Free Republic

There you have it. Immediately after learning about Dylan Roof, MSNBC had drawn the quick conclusion that Roof was a racist, right-wing supremacist. They weren't able to draw any conclusions about Abdulazeez's ideology, even after learning that he had visited the Middle-East and come back "very different" from his old self. For some bizarre reason, Maddow's brilliant investigative skills and intuition evaporated into thin air following the Chattanooga shooting. It was a truly strange phenomenon that, even after law enforcement deemed the shooting a terror attack, Maddow was unable to determine Abdulazeez's motivation. As more details emerged over the weeks,...

Bucking a national trend, a defiant Walton County voted Tuesday after an emotional hearing to replace one Confederate flag with another one at its courthouse in the Florida Panhandle. Under intense pressure from a deeply divided citizenry, county commissioners agreed to remove the controversial flag with the X-shaped Southern Cross design that has flown at the courthouse in DeFuniak Springs since 1964, the year President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. As that flag heads to a local museum, it will be replaced by the first version of the Confederate flag known as the stars and bars, with 13 stars...

Are the words "blacks rule" and a burned Mississippi state flag considered a hate crime or vandalism?  Pascagoula police are still trying to answer that question, one day after those inflammatory words and a charred flag were discovered on a residential driveway. Meanwhile, there's a new state flag flying at Bob Comans' home. The 85-year-old was like a kid on Christmas Day as he opened his new Mississippi flag Tuesday. "Two men come and parked out front and brought me a flag in a box and said they were from the American Legion in Gautier," Comans said.  The disabled Korean War veteran...

Surveillance cameras caught images of two white males laying Confederate battle flags on the ground near the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, but it wasn’t clear whether they had committed a crime. Atlanta police Chief George Turner said Thursday his officers were working with federal authorities and hadn’t determined what, if any, charges might be sought. Turner said they had not ruled out a hate crime, though Georgia has no state hate crimes law. An officer from the Atlanta FBI’s joint terrorism task force was on the scene “to better determine if any specific threats were received” and to...

Larimer County, Colorado, authorities are scratching their heads over a case in which a man allegedly purchased an antique toy wagon, then shot it nine times with a handgun, the Associated Press reported Sunday, citing the Coloradan. The wagon, according to the report, was decorated with a Confederate battle flag. The unidentified purchaser is described as a white man in his 60s, the AP said. He bought the wagon for $30 from a thrift store, placed it wheels-up in the street, then tried to run it over with his SUV. According to the Coloradan, the man originally offered $19 for the wagon, but...

Liberal talker Thom Hartmann wonders if "Union" forces should re-occupy the old Confederacy.It seems that for some on the left, the Civil War never really ended. Citing a Politico story slamming southern states, liberal talk show host Thom Hartmann wondered if the United States should "reoccupy the South with Union forces" to restart Reconstruction, Newsbusters reported Saturday. "Now listen to this in the context of my question -- should we, a) reoccupy the South with Union forces and restart Reconstruction which came to a screeching halt in 187- whatever it was, '74 I think, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes,"...

“The Civil War never ended”: Jesse Jackson on the racist agenda that must come down with the Confederate flag"..Full Headline Since the homicidal evil named Dylann Roof claimed the lives of nine black worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina, the country has commissioned a conversation about racial harmony and diversity. The audible defeat in President Obama’s voice when he made yet another call for gun control to millions of deaf ears was an early signal of legislative dysfunction, and the political system’s inability to react meaningfully to crisis. Politics under the noxious regime of slavery and under the nominal promise of...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that Congress will likely have to take up a stopgap funding bill in September to avoid a government shutdown. Lawmakers are expected to leave Washington next week for the month-long August recess and won't return until the Tuesday after Labor Day. That leaves a limited number of days for Congress to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1. "It’s pretty clear, given the number of days we’re going to be here in September, that we’re going to have to do a [continuing resolution] of some sort. But no decision has been made about that....

(Photo: Facebook/Clenard Childress) The Rev. Clenard Childress uses controversial sign to protest NAACP's support for abortion that features a Confederate flag and an aborted baby at the organization's annual meeting held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in July 2015. A black New Jersey pastor and pro-life activist protested the NAACP's support for abortion at the organization's convention held in Philadelphia last week, where he posted a sign that included both an aborted baby and a Confederate flag. Rev. Clenard Childress, the president of the Life Education and Resource Network, the largest African-American pro-life group in the U.S., used this sign that...

