Free Republic

A 22-carat dictator: Robert Mugabe has gold coins minted to celebrate his 89th birthday in poverty-stricken Zimbabwe • Four-tier cake made in his honour at Zimbabwe's state house party • Opposition accuses his party supporters of killing 12-year-old boy Zimbabwe is one of the poorest country's on Earth, but clearly despot Robert Mugabe doesn't seem to care on his 89th birthday. The president celebrated it by immortalising himself in freshly minted gold coins and held a lavish party with a giant cake. Guests, including his wife, first lady Grace, tucked into the four-tier treat made in his honour at the...

An Academy Award-winning actor and a famed stand up comedian will attend a weekend event in Miami in remembrance of Trayvon Martin, a law firm representing the slain teen's family has announced. The Tallahassee-based Parks & Crump firm announced that Jamie Foxx and Cedric the Entertainer will attend the "Day of Remembrance Community Peace Walk and Forum," which is being hosted by foundation created by the teen's parents. The event, which starts 10 a.m. Saturday at Ives Estate Park in Miami, will focus on "motivating youth on peaceful conflict resolutions instead of gun violence," the firm said in a statement....

Democrats can't agree on successor to Jesse Jackson Jr.By Rick Pearson Tribune reporter 5:22 p.m. CST, December 15, 2012 Democratic leaders spent four hours Saturday listening to 16 candidates audition for the party's endorsement to replace former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., but were unable to solidify behind one contender. After 90 minutes of deliberations, South Side and south suburban committeemen voted for an “open primary,” after Thornton Township chairman Frank Zuccarelli failed to win a majority of the weighted vote on behalf of veteran state Sen. Donne Trotter of Chicago. Trotter spoke the longest and also gained the most...

Shrewsbury resident Carl Lund. Northborough, MA – When Carl Lund saw a table set up on Main Street in Northborough on Friday, Dec. 7, he was “disgusted” he said, to see a poster of President Barack Obama, depicted as Adolf Hitler, prominently displayed. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Lund, a resident of Shrewsbury and a Vietnam veteran, said. Lund then got into a verbal confrontation with the two men manning the table, who Northborough police identified as Ian Brinkley and Jared Caskill. “[Brinkley and Caskill] claimed it was a peaceful, political display with literature,” Lund said. “I...

<p>The union official who sucker punched Steven Crowder today in Michigan has been identified. His name is Tony.</p>

Hector Camacho, a boxer known for his lightning-quick hands and flamboyant personality who emerged from a delinquent childhood in New York’s Spanish Harlem to become a world champion in three weight classes, died on Saturday in San Juan, P.R., after being shot while sitting in a parked car. He was 50.

LAKELAND, Fla. - A bay area electrical lineman who got attacked while helping restore power in the storm-ravaged area of New York will likely need surgery to repair his face. John Applewhite was wrapping up a long day Friday with his 24-member crew from Lakeland Electric, when they pulled into a restaurant for a much needed dinner break. That's when a stranger drove up, yelled something, and took a swing at John.

Critics are harping that Barack Obama is running a campaign that in its coarseness, smallness, and pettiness [i] marks a new low in American politics. Why are they so outraged? He has behaved this way ever since he moved into the Oval Office. Many people have criticized Barack Obama for his failures as president. His economic record is pathetic: trillions of dollars in new debt; anemic growth juiced up only by massive deficit spending, endless printing of money; zero interest rates that have proven so harmful to senior savers; regulations that are smothering businesses; a stimulus bill that reward Democratic...

In the wake of the Daily Caller’s release of President Obama cheering Rev. Wright and invoking the race card in various ways, our friend Morgen Richmond decided the time was right to release some little-known Obama video of his own. He authorized me to release the video here first. The following clips are from 2002. Obama is speaking in a church at a 2002 Martin Luther King Jr. Day memorial service. The full speech is here, and by and large it is a nice speech by a rising politician. Obama speaks about the need for empathy in society, about taking...

