Free Republic

True story: Way back in those ancient days known as the 1990s, I was a columnist for The Baltimore Sun. I had just done a piece about Dennis Rodman, the incomparable and, in some ways, indescribable forward for the Chicago Bulls. As indescribable as some of Rodman’s on and off-court antics were, I decided to take a shot at describing them. “Monkey shines” is the term I came up with. I’d no sooner sent the column to a line editor than a black female editor pulled me aside. Calmly and nicely, she expressed her doubts about whether I should use...

On Father's Day, Americans should ponder the appalling fact that an estimated 40 percent of our nation's children are living in homes without their own father. Most of our social problems are caused by kids who grow up in homes without their own fathers: drug abuse, illicit sexual activity, unwed pregnancies, youth suicide, high school dropouts, runaways, and crime. Where have all the fathers gone? Some men are irresponsible slobs, but no evidence exists that nearly half of American children were voluntarily abandoned by their own fathers; there must be other explanations. For 30 years, feminist organizations and writers have...

IS JANICE Rogers Brown, the California Supreme Court justice who was just confirmed by the U.S. Senate to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, more mainstream than the Congressional Black Caucus? I'm sure the caucus wouldn't agree. It's members opposed Brown's nomination from the start. In 2003, Maryland's own Rep. Elijah Cummings, who was then CBC chairman, said that Brown was one of several of President Bush's nominees "who are out of the mainstream of America." Brown's supporters noted that the last time her name appeared on a California ballot, she received 76...

BILL COSBY'S Wednesday visit to Baltimore did nothing for me but bring back a bad memory, one only a week old. None of this was Cosby's fault, mind you. My experience occurred in Cambridge, Mass., during my three days at a liberal re-education camp. You know it better as the college formerly called Harvard University. OK, so I'm kidding. A little. I spent three days in Cambridge, where members of the Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, held their annual meeting. There were several symposiums held with liberal cognoscenti in the Charles Hotel and at several places on the...

JAWANZA KUNJUFU, author, lecturer, educational consultant and inveterate truth-teller, stood at a podium Thursday night and told several truths. "You know," Kunjufu told several hundred people gathered in one of several theaters of the Murphy Fine Arts Building on the campus of Morgan State University, "black folks love blaming the white man for everything. But if racism ended tonight, would [African-American] SAT scores increase? Would the [African-American] dropout rate decrease?" Seeing that none of the assembled was reaching for either tar or feathers, Kunjufu continued with some more truth. "I don't believe our major problem is racism," said Kunjufu, as...

FREDERICK ANTHONY Romano remembers the night. More than 15 years later, he remembers it as if it happened within the last week. It was Sunday night, Nov. 1, 1987. Seventeen-year-old Romano had gone to bed. His mother, Betty Romano, was in the house with him and his father, Frederick Joseph Romano. Soon the father received a call from his son-in-law Keith Garvin, a Navy petty officer who had returned to his base in Oceana, Va. Garvin had called his wife, Dawn Garvin, to let her know he had arrived back safely. But there was no answer. After two calls to...

REP. JOHN Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat recently crowned for the 20th time when voters sent him back to Congress, might be the ambulatory argument for term limits. Conyers has sponsored much legislation, some of it good, over the years. He has so grown in stature that he has made the error of thinking he actually knows something about Maryland's politics. Here's the congressman speaking at a post-election forum Thursday sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in the Rayburn House Office Building .

DAAYY-OH! DAY-AY-AY-AY-OH! MY FOOT IN ME MOUTH AND I WAN' GO HOME!