Free Republic

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s office has announced the appointment of a diverse group of four new judges to the Baltimore City District Court on Aug. 13. Kevin Wilson and Martin Dominic are African American; Mark Franklin Scurti and Nicole Pastore Klein are White. “I am pleased to appoint such an accomplished and diverse group of candidates to serve on the Baltimore City District Court,” said O’Malley, in a statement released the same day. “These appointees will bring to the bench a broad range of legal expertise and a true commitment to public service.” Wilson took the former position of just-retired District...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a new plan to change U.S. neighborhoods it says are racially imbalanced or are too tilted toward rich or poor, arguing the country's housing policies have not been effective at creating the kind of integrated communities the agency had hoped for. The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments and others who receive agency money with data and a geospatial tool to...

PHILADELPHIA--The stench of injustice has spilled over with the nauseating smell of institutional murder once again. Left unchanged, this injustice will linger until the next injustice, and the next case…until we finally get it: public policy, in the form of reparations, is the solution to all of our social ills and the injustices that frame our existence. It’s time to rethink our demands and actions. Reparations is a word to describe what can be done to help victims of chattel enslavement overcome the horrific generational damage that they suffered and the means to give them back their dignity and to...

Trayvon Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel will enjoy a full ride to any historically black college or university of her choosing thanks to radio personality, philanthropist, and media executive Tom Joyner. The 63-year-old made an offer to pay for all of Jeantel’s education needs on open air July 16, and the 19-year-old accepted in an interview on HLN the following day. “If there’s something that I can help her do—that she wants to do—I want to help,” Joyner said during a phone interview with Jeantel and her attorney, Rod Vereen, during The Tom Joyner Show. Joyner made the offer after viewing...

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) , an organization representing 34,000 Black churches, is staging a rally July 15 at noon in front of the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. to protest the verdict in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. The NBCI, which has been among the leading advocates for justice in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., is calling for the demonstration to buttress demands for the Justice Department to launch a prosecution under federal civil rights laws of George Zimmerman, who was found not guilty July 13 by a Florida Circuit Court jury...

Wells dry up and underwater tables fall so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, a leading resource analyst has warned. Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world's people, are overpumping their underground water tables to the point – known as "peak water" – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year. The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: "Among the countries whose water supply has...

For two consecutive Sunday somebody's carelessness with a gun left a minor in our metropolitan area dead. On June 23, a New Orleans mother Laderika Smith said she locked her 5-year-old daughter Brandajah inside a bedroom on North Galvez Street before leaving the house to go to the store. Apparently, the child found a .38 revolver in the closet and accidentally shot herself in the head.A week later in Marrero, 23-year-old Christian Cardon of Gretna was reportedly showing off his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to a group of friends. Cardon told Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies that he had left the magazine...

For reasons that have eluded people forever, many of us seem bent on our own destruction. Recently more human beings have been dying by suicide annually than by murder and warfare combined. Despite the progress made by science, medicine and mental-health care in the 20th century — the sequencing of our genome, the advent of antidepressants, the reconsidering of asylums and lobotomies — nothing has been able to drive down the suicide rate in the general population. In the United States, it has held relatively steady since 1942. Worldwide, roughly one million people kill themselves every year. Last year, more...

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Black activists marked the 42nd anniversary of the War on Drugs with a protest in front of the White House aimed at ending a targeted action that has led to the disproportionate arresting, conviction and incarceration of Blacks for decades. The Institute of the Black World 21st Century, an organization dedicated to the empowerment of the Black community, mobilized a network of community groups last Monday for the “day of direct action.” Workers on their lunch breaks and a few tourists paused to snap cell phone photos of the group of activists as they marched, led by...

ItÂ’s commencement season. College seniors across the country are donning mortarboards, getting misty-eyed and preparing to face the realities of President Barack ObamaÂ’s sparkling economic recovery. The Daily Caller is a little misty-eyed, too, because college students will soon disperse from campuses for a long summer, which likely means far fewer stories about stupid and otherwise outrageous occurrences on campus. The time is right, then, to celebrate the academic year that was. Here are the 20 stupidest, most outrageous and most cringe-worthy campus moments of 2012-13. Florida Atlantic University: Worst university in AmericaWhat an embarrassing year for Florida Atlantic. The...

