Free Republic

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is not dreaming of a white Christmas — party, that is. An invite concerning the Boston mayor’s holiday party, specifically for “Electeds of Color,” was mistakenly sent by an aide to all members of the Boston City Council. Some 15 minutes later, that aide, Denise DosSantos, who serves as the mayor’s director of City Council relations, blasted up a follow-up email flagging the embarrassing error. “I wanted to apologize for my previous email regarding a Holiday Party for tomorrow,” DosSantos wrote. The white councilors were not supposed to receive an invite. “I did send that to...

New York - TIME has obtained the first documented look inside the highly classified realm of military interrogations since the Gitmo Camp at Guantanamo Bay opened. The document is a secret 84-page interrogation log that details the interrogation of 'Detainee 063' at Guantanamo Bay. It is a remarkable look into the range of techniques and methods used for the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, who is widely believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker, a compatriof Osama bin Laden and a man who had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks....

An assistant principal in Greenwich is on administrative leave after a video surfaced online that purportedly shows him talking about discriminatory hiring practices. The now-viral video released by Project Veritas shows Cos Cob Elementary School’s Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland saying that he wouldn’t hire Catholics, conservatives, older applicants, or anyone he didn’t believe was progressive. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Toni Jones said the school district was made aware of the video Tuesday night, adding, “We intend to do a full investigation and until that time, we will not make any public statements. We ask that you respect the investigation process...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) accused Republicans Wednesday of attacking Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of a “stereotype” against a “Harvard grad, black woman” during her confirmation hearing. Durbin opened the third day of hearings by using his opening statement to attack Republicans for their questions the day before, implying that they were motivated by racist and sexist prejudice against the nominee.

“Faith, academic excellence, service, and community.” These are the “four pillars” that support Rice Memorial High School, one of the best high schools in the state of Vermont. These pillars anchor the topflight academics and athletics that make Rice a great option for Burlington-area families. But the state has turned one of those pillars into a stumbling block for several families who hope to send their kids to Rice. Care to guess which one? Vermont maintains a Town Tuition Program, which provides a tuition benefit for students who live in towns without public schools. Towns that provide tuition for their...

t may contain the “Crossroads of the World,” but Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that Manhattan is “not the center of our universe.” Only about 10 percent of Manhattan office workers were back as of Sept. 18, more than six months after the coronavirus pandemic upended life in the Big Apple, the Wall Street Journal had reported, citing data from commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc. “When Mayor de Blasio makes dismissive comments about the dire lack of commercial activity in Midtown, he’s really dismissing the needs of hundreds of thousands of everyday New Yorkers who will...

Elevator etiquette requires that no more than two parties share a ride, and that’s only if the next party in line says it’s OK. And Broadway is still dark, an ominous symbol of what Covid has wrought on the Big Apple.

Six weeks after the city and county of San Francisco reopened restaurant dining rooms, cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed by 250 percent, city officials say. That’s why, as of 11:59 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 2020, restaurants will be required to shut their indoor dining operations down again, and to revert to an outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery model for an unknown period of time. “With winter on the way, limited indoor dining represented the only real hope for many restaurants to survive the next three months,” the GGRA says, as “the majority of restaurants simply cannot make it financially...

San Francisco’s Department of Public Health (DPH) has shut down at least 10 bars across the city, saying that even after repeated warnings, the venues continued to violate health orders intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. And according Ben Bleiman, the city’s most vocal defender of bars and nightlife, they should shut down even more. According to DPH spokesperson Jenna Lane, that list is accurate, but she hastened to add that all of those closures were only temporary, and that as of November 11, all the bars had reopened. Here’s how it works, Lane says: Members of the public...

The Bay Area’s brief indoor dining boom is over, as Santa Clara, Marin, and Contra Costa Counties announced that all restaurants must move back to takeout, delivery, and outdoor service as of Tuesday, November 17, after a sharp uptick in cases of COVID-19. Those three counties join San Francisco, which closed dining rooms as of November 14, even as other regions, like Alameda and Solano counties, warn that they might also revert to takeout and outdoor service only.

