Free Republic

Education advocates on Monday called on Gov. Larry Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to increase funding for the city's schools, arguing the recent rioting in Baltimore shows the money is desperately needed. Without the funds, city schools will be forced to cut teachers, critical programs and student services, the advocates said. "Baltimore is not getting sufficient education funding to provide for all of our children's needs," said Bebe Verdery, education reform director at the ACLU of Maryland. The coalition includes the city's parent-teacher association and the city's charter schools organization, among other groups.

Hold your breath forever waiting for Obama’s Justice Department to take action or even make mention of this hate group urging to kill white babies. Can you fathom what would happen if the colors were reversed here?It’s easy to call these hateful ignoramus’ but I think the important factor here is that they’ve become emboldened by the fact that their racist and violent actions and words in the past have been met with no resistance from this White House. Our guy Joe Newby has the story: In a video posted at Breitbart.com on Tuesday, a New Black Panther Leader identified...

ThugThere is a split in America and it’s as wide as the Grand Canyon. We can look at what’s been going on in Baltimore and depending on what team we’re on, we see what we want to see. Liberals, black and white, see poor people who have had enough. It wasn’t a riot to some on the left. It was an “uprising,” the actual word used by a left wing professor on CNN. Conservatives, yes, mainly white, but more than a few blacks too, see dysfunction. They see crime and drugs and kids dropping out of school. What entrepreneur, they...

The popular and outspoken Israeli singer Amir Benayoun sharply criticized US President Barack Obama in a new song and went on to compare him with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, to which the US Embassy in Tel Aviv responded with a condemnation. The embassy's spokesperson told Walla!, "we were sorry to hear the repulsive descriptions. We condemn any provocative and racist language, whether it is against the president of the United States or against anyone else, and we believe that most Israelis think like us." In the new song, which Benayoun posted in a video on Facebook this week, the...

One of the Baltimore police officers who arrested Freddie Gray wants the police department and prosecutor to produce a knife that was the reason for the arrest, saying in court papers that it is an illegal weapon. The motion was filed Monday by attorneys for Officer Edward Nero in Baltimore District Court. Nero is charged with second-degree assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment — charges that can only be proven if Gray was wrongly arrested, said Andy Alperstein, a Baltimore attorney who has represented police officers but is not involved in the Gray case. If the knife was illegal,...

Two months ago, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by a professor of philosophy titled, "Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts." This is how the professor began his piece: "What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it's wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was." The problem, as the professor described it, is that a generation of Americans has been taught that there is no moral truth. There may be scientific truth and...

A large group of black teens rampaged through Charleston neighborhoods, targeting innocent people early Sunday. The Post and Courier reported: As many as 60 teens were roaming Charleston streets attacking pedestrians and drivers early Sunday, witnesses told police dispatchers in 911 calls released Tuesday. All the teens were black, according to witnesses, and all but one of the people attacked were white. Still, it’s unclear if the attacks were racially motivated or sparked by the unrest in Baltimore, which followed the recent shooting death of Walter Scott, a black man, by a white North Charleston police officer. [...] Terror could...

Police are in the process of towing hundreds of cars in the West Village section of New York to clear the way for an Obama fundraiser at the townhouse of "Sex & the City" star, Sarah Jessica Parker. Anna Wintour of The Devil Wears Parda hatefulness will host. Expected guests: Justin Timberlake, Harvey Weinstein, Tommy Hilfiger. Several blocks west of Greenwich Ave. to the river are being cleared of cars and lined with metal barricades. Hundreds of "special detail" police are to run interferencefor the $40,000 per plate event. Cost to taxpayers - an estimated $2.5 to $3 Million.

Few things undermine the foundations of a just society more than people who have been granted the power to prosecute acting not on the basis of the facts and the law, but out of political motives. To which Mika Brzezinski says . . . meh. On today's Morning Joe, there was a discussion of the possibility that Baltimore prosecutor overcharged the police officers in the Freddie Gray case. And a clip was played of Mosby repeating the politically-correct phrase of the moment: that the rioters were not "thugs." After which Brzezinski declared: "You can't get a chance if there isn't...

Nothing sharpens the focus on the Unbridgeable Crevice separating th*g (the word “thug” is now banned) apologists on the far left from those of us who use words because they mean something than Baltimore’s self-immolation. It’s really a tale of two cities, depending on who’s telling the tale. The borderline-Jacobins at Slate, who believe spanking is child abuse, and personal responsibility is out of fashion, try to explain looting away as a social phenomenon: “Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood?” The reason, I think, is likely the same reason that poor black Americans in cities across...