To date, 80 North Carolina residents have squeezed their savings for the bragging right of owning the Tesla Model S electric car, some paying more than $100,000 for their g-force ride, but they may be among the last. A legislative proposal, backed by the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, would make it illegal for Tesla, or any other car maker, to bypass dealerships and sell directly in the state. The proposal cuts at the heart of Tesla’s business model: selling luxury cars over the phone or Internet and then delivering them to the front door of high-net-worth customers. **SNIP** The whole...

For a man who regards Brussels as the biggest threat to Britain’s freedom since the Second World War, the choice of beer for Nigel Farage was obvious when we met at the Westminster Arms on Friday: Spitfire. It is brewed by Shepherd Neame in Kent to celebrate the Battle of Britain. Farage, a man of Kent, gulped down the first pint in 15 minutes, ordered a ‘reload,’ polishing off his second in another ten; and the moment we stepped outside, he lit up a fag.

PHOENIX -- When members of the student council at an Arizona high school organized a schoolwide "Redneck Day" and encouraged classmates to dress — and spoof — accordingly, they hoped to build school spirit leading up to prom week. Instead, "Redneck Day" at Queen Creek High School has angered African-Americans and civil-rights leaders and touched off a debate about free speech, social stereotypes and good taste. Tom Lindsey, superintendent of the Queen Creek Unified School District, said the only intent of Wednesday's event was to satirize the A&E reality TV show "Duck Dynasty," which follows a family of duck hunters...

..gunfire scattered thousands attending Saturday's 4/20 counterculture holiday, the first since Colorado legalized marijuana.

Maryland made national news recently for a "rain tax" to start July 1. The tax, an unfunded mandate originating with the Environmental Protection Agency and cemented by the state legislature and governor last year, means homeowners, businesses and nonprofits in certain counties will pay a fee based on the amount of "impervious surfaces" on their property. It is supposed to raise about $482 million annually. Satellite imagery will help counties comply with the law, designed to reduce runoff into the Chesapeake Bay. Call it the 'Drones for the Bay' program. The "Free State" is a Petri dish for progressive causes...

You need to go to this URL and watch the video!! ... some illegal aliens dreaming about free health care, “because health happens when we dream together”. If wishing will give us free healthcare for all, why stop at our borders? Why not get it for everyone in the world? I wish that everyone in the world could have the the very best healthcare there is, for free. Don’t you? I wish unicorns would just fly it around everywhere.

I woke up this morning and received a breathless email from Cecilie Surasky, the Deputy Director of “Jewish Voices for Peace.” The email gleefully announced that in anticipation of the AIPAC Policy Conference in DC and the arrival of thousands of Israel activists from across the US, JVP arranged for the placement of 100 large back-lit ads to be plastered across the busiest Metro stations in Washington, D.C. The ads read as follows “Jewish and proud and AIPAC doesn’t speak for me – President Obama and Congress: Most Jewish Americans are pro-peace. AIPAC is not.” The email then urges JVP’s...

Martin Dempsey, the Army general who's now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a division commander when he got to Baghdad in 2003 and climbed into a Humvee for his first trip off base. "I asked the driver ... who he was (and) where he was from," the general remembers, "and I slapped the turret gunner around the leg and I said, 'Who are you?' And she leaned down and said, 'I'm Amanda.' "And I said, 'Ah, OK.' So female turret gunner protecting division commander." One of the things that makes a good commander is the speed...

There are people on both sides of the gun debate who make good points. And then there are people who have absolutely no clue. In that latter camp we might include Senator Lamar Alexander, who thinks that, when it comes to people getting shot to death, "video games are a bigger problem than guns." We might also include at least some of the 495-plus people who have shared a picture of me on Facebook and tried to make me a poster child for all that is wrong with people who like guns. These people—some of them confused, some of them...

With California mandating that 33 percent of electricity be generated from renewables by the end of the decade, there are 227 proposed solar projects in the pipeline statewide.. Coupled with wind and other renewables they would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of California's power needs on an average summer day... Developers are flocking to flat farmland near power transmission lines, but agriculture interests, environmental groups and even the state are concerned that there is no official accounting of how much of this important agricultural region's farmland is being taken out of production. Planning department records in four of...