Free Republic

Progressives are horrified at the prospect of profiling, even though prejudice is a natural self-defense mechanism. Yet somehow it's ok for the IRS to target conservative groups.

Tennessee police chief using lie detector to sniff out racists on his force The police department in Coopertown, Tenn. has been rocked by scandals for more than a decade. Their newest police chief, Shane Sullivan, is using a polygraph test to clean up the town’s image and keep bigots off his force. COOPERTOWN, Tenn. — A police chief hired to rebuild a tiny Tennessee department dismantled by scandal is using a lie-detector test to keep racists off his force. Coopertown Police Chief Shane Sullivan took over the department in November, becoming the 11th chief in as many years. He was...

The clock ticked a little impatiently, waiting for an answer. My answer. The interviewer’s question stuck in my mind, “Have you worked with diverse students before?” Looking past her wide set eyes, I focused on the picture of MLK behind her head. He stared down at me with knowing eyes. Brooding. Silent. Without reserve. I paused, finding the answer to her question. “Yes. I have worked with diverse students. I mean, I’ve been an English Language Development teacher for the past two years and all of my students have been Hispanic.” “I wouldn’t call that diverse.” She caught me with...

America is a seething hotbed of “Islamophobia,” filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear the benign Muslim religion, according to the Obama administration’s lead investigator into the Benghazi atrocities. So said former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering in more polished, diplomatic language during an Oct. 23 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The talk was on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia,” a make-believe mental illness that Islamists would love to have listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Radical Islam’s stateside defenders frequently accuse anti-terrorism hawks of “McCarthyism,” hurling...

Anyone my age or above will need no reminding of the late, great Michael Wharton, whose Peter Simple column on these pages introduced readers to, among other creations, Dr. Heinz Kiosk. Chief among Dr. Kiosk’s inventions was the “prejudometer”, an anti-racist measurement device. When used on suspected racists, it emitted a reading in “prejudons”, the “internationally-recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice”. When I was a teenager, the antics of Heinz Kiosk made me laugh. I wonder now, though, if those lost in the modern world of corporate correctness might find Wharton’s work eerily prescient. What he didn’t foresee was that...

In this way, LOVE is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 1 John 4:17 When you believe and want America to be a racist hate filled country and hate it completely you assume every black kid killed by whitey is a racist event. So when you have a poor defenseless black kid innocently walking home and was killed by a white German sounding person like Zimmerman you immediately pull the race card. You especially want it to be an angry hate filled white...

In 1992 Ron Pauls newsletter said this: ======================== Paul, writing in his independent political newsletter in 1992, reported about unspecified surveys of blacks."Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,"Paul wrote. Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered "as decent people." Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote: "Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume...

The Short family packed their bags and moved back to South Africa after 10 years in London JOHANNESBURG — After 10 years in London, the Short family packed their bags and moved back to South Africa, part of what experts say is a growing trend of white expatriates returning home. "London was very good to us but it was never home," said Julie Short, who met her husband Wallis in the British capital, where their two young daughters were born. The couple were among the estimated 800,000 white South Africans who moved overseas, mainly to Britain, Australia and New Zealand,...

I’ve been thinking about race, and prejudice, a lot over the past week. The world has been quick to condemn John Galliano for his anti-Semitic rant. I condemned him a long time ago, firstly for portraying women on his catwalk as adolescent boys and, secondly, for his wanton, unthinking use of fur.

Dr. Laura Schlesinger, the outspoken radio talk show host who was derided into resignation over an August on-air controversy, is set to return “uncensored, expanded, and exclusive to” SiriusXM Satellite Radio in January. True to form, Schlesinger plans to come out swinging on the very topic which drove her from terrestrial airwaves. In confirming the exclusive arrangement to bring her talk show to satellite radio beginning Jan, 3, Schlessinger said Monday she intends to introduce roundtable discussions. Within the first three weeks one topic will be race relations and free speech. "Racism, bigotry and hate," Schlessinger told the Hollywood Reporter,...

