Free Republic

During a portion of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that is set to air on Monday’s edition of “Laura Coates Live,” CNN host Laura Coates told Harris that she was “struck, just in your presence” and watched her on stage “with your passion that you are displaying and talking about so many issues. And yet, you hear candidates suggesting that a vote for President Biden, because of his age, is somehow a vote for you, and that is hurled as an insult.”

During an interview with Active Shooter Prevention Project founder Chris Grollnek that took place during CNN’s coverage of the shooting in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday, host Laura Coates noted that one spot that the shooter targeted was a bowling alley with children in it and that the shooter was “not going to a gun range. This is not going to a place where perhaps he would believe he could encounter people who could respond.” And that he picked “soft targets.” Coates said, “And I’m looking — of course, in the photo that we’re seeing, he’s at a bowling alley. We’ve...

The first time Matt Hawn suspected that he might run into trouble for what he was teaching was last August. His contemporary-issues class was discussing the events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where protesters had taken to the streets after a police officer was filmed shooting 29-year-old Jacob Blake in the back. Hawn showed his students a picture of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two people and injuring another during the protests, to demonstrate the concept of white privilege. “What are we going to do about racism in the U.S.?” he asked his students. The principal of Sullivan Central High...

“To be brave, you have to know so you can act.” They were South African author Sisonke Msimang’s words but could well have been the theme for this past weekend’s Antidote, a festival of ideas which focused on solutions that saw Chelsea Manning, Ronan Farrow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maureen Dowd, Msimang and more speaking out on the Sydney Opera House stages. The event was almost overshadowed by the home affairs department’s decision to issue a notice of intention to deny Manning an entry visa on character grounds last week. But her talk went ahead regardless: Manning video-called in from Los Angeles...

Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom. I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely seven years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like folk wisdom, because when I think of that era, I do not think of MTV, but of the futile attempt to stay awake and navigate the yawning whiteness of Friday Night Videos, and I remember that there were no VCRs...

The radicalization of the Democratic Party is transforming everything that happens in America into another battle in our unending culture war. Is there anything left in American public life that isn’t an occasion for political rancor and division? NFL games are now nothing more than crude pieces of political theater. On Sunday even Vice President Mike Pence got in on the act, showing up to a Colts-49ers game then leaving after a few players knelt during the national anthem. Next day was Columbus Day, which the cities of Los Angeles and Austin decided this year to replace with “Indigenous Peoples’...

IT IS INSUFFICIENT TO STATE the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the...

Ted Cruz's extraordinary speech at the Republican not only angered Donald Trump's supporters who were in the hall Wednesday – it set off one of Cruz's senior Senate colleagues, who is now branding him a 'liar.' 'I think what people saw last night is what we have seen in the Senate. No matter how conservative you are, you never can meet Ted's standard,' fumed retiring senator Dan Coats of Indiana in an interview with IndyStar. 'He only thinks of himself, he doesn't think about party. He's a wrecking ball.' said Coates, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany who did two...

The Hard Untruths of Ta-Nehisi Coates A bestselling polemic riven with hatred thrills the liberal elite KYLE SMITH / SEPT. 24, 2015 Suppose you were a white person with a deep-seated dislike for black people, and you were intent on training your son to feel the same way. Suppose that, day after day, week after week, you instructed him to study the details of every instance of black-on-white crime. Say you advised your son to extrapolate from these incidents the notion that black people are generally dangerous, and that your zeal to present him with disturbing anecdotes along these lines...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came out in December with a draft of its interim report on the New Black Panthers Party scandal. Earlier today a final report was posted on the commission's website, and with it, a flurry of rebuttals and separate statements from a number of the commissioners. The import of these statements should not be minimized. ~snip~As Gaziano and Heriot do, commissioner Peter Kirsanow (a Republican appointee) goes through the evidence of malfeasance by an Obama political appointee, Julie Fernandes: Mr. [Chris] Coates [who headed the NBPP trial team] came forward and testified to the...

