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WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word "fed" was scrawled on his chest. The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. Investigators have said little about the case.

The FBI is investigating the hanging of 51 year old census worker, Robert Sparkman. Sparkman was found hanging in a remote wooded area of west Kentucky in Clay County with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. I was reading about this case this morning and of course, the thought came to mind that “right winged” extremists would be blamed for this event. I mean, geez, there is so much hatred for those who oppose the take over of America and “fundamentally transforming” America into a European style Socialist country that, of course, when a dead fed is found that,...

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed his shock and concern Saturday night in response to the lynching of a 59-year-old Jewish man at the Tel Baruch beach Friday night by a gang of intoxicated young Arab men from the village of Jaljulya. A 17-year-old girl from Kfar Saba and a 19-year-old female from Petach Tikvah were with the gang. The prime minister told Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonvitch that he was "shocked and worried" by the recent surge in murders around the country. Seven people have been murdered in the past two weeks, including two in a homosexual club two...

Bali bombing cleric attacks western tourists By Nick Squires in Sydney Last Updated: 1:56am GMT 25/03/2008 Western tourists in Indonesia are "maggots, snakes and worms" who should be beaten up, the alleged mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings has told hardline Islamic followers. Abu Bakar Bashir, the cleric who was convicted of conspiracy over the Bali bombings but later cleared and released from prison after 26 months, said the island resort had been overrun by scantily-clad tourists who deserved to be attacked for their immorality. "Worms, snakes, maggots... those are animals that crawl. Take a look at Bali... those infidel...

Yes, the noose is still included. For those who already have the Obama hope poster, the McCain maverick button and the Joe the Plumber T-shirt, there is one more kitsch -– though more controversial -– item for the comprehensive 2008 presidential campaign collection: the Sarah Palin effigy that caused a bit of an uproar outside one West Hollywood home and prompted Keith Olbermann to name the homeowner “Worst Person in the World.” Chad Michael Morrisette, a professional window-display designer, and his partner, Mito Aviles, put the Palin mannequin up for auction on eBay last week, complete with red coat, beehive...

Palin Effigy 'Not A Hate Crime' 4:50pm UK, Tuesday October 28, 2008 A resident in Los Angeles who hanged an effigy of Sarah Palin from the chimney of his house will not face action by local police. The American Halloween display of Sarah Palin was always likely to provoke a reaction Neighbours of West Hollywood resident Chad Michael Morrisettebelieved he had gone too far with the crude display of the Republican vice presidential nominee and reported his action as a hate crime. But the Los Angeles County sheriff's office said Mr Morrisette has not committed an official offence because the...

A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from some passers-by and gasps of outrage from others. The mannequin is dressed in brunet wig, glasses and a red business suit. Another mannequin dressed as John McCain emerges from a flaming chimney. Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene. Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other...

WEST HOLLYWOOD (CBS News) ― Sarah Palin is not considered to be a friend of the gay community, but the Republican vice presidential candidate seems to be looming over the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival. First, a rumor got started that city officials were going to ban Sarah Palin drag queens at its upcoming costumed street party, which draws some 500,000 people annually. The rumor turned out to be false, but tonight comes word that a mannequin has been outfitted to look like Palin -- with glasses, a beehive wig and a red business suit -- and is hanging from...

The FBI (web) and Carter County Sheriff's Department are investigating a claim by a black Ardmore man who says a group of men tried to lynch him in southern Oklahoma. The man's name hasn't been released. Deputies say he told them he was traveling to Milo in northwestern Carter County on May 25th when he stopped to help a farmer round up stray cattle from the road. He says as helped move the cattle four white men appeared and accused him of stealing the and began trying to lynch him. The man says another man then drove up in a...

ARDMORE — A black man who told police he was nearly lynched by a group of white men actually ran into a clothesline after arguing with his wife, said Carter County Sheriff Ken Grace. Last week, the man whose name was not immediately available, called the sheriff and said a group of men tried to hang him in rural Carter County after he stopped to help an elderly farmer round up straying cattle. Grace said deputies and FBI agents investigated the case, and the man told officers that he made up the false claim. "He said they accused him of...

