Free Republic

Of course, it was self-defense, but not by George Zimmerman. Let's forget blackness, racism, neighborhood watches and location for a moment and simplify the story. Let's say a person spots someone he has a perceived beef with; maybe this person doesn't like the way the other guy looks, or the way the other guy looked at someone else, or doesn't want him around his neighborhood, or this person is just out for trouble. Now this person follows the other guy slowly in his car for a while, ultimately getting out and confronting him. Maybe he even pushes the other guy...

Stand Your Ground: A big hypocrite in the IRS scandal targeting Tea Party groups sets his sights on a conservative think tank, asking its suspected supporters: "Are you now or have you ever been a conservative?" Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is on a witch hunt that threatens anew the free speech rights of Americans who don't hold his views or those of the Obama administration. This time he has targeted the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of state legislators who promote free markets, limited government and federalism, ahead of a "stand your ground" hearing Durbin announced after George...

TALLAHASSEE — Trayvon Martin’s father has been named honorary captain of the FAMU football team after delivering an inspirational speech to the team Sunday. Florida A&M coach Earl Holmes said Tracy Martin, whose son’s shooting death in Sanford drew national attention, called him recently and the coach recently invited the grieving father to address his players. “[We] talked and I told him I’d love him to talk to the team. He came out and he was very, very encouraging,” Holmes said of Tracy Martin. “ . . . [He] got a standing ovation from our guys. He talked about just...

MIAMI GARDENS – Library closures, treating the mentally ill and the state of the fire-rescue service took center stage Tuesday when Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez hosted a town hall meeting at the North Dade Regional Library to discuss his proposed $6.3 billion budget for the new fiscal year. “What are your priorities and what do we cut?” asked Marilyn Lieberman, a self-styled community activist. . . Linnea Pearson, a Florida International University professor and former teacher of Travon Martin’s brother Jahvaris Fulton, said one of the reasons Trayvon got into trouble was because he was suspended. “As an educator, one...

Florida Sit-In Against ‘Stand Your Ground’ By LIZETTE ALVAREZ TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The college and high school students arranged themselves in the colonial-style chairs and on the green carpet, a portrait of the state’s Old Capitol building above them, as they exchanged stories about their lives and the travails of the “black and brown youth” in Florida. One young woman whose parents were both drug addicts spoke about how she had defied the odds; she will graduate from college next year. A young man mentioned that he was one of the few in his family who had not ended up...

A Florida beach safety officer was fired on Friday after he referred to Trayvon Martin as a “thug” on his personal Facebook page. Todd Snipes, a beach officer of 15 years who was stationed about 40 minutes from where Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, Fla., was initially suspended for the post he made on Facebook last month. “Another thug gone,” Snipes wrote the night of George Zimmerman’s acquittal. “Pull up your pants and be respectful. Bye bye thug r.i.p.” In his termination letter, Department of Public Protection Director George Recktenwald wrote that Snipes had “engaged in behavior that threatens...

About 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll. The figures highlight how segregated the United States remains in the wake of a debate on race sparked by last month’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. President Barack Obama weighed in after the verdict, calling for Americans to do some “soul searching” on whether they harbor racial prejudice. There are regions and groups where mixing with people of other races is more common,...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A Florida beach safety officer has been fired over comments he is accused of making on Facebook regarding Trayvon Martin. Todd Snipes was fired Friday for unprofessional conduct. County officials say Snipes showed “horrible judgment made worse during a racially charged atmosphere.”

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin is facing a firestorm of criticism after sending letters to hundreds of organizations trying to find out the depth of their relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council. The senator’s interest in ALEC is based on the stand your ground legislation that has become a focal point for liberal activists and lawmakers after the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. But his hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, editorialized that the inquiries looked like “Durbin’s enemies list.” In the August 6 letter sent to think tanks and corporations, Durbin wrote, “I am seeking clarification whether organizations that...

The issue is beyond race and Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. George Zimmerman’s fear of Trayvon Martin led to murder and his acquittal. Since fear for his life, even if unreasonable, allowed Zimmerman to walk free. Then, what of other fear-based prejudices? Last year, in Jacksonville, FL, Jordan Davis, 17, African American, and unarmed, was killed in a mall parking lot, while sitting in his car. Michael David Dunn, 46, White, claims Davis pointed a shotgun after Dunn told Davis to turn down his music. Dunn shot his 9mm into Davis’ car and sped away. Now charged with first degree...

