Free Republic

Since she’s been running for president since 2000, Hillary’s Tweet at noon today may well qualify as the most anti-climactic announcement of the Internet era. The “Hillary For America” campaign has written what they believe to be a winning mission statement: “To give every family, every small business, and every American a path to lasting prosperity by electing Hillary Clinton the next President of the United States. This campaign is not about Hillary Clinton and not about us — it’s about the everyday Americans who are trying to build a better life for themselves and their families.”  Got that? A...

elma: After ignoring the battle that ended slavery under the first Republican president, President Obama at the 50th anniversary of Democrats' blocking the Selma bridge says, "We're the slaves that built the White House." The parts of American history that this president chooses to commemorate and what he says about them speaks volumes about his view of America and American history. His America is not only unexceptional, it is perpetually and deeply racist, an overbearing world bully with no right to lecture the world about morality, democracy or freedom. He reminded us over the weekend that despite any progress since...

Exclusive: Erik Rush charges Obama et al. with 'lobotomizing' African-Americans Once upon a time in America’s black communities, distinctions were indeed made between a “black man” and a “nigger.” Any black person who denies this is either very young, or they’re lying in an attempt to validate the current liberal racial orthodoxy. It probably isn’t of much use to belabor the fact that not only is Barack Hussein Obama not the post-racial president people hoped and claimed he would be (whatever that is), but that he and his political ilk have created a more racially divided and racially tense atmosphere...

Suffrage: Fresh from using his race as a defense in the Fast and Furious scandal, the attorney general blocks South Carolina's voter photo ID law as discriminatory. Tell that to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Palmetto State can't seem to catch a break from this administration. First, the right-to-work state gets harassed by the National Labor Relations Board over Boeing's expansion into a new plant. Now the Justice Department has blocked a voter ID law passed in May and signed by Gov. Nikki Haley. Both federal actions, along with a Justice Department investigation into Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have...

WASHINGTON -- At some point after calming the threatening seas and sprinkling world peace around the globe, President Obama promised us he would find time to bring about a political truce in Washington. On the Seventh Day or thereabouts, the "post-racial" Obama would become the first "post-partisan" president. Of all his audacious promises, this was one of his most pedestrian. After all, his party firmly controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, and his approval ratings were flying close to the sun. With absolute strength, Obama was perfectly positioned to work with conservatives and Republicans to govern from...

As anybody who has watched the firestorm of news surrounding Shirley Sherrod knows, the media have found a new post-racial saint. With each reporter as eager as the last to fawn all over Sherrod, it’s become a circus. The concocted narrative is as follows: Sherrod was unfairly taken out of context while trying to spread an inspiring story of getting past her own racial bias in order to help a white man keep his farm. According to the propagandists (aka, “reporters”), Sherrod is an over-comer and has been redeemed. According to those same propagandists, Sherrod is the kind of person...

Racial Politics: After passing a resolution condemning Tea Party racism, the NAACP must confront its own tolerance of bigotry. The post-racial society we were promised seems to be drowning in a sea of hypocrisy. The historic civil rights organization famous for its Image Awards seems to be having problems with its own. The latest chink in its armor is a speech by a black Agriculture Department official at an NAACP event that, if given by a white person at a Tea Party event, could rightfully be called racist. It will not get an Image Award. If character is defined by...

At 8:30 AM, Saturday, July 17, Pastor Ronnie Wallace, a black Pastor and disabled Veteran from Charlotte, N.C., was arrested by seven white police officers on the public right of way in front of the Family Reproductive Health Abortion Clinic on Hebron St, Charlotte N.C. for obstruction. Pastor Wallace comes regularly to this spot to preach the gospel and offer hope to women who are entering the clinic. Pastor Wallace, a war veteran, is disabled, walks with a cane and cannot stand for long time. ...

Racial Politics: The NAACP, in crafting a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement, seems to have forgotten those Black Panthers with clubs intimidating voters and wanting to kill white people. The "angry mobs" that reshaped the 2010 political landscape are angry white racist mobs, at least according to a resolution proposed by the NAACP at its annual convention this week in Kansas City, Mo. The resolution calls on "all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights...

Politics: Faced with losing Congress, the Democrats want to make Puerto Rico a state whether the people want it or not. The Democrats would get two new senators, new congressmen and a campaign issue. Throw in voting representation for D.C., amnesty for illegals and voting for felons, all items on the Democrats' agenda, and in their cookbook you have a recipe for Democratic majorities as far as the eye can see. It's a plan to retain control at all costs and counteract a Tea Party movement that threatens to throw their big-government liberalism on the ash heap of political history....