Electronic music pioneer Moby (real name Richard Melville Hall) went on quite the Twitter tirade on Saturday, railing against “racist, xenophobic, ignorant” Republicans who “support war” and “hate immigrants.” The musician, who has campaigned for and written open letters to President Obama, began his rant in standard fashion, calling Republicans “loathsome” and linking to a Los Angeles Times article about NASA funding:

Over the past 24 hours, the Internet has exploded with commentary and armchair analysis on the riots in Baltimore. The civil unrest started just hours after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a citizen whose spinal cord was injured “mysteriously” while in the back of a police van. Gray, an African American, died on April 19. At a press conference on Friday, BPD Commissioner Anthony Batts admitted at least one glaring failure of his department: that Gray did not get the medical care he ought to have received while in police custody. Batts, a self-described reformist, forcefully asserted that he’s doing...

[Which party governed Baltimore for 50 years? Hint: It wasn't the GOP. This is the result!] Baltimore Riots As Criminal Culture Writ Large By Edward Hudgins The rioting in Baltimore represents criminal culture writ large. It is what happens every day on a smaller scale in poor minority communities: theft, vandalism, and violence. The flames in Baltimore hideously illuminate the fact that the culture of the welfare state creates the criminals and rioters that plague this city in my native state. The cycle of poverty and violenceThe ostensive cause of the riots was outrage at the death of Freddie Gray,...

For most Americans, including President Barack Obama, the term "thug" seemed an appropriate appellation for the rioters who destroyed businesses, homes and other property in Baltimore this week. Now liberals are crying foul. The Baltimore Sun has editorialized, "Having city leaders apply it to the high school students and others who rioted throughout Baltimore tells the offenders that they weren't just wrong in what they did, but that they're also worthless because of it -- something too many people already believe." Baltimore's mayor, after initially using the term, apologized on Twitter: "That night we saw misguided young people who need...

The sheriff's office says it expects the six police officers charged in Freddie Gray's death to turn themselves in at the Baltimore jail hours after charges were announced. Maj. Samuel Cogen with the Baltimore City Sheriff's Office said Friday that his agency was processing arrest warrants for the six police officers. The city's chief prosecutor announced the charges earlier Friday.

Obama was RIGHT to call rioters 'thugs' says White House after comedian Larry Whilmore claims it is the new N-word Under fire for a second day over the president's use of the word 'thugs' to describe looters and arsonists trashing Baltimore, the White House refused to give into pressure to apologize. 'I don't think there was any misunderstanding of what the president was trying to communicate,' President Barack Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest said today. 'And I think that, if anything else, is a strong endorsement of the words he chose.' Comedian Larry Wilmore gave new life to a debate over...

As Baltimore burns, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is turning the flip-flop into a high art form, to the point where she is now apologizing to the rioters for calling them “thugs.” She stated early Monday that police were instructed to allow “those who wished to destroy space to do that.” By Monday evening, facing heavy criticism from residents and business owners, she walked back from those comments. As the city was in flames Monday night, Rawlings-Blake spoke freely on CNN about “thugs” and “criminals” who were destroying what so many had worked so hard to build, even as Marxist professor Marc...

A pack of unruly teenagers who went on a rampage in downtown Charleston early Sunday morning, attacking and injuring some people, illuminated a problem: Department spokesman Charles Francis said officers were dispatched to 11 calls about disturbances on the peninsula from around midnight to 2 a.m. Sunday. He said they didn’t take some reports until two days later because they needed to respond to other calls. One man who would not give his name for fear the group might retaliate, said he was struck twice in the face. But when a policeman responded to the call, after asking if the...

Hours after residents of Baltimore, Maryland, set the city aflame, President Barack Obama took to the Rose Garden to explain in professorial style just why America, under his administration, keeps watching young black men loot buildings and attack police officers. "We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals -- primarily African-American, often poor -- in ways that have raised troubling questions. And it comes up, it seems like, once a week now, or once every couple weeks," Obama said, proclaiming that police brutality against blacks amounted to a "slow-rolling crisis." He added,...

Where are the black fathers in Baltimore? They don‘t exist. I saw black mothers in the streets. I saw black male teens. But no black fathers trying to keep their kids off the streets and away from violence. Where is Barack Obama? Our nation’s first black president has been silent as blacks tear apart a major America city. He’s quick to weigh in and assign blame every time one black kid gets shot by a white cop. But not a word on the day thousands of blacks rampage and terrorize a city? Not a word ever about black-on-black crime? As...