Free Republic

Austin’s city council voted this afternoon to slash $11.3 million from the city’s police budget. Note the tone in this piece, which is supposed to be a news story from local station KVUE: The proposed budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year of $4.2 billion – the same size as last year’s – adjusts to new fiscal constraints and community expectations, with focused investments in core programs and City infrastructure, according to the city manager’s office. The proposed $1.1 billion general fund budget supports re-imagining public safety through a reallocation of police funding to health, housing, and other critical social services....

A discussion among students at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, La., about a mathematical symbol led to a police investigation and a search of one of the student’s homes, according to the Allen Parish Sheriff’s Office. On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign. Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by itself equals another number, looked like a gun. After several students made comments...

Social media lit up Wednesday evening with complaints about former Hootie & the Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker performing "White Christmas" at the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at New York City's Rockefeller Square. Some activists had threatened to attack the ceremony after a grand jury declined to indict a New York police officer in the death of unarmed Eric Garner during a confrontation over cigarette sales in July. The ceremony went ahead under police protection and Rucker performed "White Christmas," a classic written by a Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin. The song refers to snow, not to race, in recalling...