Welcome to this episode of 'Dumb and Dumber.' I am your host, Sam Rubin. We begin with dope of the day Rick Sanchez, one of a series of TV anchor people, who despite their troubled personal lives, somehow continue to find work, or found work, until today, when CNN, understandably showed him the door...Could this guy be any dumber? Rick was talking with Pete Dominick on XM/Sirius and could not have stepped in it more. His remarks showed both a stupidity and a hubris that is almost unbelievable. It was so interesting to hear Dominick more or less absorb the...

You ee-vil Americans. You haven't contributed enough to Pakistani flood relief. And now you've been busted by Andrea Mitchell, who knows why you've been so miserly. It's prejudice. Prejudice I tell ya! Mitchell teased her prejudiced-Americans theory at the top of her MSNBC show this afternoon, then trotted it out while talking with Ann Curry, who is in Pakistan. How over the top was Andrea? Even fellow lib Curry had to gently talk Mitchell down, suggesting there was another very good reason why Americans would be cautious about sending money to Pakistan . . . View video here.

Thanks in large part to a deadly debacle at sea, things are getting shockingly tense between the US and a critical ally. Israel? Yes. But also Britain. President Obama’s drill-sergeant policy toward BP — yell more, maybe they’ll shoot straighter — has started to annoy British writers who say Obama’s attacks on BP do more harm than good. “This crisis has injected an animus into transatlantic relations unseen since the days of George III,” said Telegraph columnist (and former BP exec) George Trefgarne. Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover said Obama harbored “anti-British prejudice” dating all the way back to Obama’s...

Violent racial attacks are occurring... in Alabama?  Arizona?  Whitebread Iowa?  Nope.  In that nut and fruit bowl of diversity, San Francisco. What are the attacks about?  Angry tea partiers beating and shooting minorities?  Arizona cowboys rounding up Mexicans?  White klansmen and neo-nazi Republicans attacking African Americans?  Nope. African Americans attacking Asians Although both groups have suffered discrimination over the decades, the African-American community has been declining here faster than in any other major city, while the Asian-American community has been growing, partly due to immigration. Now almost one in three San Franciscans is of Asian descent, and many have moved...

WASHINGTON, DC (ANS)- The Stars and Stripes (http://www.stripes.com) is reporting that the U.S. Army has disinvited Franklin Graham to speak at the Pentagon on National Prayer Day after a military advocacy group objected because Graham has reportedly described Islam as "evil" and "wicked."

Everybody knows that Republicans are a bunch of racist, homophobic, angry White men who hate all minorities. And they want to add even more racist, homophobic, angry White men to Congress. Just look at this list from The Frederick Douglass Foundation (tip: Alex Pappas from The Daily Caller): Senate Marion Thorpe Florida Larry Linney North Carolina Michael Williams Texas House of Representatives Les Phillip Alabama – 5th District Princella Smith Arkansas – 1st District Vernon Parker Arizona – 3rd District Virginia Fuller California – 7th District Star Parker Califronia – 37th District Chriystopher Smith California – 39th District Mason Weaver...

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still needed for the family to make its living. Perhaps only sons may inherit land. Perhaps a daughter is deemed to join another family on marriage and you want someone...

New Yorks archbishop has got the score only half-right. Bigotry is alive and well -- and it goes far beyond the Catholic Church. When Comptroller and failed mayoral candidate Bill Thompson this week heard a slur spat against Jews on a radio show, his reaction rang out loud and clear into the wilderness: He greeted the bigoted caller with total silence. When actress and social nitwit Janeane Garofalo was asked about tax protesters, she slimed thousands of white Americans as racist "rednecks" -- with brain damage. Again, the reaction was plain: Near total silence.

October 29, 2009The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it. FOUL BALL!By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York   October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!   Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.             It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a...

President Obama has not made significant progress in his plan to infuse federal courts with a new cadre of judges, and liberal activists are beginning to blame his administration for moving too tentatively on what they consider a key priority. During his first nine months in office, Obama has won confirmation in the Democratic-controlled Senate for just three of his 23 nominations for federal judgeships, largely because Republicans have used anonymous holds and filibuster threats to slow the proceedings to a crawl. But some Democrats attribute that GOP success partly to the administration's reluctance to fight, arguing that Obama's emphasis...

