 days after the election." Jackson said in a telephone interview that he was organizing "a kind of statewide sharing of experiences" that would mobilize citizens and result in "collective state action," according to the Cincinnati Post. "We are pulling people together from around the state," he explained. The civil rights leader called on the Ohio Supreme Court to set aside...

Civil rights Leaders Criticized for Ignoring Attacks on Conservative Minorities President Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state has resulted in harsh liberal criticism that members of the black leadership network Project 21 consider racist. Along with their condemnations of offensive commentators and cartoonists, Project 21 members also are critical of self-professed civil rights leaders who are remaining silent on current and previous racial attacks on black Bush Administration officials. Over the past few months, and peaking this week with her appointment, cartoonists have been using Dr. Rice's race as a point of ridicule. Demeaning political cartoons by...

When I consider the choices for the upcoming presidential election, I look back and forth between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush and don’t see a whole lotta difference. Both are grads of Yale University, where both belonged to Skull and Bones. Both are sworn to secrecy about their membership in that incestuous fraternity for the rich and powerful. Despite all the claptrap about Kerry being so liberal, I don’t believe a word of it. I sure wish there was a viable alternative to this pair of blue-blooded bookends. Why is the choice, as usual, limited to a couple of...

One African-American's view of The Passion of the Christ By Charity Dell web posted March 22, 2004 Everyone viewing The Passion of the Christ sees this film through a unique "lens" -- our gender, religious upbringing -- or lack of it -- our ethnocultural heritage -- combined with the accumulated collection of our personal experiences, shape the "lens" through which we perceive cinematic art. As an African-American Christian viewer of Mel Gibson's film, I must share what I saw, heard and felt when I and a friend attended a matinee showing of The Passion of the Christ one recent Friday...

NORTH HAVEN — Social activist Jeffrey Johnson said Friday night he was "offended" that the principal of West Haven High School apologized for him after he gave a racially provocative speech to students during a Black History Month assembly last week. "I don’t need an apology," he told hundreds at the West Haven Black Coalition’s 18th annual scholarship and community awards dinner at Fantasia. "I am tired on every level imaginable of having to apologize for speaking out." Johnson, the keynote speaker, addressed the controversy his speech created at the school Thursday. Johnson’s remarks about racial injustice, particularly how black...

<p>Authorities stopped state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, for suspected drunken driving Wednesday night, but instead of arresting him, a Montgomery County sheriff's supervisor drove him home.</p> <p>The Sheriff's Department followed state law that prevents law enforcement officers from arresting or citing legislators for a crime -- except for felonies, treason or breach of peace -- during attendances of a legislative session or going to or from a session.</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) Carol Moseley Braun announces her candidacy for president.

Poor Spike Lee. The director/actor/ad creator/bombastic New York Knicks fan can’t get enough attention. He hasn’t had a hit at the box office, his ads for bankrupt Kmart went unnoticed, and his beloved Knicks are out of action until next season. No Page Six photos of Lee in his usual Madison Square Garden courtside conniptions. But Spike Lee craves publicity. So he found the next best way to get it. By suing Viacom over its new male-oriented Spike TV cable network (formerly TNN). In a clearly frivolous lawsuits, Lee is seeking an injunction against Viacom’s use of the name Spike...

<p>Montgomery resident Rebecca Holbert says she's lived on Jackson Street in the Centennial Hill community all of her life and she wants the street she's known for decades to stay the way it is.</p> <p>She and several members of the Centennial Hill Neighborhood Association plan to speak out against the renaming of streets after civil rights leaders in their community during the Montgomery City Council meeting at 2 p.m. today. Jackson Street is to be renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.</p>

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP)--The Rev. Jesse Jackson said community members--even those responsible for nighttime rioting this week--need to come together for a period of healing. ``People need healing. They need hope, and they need faith,'' the civil rights activist said Friday morning after a closed-door meeting with police and community officials. ``Faith has substance. Those who are torching the buildings, they, too, need help.'' Jackson's visit came after the second relatively peaceful night in this southwestern Michigan city of 12,000, following two nights of riots and high tensions. Apparent arson fires burned five buildings Friday morning near the site of...

<p>BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged the University of Alabama on Monday to consider hiring a black to replace football coach Mike Price, fired over allegations of personal misconduct.</p> <p>Speaking in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Jackson said the hiring process at Tuscaloosa should focus on "the best coaches available in the market."</p>

Jackson: Alabama should consider black coach [ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 5/5/03 ] Jackson: Alabama should consider black coachAssociated Press Birmingham, Ala. -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged the University of Alabama on Monday to consider hiring a black to replace football coach Mike Price, fired over allegations of personal misconduct.Speaking in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Jackson said the hiring process at Tuscaloosa should focus on "the best coaches available in the market.""The crisis at the University of Alabama creates an opportunity for them to consider a qualified African-American football coach," said Jackson.Commenting on reports Alabama may be...

Posted April 22, 2002 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Despite mounting financial woes and diminishing political clout, the Rev. Jesse Jackson convinced Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to keynote a Silicon Valley conference on April 24-25 that Jackson hopes will revive his flagging fortunes and revive corporate donations to his nonprofit empire. Convincing Gates to cohost the event and spend several hundred thousand dollars of corporate treasure on Jackson is a significant coup for the Chicago-based activist. Microsoft has made meager contributions in the past. But does Gates really think commercial opportunities will flow from being seen rubbing shoulders with Jackson? Or...