Ardmore, OK — An Ardmore man who told authorities last week he was the victim of an attempted lynching near Milo, has admitted the story was a hoax. Sheriff Ken Grace said Glynis Davis made the admissions Monday in a formal statement that the lynching incident he had described was untrue. “His wife was with him when he made the statement and corroborated the statement,” Grace said. Davis’ admissions came when the Carter County Sheriff’s Department and FBI investigation into his May 28 report that four white men tried to lynch him indicated the story was not factual. “The injuries...

Pakistani lawyers beat up former Musharraf minister 1 hour, 16 minutes ago A crowd including Pakistani lawyers beat up a former government minister and ally of President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday, prompting a top pro-democracy lawyer to quit his post. Dozens of attorneys surrounded ex-parliamentary affairs minister Sher Afgan Niazi in the eastern city of Lahore, television channels showed, highlighting tensions since Musharraf's allies were trounced in elections in February. Aitzaz Ahsan, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and leading supporter of ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said he was quitting after the incident. "I have decided...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

"The opening of a trapdoor and the sudden snap of a hangman's noose at dawn yesterday brought an extraordinary end to a political era in Iraq." -- Opening line from The Guardian's report of the execution of Saddam, Dec. 31, 2006 "Senator Clinton never gave a second thought to opening the trap door beneath her fellow Democrat." -- Bob Herbert of the NYT, Confronting the Kitchen Sink, March 8, 2008 [emphasis added in both citations]. When Bill O'Reilly, in an impromptu response to a phone caller's question, said that he didn't want to "lynch" Michelle Obama, critics on the left...

Star Jones Reynolds has never been one to mince words. It's no wonder that when Bill O'Reilly's most recent controversial (see also: racist) comments about Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, were discovered by Media Matters, the TruTV legal analyst was infuriated! O'Reilly, the curmudgeon host of Fox News Channel's 'The O'Reilly Factor,' was talking to a caller that was angry that Obama had said on C-Span that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." The 58-year-old television commentator, who privately settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against him in 2004, responded...

They were part of a distinctive window display designed to attract shoppers through the doors of chic high street chain All Saints. But instead, the eight headless black dummies, which are suspended from silver chains, have caused a storm of protest from race campaigners. Equality groups claim the mannequins resemble the Ku Klux Klan lynchings which terrorised America's Deep South. And they were so incensed that they complained to police - who launched a probe and sent officers round to the shop to investigate. The hanging mannequins are used at the all the chain's 40 stores around Britain but have...

by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com EditorSeptember 27, 2007Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" scheduled for broadcast tonight, pro-life Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says abortion was behind all of the attacks on him during his confirmation hearings. He called the confirmation process a "high tech lynching."Thomas tells newsman Steve Kroft that the whole issue of alleged sexual harassment was a front for abortion advocates to attack him over the issue of abortion."That was the elephant in the room... That was the issue," he tells CBS News. "That is the issue that people are apparently...

(Paul Ciniraj) Patna (Bihar, India), SVM News, Sept 23, 2007: Two more suspected thieves lynched at Saketpuri, a lower middle class neighbourhood under the jurisdiction of Sultanganj police station of Patna in Bihar state on September 21. The alleged thieves were attacked by an angry crowd after a resident raised an alarm on Friday night. "One of the victims jumped into a pond to escape, but the mob encircled, stoned, pulled him out and he was beaten to death," Anwar Hussain, City Police Superintendent told to the Salem Voice Ministries (SVM) News Service. Another man's body was recovered on Saturday...

(IsraelNN.com) An IDF Major was rescued this afternoon (Monday) by PA police from a crazed Arab mob when he mistakenly entered the city of Jenin, in northern Shomron. Arab residents who first saw him and realized he was Israeli threw rocks at him, forced him out of his car and began beating him. A Palestinian Authority policeman called for help, and PA forces rescued the Israeli. He was transferred safely to the Jalameh checkpoint north of Jenin, where the IDF received him. The PA's Maan news agency reported that the officer entered the city from the west, driving a white...

Vehicle's passenger was beaten to death by several men, police say. AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF A group of men fatally beat a passenger in a car that police said accidentally struck a child outside an East Austin apartment complex, police said today. As many as 3,000 people were in the area following a Juneteenth celebration at the time, officials said. Austin police Cmdr. Harold Piatt estimated that dozens were in the parking lot of the Booker T. Washington apartment complex at the time and that preliminary information shows no witnesses apparently tried to prevent or stop the attack. "At this point, we...