Gunslingers twice rejected from family dining establishments First, they were turned away from Fuddruckers, then Idaho Pizza Company, farther out. But here at Shari's, just west of the Idaho State Police building in Meridian, John Carter and Mike Ludlow are finally able to sit down to dinner, black Glocks still strapped to their hips. The evening, up to this point, had certainly taken on a no-room-at-the-inn feel. Their objectives were simple: to sit down in a restaurant with their handguns clearly hanging in hip holsters, and to enjoy dinner with other like-minded and explicitly armed individuals. Carter and Ludlow are...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

Prejudice in Paradise Hawaii Has a Racism Problem By Larry Keller Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey. When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting...

The more I watch and listen to the things going on around me in our country, the more I am drawn to God's word. I find myself spending more time in prayer and feeling a conviction I have never experienced. The Holy Spirit is conjuring up something within my soul that I am afraid is about to awaken a new emerging desire of fulfilling God's will. I have this energy within me that is bubbling about, stewing, wrestling, and rising. I opened my Bible last night and began reading in Galatians chapters one and two. I had finished my other...

Here it is, a fascinating glimpse into the actual attitudes and beliefs of a segment of American society, the part that strongly disapproves of Obama, the Palin base, the Fox News core. The full email from Boston police officer Justin Barrett is after the jump. I note two things that stand out to me. The first is the crudeness of the racism. "Banana-eating jungle monkey" is the baseline description of Gates, coupled, as it always is, with "I am not a racist". He also thinks it's real cool to use "ax" instead of "ask". Then this description of policing in...

BOSTON -- A Boston police officer was placed on administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr. In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. Gates, a black Harvard scholar, was arrested at his home earlier this month on a disorderly conduct charge after he tried to budge open the door of his Cambridge home. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis found out about the e-mail on Tuesday and immediately stripped Barrett of his gun and badge,...

Thank the Good Lord that there is at least one branch of our government which is not crazy left. Not yet. Say No to Soto.

Robert Bork says choosing Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court was 'a bad mistake.'Excerpt: His name has become a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've been blocked from appointment to public office, you've been "borked." Robert Bork was derailed in 1987 by a hostile Senate. Bork sat down with NEWSWEEK for a rare interview. Pres Obama has spoken of empathy as his key standard for choosing judicial nominees. What do you think of that approach? .......at a minimum it means you want a judge who will depart from the meaning of the constitution when a sympathetic case...

It seems one man’s religious freedom is another man’s “ridiculous prejudice.” One government official fumed that Catholic doctors were refusing to perform abortions-abortions that were perfectly legal. He wrote in a memo: “After all, these scruples are in most cases nothing but ridiculous prejudices . . . One is tempted to ask: where does state authority come in these cases, or else, is the state, perhaps, not anxious to assert its authority in this particular instance?” Well, Nazi Germany was seldom hesitant to assert its authority, even over religion and individual conscience. As described in the June/July issue of First...

Concluding a Thursday NBC Nightly News story on summer movies, correspondent George Lewis previewed the new Star Trek film, set to open on Friday, and found it relevant to highlight how “some Trekkies have compared the Spock character, the product of a mixed marriage between a human and a Vulcan, to President Obama.” Those “some Trekkies” would be Newsweek's Steve Daly, author of last week's cover story, “We’re All Trekkies Now,” who proposed in a soundbite: “In a certain sense, Spock the character has dealt with some of the same prejudices and problems that our new President does.” In...

Vacuous bullies on college campuses, who couldn't score in a debate with a Teletubbie, proclaim their feigned concern about "racism" and "bigotry" as an excuse to attack people expressing opposing beliefs. Likewise, Janeane Garafalo maligned Americans as "racists" for attending "Tax Day Tea Parties," and homosexual activist Perez Hilton attacked Carrie Prejean, "Miss California," as a "dumb b**** for speaking in support of traditional marriage. If any of these self-anointed "bigot" busters ever confronted real racism or unjust discrimination of any kind, they wouldn't trivialize it by using it so carelessly. Holocaust images were entrenched in my memory as a...

