Free Republic

I’ve had many infuriating conversations with my incredibly conservative, Republican stepdad. He’s laughed in my face for pointing out with facts the inadequacy of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election. We argued over the political reputation of Obama in 2008. We’ve also silently disagreed about immigration reform, birth control, gun control, and health care reform, because we both know how that conversation will end. Every time I turn on the television in his and my mother’s home it’s already on Fox News. Every time I get in his car the sexually frustrated, diabetic voice of Rush Limbaugh rattles the dash...

Her words, not mine. Alice Walker is the author of The Color Purple, The Color Purple, The Color Purple, and probably some other books. She also has some really awesome ideas about science. But first things first. Last week, Walker wrote about her deliberately factless, emotion-based reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict. It was on the Guardian‘s “Comment Is Free” blog, because of course it was: "I deliberately watched none of the Zimmerman trial, just as I have deliberately not read a draft of a new book by Jen Marlowe and others, soon to be published: I Am Troy Davis,...

Listening to the lead prosecutor’s final argument in the Zimmerman case, it’s hard to believe he really wanted a conviction. Lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda lost focus from the moment he opened his mouth and began: “A teenager is dead. He is dead through no fault of his own. He is dead because another man made assumptions….” Not only is de la Rionda’s voice flat, his tone subdued and resigned, he begins by presenting the victim as an abstraction, characterizing him in a neutral, almost dismissive way as “a teenager,” who also happens to be dead, which everyone knew...

People need to shut up about Zimmerman being found “Not-Guilty.” It might have been sh*tty, but it wasn’t a “Miscarriage” of justice. Rodney King was a “Miscarriage” of Justice (even though he was a dirt-bag). Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was a “Miscarriage” of justice. What happened to Malcolm X was a “Miscarriage” of justice. This whole thing was just a sh*tty fiasco inflated by the media that left one young man dead, and ruined the life of the other. Both sides of this issue are stupid, and I’m outraged at the social media posts from both. Martin’s side for...

A Far Rockaway man was arrested last week for making a Facebook status update with the hashtag "killallwhites," which a nervous NYPD interpreted as "making a terroristic threat," a felony. In the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict, Remel Newson's status update caught the eye of an NYPD officer monitoring Facebook; it read: "BLAC NIGGAS CNT GET NO TYPE OF JUSTICE FU**IN WIT DESE CRACCER'S #KILLALL WHITES DATS DA TYPE OF SH*T I'M ON F**K DIS BEEF SH*T LET'S KILL COPS ND NEIGHBO RHOOD WATCHER #FACTS DAT." Cops were at Newson's door with hours. According to investigators, Newson, 20, admitted...

Oh, Craigslist. You are so helpful for finding last-minute tickets, used vinyl records, and perfectly good furniture. You’re also good for reminding us that ridiculous people exist. In this case, specifically, people who enjoy watching actors role-play the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin altercation at a birthday party on Long Island. “HI MY FRIENDS AND I ARE HAVING A PARTY THIS WEEKEND AND WE ARE LOOKING TO HIRE TWO ACTORS TO COME IN AND ROLE PLAY THE TREVYON MARTIN/GEORGE ZIMMERMAN ALTERCATION,” the spelling-error-laden advertisement reads screams in all-caps. The ad doesn’t specify whether the actors should be lookalikes or just people of...

The moment the NAACP, the Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil rights organizations publicly demanded that the Justice Department conduct a federal probe into the Trayvon Martin slaying and George Zimmerman’s acquittal for killing him with a view toward bringing civil rights charges against him, volumes were written and spoken as to why the department supposedly couldn’t or shouldn’t prosecute him. There’s one problem with all this. Most argue that charging Zimmerman with a hate crime in the Martin killing won’t fly because there’s no basis for that from the apparent evidence. But that’s not the only reason, in fact...

Sen. Ted Cruz rejected questions Sunday over his eligibility to be president, saying that although he was born in Canada “the facts are clear” that he’s a U.S. citizen. “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen by birth,” Cruz told ABC. “I’m not going to engage in a legal debate.” The Texas senator was born in Calgary, where his mother and father were working in the oil business. His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba in the 1950s to study at the University of Texas and subsequently became a naturalized citizen. President...

A new system for human organs harvest will soon go into operation nationwide. Haihua, of NHFPC, said patients currently on organ waiting lists will (also) be ranked as harvest candidates. The system will be used in line with organ (collection and) worldwide distribution. NHFPC rules for obtainment, distribution will make the distribution process more transparent...and make the new system compulsory, Deng said. China has about 3,000,000 patients suffering from missing organ(s) each year, but only around 10,000 organ are found. It is no secret, executed prison (donated human organs) supply 96% of the American dental, jaw-bone / tooth-bone, soylent smile...