Last week, I attacked Frank Rich's nonsense article about race and the Tea Parties, in which he prosaically (and not-at-all-like those heavy-breathers on the right) compared recent health care protests to a famous Nazi pogrom that presaged the Holocaust. It's always helpful when demonizing your opponent to invoke Nazism—they are that bad—but Rich's real message was embedded in his headline: The rage is not about health care. And I suspect I won't spoil the ending if I reveal that health care protesters are collectively motivated by race hatred. Yesterday he revisited the issue, sharing an email from one of his...

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration plans to crack down on civil-rights infractions in school districts and university systems, including alleged disparities in the disciplining of white and black students. The campaign will essentially put an enforcement stick behind the carrot of the administration's $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which holds out the promise of extra federal funding if states revamp their education policies. States found to be violating laws designed to assure equal treatment in education could, in extreme cases, face litigation or a withholding of federal school funding, U.S. education officials said. They portrayed the move as an effort...

Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu is the next mayor of New Orleans. The city is two-thirds black, and he will be the first white elected to the office since 1970, when his father, Moon Landrieu, won the seat. The election was a true post-racial moment. Four and a half years after Katrina, black voters decided competence trumped race. The prospect of a white mayor would be “an earth-shaking event,” a politically active black lawyer told a New York Times reporter before the election. In January 2006, when the first post-Katrina election was held, Mayor C. Ray Nagin took the occasion...

Leadership: The top Senate Democrat has exposed the hypocrisy of modern liberalism through his racially insensitive remarks. Trent Lott lost his post for humoring an old man. How will Robert Byrd's party honor him? Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has called for the resignation of Harry Reid as Senate majority leader over remarks published in a new book calling then-presidential candidate Barack Obama a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one." If the Lott standard still applies, Reid should step down. Reid's propensity to shoot from the lip is legendary. He recently compared...

Union Violence: An African-American is beaten up at a political rally by thugs shouting racial epithets, and after three months his assailants are charged with the moral equivalent of jaywalking. Why wasn't it a hate crime? The beating of Kenneth Gladney by people wearing the purple shirts of the Service Employees International Union outside a Missouri health care town hall meeting three months ago met all the classic definitions of a hate crime. Time was, the beating of a black man outside a protest rally, and the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators, would be headline news. Gladney was working...

Still believe in post-racial politics? Read the health care bill. It's affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color. President Obama is on the record as being officially opposed to reparations for slavery. But as with other issues, you have to sift through his eloquent rhetoric and go beyond the teleprompter to get at what he really means. His opposition to reparations is based on the fact they don't go far enough. [snip] Under the Democrats' plans, if a medical school wants to receive contracts and grants...

Media Bias: Not long after pro football welcomed a convicted felon back on the playing field, Rush Limbaugh is dropped for his opinions from a group seeking to buy an NFL franchise. Won't someone throw a flag? When even Keith Olbermann says back off, you know the politically correct critics of the conservative icon and megaradio talk host's proposed part ownership of the St. Louis Rams are guilty of piling on. The prospect of the leading conservative voice in America participating in the purchase of a football team sent the liberal elites into cardiac arrest and into a frenzied campaign...

Legislation: Still believe in post-racial politics? Read the health care bill. It's affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color. President Obama is on the record as being officially opposed to reparations for slavery. But as with other issues, you have to sift through his eloquent rhetoric and go beyond the teleprompter to get at what he really means.

Race Relations: Two people acted responsibly in Gatesgate and did what they were supposed to do. Only one of them got invited to the White House to have a beer with the president and the professor.We don't know whether Lucia Whalen is a connoisseur of fine brews. We do know she wasn't invited to have one with President Obama, professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department. She should have been. The rabid left would say Whalen "acted stupidly" in reporting a possible crime in progress. Some are in fact saying it. The facts...

Legislation: Still believe in post-racial politics? Read the health care bill. It's affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.President Obama is on the record as being officially opposed to reparations for slavery. But as with other issues, you have to sift through his eloquent rhetoric and go beyond the teleprompter to get at what he really means. His opposition to reparations is based on the fact they don't go far enough. In a 2004 questionnaire, he told the NAACP, "I fear that reparations would be an...