I know that prejudice still exists. I know that in some communities racism still exists. But, I do think that our country has made incredible strides to rid our country of both. I am not trying to say that past actions by so many were not reprehensible, they certainly were. But I wonder, why is reverse discrimination still ok? In other words, if we truly want to eliminate discrimination or racism, why do we allow preferential policies that favor historically-discriminated groups? We are told over and over, in school, in the media, in daily conversation that prejudice is wrong, that...

So here I was - taking my daughter to school this morning (She is a high school sophomore) and she was telling me of a discussion she and the other kids were having about Black History Month. One kid suggested that - to be fair - there should be a White History Month. He was quickly chastised; "Whites don't deserve a special history month due to the racial prejudices they've committed over the years". My daughter related some of the "Rosa Parks" types of incidents as evidence of why there should be no White History Month. It was early. I...

In the UK, Lord Ahmed - a Muslim, Peer for Life, asks that British Jews who served in the Israeli Forces be tried and imprisoned upon their return. He sees no contradiction between such a request and his having made no similar pronouncement about those Muslims who are British subjects and are training with terrorist forces or who are members of such groups or raise funds for IslamoFascist terror organizations, anywhere in the world. After all they are Muslims, they couldn’t possibly a threat to Lord Ahmed’s designs on a future UKistan! Geert Wilders, a democratically elected member of the...

An academic version of NBC’s NASCAR stunt from a few years ago. They went looking for prejudice — and darned if they didn’t find it. Hailey Woldt put on the traditional black abaya, expecting the worst… “I expected people to say, ‘What is this terrorist doing here? We don’t want your kind here,’ ” said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. “I thought I wouldn’t even be served.” Instead, Woldt’s experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through...

I am no jurist and, I’ll admit, I may be reading too much into Judge Scoles’ specific ruling. However, gentle reader, the language used by the honorable judge has certainly raised my eyebrows. Does His Honor really mean to imply that, as a Jew, Mr. Rubashkin is a bigger flight risk than if he were not a Jew?!?!? I wonder if this very Honorable judge would have thought, for example, of making a ruling denying bail to some Imam whose pronouncements were too incendiary for inciting to shed infidels’ blood? Don’t you think that CAIR, ISNA, ICNA and others would...

Matthew and I were recently criticized (an increasingly regular occurrence these days) for what one commenter saw as unfair hyperbole in the criticism of Barack Obama. One recent post that was cited as an example of such unhelpful hyperbole was when Matthew used the famous poem First They Came to critique Obama, his policies, and the blind eye we turn to the culture of death in his post When Obama Came For Them. A little context may be in order. First They Came was written by Pastor Martin Niemöller, an early supporter of Hitler who eventually realized his serious error....

North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole's campaign is refusing to take down an ad that accuses her Democratic rival, Kay Hagan, of accepting money from "godless Americans," after Hagan demanded that the Republican incumbent "cease and desist." The two campaigns are in a nasty dispute over the commercial, which began running statewide in North Carolina Tuesday. Hagan sent Dole a letter Wednesday demanding she take down the ad, and held a press conference in the morning at which, according to prepared remarks, she called it an attack on her "Christian faith." The ad accuses Hagan of attending a "secret fundraiser" hosted...

What Brand Makes You Feel Comfortable? The role ofan unexamined prejudice in modern lifeWe all know the categories of prejudice that are discussed, and re-hashed endlessly, in contemporary life: racism, sexism ageism. We have made a secular liturgy of discussing these issues, and, no doubt, some good has come from it. As a tail-end baby-boomer I absorbed the principle, taught very early on, about the dangers of stereotyping. If our generation wasn't going to get anything else right on the ethical/moral front, we were going to end prejudice--at least end the sort of prejudice that was directed against the approved...

Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings on Wednesday warned two minority groups to beware of Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.” Hastings, who is black and a Democrat, made the comment in Florida at a panel discussion hosted by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

The chair of the Connecticut College history department, Catherine McNicol Stock, has suggested that Sarah Palin is somehow associated with Pacific Northwest hate groups such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations. Her proof? Well, because Palin lived in areas with low "diversity." I kid you not. Here is the professor's "learned thesis" presented in a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion column melodramatically titled, "Intolerance thrives in Palin's Pacific Northwest" (emphasis mine): Despite her efforts to portray herself as an average, small-town, "folksy" American, Sarah Palin's political views - ardently pro-gun, pro-censorship, antichoice and antigay - make John McCain's conservative credentials pale...

July 23, 2008, 12:32 pm Is Anti-Catholicism Dead? By Sewell Chan When Gov. Alfred E. Smith ran for president in 1928, his candidacy was derailed in large part by anti-Catholic prejudice. It has been nearly 48 years since John F. Kennedy became the first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president, but experts say that anti-Catholic sentiment — much of it originating in, or as a response to, immigrants in New York — remains an enduring force in American culture.

ScienceDaily (Jun. 11, 2008) — Expecting to be treated with prejudice may be part of a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to new research led by a University of Toronto psychologist. The groundbreaking study was done using a series of computer-animated male and female faces expressing a range of looks, from rejection to acceptance. Researchers created a slide show where the expressions on the animated faces morphed from looks of rejection to looks of acceptance, and study participants were asked to identify the point at which the expressions changed.

It's up to the good people in Indiana and North Carolina to do the right thing: They should ignore the political mischief and judge Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on their visions for America, which has played out during this primary. Looks like Clinton has gotten a lift from the fear-mongering, and is now slightly ahead of Obama in Indiana, and has narrowed his double-digit lead in North Carolina. Polls in Indiana show Clinton now leads Obama there by four points among likely Democratic voters, 48 percent to 44 percent. Eight percent of voters there remain undecided, according to an...

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a...

An invitation to a "diversity workshop" sent to Sandia Labs employees last week by labs management has drawn complaints because of its suggestion that white people are inherently racist. "Recent studies suggest whites' lack of awareness about other cultures has to do with whites' commitment to maintaining higher social status, or 'white privilege,' '' the invitation said. It also said whites "are likely to persist in racist behaviors unless persuaded to abolish the privileges they receive as members of the white race." Sandia staff received a dozen calls from employees upset about the wording, labs spokesman Michael Padilla said. He...

Ken Yost, 61 Kirkwood’s longtime public works director was quiet and didn’t ruffle easily, friends said. “He was always on top of things. … I mean this was a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy,” said Tim Fischesser of the St. Louis County Municipal League. Yost was active in the First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood, where his wife, Cathy, is on the staff. They led three Hurricane Katrina relief missions to Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss.

One in two believes racism is increasing By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:06am GMT 18/01/2008 Record numbers of people believe racial prejudice is worsening, according to Government figures. However, the study of views of 15,000 people in England and Wales found that more than eight out of 10 people feel a strong sense of belonging to Britain, despite evidence of growing nationalism. For the first time, more than half of people surveyed in the Citizenship and Communities survey said racism had become more of a problem in the previous five years. In the poll conducted from April...

A politically progressive friend of mine always seemed to root against baseball teams from the South. The Braves, the Rangers, the Astros -- he hated them all. I asked him why, to which he replied, "Southerners are prejudiced." The same logic is evident in the complaint the American political left has with conservative voters. According to the political analysis of filmmaker Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his own words, "The right wing, that is not where America's at . . . It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist...

What if our prejudices could be transformed into a force for good? A Harvard scholar suggests a new way to think about social relations. IN A WORLD FRAUGHT with ethnic, religious, and sectarian tensions, "tolerance" is a familiar mantra. Diversity training sessions in schools and workplaces try to instill it. Mitt Romney, in his recent speech on faith, praised our nation's embrace of it. The UN has even designated an International Day for it. (The date - mark your calendars - is Nov. 16.) Across the political spectrum, extolling tolerance is as obligatory as condemning terrorism. more stories like thisOf...