Anthony Hervey — a 49-year-old black activist known for being a vocal proponent of the Confederate flag — died Sunday in a car crash caused by a car-full of black hecklers who chased and verbally attacked Hervey, driving his vehicle off the Mississippi highway. Hervey was driving home from a rally to preserve the Linn Park Confederate Monument in Birmingham, Alabama, the Daily Mail reports. The memorial is soon to be removed from the park pursuant to a recent vote by Birmingham political leaders. Hervey was a well-known black activist for preserving the Confederate flag who’s advocacy dates back to...

utliberal@utliberal The Cuban flag goes up, the confederate flag came down. Who says Obama is not transformational? 9:37 AM - 20 Jul 2015 · Salt Lake City, UT, United States

Black Republican and Veteran Burns NAACP Card at Rally – Then Is Run Off the Road on the Way Home (Video) Jim Hoft Jul 20th, 2015 8:08 am arlene barnum Arlene Barnum, Anthony Hervey and others at pro-Confederate rally (Examiner) On Saturday Arlene Barnum, a Vietnam-era veteran, burned her NAACP card at a pro-Confederate rally. Then she was run off the road on the way home. barnum crash A Stuart woman who attended a pro confederate flag rally in Birmingham, Alabama, said on her Facebook page she was subsequently involved in a car accident in Mississippi. Arlene Barnham, of Stuart,...

Whenever members of the Judah P. Benjamin Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans don their grey wool uniforms for a demonstration or re-enactment, Al McCray is there among his brothers. Quick Clicks Rally supports Baker Courthouse... NAACP wants Ga. Confederate... Thousands rally to support... Flag debate highlights racial... Confederate signs defaced in... He marches in the parades and flies the Confederate flag. He speaks out against the notion that the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racism and defends "Southern heritage" causes. Yet McCray is different from the rest of the camp. While the other members are...

Approximately 8-9 hours ago Anthony Hervey and Arlene Barnum both black were returning from a rally in Birmingham yesterday in support of the Confederate Battle Flag Upon returning this morning Sharon Bauman started posting on her facebook page that they were being chased by unknown assailants and they subsequently wrecked on Mississippi State Hwy 6 in Lafayette county of which Oxford (Ole Miss) is county seat Ms Barnum survived and Mr Hervey died of his injuries All the info I have is from Ms Barnum Facebook and scant detail is on a blog called McAlester News According to witnesses the...

Did the extreme amount of attention southern politicians gave to the Charleston killer cause the recent Chattanooga killings? Was the Chattanooga killer hoping for the same amount of attention the Charleston killer received? The timing of the Chattanooga killings could be a coincidence but such killings are not that common and two of them have occurred in southern states within a month of each other. They occurred in the same time period as the trial of the Colorado theater killer with its national publicity. I didn’t catch the man’s name, but a recent newscast included a comment by the relative...

Is the American mainstream media correct about what provokes mad dog killers? Did the gay rainbow flag provoke Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, the 24 year-old naturalized American citizen born in Kuwait who murdered four Marines and a Sailor Thursday, to commit his heinous crime? Abdulazeez, who was shot and killed by police Thursday, was a devout Muslim. And one thing we know about devout Muslims is that many vehemently oppose same sex marriage and consider homosexuality a sin. Back In May, two mad dog Muslims attempted to murder everyone at a free speech event in Texas. Because good guys with guns...

I've been called a racist. I've been called a bigot. I've been called a non-Christian. When the controversy over the Confederate flag erupted last month, the owner of a Huntsville flag company said her business would make the flags even if no one else would. And that's apparently what's happened. "I'm not aware of another company in the United States making these flags," said Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag & Banner, in an interview Thursday with AL.com. So now you know why the website for the Governors Drive business near downtown Huntsville cautions visitors that all Confederate flag orders...

We’ve written quite a bit about worsening race relations in America over the past several months. As Robert Putnam recently made clear with "Our Kids”", the real threat to the fabric of American society may be the growing class divide and indeed, the post-crisis monetary policies that have served to exacerbate the disparity between the rich and everyone else have a polarizing effect, as Main Street watches helplessly while the very same bankers who took taxpayer money in 2008 become billionaires on the back of the Fed’s printing press. And while it might very well be that America’s future is...

JULY 17--But who will care for all those Confederate flags? The North Carolina man who responded to the South Carolina church massacre by further covering his property in the rebel flag was arrested and jailed this week on a probation violation charge, records show. Edward Lee West, 69, is locked up in the Nash County jail in advance of an August 5 court appearance. Seen in the adjacent mug shot, West was collared Wednesday afternoon. According to court records, a judge issued an arrest warrant for West after he failed to show up last week for a court hearing on...

The president of Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) has implored fans of the County Cork teams to stop waving the Confederate flag during games. Fans of Cork (“the Rebel County”), whose colors are red and white, are known for flying a range of flags from around the world emblazoned with those colors. Some fans have a preference for the US Confederate flag because of the red and the white and because of the “rebel” connotations. This allegiance has been a source of controversy in the past, with activist groups in Ireland calling for a ban on the use of the...