Free Republic

Channel 2′s Michael Seiden was in the courtroom when Brian Steel was taken into custody after he refused requests to answer how he heard about a “secret” meeting between prosecutors, the judge and a key witness in the YSL trial, Kenneth Copeland, on Monday morning. Judge Ural Glanville gave Steel until 5 p.m. to disclose the source of information about the meeting, arguing that Steel wasn’t supposed to have any communication with a state witness sworn to testify. Despite facing a contempt charge, Steel refused to reveal his source, citing client-attorney privilege. Video showed Steel take off his jacket before...

Big media balks at the term "fake news," insisting that they honestly and accurately report the news of the day. Those paying attention to the news can cite numerous examples of fake news, either deliberate misinformation or laziness on the part of reporters. Joel Gilbert, in his book and film of the same name, The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America, describes one of the biggest examples of “fake news” in modern times: that the prosecution’s key witness in the trial of George Zimmerman was in imposter. Joel demonstrated a long-lost art, investigative journalism, and he did...

If I were Trayvon Martin’s parents or his family’s attorneys, I would be very nervous. And if I were the media who covered this case — — I would prepare to be mortified. The coverage of this case was a disgrace from day one. To uncover this staggering fraud, Gilbert did what reporters used to do. He immersed himself in the milieu that produced Trayvon Martin. He reviewed the thousands of text messages, tweets, Facebook and Instagram postings sent and received by Martin and his friends. He interviewed George Zimmerman, the only person who knew, Martin’s final words that revealed...

On Monday. September 16, Joel Gilbert will preview his new documentary, “The Trayvon Hoax,” in the 500-seat Ballroom of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The screening begins at 1 p.m. Admission is free, and Gilbert is encouraging all interested parties to come see for themselves what could be a game-changer in the way the media report racially-charged news. Gilbert’s findings are that significant. Having written a book on the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin — If I Had a Son-- I have been following Gilbert’s progress with interest. In fact, I introduced Gilbert to George Zimmerman, the...

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – A South Florida university awarded an honorary degree to Trayvon Martin, Saturday. Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, took the stage at Florida Memorial University’s commencement in Miami Gardens to receive a posthumous bachelor’s degree in aeronautical science on their son’s behalf. Fulton and Martin said the ceremony was bittersweet, and now they’re passing on an inspirational message to Trayvon’s fellow graduates.

(CNSNews.com) - "Next week, Michelle and I and the girls will be traveling to Selma to pay tribute, not just as a president or a first lady or as African Americans, but as Americans -- to those who changed the course of history at the Edmund Pettus Bridge," President Obama told a gathering at the White House on Thursday. Obama mentioned the "legends and giants of the civil rights movement" as well as "the countless American heroes" who aren't named in the history books, all of whom marched and sang and organized "to change this country for the better." He...

A federal grand jury will meet in downtown Orlando Wednesday to hear testimony about whether Trayvon Martin's civil rights were violated when Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot him in the chest, according to court paperwork.. A U.S. Department of Justice attorney from Washington, D.C., Mark Blumberg, has issued at least one subpoena for Wednesday in the case. Blumberg would not comment on the grand jury session, but the federal panel is to meet at 9 a.m. at the federal courts building on Central Avenue in downtown Orlando to hear evidence in the case. It's not clear how many witnesses...

In the weeks and months after Trayvon Martin was killed, his mother saw 50 different photos painting him as a thug.. It was as if portraying the slain 17-year-old as something he wasn't — a muscle-bound, tattooed rapper, or a young man wearing his pants low and flipping middle fingers with each hand — somehow justified his death, Sybrina Fulton said. "At first, I thought I was at fault myself. I thought maybe it was the hoodie," she said. But Fulton said she soon came to realize that even in 2012, she didn't have to look to her son's sweatshirt...

We knew last year the diversionary activity around the Miami-Dade School Police Department (M-DSPD), which was coordinated, sanctioned and authorized by Miami-Dade School Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, was illegal. Now, however – the entire School Board might be legally responsible for engaging in unlawful conspiracy which resulted from the internal investigation within the M-DSPD and the School Boards’ “willful blindness” to the actual finding(s). The District Public Information Officer, Rolando Martin, has admitted to us the current Records Request delay is a consequence of School Board Legal Counsel evaluating our latest FOIA request. [M-DSPD] officers within the department admitted, under oath,...

Featured Events The Princeton University Orchestra and the University Concert Jazz Ensemble will perform a concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 5 and 6, in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall. The program will include works by Beethoven and Dvorak, a commissioned work by David Sanford and the world premiere of "Ballad for Trayvon Martin" by Anthony Branker, the Anthony H.P. Lee '79 P11 Senior Lecturer in Jazz Studies and director of the Program in Jazz Studies. For tickets call University Ticketing at 609-258-9220.

