Free Republic

I cant' tell you how many emails I've received from readers frustrated with the GOP not being more vocal about obvious voter fraud in this past election. Well, as I discovered today, there is a reason behind it: The GOP is legally barred from it according to a court ruling from nearly thirty years ago. Bob Unruh writes at WND: A race-based consent decree negotiated by Democrats against the Republican National Committee a generation ago still has tied the RNC’s hands, and GOP officials could be cited for contempt – or worse – if they try to make sure American...

Baltimore’s top law enforcement and political leaders on Wednesday vowed a sweeping overhaul of the city Police Department after a searing rebuke of the agency’s practices, which the Justice Department said regularly discriminated against black residents in poor communities. Officials promised improved community relations, a purge of race-based policing and a modernized department that better trains officers and holds them accountable. But they warned that reforming an agency entrenched in a culture of unconstitutional policing would be a slow process and could cost millions of dollars. “Police reform won’t happen overnight or by chance,” Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney...

Much of the conservative world seems shocked that the RNC is constrained from doing anything about voter fraud. The left wing blogosphere is laughing at everyone who didn’t know this already. To me, it’s old old news – sort of like the abolition of poll taxes. In fact, the abolition of poll taxes in 1964 is closer in time to the consent decree that the RNC entered with the DNC in 1982 than we are today distant from that same 1982 consent decree. Simply, under the terms of the order, the RNC cannot engage in ballot security efforts to combat...

LOS ANGELES-- The Los Angeles Police Department has been released from a long running decree after a federal judge decided the department had reformed significantly from prior corruption charges. The city was forced into the consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice after the Rampart corruption scandal and brutality complaints. The agreement, which aimed to improve the LAPD's policing standards, meant more than 100 reforms to the department, the tightening of internal checks on officers' conduct, improved training, increased oversight of the anti-gang unit at the center of the Rampart corruption scandal, and a ban on racial profiling. The...

A federal judge rebuked Los Angeles Police Department officials Monday by extending for three years a consent decree that orders reforms meant to counter a decade of corruption and brutality complaints. In a decision that caught leaders by surprise, U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess flatly rejected the city's plea that the five-year agreement — set to expire June 15 — be extended for just two years and narrowed in scope to the 30% of reforms not yet enacted. The agreement was largely born from the Rampart Division scandal in 1999 but included elements that police critics have been calling...