Free Republic

In mid-December, Jeb Bush announced his intention to explore a presidential bid. If he runs and wins the Republican nomination and then the election, he will be the third President Bush in 25 years. That unprecedented prospect has left many wondering: In a republic like ours, is it proper for one family to fill the executive seat so often? The Bushes are not the first family to send multiple members to the White House. They join the Adamses (father John and son John Quincy), the Harrisons (grandfather William Henry and grandson Benjamin), and the Roosevelts (cousins Theodore and Franklin). But...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Again? Really? There are more than 300 million people in America, yet the same two families keep popping up when it comes to picking a president. The possibility of a Bush-Clinton matchup in 2016 is increasingly plausible. After months of hints and speculation, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he's actively exploring a bid for the Republican nomination. And while Hillary Rodham Clinton hasn't revealed her intentions, she's seen as the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination. Between them, the two potential rivals have three presidents and a U.S. senator in the branches of their family trees....

Media Titans: The Hearst family Worth: $35 billion Wealth established: 1887 Source of wealth: Hearst Corporation The Hearst fortune began in the late 1800s with George Hearst, a millionaire goldmine owner and U.S. senator. Hearst's son William Randolph attended the finest schools but was kicked out of Harvard University for throwing keg parties in Harvard Square and sending used chamber pots to his professors. After his expulsion, William Randolph took over managing the San Francisco Examiner, a publication his father had won as settlement for a gambling debt. Oil barons: The Rockefeller family Worth: $10 billion Worth Established: 1858 John...

hen the police break your teammate’s leg, you’d think it would wake you up a little. When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you’d think it would sink in. You’d think you’d know there was more to the story. You’d think. But nope. I still remember my reaction when I first heard what happened to Thabo. It was 2015, late in the season. Thabo and I were teammates on the Hawks, and we’d flown into New York late after a game in Atlanta. When...

@Freeyourmindkid White people - What is the most outrageous thing that you've gotten away with as a white person that you know damn well a black or brown person would have never gotten away with? Ericka Hart @iHartEricka #MyWhitePrivilege needs a trigger warning. That white people can just put on display for the world to see what they have gotten away with and still not experience any repercussions isn’t privilege, it’s power. @mlleaimee Replying to @Freeyourmindkid @synaestatic I got in a car accident with an African American woman. It was my fault. I told the cop it was my fault....

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Monday came to the defense of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), saying he shouldn't yet resign despite the revelation that his medical school yearbook page included a racist photo. Lieberman said during an interview on CNN that there has been a "a rush to judgment that is unfair to" Northam. "One, he says he wasn't in that picture. Two, I think we ought to fairly ask him, did he know the picture was on his page of the yearbook? And three, he ought to be judged in the context of his whole life," Lieberman...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the nation’s “weird American Dream mythology” needs to change — particularly in the minds of “cisgendered” and poor white citizens. The rising Democratic Party lawmaker from New York told the Intercept’s “Deconstructed” podcast this week that poor white people need to accept that they “benefit” from their skin color, and more so if they identify as their birth sex. “I find the solutions for white communities to be very painful because it’s very painful for a community to understand and have to go through this — like, you can be — the idea that you can...

After news came out about mass layoffs at HuffPost, Buzzfeed and Gannett -- in the midst of the media's relentless smear-job against the Covington Catholic students -- right-wing Twitter had a field day. Tons of leftist journalists announced they were laid off on Twitter and the top meme was telling them to "learn to code" -- which is the same advice the media gave middle Americans whose jobs are being taken in traditional industries. Talia Levin, who was hired by Media Matters last year after being fired by the New Yorker for smearing an ICE agent as a Nazi because...

Across the country, re-education sessions are routinely held in businesses, professional offices, medical schools, universities, and even kindergartens. Their purpose is to teach the un-woke about the evils of “white privilege,” and make white people who participate uncomfortable about their skin color. Whites are to own up to the fact that regardless of their intentions, beliefs, behaviors or status in life, they are elite participants in a racist system that oppresses “people of color,” and are so merely because they are white. But discrimination on the basis of skin color has been outlawed in this country for more than 60...

