Free Republic

SPRINGFIELD — Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, was declared a “hostile witness” in the multimillion-dollar fraud trial of a Chicago couple Monday — after an explosive hearing in which Whitaker suggested prosecutors were biased against African-Americans. U.S. District Judge Richard Mills declared Whitaker “hostile” just minutes after Whitaker testified in his Springfield courtroom in the trial of businessman Leon Dingle Jr. and his wife, Karin Dingle. On the witness stand for more than two hours, Whitaker voiced concerns that the Justice Department’s pursuit of state grant-fraud cases in the Central District of Illinois has...

Five years ago, while fervently supporting the candidacy of the man who would become America’s first black president, I came to the realization that I didn’t actually know any black people....One,maybe two,was the norm....I wanted to know why integration—actual,genuine integration—had failed so spectacularly. The result....was Some of My Best Friends Are Black:The Strange Story of Integration in America, which traced the history of the color line back through all the places I have lived and chronicled the various efforts to erase it:school busing, affirmative action, air housing, etc.......after eight miserable years of George W. Bush and the euphoria of the...

".....Still, some Chicago communities — such as West Garfield Park on the West Side — continue to suffer from extremely high rates of violence, [Professor Andrew] Papachristos noted. “There is a lot of work to be done,” he said in an interview. “The work to be done is how to deal with the inequality in the crime rates.” The violent crime rate for West Garfield Park in 2011 was more than 3,000 crimes per 100,000 people, more than any community in Chicago other than Fuller Park on the South Side. Papachristos’ research showed West Garfield Park was more murderous in...

One of two victims identified as Adonis Mera, 14, who was skating with his friends and sister [may never walk again] A New York teenager has been charged with attempted murder after he allegedly opened fire at skaters in Manhattan's Bryant Park and then seemed to confess to the crime on Facebook. During an hour-long standoff at his Bronx apartment on Sunday morning, Corey Dunton, 16, wrote on the social media website: 'Feds trien [sic] kick down my door its over were do i go from hereeeee...[I don't know] wat to do i f----ed up.' Minutes later, he added: 'These...

A 28-year-old Chicago woman has allegedly admitted she dragged an 82-year-old man from his car and 'beat the f*** out of him' because he bumped her vehicle. Sophia Body has been charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery of a senior citizen after the incident, which occurred Thursday night in the city's Grand Crossing neighborhood. Authorities responded to the 900 block of East 79th Street after witnesses reported a battery in progress. They arrived to find the octogenarian bleeding from the right side of the head and suffering from lacerations to his back, police said. Body allegedly admitted she beat...

The right loves to demonize unions, but economic factors are much more important to success in the classroom Google the phrase “education crisis” and you’ll be hit with a glut of articles, blog posts and think tank reports claiming the entire American school system is facing an emergency. Much of this agitprop additionally asserts that teachers unions are the primary cause of the alleged problem. Not surprisingly, the fabulists pushing these narratives are often backed by anti-public school conservatives and anti-union plutocrats. But a little-noticed study released last week provides yet more confirmation that neither the “education crisis” meme nor...

“There are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator.” ~ Potus 44Don’t Patronize Me Bro- By: Larry Walker, II -Whatever you do, don’t listen to anything Potus 44 says, period. The truth is that there are very few Black men who haven’t experienced an auto theft, or attempted carjacking. Both have happened to me, twice in my early 20’s and again in my late 30’s.This past week, diving headlong into Bizarro World,...

Detroit, in the minds of many people, looks like something from the film Gran Torino, in which Clint Eastwood’s retired car worker defiantly manicures his lawn and flies an American flag as the city around him descends into chaos. With its fraying social fabric and the imposition of an emergency manager to cope with its collapsing finances, it would be easy to argue a city that was a global centre of carmaking and musical innovation 50 years ago has passed the point of no return. Easy, yes; but wrong. Detroit’s days as a manufacturing powerhouse – like those of many...

Before Gov. Jerry Brown left the pulpit at Acts Full Gospel Church in Oakland on Sunday, where he had gone to preach the benefits of Proposition 30, Bishop Bob Jackson asked him to leave a little something in the offering plate. "Our city is in dire straits," the governor was told by Jackson, pastor of a congregation of 7,000 in East Oakland. "It's under siege from shootings and homicides." Jackson asked Brown to declare a state of emergency to open Oakland's door to state assistance that could help curb escalating street violence that has claimed 102 lives this year. "You...

'Do your mom look like you? We gonna get her too': Chilling words of three men who 'dragged girl, 15, off street and held her captive for three days while repeatedly raping her' - Eddie A. Johnson, 37, Alfred Kulah, 35, and Mortiman Kesselly, 41, all of Pennsylvania, have been charged with the violent sexual assault - Girl was able to escape after three-day ordeal after they left her alone Three Pennsylvania men kidnapped a 15-year-old girl while she was on her way to her father's house, ripped her clothes off, raped and sodomized her repeatedly as they held her...