A crowd attacked and killed a passenger in a vehicle that had struck and injured a child, police said Wednesday. Police believe 2,000 to 3,000 people were in the area for a Juneteenth celebration when the attack occurred Tuesday night. The man who was killed had been trying to stop the group from attacking the vehicle's driver when the crowd turned on him, authorities said. The Austin Police Department identified the victim as David Rivas Morales, 40. The child was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Police spokeswoman Toni Chovonetz said she had no further information, including how...

In April 2006, three members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team were accused of raping a black stripper, Crystal Gail Mangum, during a March 13 party at an off-campus residence. Three players, David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty, were charged with forcible rape, first degree sexual assault, and kidnapping. What the three young men did not know was that they were about to get a lesson in Democrat Party politics that no political science course at Duke could ever teach. 2006 was an election year in North Carolina and Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, a Democrat, was in...

We now know with certainty that Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong is a self-serving creep who played the race card to advance his career. Whatever happens to him -- disbarment, being subjected to civil lawsuits or being pelted with tomatoes at a public square -- will not undo the damage his office inflicted on the three former lacrosse players at Duke University the 13 last months. His rush to judgment fit the liberal template of the university that convicted the players, the lacrosse program and the coach before the ink on the bogus charges was dry. All of it...

WASHINGTON - U.S. criminal investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine, a senior defense official said Saturday. Investigators determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm's length of each other and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha, said the official, who is familiar with reports produced by the Naval...

Red America, my new blog at washingtonpost.com, has been under attack since its launch. It is a conservative blog on a mainstream media site, so many of the attacks were expected. If one bothers to read it, I believe it stands as a welcome addition to the opinion debate. The hate mail that I have received since the launch of this blog has been overwhelmingly profane and violent. My family has been threatened; my friends have been deluged; my phone has been prank called. The most recent email that showed up while writing this post talked about how the author...

GAFFNEY -- The nation will have a chance to see the state's case against five Spartanburg County teenagers charged with a racially motivated attack when Court TV airs coverage of the trial next week.

DETROIT - A full-page newspaper advertisement depicting black corpses hanging from trees and likening media coverage of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to lynching has drawn criticism in the home stretch of his re-election campaign. The mayor distanced himself from the ad, which was published this week in the city's largest black newspaper and echoes complaints he has made about media coverage. "This advertisement is not affiliated in any way with the Kilpatrick administration or the Kilpatrick for Mayor campaign," Kilpatrick said in a statement. "Detroiters are very passionate people, and while I appreciate the spirit of some of the content, I...

DETROIT - An advertisement in a local weekly newspaper has caused some controversy over its words and a photograph, Local 4 reported. The full-page ad on the back page of this week's The Michigan Citizen carries the headline, "Lynching Is Still Legal in America," and bears a photograph of three black men being lynched. The ad was purchased by the Citizens for Honest Government with the intention of depicting Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as a victim of media lynching, Local 4 reported. The price of the ad was not disclosed, but according to the rates posted on the newspaper's Web site,...

  Nigerian lynched for witchcraft   A mob in northern Nigeria has beaten to death a man who police say confessed to involvement in ritual murders.The incident came after three women were found murdered and mutilated in Bakori town in Katsina state. Their body parts are thought to have been removed for use in rituals. A police spokesman said that on Thursday, passers-by apprehended a man who appeared to be attacking another woman, who was screaming for help. "They took him to the office of the traditional chief of the town where he confessed to taking part in the...

WASHINGTON – In more than 200 years, the United States Senate has rarely found an occasion to apologize. But today the body is expected to apologize to lynching victims and their families for the Senate’s failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation during the first part of the 20th century. From 1890 to 1960, 4,742 Americans were documented as having been lynched, with actual numbers believed to be much higher. During that time, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced to the United States Congress. The United States House of Representatives even passed three anti-lynching bills, but all failed on the floor...

(CBS 5) Oakland police are learning more about a brutal beating caught on tape and sold on DVD. The DVD is called "World's Wildest Street Fights," and the scene was taped in Oakland about three years ago. Oakland police found out about the tape Monday, and don't know who the victim is, or if she's alive. "As it stands right now, or homicide section has not been able to identify any unsolved homicides for that time period," said Oakland Police Department spokesperson Danielle Ashford. Investigators believe that the woman was attacked in a parking lot that is now a charter...