It’s been difficult to write anything about the George Zimmerman trial verdict that doesn’t begin and end with profanity-laced diatribe topped with rage. As if the reality that there is Florida legislation — and similar laws in some 20 other states — that effectively protects prejudice-holding vigilantes like George Zimmerman and their hunting and slaughtering of Black children wasn’t infuriating enough, making it even worse is the smug behavior of the cast of characters who serve as a support system for that murderer. At their press conference, Zimmerman’s attorneys Mark O’Mara and Don West practically threw their win in the...

How is it that in this day and age, a man can kill an unarmed teenager in cold blood, get acquitted and then get his gun back a few days later? How is it that a man who cannot pass the tests necessary to become a police officer—possibly due to failing the psychological portion of the testing—can get a gun permit? How is it possible that George Zimmerman can walk this earth today legally armed, while Trayvon Martin is buried six feet under due to a bullet that came out of Zimmerman’s gun? Only in America. The Kel Tec PF-9...

The history of America is still being written and the acquittal of George Zimmerman of second degree murder by a Florida jury of five White women and one Hispanic female in the mindless shooting death of 17-year-old African American teenager Trayvon Martin is now an important chapter in that history that gave birth to centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. Like so many, I was shocked by the verdict and could not comprehend how in 2013, a jury purporting to be part of balancing the scales of justice would let go a martial arts trained man with a gun who...

Within days of Trayvon Martin's killing at the hands of neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, the 17-year-old's story became, in part, a story about how he looked and what he was wearing. This continued during George Zimmerman's trial, which ended on Saturday with Zimmerman being acquitted of murder, as well as manslaughter. Martin had been reduced to a handful of anecdotal sketches: He was wearing a hoodie; he was suspended from school for smoking marijuana; he posed for a photo sporting a grill and trying to look tough for the camera. In short, elements of hip-hop and teen culture now embodied...

Energy Update: Speculation on the Cold Fusion Front July 16, 2013 lenrosen434 C omments What is cold fusion as we understand it today? The answer is: “nobody really knows.” It is certainly not nuclear fusion as we understand it because the transmutation of elements as described by those who purport to have developed cold fusion reactors defies the laws of physics. Once the quest of medieval alchemists, transmutation of the elements sought a way to convert dross metals like lead and turn them into gold. Well it didn’t work then and it doesn’t work today, that is, unless you compress...

I have seen this movie before and hummed its title theme in my nightmares. On April 7, 2001, 19-year-old Timothy Thomas, wanted on a bundle of minor seatbelt infractions, ran from Cincinnati Police through Over-the-Rhine and was shot dead by Officer Stephen Roach in a pitch-black alcove on Republic Street. The neighborhood’s scars have been scrubbed clean by development, but anger and confusion erupted into riots and curfews resulting in lawsuits, a federally monitored Collaborative Agreement and sweeping police reforms. On February, 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, seemingly a world away in a Sanford, Fla., neighborhood that wasn’t his own,...

Defense attorneys knew a jury of five white women and one Hispanic woman would find it difficult to identify with the humanity of a Black teenage boy.When I was a kid in Florida, I remember the old folks used to play Bingo. As far as I could tell, it was purely a game of luck. If they called your number, you simply moved your chip onto the appropriate space on the board. But what if a player controlled the boards that were distributed or the numbers that were called. That would obviously raise a ruckus, of course, unless it was...

While those of us who see the injustice, ponder the outcome, reconstruct events in our head, and search for answers, the real problem is not the system it is the lack of integrity of those that we trust within the process. Humanity and Justice call for us to answer the question, how can a child be killed by someone we know was the aggressor and six jurors return with not guilty? Many people thought this was the worst thing that could have happened, but it was Sybrina Fulton’s words that brought sobriety to us, the worst thing that could have...

Let's set aside the issue of race for just a moment in the Trayvon Martin case. Strip away the hyperbole on the left and the right and cut to the facts. Here is what the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial tells us. In the state of Florida, a grown man can stalk a teenage boy whom he thinks "is up to no good" in his gated community. He can disobey a police dispatcher who tells him he doesn't need to follow the 17-year-old. When the teen, who happens to be visiting the man's neighbor, gets upset that...

A MAN was rushed to a hospital after a snake bit his penis while he was relieving himself in a toilet, according to hospital officials in Israel. The man, 35, of northern Israel was bitten on Friday after the snake suddenly appeared from inside the toilet. The man suffered minor injuries from the bite; fortunately the snake was not venomous. -snip- It is 'snake season' currently in the Middle East and among the most dangerous are the black snake or desert cobra, the horned desert viper, the Palestinian viper which is the most common poisonous snake in Israel, the saw-scaled...

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