Free Republic

Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time — and, above all, some serious thought — into how to go about doing it. Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them. Some have even suggested that the channels to use are organizations like the NAACP and black "leaders" like Jesse...

I guess this should be filed in the "Washington Politics" thread ... I'm an African American registered Democrat. I don't mind giving conservative Republicans hell when they deserve it. But unlike many conservative, I don't mind speaking out against my Party when I think they are wrong and encouraging them to do the right thing. Anyway, white liberals are having fits about the article posted below, which was written by me and published on my blog, in Black newspapers across the country, and at the liberal Daily Kos blog. I'm posting the article here because I'd like to have some...

One of my posts on the Civil War just got its 40,000th "view." On December 27, 2011, I posted an article titled The U.S. Constitution and Civil War. It had 42 views that year, 18,728 in 2012 and has had 21,234 so far this year, for a total of 40,004. That amounts to just over thirty percent of the views at my little blog since it began. The progression, suggesting a current level of interest in the Civil War, strikes me as interesting and I thought that maybe others might be similarly interested.For anyone who may be interested, here is...

The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the winter of 1865-66. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan. In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization.

Just days after comparing the tea party to the Ku Klux Klan, Florida’s most-outspoken Democratic Congressman, Alan Grayson, addressed the state party faithful Saturday and likened some Republicans to Confederate flag-waving “bigots.” Grayson made his comments during a mock reading of a fake Republican Party agenda in which he suggested conservatives were also gay marriage-bashing gun nuts. “At 8:30 a.m., the morning breakout sessions,” Grayson said, reading the made-up GOP agenda. “Ballroom A: the bigots. Ballroom B: the paranoids. And Ballroom C, the largest group of all: the gullible.” The speech, largely applauded by the attendees of the Florida Democratic...

Samuel "Joe The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the conservative activist and failed Ohio congressional candidate who rose to prominence after he had a campaign trail confrontation with President Barack Obama before his election in 2008, posted a tweet Friday accusing Democrats of having "a history of lynching Black Americans." Wurzelbacher's tweet was accompanied by a picture showing the word Democrat with the final "T" replaced by an image of a burning cross. The burning cross photo came from The Black Sphere, a site run by a conservative African-American writer named Kevin Jackson, who originally published the picture as a response to comments...

April 18, 2013 FAU student to police: Allen West making me ‘feel danger at school’ Laura Byrne A student at Florida Atlantic University filed a complaint with the local police, alleging that former Florida Congressman Allen West made her “feel in danger at school” after he pleaded with students to stop bothering his wife when she’s on campus.“As students, we deserve to feel safe exercising our First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and express our grievances with the University,” Stephanie Rosendorf of the Florida College Democrats wrote in the complaint obtained by The Raw Story. “These days you never know...

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...

Exactly 150 years after South Carolina became the first state to leave the United States, a group whose purpose is to preserve Confederate history is holding a dance in Charleston. The NAACP plans to protest Monday night's "Secession Ball." Leaders of the civil rights group have said it makes no sense to honor men who committed treason in order to maintain a system that kept black men and woman in bondage as slaves. But organizers of the ball say their intention is to honor men who were willing to die to protect their vision of states' rights and what this...

Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and to aid me in the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of the people.