Free Republic

A recent NAACP Texas State Conference report declares energy and climate change as civil rights issues. The report assesses energy policy in the State of Texas from a civil rights lens. In a statement, NAACP Texas President Gary Bledsoe said “The poisoning of Latino Americans and African Americans living in the shadows of oil refineries and coal fired power plants from Houston to San Antonio; the children who are flooding across our borders sent by hopeful parents who pray that these children will have better lives than their own as their crops dry up and their communities are destroyed by...

Mississippi NAACP, said that Cochran could thank black voters by supporting efforts to re-establish protections in the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down last year. "Our advocacy towards his office is to support amending the Voting Rights Act, free of any conditions such as voter ID," Johnson said. "I think this is an opportunity for him to show some reciprocity for African-Americans providing a strong level of support for him." Johnson said that there are currently no Republicans who support re-establishing the formula eliminated by the Supreme Court last year, though Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and a...

The roots of modern-day voter suppression is buried in Florida, and it grew and blossomed during the 2000 presidential elections. “Florida is the state where awareness of how serious flaws in elections administration could result in voters being disenfranchised developed,” said Marcia Johnson-Blanco, coordinator, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.votersuppression2 The critical role of Florida in deciding the presidential contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, and the narrow margin by which the outcome was decided shined a global-sized spotlight on the state, revealing several election irregularities. Before the elections, state officials...

Blame for the recent violence that's swept through Springfield lies in the hands of the young men committing the crimes – and those who tacitly abet them – not the law enforcement officials and religious leaders trying to keep the peace, according to the Rev. Talbert W. Swan II, president of the Greater Springfield NAACP and pastor of Spring of Hope Church. "Don't blame the police, you know, when Pookie gets shot and you knew the kind of life Pookie was living, and you knew the path that Pookie was on and you never addressed it with Pookie," Swan said...

The woman at the center of the Donald Sterling racism scandal, the ex-Los Angeles Clippers owner’s gal pal V Stiviano, was badly beaten up by two white men in New York City on Sunday night, her lawyer has confirmed exclusively to RadarOnline. Around 7pm, as Stiviano was leaving the Gansevoort Hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, “two white men descended on her,” attorney Mac Nehorary said. “They were about 5’7 and they knew exactly who she was. They began to hit her and called her the N word. “Other disgusting slurs were made against her. She was able to run away...

How’s this for irony … V. Stiviano said a bunch of racist stuff about black people — and TMZ Sports has the footage. Among the lowlights … – “I don’t understand black people. You give them a little bit of money, they don’t know what to do with it.”

How's this for irony ... V. Stiviano said a bunch of racist stuff about black people -- and TMZ Sports has the footage. Among the lowlights ... -- "I don't understand black people. You give them a little bit of money, they don't know what to do with it." -- "[Black people] just act crazy ... they're like, 'Yo, I wanna put extra rims on top of my rims. And my rims are gonna turn around. I'm gonna call them spinners.'" The footage was shot back in 2011 as part of a reality show pilot about gold diggers -- V....

Before former Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) CEO's just-announced deal to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers, the previous record high price for an NBA team was the $550 million paid earlier this month for the Milwaukee Bucks. The amount Ballmer is paying makes it look like former Bucks owner Herb Kohl had his pocket picked by new owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry. Yes, Milwaukee is the fifth smallest market in the NBA, but it's hard to imagine that being the second most important team in Los Angeles is actually worth nearly $1.5 billion more. When the Bucks deal was announced...

A pro-life legal group is having to go to court to help the state of Arizona protect its law it passed to ban race-based abortions. Here’s the ironic rub: the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the bill, which stops abortions done specifically if the baby is African-American (or any other specific race or gender). It makes one wonder if the NAACP, which, for years has held a pro-abortion position and which recently won a court order to silence a black pro-life who was writing at LifeNews to expose it’s abortion advocacy, should be called the National Association for the Abortion...

"So long as I have the privilege of serving as attorney general of the United States, this Justice Department will never stop working to expand the promise of a nation where everyone has the same opportunity to grow, to contribute, and to succeed," Eric Holder told a civil rights group on Friday, the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling. "In these and other efforts, there are undoubtedly difficult times ahead," he said. "There are too many wedded to the past and who irrationally fear the new America that is emerging." Holder did not elaborate on those who...