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) - Jewish congregations gathered in a suburban shopping center Wednesday to remember the lynching of a Jewish businessman on the same spot 90 years ago. Leo Frank was kidnapped from prison and hanged in 1915 after being convicted of killing a teenage girl at a pencil factory. Frank, a 29-year-old from New York City, had been sentenced to death for the 1913 strangulation of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker whose body was found in the factory's coal bin. But the evidence against Frank was thin, and the governor commuted the sentence to life in prison. Two months...

Letter from North America: “ ‘Ling Chi’ [lynching’s] Shadow” BBC Special Internet Correspondent: Fang Hu Zhai‘Ling chi’, using a knife to dismember a person piece by piece, was a method of torture practiced in ancient China. I am using ling chi here however as a borrowed translation to describe the history of ‘lynching’ in the United States. Most of the history of lynching, the “illegal punishment” by hanging of a criminal without any legal process whatsoever, is tied to southern white racists. In the past, they wantonly killed blacks, other minorities, even white people who opposed their views, and thus...

ISRAELI Arab leaders have called on the Government to refrain from investigating the lynching by Arabs of an Israeli soldier who shot dead four Arabs, including two women, on a bus last Thursday. Knesset member Mohammed Barakei warned that protests could erupt throughout the Arab sector if an investigation is carried out into the soldier's killing. A security official in the Israeli Arab town of Shfaram, where the shootings occurred, said the soldier, Eden Natan Zada, had been beaten to death by the mob after he had been subdued by police and handcuffed. But Mr Barakei denied this, and said...

WALTON COUNTY — With the 59th anniversary of the Moore’s Ford lynchings coming up on Monday, activists are gearing up for a re-enactment of the tragedy. Two black couples, George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Dorothy and Roger Malcom, were killed by a lynch mob of unmasked white men at the Moore’s Ford bridge on July 25, 1946. On Friday, state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-47, of Atlanta) held a press conference in Monroe to provide more details about the re-enactment

------------------------ Today: July 25, 2005 at 8:8:21 PDT Re-Enactment of 1946 Lynchings Planned By ERRIN HAINES ASSOCIATED PRESS ATLANTA (AP) - Civil rights activists in Georgia hope to stage a re-enactment today of the lynchings that took place on July 25, 1946.

Reid cited Justice Hugo Black of Alabama as a former senator who was appointed to the Supreme Court. Black, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth, was appointed to the court by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. “I think it is a great idea,” Reid said about the possibility of appointing a senator to the Supreme Court. “Some outstanding people have come from the Senate. The last was an ex-Ku Klux Klansman who turned out to be one of the greatest civil-rights jurists of all time.”

JUST WHO OWES lynching victims an apology? Judging from some of the commentaries we've seen, you'd think the eight Republicans who did not cosponsor the Senate's lynching apology — including Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu — had all been unmasked as former Ku Klux Klan members. (The bill passed on a voice vote with no objections.) But alas, the only former Klansman in the Senate is a Democrat, which brings us to the issue at hand. What the Senate passed last week was not an anti-lynching bill, as some have portrayed it. It was a formal apology by the...

What, me apologize? Jay Bryant June 21, 2005 The United States Senate has passed a resolution, sponsored by Republican George Allen of Virginia and Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, apologizing as an institution for preventing the passage of anti-lynching legislation. We are still waiting for the Democratic Party to apologize for its role, which is far greater than that of the whole Senate, inasmuch as all the senators who prevented action to abolish lynching for all those decades, were Democrats. The old massahs were Democrats, too, and so were the whip-toting overseers who carried out their brutality on what they...

The United States Senate has passed a resolution, sponsored by Republican George Allen of Virginia and Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, apologizing as an institution for preventing the passage of anti-lynching legislation. We are still waiting for the Democratic Party to apologize for its role, which is far greater than that of the whole Senate, inasmuch as all the senators who prevented action to abolish lynching for all those decades, were Democrats. The old massahs were Democrats, too, and so were the whip-toting overseers who carried out their brutality on what they regarded as sub-human chattel. The sponsors of Jim...

"The U.S. Senate last night approved a resolution apologizing for its failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation decades ago, marking the first time the body has apologized for the nation's treatment of African-Americans." The Washington Post, June 14, 2005. --snip-- The Senate wants you to know how terribly, sincerely sorry they are even though not a single member of today's Senate was even in office the last time America saw a lynching. Some were not even born. But that's the way we prefer our apologies in American politics. We don't apologize for our own sins. Bill Clinton never apologized for...