Former Florida Rep. Allen West had harsh words of criticism for nationally known civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have remained silent on a video showing black teens beating a white boy, 13, on a school bus: “Ya’ll just make me sick.” The video, which went viral this past week, depicts a July 9 assault on a Pinellas County school bus. Three black teenage boys, all age 15, beat a white boy, while the bus driver — who has since resigned — tries to verbally halt the altercation but does not physically intervene. The...

Okay, well, somebody needs to paint a mural of Trayvon selling weed or smashing George's skull in or jumping from behind a bush and ambushing George and demand it be displayed as well. ORLANDO, Fla. – An eye-grabbing mural showing a picture of a man shooting a likeness of Trayvon Martin was unveiled Friday at the state Capitol.

A Volusia County Beach Safety officer accused of sending insensitive racial messages at the end of last month’s Trayvon Martin trial was fired Friday for unprofessional conduct — or what county officials called “horrible judgment made worse during a racially charged atmosphere.” Todd Snipes, 45, a Volusia lifeguard for 24 years and a law enforcement officer for 15, “engaged in behavior that threatens the respect and trust of the community and jeopardizes the perception that the department enforces the law fairly, even-handedly and without bias,” Department of Public Protection Director George Recktenwald wrote in Snipes’ notice of dismissal. Reached Friday...

  Obama has unwittingly made his real beliefs clear. From time to time, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas have naturally talked about growing up African-American under far less tolerant conditions than those we take for granted today. Yet their biggest contributions to American race relations have been their admirable abilities to transcend such racial intolerance — to make being black incidental, not essential, at least in public, to their sterling characters and impressive achievements. They all paid a price for emphasizing individuality rather than adhering to identity politics. Those on the left often criticized them as somehow inauthentic,...

Recently released video shows a 13-year-old boy receiving a barrage of blows and kicks from three 15-year-old boys as they all rode home in a Pinellas county school bus. The dispute began on July 9 when one of the three boys tried to sell the younger boy marijuana while the two were in a bathroom at their drop out prevention school, prompting the younger teen to notify school officials, according to WFLA.com. Later that day, Joshua Reddin, Julian McKnight and Lloyd Khemradj were on the bus when they confronted their peer about the incident and began beating him....

A viral video showing the beating of a 13-year-old white boy by three African-American youths in Florida has left hundreds of thousands of viewers horrified, but critics say the case doesn't seem to be attracting much sympathy from self-styled civil rights activists. In the chilling video, three 15-year-old boys repeatedly beat and kick a victim police said was left with a broken arm and two black eyes. Although Florida came under fire in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and George Zimmerman's acquittal by activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson - who called it an "apartheid state" - neither...

Maybe it was the upbeat mood of a man about to go on vacation, but President Obama seemed feistier than usual in making the case today for his policies on surveillance, health care and immigration reform. During his second term, Obama has sometimes seemed back on his heels in defending his policies against Republican attack, but that wasn’t the case in his White House news conference Friday. He argued for what he called, at one point, “common sense” solutions, with seeming confidence that he has the upper hand politically against the GOP. Obama’s attempts to hold the middle ground, and...

Apparently, inciting racist lynch mobs is approved by the ‘black Time magazine’ if the instigator is a famous black filmmaker and the victims are “white Hispanics.” Ebony magazine is featuring film director Spike Lee, who last year tried to incite a lynch mob against the family of George Zimmerman by Tweeting what he thought was their home address, on their cover. Spike and his son don their hoodies for the September issue entitled “We are Trayvon.” The magazine included several photos of black fathers and sons in grey hoodies. For the record, if your son, Spike, refrains from jumping a...

<p>A mob of nine black people attack two off-duty cops visiting Green Bay. Downtown. At night. Happened last month.</p> <p>Green Bay cops show up. No one is arrested. The off-duty cops – from Minneapolis – do not like that. They accuse Green Bay cops of running a “clown show.”</p>

Obamacare is an "anti-poverty program" aiding poor blacks and Latinos, especially in inner cities, and will help those minorities win health insurance they otherwise wouldn´t get, according to Harvard´s — and the nation´s — leading expert on poverty. In a paper that marks the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking study of the poor, "The Truly Disadvantaged," Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson said that without Obamacare and the president´s first-term stimulus programs, poverty in the nation would be far worse. "Quite frankly, I think that Obama´s programs have prevented poverty, including concentrated poverty, from rapidly rising, Drudge: Megyn Kelly to Take

Across the country, laws that pertain to the use of deadly force have come under scrutiny in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial, but not all the laws are the same. That is why Indiana’s law likely won’t be changing any time soon. Indiana does have legislation in the Indiana Code that would be considered “Stand Your Ground.” It means that a person in Indiana does not have a “duty to retreat” and is allowed to use deadly force in certain scenarios. Indiana’s legislation is different than Florida’s in a few key areas, but it also shares a lot...