CNN legal analyst Areva Martin thought she was talking to a white man Tuesday while appearing as a guest on David Webb’s SiriusXM radio show. When Webb, a frequent Fox News contributor and host on Fox Nation, said he considered his qualifications more important than his skin color when applying to jobs in journalism, Martin accused him of exercising white privilege. But there’s a problem with that sentiment, as Webb quickly pointed out: “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped,” he responded. “I’m black.” The exchange was posted to Twitter by Webb on...

It was a rough day for author and CNN legal analyst Areva Martin on Tuesday. Martin accused Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation host David Webb of “white privilege” during a segment on a radio program before he broke the news. “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black,” Webb said. The embarrassing moment occurred during a discussion about experience being more important than race when determining whether or not someone is qualified for a particular job. “I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that...

Sirius XM radio host David Webb, who happens to be black, had an awkward moment on his show this week when a CNN analyst began lecturing him on his alleged “white privilege.” [snip] “David, by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege,” the guest replied. “Areva, I hate to break it to you, but you should’ve been better prepped. I’m black,” the Fox News contributor deadpanned. “You went immediately with an assumption. You’re talking to a black man who started out in rock radio in Boston, who crossed the paths into hip-hop rebuilding one of the greatest...

Why don't Asians complain about White Privilege? Here's my take on it.

A new city policy requiring public signs on brick buildings warning they might collapse in an earthquake is part of a long history of white supremacy aimed at forcing black people to move out of neighborhoods, the NAACP of Portland, Oregon, says. The group on Thursday decried the policy affecting some 1,600 unreinforced masonry buildings that are on average 90 years old, many in areas with a predominantly black population, The Oregonian/OregonLive reports. The policy “exacerbates a long history of systemic and structural betrayals of trust and policies of displacement, demolition, and dispossession predicated on classism, racism, and white supremacy,”...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it is leaving in place a decision that vacated a murder conviction against Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel. Skakel was convicted in 2002 of the 1975 bludgeoning death of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old who lived across the street from the Skakel family in Greenwich, Connecticut, and whose body was found in her family’s backyard. Both Skakel and Moxley were 15 at the time of her death. The high court’s refusal to hear the case means that a 2018 decision by Connecticut’s highest court throwing out Skakel’s conviction will stand. Connecticut’s highest court...

Sixteen months ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated the conviction, but then reversed itself on Friday and granted Skakel a new trial. In an interview with "Today" on Monday, attorney Michael Fitzpatrick said defense

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) - The Connecticut Supreme Court has overturned the 1975 murder conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel. The Hartford Courant reports that the Connecticut Supreme Court voted 4-3 that Skakel's trial lawyer was so ineffective, that his right to a fair trial was violated. Skakel was convicted in the murder of his friend, Martha Moxley, when the two were neighbors in Greenwich. Skakel has been free since late 2013 while the court considered this latest appeal. He is expected to remain free unless state prosecutors make what many lawyers predict would be an unlikely decision to retry him...

(CNN)Michael Skakel could be headed back to prison after the Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday reinstated his conviction in the 1975 murder of a 15-year-old neighbor. Skakel, the 56-year-old nephew of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, had spent more than a decade in prison for the killing of Martha Moxley until a judge in 2013 decided he did not receive adequate representation in his trial and ordered a new one. On Friday, after Skakel had been free for three years, the state's high court overruled the decision. "Because we conclude that the petitioner's trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse...

On the 39th anniversary of the 1975 slaying of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley, the Kennedy scion accused of her murder is set to settle a slander lawsuit against television host Nancy Grace. In a stipulation of settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Wednesday, legal counsel for Michael Skakel agreed to drop his case against the HLN pundit and fellow legal commentator Beth Karas for comments they made in a 2012 broadcast about DNA evidence near the scene of the crime. HLN parent companies Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System were also named in the defamation suit and...

HARTFORD, Conn. — A divided Connecticut Supreme Court Friday reinstated the murder conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, rejecting a Superior Court judge’s finding that Skakel’s trial was tainted by ineffective lawyering and setting the stage for Skakel’s return to prison after three years of freedom. “Because we conclude that the petitioner’s trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse the judgment” of the lower court, a 4-3 majority of the Supreme Court wrote in a decision released Friday afternoon. Skakel was convicted in 2002 in the bludgeoning death 27 years earlier of Greenwich neighbor Martha Moxley, when she and...