Free Republic

The pandemic has slowed much American police work, but police are still working. “As of May 17, 375 people had been shot and killed by on-duty police officers in 2020—about the same rate as other recent years despite the coronavirus pandemic,” Wesley Lowery, who helped track killings at The Washington Post, observed on Tuesday. Just a day before, a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer who pinned him to the ground, kneeling on his neck for five minutes. Floyd’s last words were captured in a video on Facebook: “Don’t kill me” and...

Anger over the death of George Floyd spilled into the streets of Minneapolis for a second night Wednesday, as protesters lobbed rocks and bottles at police and gathered separately outside the homes of Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and the fired officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck. Protests also took place in Duluth. A large crowd gathered outside Minneapolis’ Third Precinct police headquarters, throwing objects at the building and officers. Police deployed rubber bullets, flash bombs and tear gas to push them back. Fired police officer Derek Chauvin and three other officers who were at the scene of Floyd’s death...

Four Minneapolis police officers were fired Tuesday after the detention and death of 47-year-old George Floyd — a scene that unfolded in a Facebook video showing a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he pleaded with police, “I can’t breathe.” Floyd died at Hennepin County Medical Center soon after the incident, which started when police detained him Monday evening on suspicion of trying to pass a fake $20 bill at a convenience store. The FBI launched an investigation Tuesday, as the Minneapolis Police Department fired the officer as well as three others who were at the scene. Anger over...

During a recent session conducted over Zoom, my therapist told me I was “glowing.” In the middle of a pandemic. I struggled to explain why until she prodded, “No crazy experiences with white people this month?” “Not that I can immediately recall,” I replied. That’s when it became clear: I’m doing better these days because staying home alone and practicing social distancing has meant I’m avoiding many of the racist encounters that used to plague my daily life.

Gayle King delivered an emotional reaction on Tuesday’s CBS This Morning after the show played the racially charged viral video of a white woman calling the police and falsely claiming a black man was threatening her life.

WASHINGTON — A photograph of President Trump and his top four-star generals and admirals, tweeted in October by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, was meant as a thank-you to the commander in chief. But it angered a lot of others, and not just those who erupted on Twitter. “You would have thought it was 1950,” said Lt. Col. Walter J. Smiley Jr., who is African-American and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan before retiring last year after 25 years in the Army. Dana Pittard, a retired major general, also African-American, was equally frustrated. “It’s America’s military,” he said. “Why doesn’t this...

Wow! On MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry Show Saturday, CBS's Nancy Giles said the reason white people are "trying to eliminate all these abortions" is "to build up the race" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, file photo):

Two days before Super Tuesday, NAACP Minneapolis and Black Lives Matter activists protested Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar's rally before it began over her involvement with the murder conviction of a black teen. Klobuchar canceled the rally. The next day, unable to curry enough support nationwide, she ended her campaign for president, looked into a television camera from Dallas, and told her home state of Minnesota to support former Vice President Joe Biden.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says she will help make sure that racial- and ethnic-minority voters know about the potential benefits of electing Joe Biden as president. Asked Wednesday at an online news conference whether she would accept a potential invitation to run for vice president in November, Lujan Grisham said she is completely dedicated to her job as governor but also will provide specialized support to Biden's presidential campaign.

The only hockey players most Americans can name from the top of their heads are Gretzky, Howe, Messier, and Lemieux. I would rate hockey at the lowest of the 4 big sports. Why doesn't it get much attention?

America's billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the U.S. lockdown between mid-March and mid-May, according to a new report.

In his first major decision after being elected governor of New Jersey, Jon S. Corzine announced the selection of a Hudson County congressman to replace him in the United States Senate. Robert Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants who became a lawyer then rose in the brass-tacks world of New Jersey politics, will fill Mr. Corzine's old post for at least a year, when he will face what may be a crowded run for re-election. Making the announcement inside a historic rail terminal in Jersey City's Liberty State Park, near the Statue of Liberty, this afternoon, Mr. Corzine described Mr....

Around 1 p.m. on Feb. 23, a warm Sunday afternoon a couple weeks after the Super Bowl, yet another unarmed black man was killed in the United States. Ahmaud Arbery, an avid jogger, left Brunswick, a primarily black city in southeast Georgia. Running through the predominantly white neighbouring community of Santilla Shores, Arbery was chased down in a truck, confronted and fatally shot by George and Travis McMichael, a father and son who allegedly believed Arbery was responsible for burglaries in their neighborhood.

The Players Coalition and dozens of professional athletes sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting an immediate federal investigation into the death of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick.

Matthew Henderson couldn’t be entering the job market at a worse time. As a senior at Loyola University, he spent the spring semester interning as a trade policy analyst at the British Consulate in Chicago. But his chances of turning that opportunity into a permanent job after graduation ran headlong into the coronavirus pandemic. Now Mr. Henderson is at home with his family in South Bend, Ind., unemployed and considering jobs at Costco and Target to help pay off $24,000 in student loans. “I’m in this bubble of anxiety,” said Mr. Henderson, who just turned 21. “I have to pay...

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to raise taxes on the rich — but not pay her own. The Democratic socialist congresswoman from The Bronx still hasn’t paid a 7-year-old tax bill left over from a failed business venture. AOC had founded Brook Avenue Press, a publishing house that sought designers, artists and writers from urban areas to help paint The Bronx in a positive way in children’s stories, in 2012. As The Post previously reported, public records show the state dissolved the company in October 2016. The state can make such a move when a business fails to pay corporate...

t's a glorious day for baseball at Yankee Stadium and fans are flocking to watch their team battle the Oakland Athletics, but two words are enough to cloud their joy. One word is "George." The other is "Steinbrenner." After threatening to pull the Yankees out of their stadium in the Bronx and resettle them in New Jersey, it is well the multimillionaire owner is not present, for at this game he has no friends. "The Yankees are a New York tradition," said Brendan Walsh, his voice heavy with sorrow. "To move them would be awful . . . just awful....

Former Yankees player and general manager Bob Watson died at the age of 74 in his Houston home on Thursday night after a long battle with kidney disease, according to the Astros. Watson was the Yankees general manager from 1995 to 1998, a tenure that included leading the Bombers to a World Series title in 1996, their first championship since 1978. He also played for the Bombers for three seasons from 1980 to 1982. Watson was primarily a first baseman and left fielder throughout his 19-year major league career, which began in 1969, including the first 14 with the Astros....

Cristiano Ronaldo. LeBron James. Lionel Messi. These are a few examples of athletes that make close to 40 million dollars a year. Athletes are extremely overpaid, considering that their careers do not, arguably, contribute to society in a meaningful way. This opinion is shared by 59% of the population, according to a Zeitgeist survey. The average annual salary for a doctor is around $188,000, while the average salary for an NBA player is around $5 million. Similarly, firefighters only make around $46,000 a year, while MLB players make about $4 million a year. Doctors obtain high levels of education and...

TAMPA, Fla. -- It's a warm, sun-drenched weekday morning outside D.W. Webb Middle School, in the Town 'n' Country neighborhood of Tampa. Under a cloudless sky, Joe Molloy, a boulder of a man, bespectacled and clad in a gray Webb Middle School T-shirt, khaki shorts and black New Balance sneakers, is preparing for his first phys ed class of the day. He's going to have his sixth-graders play kickball, so he's placing orange cones around the grass field to serve as the bases. "They don't know how to set up the cones," Molloy laments to his fellow teacher, Timothy Ruff....