In the aftermath of the trial of George Zimmerman, protests erupted around the country, in Florida and elsewhere, demanding a range of legal remedies for the failure for Zimmerman to be convicted and punished for shooting unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.  Not much has happened.  Here's why. 1.  Federal prosecution of Zimmerman. Perhaps the loudest demand (from Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others) was that Zimmerman be tried again on federal civil rights or hate crime statutes, which Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the justice department was considering.  This idea made no sense from the start, since to bring such...

Sybrina Fulton, Her Son Jahvaris, And Some Unrelated Guy Named “Fruit”, Represent Modern African Americans On The Cover of Ebony Magazine… I wonder if the other people who are sharing the cover of Ebony Magazine know that Jahvaris Fulton is the son of Sybrina Fulton, and not her ex husband Tracy “Fruit” Martin, who has fathered 4 or 5 other kids by other women; some while married to the prior child’s mothers. Then again, now that I think about it, the “We are Trayvon” catch phrase probably does attach aptly to most of the group claiming such a descriptive as...

President Barack Obama discussed Edward Snowden, the health care law, Hillary Clinton and Russia during a Tuesday visit to "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno." But Obama´s comments about the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin had special local interest. George Zimmerman was acquitted last month of murder in the teen´s death in Sanford. Some Americans have criticized Obama previously for commenting on the issue, but Leno said that the president had spoken eloquently and from the heart about Trayvon´s death. "I think all of us were troubled by what happened," Obama told Leno.

Two different conservative organizations with whom we’ve got contacts have received letters from Sen. Dick Durbin’s office today which look an awful lot like the actions that precipitated the IRS scandal. Apparently there’s a massive fishing expedition afoot. This came to the our buddy Kevin Kane at the Pelican Institute… Dear Mr. Kane, I write to seek information regarding your organization’s position on “stand your ground” legislation that was adopted as a national model by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Republican Rep. Ted Yoho said a tax on tanning salons included in President Obama’s health care overhaul law is “racist” against white people. At a town hall meeting in his north Florida district earlier this month, the freshman Tea Party favorite suggested the 10 percent tax was discriminatory because “dark skin” people don’t using tanning booths. “I had a little fun with [House Speaker] Boehner and told him about the sun tanning tax. He goes, ‘I didn’t know it was in there,’” Yoho told his constituents in an audio clip of the event posted on Right Wing Watch, a blog...

(Note to readers: The following is pure fiction.) We stopped for gas and coffee near the Oregon border and then pulled back onto the road, continuing North. It seemed like George hadn’t felt like talking these last hundred miles or so, not as much as he had earlier on in the time since I’d joined him on his journey. But now that he had a fresh jolt of java starting to flow into his veins, he started to open up again as he drove. “I’m thinking of changing my name,” he blurted out. “To what, Bob Dylan?” I wisecracked, trying...

<p>How did the world get here? Did you hear what they said: Another young brother is dead. Meanwhile Zimmerman is set free; how the f*** can this be? A man with a gun killed Sybrina and Tracy’s son. Yet he received an acquittal while Trayvon was only armed with a bag of skittles, showing once again how little America values Black life.</p>

Miami Heat star Dwayne Wade shared a photo Tuesday on his Instagram of a new Ebony magazine cover featuring him and his two sons, showing support for Trayvon Martin. On the cover of the Sept. 2013 issue of Ebony, Wade and his two sons, Zaire and Zion, are seen wearing gray hoodies. Underneath them is text that reads "We are Trayvon."

Newly uncovered video shows Lois Lerner discussing the political pressure that swirled around the IRS in 2010. Lerner says "everyone" was "screaming at" the IRS to stop the flood of money pouring into the 2010 elections through 501(c)(4) groups as a result of Citizens United. Lerner spoke to a small group at Duke´s Sanford School of Public Policy on October 19, 2010, just two weeks before the wave election that brought the Tea Party and Republicans significant gains in Congress. During her appearance Lerner was asked about the flow of money from corporations to 501(c)(4) groups.

