Free Republic

In a great reverse Black migration, Brookings data says four of the top five states for Black population gains since 2010 are Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. Black people are driving U-Hauls to Texas, Georgia and Florida despite voter restrictions. A new Republican majority on North Carolina’s supreme court is reconsidering redistricting and voting restrictions ruled illegal by the court’s prior Democratic majority. Florida banned an Advanced Placement African American studies course. Texas and Florida are ending diversity, equity and inclusion in state agencies, and limiting the teaching of race in schools. Some observers, such New York Times columnist...

KNOXVILLE, TN—A southern man was immediately rushed to the hospital yesterday after being served unsweetened tea, believing it to be sweet tea. The ambulance arrived at Litton’s restaurant at approximately 2:15pm after being called by another restaurant patron. The man was found completely unresponsive due to an immense shock to his senses. According to others having lunch at the time, the man seemed to be perfectly normal and healthy, until he took a small sip of his drink. “He was just sitting there enjoying his meal, until all of a sudden he just violently collapsed onto the floor, spilling food...

MOBILE, AL—A California man who was visiting some friends in Alabama shocked the group when he committed blatant cultural appropriation, saying the word "y'all" even though he was born and raised in Los Angeles. "Listen up -- that ain't cool," said his buddy, Cletus Miller, after the group had recovered from hearing the offensively appropriated word. "Our culture ain't yours to appropriate as you see fit, partner."

Nearly fifty years after it was written, “Free Bird” is still the signature concert closer for the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose final farewell tour wraps up in October in Manchester, Tennessee. Founding members Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins wrote the song in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1970, and it wasn’t long before “Free Bird” and its extended guitar solo near the end became one of the band’s most well-known tunes and a live-show favorite.

The cycles of history can be very interesting indeed. The American South is the home of America’s original sin. It is the one region of this nation that turned its back on the principles of the Founding and did so for decade after decade — imposing first the tyranny of slavery, then the oppression of Jim Crow. Even after the Civil War, the South was a virtual nation-within-a-nation, a world apart where only white citizens could fully enjoy the blessings of liberty. And, make no mistake, the South paid for its sins. The Civil War decimated its male population and...

Can somebody tell Gov. Phil Murphy that the voters elected him to run the state, not to start another civil war? Apparently not. Last week, our governor opened up hostilities between New Jersey and Mississippi over the issue of state flags. One from each of the 50 states flies in Liberty State Park – or did so until Murphy declared Friday that Mississippi’s flag must be removed. It seems that Mississippi’s flag incorporates elements of the Confederate Battle Flag. That’s the flag known mainly for drawing people into long, boring arguments about exactly what it signifies. Fortunately, we here in...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz arrived Jan. 4 at the first stop on a six-day tour of Iowa. The Republican presidential candidate was set to visit 28 counties by bus. (Photo by Patrick Svitek) WASHINGTON — In the more than 200 events he's held since launching his campaign for the White House 10 months ago, Ted Cruz has tested out an unorthodox strategy, one that could rewrite the rules of Republican presidential politics.Since the Texas senator declared his candidacy in March, 40 percent of his public events have taken place in Iowa, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of his travel schedule as of Saturday. But...

Ted Cruz plans to canvass the Super Tuesday nominating states in the week after the next Republican presidential debate. Following Tuesday's debate in Nevada, Cruz will begin a tour of seven states before the Christmas holiday and focus heavily on those belonging in the SEC primary. "SEC" is a reference to the collegiate Southeastern Conference's prominence in NCAA football. The Texas senator will visit Minnesota, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma. "Our 'Take Off with Ted' barnstorming of the March 1st states will fortify our national organization and position us to win on Super Tuesday," said Rick Tyler, Cruz campaign...

Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union. “Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.” The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — On average, the winner of the New Hampshire presidential primary is someone who shook the hands of at least 35 percent of the people who voted for him.Not everyone who shows up and kisses all the babies gets the most votes. But you can’t win without a whole lot of face time. And time is quite a precious commodity to a candidate.So far, Sen. Ted Cruz has spent far more time outside the Granite State. His two-day visit last weekend was his first in three months, and it did not go unnoticed that he’d already made four...

New Yorkers may be rude to tourists, but at least we aren’t the worst. Big Apple residents are only No. 2 in rudeness, taking a back seat to the citizens of Arlington, Texas, according to a puzzling nationwide study. Data analysts at AlchemyAPI, in a study commissioned by air company Stratos Jet Charters, looked at tweets containing the word “tourist” between June 2014 and July 20 of this year.

National Pride is essential to the building of a people - and so is regional pride, state pride, and even being proud of our city or school. It helps to bond us and unite us. But some - especially on the left - believe that this is destructive. They believe that this divides us and creates feelings of superiority. We see this every time they attack a school or sports mascot, the Boy Scouts, and when they say America is not a great nation, only one among many. Thus their attempts to destroy the roots and symbols of pride in...

Michael Tomasky is not content to argue, in the wake of Mary Landrieu's defeat, that Democrats should write off the South as politically-unfriendly territory. In his Daily Beast item of today, Tomasky goes to great lengths to trash the region in the ugliest of terms. "Reactionary, prejudice-infested, fetid, reject[ing] nearly everything that’s good about this country, just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment," is how Tomasky slurs most of the South, saying "almost the entire South" is as he describes it.

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans will again sponsor their annual Robert E. Lee Birthday Commemorative on Saturday January 18, 2014 at the Old Capitol Building, 201 E. Greene St., Milledgeville, Georgia.

In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court arguments over the Voting Rights Act, the geography of racism is once again a topic of debate. None other than Chief Justice John Roberts kicked things off when he asked the act’s defenders—that would be the U.S. government—a 20-word question that brilliantly framed the entire debate: “Is it the government’s submission that the citizens of the South are more racist than the citizens of the North?” Roberts asked, pinning a very ragged tail on a very ugly donkey. Unlike most debates about this question, this one has real implications. The landmark act...

“You can't own a mountain any more than you can own an ocean or a piece of the sky. You hold it in trust. You live on it, you take life from it, and once you're dead, you rest in it.”-- Grandpa Walton

Thieves have snatched a copper sword from the burial site of president Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered leaders in US history, local media reported. The roughly three-foot (90-centimeter) sword was brandished by the statue of a Civil War artillery officer at the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site, located in Springfield, Illinois. The sword was broken off at the handle, The State Journal-Register reported Friday. The theft was apparently the first since 1890, when the same sword was stolen from the statue, the newspaper said. At that time, the sword was made of bronze that largely came from melted-down...

Christmas is about love, forgiveness, old friends, family and the child who became Savior of the world.

...In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party... Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong...

Shortly after Barack Obama won the presidency, the gleefully snarky Web site Gawker.com trumpeted "North Finally Wins Civil War." Speaking on behalf of what Sarah Palin and other conservatives famously dismissed as the "un-American" parts of America, Gawker rejoiced that the South is no longer the big dog of national political discourse, citing the New York Times and other respectable news outlets, which claimed Obama's new Midwestern wave drove old Dixie down. Certainly Washington is minus the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Bob Graham and Elizabeth Dole. President Obama's Cabinet will have the fewest Southerners since the Kennedy administration....