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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump disavowed white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke in a tweet Sunday. "As I stated at the press conference on Friday regarding David Duke- I disavow." Earlier Sunday morning, Trump avoided a question about whether he'd condemn Duke's racism. The GOP front-runner said on CNN's "State of the Union" he didn't know anything about Duke and would need to research his connections before deciding whether he would condemn them. "I have to look at the group. I don't know what group you're talking about," he said. "You wouldn't want me to...

According to Chris Matthews, it's uncertain whether the term Hispanic can properly be used to describe GOP presidential aspirants Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Florida). It's better to say they are "Cuban nationals," offered the Hardball host on his Nov. 11 program. Matthews's remarks came during a roundtable discussion in which Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel was outlining how she believes Cruz will seek to paint fellow Cuban-American Rubio as too moderate for the party's nomination: (video at link) MSNBCHardball Nov. 11, 2015; 7:44 p.m. Eastern AMANDA TERKEL: ...you started to see in the debate last night where they...

Republican opposition to the possible nomination of Susan Rice to be secretary of state is showing signs of cracking. Arizona Sen. John McCain now says he'd be willing to meet with Rice, the current U.N. ambassador, and consider her much-scrutinized explanation about how the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, unfolded. McCain has said GOP senators would do "whatever is necessary" to block Rice if President Barack Obama were to nominate her to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department. On Sunday, McCain was asked on "Fox News Sunday" if Rice could change his mind....

In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt. Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.

UPDATE: Group commits assault, violent robbery on VCU's main campus RICHMOND, Va. -- By: Joe Macenka | Richmond Times-Dispatch , Robert Zullo | Richmond Times-Dispatch Published: August 22, 2012 Updated: August 22, 2012 - 2:34 PM RICHMOND, Va. -- Police are searching today for a group of about 15 young men believed to have punched one passerby and robbed and beaten another in rapid succession on Virginia Commonwealth University's main downtown Richmond campus. Neither victim was seriously injured in the two attacks, which happened along Shafer Street on the Monroe Park campus about 2:55 a.m. VCU and Richmond police described...

When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks — beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work — that might seem to have been news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn't. "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Channel was the first major television program to report this incident. Yet this story is not just a Norfolk story, either in what happened or in how the media and the authorities have...

NBC has launched an internal probe after running an edited version of the 911 call from George Zimmerman -- the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin -- that made Zimmerman sound racist. "We have launched an internal investigation into the editorial process surrounding this particular story," the network said in a statement to the Washington Post on Monday. NBC's "Today" show ran the edited audio of George Zimmerman's phone call to a police dispatcher in which Zimmerman says: "'This guy looks like he's up to no good … he looks black."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell on New Year's Day made it clear to Nightly News viewers that her Obama-loving network will continue using the race card to assist the current White House resident's reelection. In a brief segment about the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Mitchell said "the rap" on the Hawkeye state is that "it doesn't represent the rest of the country - too white, too evangelical, too rural" Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/01/02/andrea-mitchell-iowa-too-white-too-evangelical-too-rural#ixzz1iMDxZzyc

Mr. Cain raised more than $5 million through September. Information on the financial activity since that time won’t be disclosed until January, but the campaign said it raised $9 million over a few weeks alone. The funds allowed Mr. Cain and associates to dine and travel in style, using $350,000 on private chartered air in a few weeks, spending thousands at hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton and the Four Seasons, and eating largely steak dinners, records show. One of the campaign’s top recipients was T.H.E New Voice, a company set up to sell Mr. Cain’s books and motivational talks, which...

Karen Finney is not just any Democrat; she was the spokeswoman for the Democrat National Committee, served in the Clinton White House, was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate race, and is a veteran of four Presidential Campaigns. Tasked with analyzing Herman Cain's surge in the GOP's Presidential campaign for MSNBC last week, Finney offered up the most outrageous, insulting, demeaning single sentence we have ever heard – particularly by someone who supposedly speaks for an entire national political party. "I think he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel that they're not...

The author who calls himself simply Toure -- a regular guest on MSNBC, and before that on CNN -- is throwing rhetorical bricks at Herman Cain for Time magazine. His article is headlined "Is Herman Cain the Most Unctuous Black Man Alive? Why the Hermanator experience is making me sick." Toure compared Cain to a circus clown, called him a "buffoon," compared him to "rancid, spoiled, stinky, curdled milk" and dissed him (in the liberal mind) by calling him "the Black Sarah Palin." In the midst of that, he somehow scolds Cain for "sinking to teenage-level disses." He began: This...

Gender and race will loom large when Barack Obama or John McCain has a chance to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. ADVERTISEMENT With only one woman and no Hispanics on the court, the next president will feel pressure -- and perhaps a desire -- to diversify the nine-member court. ``Regardless of who is elected president, there will be strong sentiments in favor of appointing a woman or someone who would reflect other elements of diversity such as an Hispanic or African-American,'' said Theodore Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general who heads McCain's advisory committee on judicial appointments. Six justices...

Hitting what is likely to be a media refrain in the general election, Bloomberg News Service reporter Heidi Przybyla dredged up the outdated "Archie Bunker" character to imply that white people who refuse to support Barack Obama do so out of racial animus. "Barack Obama is having trouble with Archie Bunker. [...] The state's white voters aren't 'bigots, but the image they see every day of black America is drugs, crime, guns and violence," she begins, quoting a Cleveland-area Obama supporter. They're not racists of course. Although reading Przybyla's story you'd be hard-pressed to think otherwise:

Books Discussed in this Essay: The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South, by Joseph A. Aistrup. The Rise of Southern Republicans, by Earl Black and Merle Black. From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994, by Dan T. Carter.A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell.The Emerging Republican Majority, by Kevin Phillips. A myth about conservatism is circulating in academia and journalism and has spread to the 2004 presidential campaign. It goes something like this: the Republican Party assembled a national majority by winning over...