22-year-old Jared Alexander said he was wearing a hoodie at a Boynton Beach mall when a security officer asked him to take the hoodie off. When he refused, other security officers showed up. Alexander said, “Why are you guys harassing me? I’m not stealing. I’m not going to take my hoodie off.” After a few minutes, he says, he had to go to work and so he left. He was met outside by police. Alexander says they handcuffed him and questioned him.

I was a little disappointed in reading your bold headlines "Zimmerman Walks" (July 14) and "Still Outraged" (July 15) with the picture below showing protestors carrying signs reading "Whole System is Racist" and "Say NO to Racism." Racism is in the eyes of the beholder and, so often, if those eyes would look into a mirror they might see things differently. I am not a racist by any means, but I saw a trial with a judge, prosecutor, defense lawyer, and a jury, agreed upon by all parties involved. I saw arguments, and testimony for both sides, and a jury...

The National Association of Town Watch will hold its 30th annual National Night Out celebration, otherwise known as "America's Night Out Against Crime," on Tuesday. The event, which celebrates crime prevention throughout the country, encourages communication between communities, police and neighborhood watch groups. While National Night Out is intended to be a fun event, filled with celebratory block parties and cookouts, one might wonder whether the George Zimmerman case has cast a shadow on neighborhood watch groups and influenced how they are perceived. "Everyone uses the neighborhood watch umbrella for what [Zimmerman's] group is, when really there is a severe...

A viral video showing the beating of a 13-year-old white boy by three African-American youths in Florida has left hundreds of thousands of viewers horrified, but critics say the case doesn't seem to be attracting much sympathy from self-styled civil rights activists. In the chilling video, three 15-year-old boys repeatedly beat and kick a victim police said was left with a broken arm and two black eyes. Although Florida came under fire in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and George Zimmerman's acquittal by activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson - who called it an "apartheid state" - neither...

The response was predictable, even to those who had maintained hope for a different outcome. After the jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, many cities erupted into protests of what was perceived as a fundamentally unfair and racially-biased verdict that was the result of a broken justice system. Among those protesting that Zimmerman should be punished, some admitted that the flaw was actually found within the Florida law which departs significantly from the common law by allowing individuals who initiate confrontations to use deadly force to defend themselves without a duty to escape. Florida's Stand Your...

Just revealed Democratic anti-NRA talking points urge anti-gun advocates and politicians to hype high-profile gun incidents like the Florida slaying of Trayvon Martin to win support for new gun control laws. In talking points likely followed by top Democratic leaders including President Obama after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December, the anti-gun "guide" urged gun foes to speak out when a shooting "creates a unique climate" to shout down the National Rifle Association."The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," said the 80-page document titled "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective...

Virgnia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe did not want to tell reporters if he supports the passage of an "assault weapons" ban (AWB) in the commonwealth of Virginia. When asked by Breitbart News, he replied, "What I said in Virginia, what we ought to do--and I'm a strong supporter of the second amendment--I'm a gun owner. I take two of my sons hunting and skeet shooting. I think there are reasonable things we can do."

An apartment complex in Colorado has news for tenants: get rid of your guns, or get out. Colorado Apartment Building Tells Tenants They Have to Get Rid of Their Guns or Leave Art Dorsch said he’ll either have to give up his guns or move out of his apartment. (Image source: KUSA-TV) The Oakwood Apartments in Castle Rock, Colo. sent notice to residents last week of a new provision banning all “firearms and weapons” from the premises, KUSA-TV reported. Tenants have until Oct. 1 to comply. Art Dorsch, a 77-year-old retired Marine Corps veteran, told KUSA he’s afraid he’ll lose...

In preparation for a previously announced hearing on controversial “stand your ground” laws announced after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., sent letters to more than 300 possible corporate backers of the American Legislative Exchange Council, requesting their position of such policies in states across the country.

One can't imagine the fear in the hearts of the parents of those nine black students who walked past shouting placard-carrying mobs as they entered Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Each day, they were greeted with angry shouts of "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate." In some rural and urban areas, during the school desegregation era, parents escorted their 5- and 6-year-old children past crowds shouting threats and screaming racial epithets. Often there were Ku Klux Klan marches and cross burnings. Much of this protest was in the South, but Northern cities were by no...

