Free Republic

A former NBA player and actor was sentenced to 90 years to life in prison on Friday for a series of violent sexual assaults, some of which occurred in Los Angeles County, authorities said. “During their investigation, detectives learned [that] in 2010, Byrd was convicted of sexual assault involving a different victim,” the LAPD release stated. “Detectives also discovered that Byrd had been arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman in Washington State in 2005.” Byrd’s victims told investigators that he was “initially charming” before he subsequently forced them into a variety of sex acts. “He started as a charmer,...

“Can we keep our sons from conservative politics?” That’s the question writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton posed in a recent column for New York Magazine’s The Cut. “In her son’s case, I wouldn’t bet on it,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shot back on X. He’s right. Jezer-Morton is facing an age-old conundrum of parenthood: Kids rebel against their parents’ politics. Except, in 2024, the classic trend is being inverted.

In this painting, Kehinde Wiley, an African-American artist, strategically re-creates a famous French painting from two hundred years before but with key differences. This act of appropriation reveals issues about the tradition of portraiture and all that it implies about power and privilege. Wiley asks us to think about the biases of the art historical canon (the set of works that are regarded as “masterpieces”), representation in pop culture, and issues of race and gender. Here, Wiley replaces the original white subject—the French general-turned-emperor Napoleon Bonaparte—with an anonymous Black man whom Wiley approached on the street as part of his...

Beginning Monday, Pittsburgh police won’t respond to any calls that aren’t in progress emergencies. Chief Larry Scirotto wants to cut their call volume from approximately 200,000 calls per year down to about 50,000. That essentially means that calls for criminal mischief, theft, harassment and burglary alarms, just to name a few, will all be handled by the telephone reporting unit or online reporting.

The city of Chicago on Tuesday sued six major oil companies and the primary fossil fuel lobbying group, alleging they funded and planned a campaign of climate change denial that directly affects the city’s residents. In the lawsuit, the city accused BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Phillips 66, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute (API) of misleading the public about the impact of their products and of contributing to the effects of climate change on Chicago. These impacts include unsafe summer temperatures, an increase in extreme weather, shoreline erosion and susceptibility to disasters such as flash flooding in basements on...

I have written about the disastrous policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson for Chicago. As a native son, it is hard to watch this wonderful city undermined by Johnson and radical allies in the city council. Some initiatives like reparations and state-funded grocery stores will cost money but will not impose nearly the costs of Johnson’s dismal record on crime and taxes. However, this week saw a particularly confusing moment when, after calling the anti-crime program ShotSpotter “racist,” Johnson asked the company to extend its contract beyond the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So Johnson will put an end to this supposedly...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defended staying in the Democratic nominating contest on Friday by pointing out that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June 1992, adding, “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” Her remarks were met with quick criticism from the campaign of Senator Barack Obama the comments touched on one of the most sensitive aspects of the current presidential campaign — concern for Mr. Obama’s safety.

MSNBC host Joy Reid lamented that black Americans have not received sufficient reparations for “literally, physically” building this country, believing that former President Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure is the best they will get. Reid issued her comments during an interview on Salon Talks with writer Dean Obeidallah wherein she said that black people “literally, physically, built this country” and therefore deserve much more than a two-term black president.

Never knew the name of this department. But every American should. They're the ones who show up to harass and threaten rape victims and the families of murder victims They exists to insinuate and threaten legal consequences for victims who "make it about race" and bully vulnerable people into surrendering their first amendment right to say whatever they damned well please about the people who harm them and their family no matter how "hateful" Whenever the parents of a murdered girl make a statement about "Saying no to hate" or fathers "Don't want to comment"... These are the people behind...

The commercial "What Does the Data Say?" from Monday dot com has three actors: - an older black male - a white female - a white male. If you've been watching TV ads over the last few years, can't you basically write the script? 999 chances out of 1000 you'd get it 100% correct. The older black male is the boss, the white female is a super-competent employee, and the white male is an incompetent doofus that the other two mock. No company would ever have the black male or the white female as the doofus: it's almost always a...

Oklahoma's largest newspaper must pay out a staggeringly large settlement to a sports broadcaster they wrongly identified as being a racist, it was announced on Tuesday. The Oklahoman, the state's largest newspaper, was ordered by a jury to pay $25 million to Scott Sapulpa after they accused him of engaging in a racist tirade against high school basketball players. The incident in question took place in March 2021, when players from the Norman High School girls basketball team "took the knee" in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. As the protest took place, audiences were astonished to hear one...