(AgapePress) - This year's Senate apology casts a vote of regret for Senate inaction on lynchings. All in favor, say "Aye!" And for those who didn't sign up as co-sponsors (only 15 of 100 senators didn't), get ready for reporters' phone calls. Apparently, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran -- not a co-sponsor -- actually answered one of those calls. "I don't feel that I should apologize for the passage or the failure to pass any legislation by the U.S. Senate." He declined, he said, because he felt he could not say sorry for "something I did not do." Cochran's words were...

US examiner concludes that brain damage was irreversible An autopsy on Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose condition sparked a legal, medical and political battle that divided America, has backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state before her feeding tube was removed. The report, released yesterday by a medical examiner in Florida,found she had massive and irreversible brain damage, and was blind. It found no evidence she had been strangled or that Michael Schiavo, her husband, had abused her, as her parents had claimed. But the cause of her collapse 15 years ago remains...

Enzi, Thomas mum on anti-lynching bill By Jessica Lowell rep5@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Fred Lebsack isn't very happy with his U.S. senators. The Cheyenne man said it was "pretty backward" that neither Sen. Craig Thomas nor Sen. Mike Enzi, both Republicans, signed on to support the Senate's apology, issued Monday, for that body's failure to take action when anti-lynching legislation first was proposed. "This is waffling at best, weaseling at worst," Lebsack said, pointing out that Wyoming's nickname is the Equality State. The U.S. Senate passed a non-binding resolution that apologizes to victims for the Senate's...

Here are the 20 Senators who 1) refused to co-sponsor the anti-lynching resolution passed yesterday, and 2) refused a roll-call vote so they'd have to put their name on the resolution. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Robert Bennett (R-UT) Christopher Bond (R-MO) Jim Bunning (R-KY) Conrad Burns (R-MT) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Thad Cochran (R-MS) Kent Conrad (D-ND) John Cornyn (R-TX) Michael Crapo (R-ID) Michael Enzi (R-WY) Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Judd Gregg (R-NH) Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Trent Lott (R-MS) Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Richard Shelby (R-AL) John Sununu (R-NH) Craig Thomas (R-WY) George Voinovich (R-OH) 19 Republicans and 1 Democrat, a real wall of...

Research by the Tuskegee Institute documented 4,743 lynchings in 46 states between 1882 and 1968. Three-quarters of the victims were black. In Texas, 493 lynchings took place, of which 352 involved blacks.

Senate votes an apology on lynchingLawmakers expressed regret for never having outlawed what one called "domestic terrorism."By Lauren MarkoeInquirer Washington BureauWASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate apologized yesterday for never having outlawed lynching, which from the 1880s to the 1960s took the lives of more than 4,700 people, mostly African Americans.Lynching "is really an act of domestic terrorism," said Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D., La.), who sponsored the apology resolution along with Sen. George Allen (R., Va.), "and I think it's quite appropriate today that we're discussing this as our country leads the fight against terrorism abroad."The resolution passed by voice...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Monday formally apologized for having rejected decades of pleas to make lynching a federal crime as scores victims' descendants watched from the chamber's gallery. On a voice vote and without opposition, the Senate passed a resolution expressing its regrets to the relatives as well as to the nearly 5,000 Americans -- mostly black males -- who were documented as having been lynched from 1880 to 1960. These deaths occurred without trials, mostly in the South, often with the knowledge of local officials who allowed mob lynchings to become picture-taking, public spectacles. During this period,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate seldom says it's sorry, although it is now ready to officially express its remorse over the failure to outlaw lynching in the United States. A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968. Doria Dee Johnson, the great-great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who was killed by a white mob nearly a century ago, was to be on hand for the floor...

1916 MURDER OF ABBEVILLE FARMER U.S. Senate on Monday will express regret for failing to pass anti-lynching legislation WASHINGTON — There can be no justice for the Crawford family. In 1916, their forebear, Anthony Crawford, a successful black farmer from Abbeville, accused a white buyer of offering an unfairly low price for Crawford’s cotton. For this, Crawford was beaten, mutilated and hanged by a white mob who repeatedly fired shots into his swinging body. No one was ever punished. But on Monday, the U.S. Senate will apologize. It will offer an apology — an act documented only a handful of...