Discussions of race in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case have focused on issues of prejudice and stereotypes, but have generally ignored Americans’ confusion about the concept of race itself. While my recent e-book and paperback, The Myth of Race, discusses various aspects of the race concept in depth—including the biology of human variation, cultural differences in conceptions of race, the race-IQ debate, and the treatment of race in the census, I will limit myself here to pointing out some of the paradoxes and confusions about race implicit in the current debate. George Zimmerman has been described as white, a white...

Members of the New Haven community are up in arms as rocker Ted Nugent gets ready to play at the legendary Toad’s Place Tuesday night evening. More than 2,700 community members have signed a Change.org petition asking Toad’s Place to cancel Nugent's 7:30 p.m. show in the wake of several controversial remarks he has allegedly made about Trayvon Martin. The petition reads: “We, the undersigned, ask that out of respect of the New Haven community, which is experiencing a great deal of grief as a result of the Trayvon Martin verdict, you cancel the Ted Nugent show scheduled for...

<p>A cell-phone video captures the 13-year-old boy’s screams for help as he’s pummeled with fists and kicked by three bigger, older youths who “ganged up” on him as he was about to get off at his bus stop.</p> <p>The black teens beat the white sixth-grader for roughly a minute before opening the emergency-exit door and fleeing the bus.</p>

Monday afternoon towards the end of The Five, fill-in host and frequent O’Reilly Factor correspondent Jesse Watters shared his opinions about Oprah Winfrey’s first public comments about the Trayvon Martin case. Watters called Winfrey’s analogy to Emmett Till “atrocious” and said it was a “missed opportunity” for the influential media mogul to move the country forward on the issue of race. After explaining to Fox viewers who exactly Emmett Till was, Watters expressed his dismay at what he saw as an unfair comparison.

According to Essence magazine, the GRAMMY Award winning gospel dou Mary Mary will Join Stevie Wonder in his Florida concert boycott following the acquittal of former neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. "We will stand with Stevie Wonder & boycott Florida until the Stand Your Ground Law is changed," the pair reportedly told their Twitter followers. The pair explained "We love our fans but we MUST do something. We understand that a No from us isn't as big as a 'No' from Stevie Wonder, but if all our voices join together we can REALLY change things." Before the announcement, Mary Mary singer...

"People always say to me, they say, `Hey, Letterman,' they say. `Why don't you make jokes about Obama?' And I say, `All right, I'll tell you why. I don't make jokes about him because I don't want the FBI tapping my phone,"' he said. Leno tapped into the same idea with a different story: "I was going to start off tonight with an Obama joke, but I don't want to get audited by the IRS, so forget that."

A defiantly unapologetic Tawana Brawley began paying off damages last week, 25 years after falsely accusing ex-prosecutor Steven Pagones of rape, The New York Post reported. Ten checks totaling $3,764.61 were delivered to Mr. Pagones — the first payments Miss Brawley has made since she defamed him in 1988, The Post said. She still owes Mr. Pagones $431,000. A Virginia court this year ordered the money garnisheed from six months of Miss Brawley’s wages as a licensed practical nurse at The Laurels of Bon Air in Richmond, The Post reported. She can appeal the wage garnishment every six months.

"There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House...They hate not just his politics but him," says Chris Matthews. Let me finish tonight with this. I said it before and am now saying it again. There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills – even now – tens of millions of others. They hate not just his politics but him. Think about all the days we have...

Race Relations: A quarter-century after a black teenager falsely accused an innocent white man of rape, she has begun paying reparations for her slander. The man who rocketed to fame on her falsehoods is still at it. If ever there was a case of racial injustice it was the case of Tawana Brawley and Steven Pagones, except the roles of victim and perpetrator were reversed in the parallel universe of the racial grievance industry. The master of that universe is Al Sharpton. Pagones is not as well-known as George Zimmerman, nor is he likely to be now, given the media's...

<p>A wrongful death suit filed by the parents of black teenager Trayvon Martin who was shot to death by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman has been settled, according to documents filed in a Florida court yesterday.</p> <p>Trayvon Martin's parents have settled a wrongful-death claim for an amount thought to be more than $1 million against the homeowners association of the Sanford subdivision where their teenage son was killed.</p>