Serena Williams does the CRIP walk after winning a Tennis Match.. Sorry but no glory in this action. It demeans her success and promotes the CRIPS who are nothing but murderers, drug dealers, extortionists and pimps. Its beneath her. like takimg a public dump on World Wide TV...... Soo dissapointed in her. See source url for video

Fighting back tears, the parents of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin stood beside the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and relatives of Chicago area murder victims on Saturday to stress the need to end “senseless gun violence.” “We are the voice of Trayvon Martin,” Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton said. “He’s not here to speak for himself so we as his parents have decided instead of sitting back and not doing anything, this is what we have decided to do, to help our community and to help other parents.” As she spoke about her son, Fulton also detailed her family’s Justice for...

BIRMINGHAM - AL - Family and friends are in mourning, the funeral service was held at Living Stone Temple church, community members tell me they're not too happy that no arrests have been made. During the service, Walkers family was overcome with emotion during the ceremony and had to step outside. Many mourners wore red, black and white t-shirts with walker's picture saying "In loving memory of Tez". Dr. Al B. Sutton Jr. led a sermon preaching out the book of mark and had a direct message to young adults as well as the parents in the building. "Our son's,...

... In papers filed with the Supreme Court, administration lawyers have warned of “extraordinary disruption’’ if Medicare is forced to unwind countless transactions that are based on payment changes required by more than 20 separate sections of the Affordable Care Act. Opponents say the whole law must go. The administration counters that even if it strikes down the insurance mandate, the court should preserve most of the rest of the legislation. That would leave in place its changes to Medicare as well as a major expansion of Medicaid coverage.

The mother of a 13-year-old boy fatally shot when police say he tried to rob a couple said she is in shock that her son is dead -- and even more so at the circumstances surrounding his death. "I don't want it put out like he was a bad person or a mean person, because he wasn't," Latonya Walker, 38, said Tuesday. "This is not him, not who he was. Anybody that knew Ja'Quares knows that." Birmingham police said Ja'Quares Cortez Walker was in a car that pulled into the parking lot of the gated Skyview Condominiums at 407 Skyview...

Metta World Peace was subdued and contrite in the Los Angeles Lakers' locker room, apologizing to Oklahoma City's James Harden for throwing the elbow that sent them both to the locker room in the second quarter. They both missed a beauty of a game that could echo into the postseason for two division leaders.

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - LeMaricus Davidson pleaded guilty Wednesday to robbing a Pizza Hut a day after the Christian-Newsom murders, in which he faces a second trial. Davidson, who had a felony record, could receive eight years for the robbery. He pleaded to charges of aggravated robbery, aggravated assault and possession of gun. He will serve his term concurrent with whatever sentence he's expected to receive for the slayings of Channon Christian and her boyfriend, Chris Newsom.The couple was carjacked on January 7, 2007, taken to Davidson's rental house, tortured and killed, according to investigators. Davidson is again facing the death penalty in the case. He and three defendants were...

<p>As the media coverage of Trayvon Martin's death turns more political, with President Obama calling for national "soul-searching" and Newt Gingrich and others on the right calling his remarks "disgraceful," the politicizers at the Daily Kos are upset their preferred Racist America narrative is being questioned.</p>

The teen was suspended from school three times He was on suspension when he was shot in February, after officials caught him with a 'marijuana pipe' and a baggie with drug residue Trayvon was kicked out of school in October for graffiti after he was allegedly caught with a 'burglary tool' and a bag full of women's jewelry Officials also suspended him once for skipping school and tardiness Tearful parents say their son is now the victim of a smear campaign New poll shows 73 percent of Americans think Zimmerman should be arrested Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was allegedly suspended...

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered, authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel. That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. Zimmerman has not spoken publicly about what happened, but that night, Feb. 26, and in later meetings he described and re-enacted for police what he says happened. In his version of events, he had...

CARY -- Seated in his wheelchair, Nolan Turner, 12, staked out his neighborhood Thursday evening to sell water bottles and raise money to bring his wheelchair basketball team to his elementary school. “Everybody at school has been asking me what it’s like to (play basketball) in a wheelchair, and I want to show them,” the Briarcliff Elementary fifth-grader said. He had already collected more than $250 – kept in a bucket – of the $1,000 needed to bring the experience of playing wheelchair basketball to his schoolmates. But as he began to work the neighborhood near High Meadow Drive about...