The Los Angeles NAACP chapter that withdrew its lifetime achievement award to embattled Clippers owner Donald Sterling last month honored Al Sharpton with its “Person of the Year” award on Thursday evening, in Sterling's absence.

A letter from Donald Sterling’s lawyer reveals that the Los Angeles Clippers owner is refusing to pay the $2.5 million fine levied against him by the NBA. USA Today reports that his attorney, Maxwell M. Blecher, wrote in a letter to the NBA that Sterling has no intention of paying the fine. Moreover, the letter argues Sterling doesn’t deserve "any punishment at all" for his racist remarks that were made public last month. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is currently working to force Sterling out of the NBA.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Baseball Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda says he's not surprised by his friend Donald Sterling's racist remarks. The former Dodgers manager tells West Palm Beach station WPBF after 30 years of friendship with Sterling, "It doesn't surprise me that he said those things. And he shouldn't have said it." Lasorda also offered his thoughts on the woman Sterling was talking to on the tape, V. Stiviano, saying: "I don't wish that girl any bad luck, but I hope she gets hit with a car."(continued)

Donald Sterling may be down, but he’s not out and he’s out looking for a law firm to help him sue the NBA, who are attempting to force him to sell the LA Clippers. According to media reports the combative and controversial Clippers boss is preparing to sue the NBA and fight attempts to make him sell the lucrative franchise. The reports are not entirely authoritative, coming from TMZ, but they are likely true given the nature of Donald Sterling, 80, and his humiliation over what has occurred in recent times. For him, the issue is of his own making...

A federal judge has ordered Ryan Bomberger to stop making fun of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Court effectively ruled that Bomberger and his group, The Radiance Foundation, are not very funny. Bomberger, who founded The Radiance Foundation, created a series of ads for billboards and websites calling attention to what he sees as the support of the NAACP for abortion. In them Bomberger referred to the NAACP as the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People.”

It's Jew Vs. Jew as Battle Over Team Heats Up.Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Sunday he expects Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to put up a “long, protracted fight” to retain ownership of the team after being banned for life from the National Basketball Association because of racial comments. Garcetti, appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program, was asked about a potential boycott of Clippers games if Sterling balks and said, “I would certainly keep that arrow in my quiver.” Last week NBA Commissioner Adam Silver fined Sterling $2.5 million and imposed a lifetime ban after...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s confidante V. Stiviano today told ABC’s Barbara Walters that she thinks the embattled NBA basketball owner should apologize for his racist remarks. "Yes. Absolutely,” Stiviano, 31, said when Walters asked her during an exclusive television interview in Los Angeles. "I think he’s highly more traumatized and hurt by the things that he said himself,” she added. “I think he can’t even believe or understand sometimes the thing he says, and I think he’s hurt by it. He’s hurting right now." Asked if she thought he would go through with a public apology, Stiviano replied:...

Shelly Sterling — who distanced herself from her spouse’s hate speech in a statement on Monday — was accused in a 2009 deposition related to a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Sterlings of saying that Latinos were filthy and that she had called one of her husband’s tenants a 'black mother------.'Clippers coach Doc Rivers voiced his support of Donald Sterling’s wife following Sterling’s lifetime ban from the NBA on Tuesday, although it was unclear if Rivers was aware of reports that Shelly Sterling had expressed her own bigotry against blacks and Latinos in court records uncovered this week. “It’s a...

Racism is ugly, no matter who is spewing it. But there does seem to be a double standard when it comes to public outrage on the subject. It was less than a week after LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist comments to his girlfriend in a private conversation became public that he was banned for life from NBA games and venues, fined $2.5 million, and on the verge of being forced to sell his team. But when a Democratic congressman engages in racist, public name-calling of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the reaction is muted at best. First, let's be...

The current owner of the Clippers, Donald Sterling, is not a very nice man. He has been sued repeatedly for race-based discrimination. He has had to settle those cases. He is married and takes his girlfriend to basketball games, which too many people find acceptable. But what's more, it is pretty apparent his girlfriend goaded Donald Sterling into saying what he said for reasons that still are not necessarily clear. No one should excuse what Donald Sterling said, but it is clear that Sterling's girlfriend spent a lot of time working Sterling up to making his now-infamous comments. In fact,...