Free Republic

America's 1st Freedom, March 2011. More articles by Kopel on civil rights and gun control are available here. Jim Crow is alive and well. School children today are taught that “Jim Crow” was the name for a legal system of racial oppression, which began after Reconstruction, particularly in the South, and reached its nadir in the early 20th century. Children are also taught that Jim Crow was banished by legal reforms such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Yet in one important part of American life, Jim Crow...

Cries for more “gun control” have flooded opinion and editorial pages in the wake of the school shooting in Connecticut. The opinion that Americans do not have a right to own firearms, and the assertion that the Constitution does not protect the right of individuals to own firearms, is absolutely false — and also incorrect in the context of law. In 2008, the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for private use within the...

Jeff Knox educates Jason Whitlock, Bob Costas on realities of firearm ownership Sports fans watching the Sunday night game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles last weekend were subjected to an anti-gun homily from sportscaster Bob Costas. The scripted comments were prompted by the tragic murder of Kasandra Perkins and subsequent suicide of her murderer, Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher. Perkins was Belcher’s live-in girlfriend and the mother of his 3-month-old daughter. At this point, no one knows what set the football player off, but the tragedy triggered a scathing editorial from Fox Sports personality Jason Whitlock,...

Exclusive: Erik Rush notes early firearms laws were meant to keep them from blacks I understand that given the nature of the media it is all but irresistible for the press to cover events such as the shooting murder-suicide case of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher prior to possessing pertinent facts. Given the bias of those in the media, I can also understand NBC sports guru Bob Costas engaging in an abysmally ignorant anti-gun rant following the Belcher tragedy, which quickly became as much of a story as the shootings themselves. Reactions to the Costas diatribe ranged from the...

“For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights, health care, Social Security, workers’ rights, and women’s rights.” — from a history of the Democratic Party, on DNC Web site. A number of readers asked about this brief (20 paragraphs or so) history of the Democratic party, especially the first sentence. It certainly appears to ignore the party’s long and troubled history with race, literally leaping from the “200 years” phrase to 1920, when the women’s suffrage amendment was enacted. The Web history mentions the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson in helping pass the 19th...

Interesting that the Jim Crow laws were enacted by the Democrats back in the day........

ABC News, in a rather surprising bit of actual investigative journalism, is covering some newly released documents from our intelligence agencies dating back to the 1960s. In response to an Associated Press FOIA request, the FBI has provided records of some very interesting and potentially highly embarrassing exchanges between a young Senator Robert Byrd, who sought secret documents regarding unnamed civil rights leaders of the time. His actions also managed to spark something of an internal war between two agencies over their inability to keep secret documents under control. U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd obtained secret FBI documents about the...

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd obtained secret FBI documents about the civil rights movement that were leaked by the CIA and triggered an angry confrontation between the two agencies in the 1960s, according to newly released FBI records. Byrd, who died in June 2010 at age 92, had sought the FBI intelligence while suspecting that communists and subversives were guiding the civil rights cause, the records show.

Q. How do you know when MSNBC has sunk to unimaginable depths of Dem-partisan hackery? A. When even Al Sharpton renounces it. On his MSNBC show this evening, Sharpton said the network was right to apologize for the smear MSNBC host Thomas Roberts perpetrated againt Mitt Romney earlier in the day, when Roberts claimed Romney had borrowed a campaign slogan from the Ku Klux Klan. View the video here.

Youtube video of Scott Walker do official Xmas tree lighting at the capitol. Two in the audience prominently give a 'Nazi' salute as he is introduced.

Watch the video at Breitbart.tv

In episode 4 on how gun control and socialized medicine leads to genocide, we see in America how medical scince under the influence of liberals was used to promote racism slavery and apartheid here and in South Africa. One of universal healthcare's biggest supporters wasthe Ku Klux Klan which has always been Democratic and Socialistic. Among its more violent and fanatical supporters was former senator and grand cyclops the late Robert Byrd who worked tirelessly to advance universal healthcare in the united states, ushering in a new dark era of socialism.

In her book "Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America," Ohio State University law professor Sharon Davies digs deep into the 1921 slaying of a Catholic priest in Birmingham. The Rev. James E. Coyle, who had been pastor of St. Paul's Cathedral since 1904, was shot to death on the porch of the wood-frame rectory, the priest's house next to the cathedral, on Aug. 11, 1921. "There are so many things about this story that are really compelling," Davies said. She said she stumbled across the case while doing research for a law journal article....

In the early 1900s, many Americans — from ordinary citizens to those in high office — were frightened by the perceived threat from the Roman Catholic Church. Their fear had tragic consequences.The mind-set is all too familiar: A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly...

The American left has long insisted that Democrats have cornered the diversity market, a talking point that, if not exactly true, has proven useful in portraying Republicans as anti-immigrant, anti-minority, anti-woman, anti-black and anti-gay for decades. Nominating and electing the first black President was undoubtedly a particularly proud moment, one that seemed to confirm Democrats' position on the leading edge of diversity. But maybe the diversity claim serves as nothing more than atonement for all those years Democrats identified as the "white man's party," or for their support of Southern slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws. Or...

"will cover the entire lawn of Planned Parenthood with white sheets, a longtime symbol of the KKK" In a press conference held on Saturday, Christian Defense Coalition Director Rev. Patrick Mahoney — the anti-abortion activist behind last month’s KKK-invoking rally in front of House Speaker Rep. John Boehner’s office — announced that he is starting a national campaign called “Defund ‘Klanned’ Parenthood.” # A press release circulated by Mahoney last week says the group will also stage a protest outside a Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C., and “as part of their public witness against the racist roots of Planned Parenthood,...

Foes of illegal immigration are up in arms over plans for a weekend disaster exercise in western Iowa with a fictitious scenario in which white supremacists shoot dozens of people amid rising tensions involving racial minorities and illegal immigrants. The exercise is planned for Saturday at Treynor High School in Pottawattamie County and will involve more than 300 people, confirmed Doug Reed, the lead exercise planner for the county's emergency management agency. Some 30 to 40 "victims" will be transported to area hospitals.

Recently the History Channel proved that it is as snarky as those of who watch it thought. To wit: the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) wanted to run some ads on the History Channel. These ads pointed out the legal basis for secession and, quite accurately, that the North invaded the newly configured Confederacy (Manassas/Bull Run is, after all, in Virginia). Another pointed out that Northern interests essentially ran the Federal government, frequently to the advantage Northern supporters at the expense of the South. The most accurate ad of all simply stated that ANY STATE had...

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart. The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

Event marks war's anniversary CHARLESTON -- The shots are solely verbal -- and expected to remain that way -- but at least one Civil War Sesquicentennial event is triggering conflict. The Sons of Confederate Veterans plan to hold a $100-per-person "Secession Ball" on Dec. 20 in Gaillard Municipal Auditorium. It will feature a play highlighting key moments from the signing of South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession 150 years ago, an act that severed the state's ties to the Union and put the nation on the path to the Civil War. Jeff Antley, who is organizing the event, said the Secession...