San Francisco CrossFit helped broaden the appeal of a type of training that was considered unconventional in the fitness industry when it opened 15 years ago. Now the popular business has become another victim to the pandemic. CrossFit held a final training session on Sunday then closed for good. Longtime members of the facility said the loss is much bigger than just a gym. They said they will miss the community and the relationships that they’ve built over the years. “It’s really sad. I mean we’ve been here for 15 years. As you can see, you know, there’s a huge...

With coronavirus again surging across California, officials are faced with a narrowing number of options to slow the spread.Weekly coronavirus cases have doubled in the last month around the state, and Los Angeles County recorded more than 6,800 cases over the weekend, an alarming spike that has officials talking about more restrictions.

I wended my way up the Walgreens greeting card aisle. I stopped dead in my tracks. A card featured a cartoon image of a white man with a mullet haircut. This cartoon character wore a baseball or seed cap and a sleeveless t-shirt, a so-called "guinea T," "dago T" or "wife-beater." The very names convey class and ethnic contempt, as the New York Times points out. "Is the vilification of working-class men fair?" The Times laments, in an op-ed entitled "Are We Really Still Calling This Shirt a 'Wife Beater'?" Over the sleeveless t-shirt, the character on the card was...

It’s having a corrosive effect on American life — and hurting the Democratic Party. Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university. This is a potential strength. One of the sources of Donald Trump’s political appeal has been his ability to tap into resentment against meritocratic elites. By the time of Mr. Trump’s election, the Democratic Party had become a party of technocratic liberalism more congenial to the professional classes than to the blue-collar and middle-class voters who once...

Coming soon to a team you root for, right now there is no stopping what's happening to this country. The University of Florida President today issued a statement on how UF would address racial injustices going forward...I have no issue with that... If you know anything about the University of Florida or have watched their teams play on TV, they are usually a top-10 program in most major sports, winning National Titles in Football, Basketball and Baseball in the last 15 years.... They have a cheer that was played by the Band and the fans would join in... GATOR BAIT.......

The movie is free at the link until June 2.

A new survey from Jackson & Coker shows an overwhelming majority of doctors would prescribe hydroxychloroquine or another anti-malaria drug to a family member suffering from Wuhan coronavirus. "Sixty-five percent of physicians across the United States said they would prescribe the anti-malaria drugs chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat or prevent COVID-19 in a family member," the survey, which questioned 1,271 doctors in 50 states, found. "Only 11 percent said they would not use the drug at all." In addition, a significant number of doctors said they would prescribe the drugs to those exposed to the virus as a preventative measure...

- I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it. - I once opened a speech by confessing to a crowd of Jews that I used to hate them. It was 2006 and I was a young native of Somalia who’d been elected to the Dutch Parliament. The American Jewish Committee was giving me its Moral Courage Award. I felt honored and humbled, but a little dishonest if I didn’t own up to my anti-Semitic past. So I told them how I’d learned...

SCIENCEDIRECT.COM A mid-2000’s study linking anti-gay prejudice to shorter lifespans for lesbians, gays, and bisexual individuals has been retracted on grounds that it was an “erroneous” finding.The study “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations” was conducted by researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Social Science & Medicine in February 2014.The study purported to have found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who live in communities with high levels of anti-gay sentiment tend to die earlier than lesbians, gays and bisexuals who live in communities that are...

You are a racist. Go ahead and prove me wrong. Or at least try. You can’t. It’s the perfect charge to level against someone if you want to end a discussion because there’s nowhere for anyone to go after it’s tossed out. It’s also childish, which is why Democrats level it with the frequency that my newborn daughter soils her diaper – and they both come from the same place with the same substance. Racism still exists, of course, there are always going to be people who don’t like others because of immutable traits which they blame for their own...