Free Republic

Abigail Disney has weighed in on Kobe Bryant's controversial past, after actress Evan Rachel Wood and a Washington Post journalist were berated for tweeting about a rape allegation against him from 2003, just hours after his death in a helicopter crash Sunday. Disney - whose grandfather Roy O. Disney co-founded The Walt Disney Company - tweeted: 'I haven't said anything about Kobe so far because I felt some time needed to pass before weighing in. But yes, it's time for the sledgehammer to come out. The man was a rapist. Deal with it.'

No two athletes of color have been more in the news this past week than the amiable, biracial Kansas Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Los Angeles Lakers basketball great Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash Sunday. What the two shared was an independence of spirit that has apparently made leftists uneasy. In both cases, this spirit manifested itself after the 2013 trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Said Mahomes at the time, "This case was an absolute horrible tragedy, however there was no criminal activity that occurred." While alive, Kobe Bryant caught...

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." Thomas, appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews, was reacting to a preceding monologue in which Matthews praised Obama’s speech: "I think the President's speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful...But what I liked about the President's speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility...The question now is whether the...