Rather than thanking a list of friends and colleagues, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis used their American Music Awards acceptance speech to send a message of tolerance on Sunday night. The white rapper accepted his award by satellite from Florida where he preached about racial profiling and Travon Martin. Of course, he forgot to mention the numerous knock-out attacks by black youths this year.

Posters with images of Trayvon Martin were defaced recently on the Wichita State University campus. The posters were advertising a diversity discussion Wednesday called "Does My Hoodie Scare You?" Student Wilma Foster says she was surprised by the posters that showed the slain Florida teen's face crossed out and another poster with a Hitler-looking mustache added. "That's an expression of something inwardly that's very negative and perhaps even very deep that may end up surfacing over a short or long period of time," she says. But student Jared Higgins says things like this happen on a college campus. "I...

While HBO’s “Newsroom” is surely today’s leading liberal fantasy news show, it is following in a format pioneered by the overwrought crime drama series “Law and Order” and its various clone shows. The producers of “Law and Order: SVU” reminded everyone of that recently by actually writing and filming an episode in which a character based on Paula Deen kills a Trayvon Martin character. You can’t make up this kind of absurdity in a humor setting. People wouldn’t find it credible. The only thing missing is a George Bush or Dick Cheney character in there engaging in a serial killing...

A Florida beach safety officer was fired on Friday after he referred to Trayvon Martin as a “thug” on his personal Facebook page. Todd Snipes, a beach officer of 15 years who was stationed about 40 minutes from where Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, Fla., was initially suspended for the post he made on Facebook last month. “Another thug gone,” Snipes wrote the night of George Zimmerman’s acquittal. “Pull up your pants and be respectful. Bye bye thug r.i.p.” In his termination letter, Department of Public Protection Director George Recktenwald wrote that Snipes had “engaged in behavior that threatens...

After the courts are through with Trayvon Martin's sweatshirt, which he was wearing when he was killed, will it wind up in an evidence locker...or a museum? Long after the trial ends, the evidence remains. Sometimes, it's returned to family members. Other times, if it's valuable, it's auctioned off. And then, if there's no more room for it in the court house or police station and the case is long closed, it's destroyed. In the case of Trayvon Martin's iconic black hooded sweatshirt, which he was wearing the night neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman shot and killed him in 2012, there...

So, George Zimmerman was scared the night he shot Trayvon Martin through the heart. Know who else was probably pretty scared that night? Trayvon Martin. Surprised I’m asking? Me too. But it seems like a lot of people haven’t thought much about that. Obviously, Trayvon isn’t here to tell us how he felt. He’s dead. And a lot of folks disregarded Rachel Jeantel’s account of him being afraid even though she was the last person to hear Trayvon speak (besides Zimmerman). She heard his fear through the phone. She heard him try to run away. He was scared. And yet...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the “heartache” of the Trayvon Martin case in D.C. Tuesday evening while speaking to an African-American sorority group. “My prayers are with the Martin family and with every family who loves someone who is lost to violence,” she said in an almost 30-minute speech. “No mother, no father, should ever have to fear for their child walking down a street in the United States of America.”

Columnist Richard Cohen is not a friend of conservatives (see past articles posted at FR). However, he did write an article in the WaPO, see Racism vs. reality (posted here today) that was pretty balanced. Needless to say, the rest of the left is not pleased with their colleague. Yes, Richard Cohen is now a racist. Elspeth Reeve of The Atlantic and Tom Scocca of Gawker have chimed in. There have been others as well. Meanwhile, WaPo is standing by Cohen for now. Will the Post end up firing Cohen? Will this experience wise Cohen up to his leftist brethren?

Keeping Hope A Lie – One Year Later: The Trayvon Martin story is on Legacy Media provided Life Support The million hoodie march is now a couple hundred race-baiting fools… gathering to beat their drums and demand mo’ money under the guise of ‘In-just-us’. Laughable at best… (AP STORY) Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, were joined by actor Jamie Foxx and a crowd of about 200 people on Tuesday evening in Manhattan’s Union Square Park. They lit candles and held a moment of silence at 7:17 p.m., the time Martin was fatally shot on Feb. 26, 2012. Now...

We need another thread to continue the analysis of the George Zimmerman statements, interviews with police and crime-scene re-enactment. So many were released yesterday, I doubt anyone but true case afficionados have listened to them all. I know I haven't. Yet across the internet, people are cherry-picking, pointing to minor variations as if they are contradictions affecting the totality of George Zimmerman's version of events. If George Zimmerman told the exact same story over the course of days, people would say it was rehearsed and false. Variations are to be expected, human memory is not like a video recorder, it...