Chicago’s hip-hop community is in a war of words that has escalated into violence, with the shooting death of a teenage rapper. Tuesday was another night, another homicide in a year in which hundreds of Chicagoans have been gunned down; the murder rate for the year’s first half is up an alarming 38 percent over last year. This time the victim was Joseph Coleman (18-year-old rapper Lil Jojo). The bicycle-riding teen was slain by a drive-by shooter in his South Side Englewood neighborhood. His death starkly punctuated a gang-related war of words and music between Jojo and rapper Lil Reese,...

Maybe CTU President Karen Lewis is just rattling her saber by announcing the teachers union has filed a 10-day notice of intent to strike. ....Parents with children in Chicago Public Schools should definitely be putting together an alternative plan given the rhetoric from the union. “CPS seems determined to have a toxic relationship with its employees,” Lewis said at the news conference. “[T]hey attempted to ram a poorly-thought-out longer school day down our throats . . . It has been insult after insult after insult.” Now that Lewis has taken the next step toward a showdown, I’m betting there will...

Link to Video Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, and the students and staff at Messmer Preparatory Catholic School were all targets of an obnoxious protest on Friday, August 26, 2011. From this report by the MacIver News Service, it is clear the protesters (Union members, socialists, MPS officals, liberal activists) could learn a lot by emulating the behavior of the children inside the school.

Oh wait, that's not the Tea Party. It's Obama-supporting Democrat-voting* public union teacher protesters -- again.Yes, the Democrat-media complex still smear the Tea Party and anti-Obama conservative Americans as vitriolic and racist, and most recently "the real enemy" who can "go straight to hell." Meanwhile in the real world, actual vitriol and (by the left's own standards) racism occurred at the hands of union protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin both Thursday and Friday.As reported by Milwaukee's local Fox-TV affiliate: Vandals super glued the locks of several doors and a parking gate at Messmer Preparatory School in Milwaukee. School officials believe the people responsible...

Boston teens, urged by city councilors to speak out about crime, say helping cops will mark them as targets. “People wouldn’t want to say anything because they’re scared,” said Miguel Peguero, 15, of Dorchester, one of more than 50 youth workers who attended a roundtable yesterday about youth violence. Twenty-six people have been killed in Boston so far this year, including four on July 4 alone. As of June 13, police had reported 110 shootings in the city, a number that has spiked to more than 120 in recent weeks.

What the hell is going on over Memorial Day weekend among America's youts, specifically, "Eric Holder's People"?!IM SICK OF IT! Here in Little Rock, (which was just named No. 7 most dangerous city), I was talking to my friend yesterday, who is an LRPD officer. He asked if my wife and I were going to Riverfest that evening. I told him my son, age 9 mos. was sick, and we weren't planning to. He told me, "Good. There is a Rap artist playing at 9PM and there are not enough cops on duty so be very careful, and carry your...

Unruly students have turned some Memphis classrooms into war zones where teachers have been subjected to verbal and physical attacks, according to a school board commissioner who has introduced a resolution to reinstate corporal punishment. “Teachers, for several years now, have been increasingly agitated by the lack of classroom discipline,” said School Board Commissioner Kenneth Whalum. “It’s out of hand, man.” Memphis city schools banned corporal punishment five years ago. Since then, according to Whalum, teachers have been subjected to out-of-control kids. “They are being abused,” he said. “Teachers have been hospitalized after getting attacked by middle schoolers. It’s a...

From a continuing story at Ohio.Com and my post on Freerepublic.Com, "This Is A Black World!" 50 Black Teens Shout, Then Attack White Family In Street" 'John Alchier said he was frustrated that an injury barred him from helping his brother. He has been paralyzed below the waist since a motorcycle crash 11 years ago. ''I couldn't do anything and I just yelled out, 'Help us, Jesus' and when I did that, they all just kind of went away.'Full Story Here . . . 'Help Us, Jesus' Akron Beacon Journal

From a continuing story at Ohio.Com and my post on Freerepublic.Com, "This Is A Black World!" 50 Black Teens Shout, Then Attack White Family In Street" 'John Alchier said he was frustrated that an injury barred him from helping his brother. He has been paralyzed below the waist since a motorcycle crash 11 years ago. ''I couldn't do anything and I just yelled out, 'Help us, Jesus' and when I did that, they all just kind of went away.'Full Story Here . . . 'Help Us, Jesus' Akron Beacon Journal

1995 Obama Race Baiting Video Discovered YouTube video of Obama can be seen at: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-race-baiting-video-discovered.html It sounds like those first 10 years with Rev. Jeremiah Wright rubbed off on The One... The post racial candidate Barack Obama slams "white executives" living out in the suburbs who do not want to pay taxes to inner city children in a 1995 interview: Obama talks redistribution and salvation- bashes whitey: YouTube video is at:http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-race-baiting-video-discovered.html Obama admits his Redistribution of Wealth is to SAVE the African American community SO HE CAN ENSURE HIS OWN SALVATION! (and Our Countries Salvation) He compares the plight of...