It’s Black History Month. Back in 2005 on CBS “60 Minutes,” Mike Wallace told actor Morgan Freeman: “Black History Month, you find. . . . “ “Ridiculous.” “Why?” “You`re going to relegate my history to a month?” “Come on.” “What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.” “I’m Jewish.” “Okay. Which month is Jewish History Month? “There isn’t one.” “Why not? Do you want one?” “No, no.” “I don’t either. I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.” “How are we going to get rid of racism until...

More than 60 current and former NYCHA workers have been busted in a bribe-and-extortion scheme that authorities say involves the largest number of federal bribery charges in a single day in Department of Justice history. The suspects — accused of accepting cash payments from contractors in exchange for lucrative New York City Housing Authority contracts — were hauled off in handcuffs in a widespread raid Tuesday morning, according to the Southern District of New York. The charges may be linked to “micro-purchase” projects, or contracts for smaller repairs and other construction at city housing developments, sources told The Post. As...

The continued embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM combined with a broad decline in academic standards is producing a generation of scientists who are less capable than their predecessors, warned some scientists in recent interviews with The College Fix. From easier math classes in high school to the elimination of standardized tests to extreme grade-inflation to DEI tropes that elevate lived experiences and ways of knowing over facts and data, the trend represents a pressing problem for science professors working to protect STEM and preserve its standards and meritocracy. Alex Small, chair of the physics and astronomy department...

SNIP According to its website, Gem’s software allows recruiters to track “gender and race/ethnicity throughout the entire hiring funnel.” Essentially, it appears to include a comprehensive race and gender tracking system designed to help companies fill race- and gender-based quotas with precision. For example, in a 2021 diversity webinar posted on YouTube, a Gem employee seemed to explain how the software could show how many candidates a company would need to reach out to if it had three engineering positions open, but didn’t want to hire men for them (in her words: “wanted to give women a chance”). In the...

MSNBC’s Joy Reid was caught on a hot mic dropping the F-bomb, seemingly against President Joe Biden live on air Monday. The left-leaning host of “The ReidOut” made the gaffe when she was heard saying: “Starting another f—king war,” over footage of President Biden giving a speech about the border crisis. Her remark was presumably about the fallout from a drone strike by Iran-backed militants on a US base in Jordan that killed three American soldiers and resulted in at least 34 other injuries, insiders said. The president has not yet launched any retaliatory strikes but his administration is in...

Monday marked the five-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s online condemnation of a “hate crime” that never happened. On Jan. 29, 2019, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, made national headlines with claims a pair of white supremacist Trump supporters violently attacked him. The actor said his assailants screamed, “This is MAGA country!” in the apparently far-right city of Chicago. “I will never be the man this did not happen to,” Smollett told ABC News in an interview with Robin Roberts two weeks later. By December 2021, Smollett was convicted on five out of six charges over staging...

The Jan. 25 episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” went viral after creating a divide among fans for a racially-charged rape episode. The episode features a white female rape victim that resisted testifying against her black attacker out of fear that he wouldn’t get a fair trial due to his race. The episode, called “Truth Embargo,” stars actress Romina D’Ugo in the role of the rape victim, Natalie, and the role of the rapist named Jay is played by actor Mykey Cooper, according to Fox News. Social media exploded after Natalie’s lesbian partner, played by actress Keeley...

After Hamas supporters were caught screaming “shame on you” at children receiving cancer treatment at a Manhattan hospital (“make sure they hear you, they’re in the windows”) some people wondered what they were trying to accomplish. Questions like that only reveal the vast gap between the pro-Hamas mob and everyone else. The pro-Hamas protests, allegedly in pursuit of a ceasefire, but in reality celebrating Hamas and now Houthi terrorism, have picked random fights with Starbucks, Christmas Tree lightings and Alec Baldwin to name a few. They are not so much for anything as they are against things. Reasonable people, usually...

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Monifa McKnight said in a statement Monday she was asked by school board members last week to “step away” from her post. McKnight said the board didn’t give a justification for its request and hadn’t communicated concern about her performance — and she said she would fight the attempt to oust her. (See backstory below) “For these reasons, I’m concerned that its actions are based on something other than my performance, which would constitute a violation of my contract,” McKnight said. “I will defend my reputation and my decades-long commitment to the students and families...