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine should finish one major piece of business before his announced retirement next month: the investigation into Justice's Civil Rights Division.On Sept. 12, Mr. Fine announced that while he's precluded by law from investigating a "specific piece of litigation" such as the Black Panther voter-intimidation case, "we do have the authority to conduct [a] broader program review ... regarding the Civil Rights Division's enforcement of voting rights laws." Mr. Fine vowed to review "whether the Voting Section has enforced the civil rights laws in a non-discriminatory manner." Substantial testimony, backed by a record of...

With the vote on the Civil Rights Commission New Black Panther report set for Friday, former DOJ attorney Hans von Spakovsky submits this affidavit rebutting former Deputy Chief of the Voting Section Robert Kengle. Kengle had contested portions of Christopher Coates’ testimony before the Commission, testimony which described Kengle’s hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. The Coates testimony was deeply embarassing to Kengle, and von Spakovsky’s corroboration of Coates’ testimony is even more so.Click here  pdf to download von Spakovsky’s affidavit.

Complete title: Top DOJ Official Describes Recent Controversy As "He Said, She Said," Insists Actions Speak Louder Than WordsThe head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on Wednesday strongly disputed accusations by a department colleague that the Obama administration avoids prosecuting minorities in civil rights cases, saying it all amounts to a "'he said, she said' thing" and that he "tends to judge people by their actions," not their words. It's the first time Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has weighed in since Justice Department lawyer Christopher Coates accused Perez's office of being "hostile" toward "race-neutral enforcement" of voting...

The Obama Justice Department can put an end to the scandal surrounding the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case. All Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. would have to do is allow members of his Voting Rights Section to answer a few simple questions under oath, without waiving a single legal privilege.On Friday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights approved two letters to Mr. Holder. Both ask, again, for more cooperation than the Justice Department has provided for 16 months. The commission is seeking information about an alleged "broad culture of hostility to race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws;...

Like any administration snared in a Beltway scandal, the Obama team has two problems in the New Black Panther Party scandal: the wrongdoing and the cover-up. The wrongdoing is not merely that the Obama administration dismissed a blatant case of voter intimidation. It is not merely that an NAACP attorney pressured the Obama team to dump the case. It is not merely that the Obama Justice Department explicitly told attorneys not to enforce Section 8 of the Voting Rights Act, which helps prevent voter fraud. It is that the Obama team believes that the civil rights laws run only one...

ABC, NBC, and CBS refuse to cover him. Left-leaning sources report on him with no integrity. PR tactics get employed at the hearing. And the DOJ spokesperson lashes out. The testimony of Christopher Coates before the United States Civil Rights Commission exposed a pervasive hostility to equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, as well as racialist policies at the Justice Department. He also exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of the defenders of the dismissal of the New Black Panther case. The testimony was covered by CNN and the Los Angeles Times, and was on the front page, above the fold,...

A Republican lawmaker has sternly warned Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. not to take any action against a high-ranking Justice Department official who told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that the government's dismissal of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party was a "travesty of justice." In a letter, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said the testimony Friday of former voting rights section Chief Christopher Coates was protected by federal law and admonished Mr. Holder against any possible punishment. "I trust that Mr. Coates will face no repercussion...

A top House Democrat said Sunday that TV comic Stephen Colbert's in-character testimony at a congressional hearing Friday was "an embarrassment" to the comedian and wrong for the House. "His testimony was not appropriate. I think it was an embarrassment for Mr. Colbert more than the House," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, on "Fox News Sunday." Mr. Colbert testified to the House immigration subcommittee Friday on illegal immigrant agriculture workers, after he took the United Farm Workers' "Take Our Jobs" challenge and worked a day in the field picking crops. He testified that the work was...

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has an obligation to clean house at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. That's clear after explosive new whistle-blower testimony under oath Friday in the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, which triggers a pledge Mr. Perez made under oath on May 14. Failure to fire some officials and to radically revamp practices in the Civil Rights Division would represent clear dereliction of duty by Mr. Perez.Friday's testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came from much-decorated Justice Department veteran Christopher Coates, a hero of the civil rights legal community when he...