Free Republic

I completely missed this when it was published at the end of last month. Fortunately, Jesse Singal did a great write-up about it which I noticed today. As you may know, Bill Adair is the founder of Politifact, a site which has generate a lot of content for this blog over the years. Last month, Adair was asked to share his predictions for 2024 and he wrote a piece titled “Fact-checking needs a reboot.” Part of that reboot would be pressuring social media companies to “suppress misinformation” more often.After I founded PolitiFact in 2007, I often said that our goal...

MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said the organization would "continue to fight for better" in the aftermath of a jury's verdict Friday that Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men and wounded another during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, was acquitted of all charges. The Bucks performed a wildcat strike during the NBA's playoff bubble in Orlando, days after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in August 2020 and one day after Rittenhouse shot three people in the protests over police violence that followed. Budenholzer anticipated having a conversation with the team ahead...

A former New York Times reporter claims the newspaper held her story about the ravaging effects of the Kenosha riots on impoverished neighborhoods until after the 2020 elections. Nellie Bowles went to the Wisconsin city to report on the racial justice riots in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August 2020, according to a Thursday post on partner Bari Weiss’ Substack channel Common Sense. Protests, riots and civil unrest engulfed the city for days, and the events were the backdrop of then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse’s fatal shooting of two people. Bowles said she was sent to report...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the Biden administration has been in communication with local law enforcement in Kenosha, Wisconsin, of possible unrest following the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case. A jury of seven women and five men declared Rittenhouse, who was accused in the shooting deaths of two men on a night of riots and protests last year, not guilty on all five charges on Friday afternoon. The most serious charge would have carried a maximum sentence of life in prison. Psaki on Friday said that the White House “has been in close touch with...

Ten years ago this coming February, George Zimmermann shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on a rainy night in Sanford, Florida. Without intending, Zimmerman triggered a dark new phase in the history of progressive America. Beginning with the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the 1920s, the left lied to conceal the guilt of the guilty. Yes, Virginia, those two bad boys were guilty. Upton Sinclair, who “proved” their innocence in his epic novel Boston, knew they were guilty. "My wife is absolutely certain that if I tell what I believe,” Sinclair confided to a friend, “I will be called a...

Wisconsin Lt. Governor, Mandela Barnes: Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said Monday the police shooting of a Black man by Kenosha officers "wasn't an accident," after the man was shot seven times in the back "in front of his children." "This wasn't bad police work," Barnes said in an address Monday. "This felt like some sort of vendetta taken out on a member of our community." Speaking alongside Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Barnes said "the irony isn't lost on me that Jacob Blake was actually trying to deescalate a situation in his community, but the responding officer didn't feel the...

"Looking at the video, I saw no justification whatsoever for those cops to shoot that young man," Scott said in an interview Thursday with "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King. "We need to get to the root of the issue." (snip) Scott credited the wide availability of video cameras for bringing such incidents to light, enabling us to respond to issues of racism and police violence "at a higher level."

Ana Kasparian, far-left co-host of progressive news program "The Young Turks," admitted she was "wrong" for assuming Kyle Rittenhouse chased Joseph Rosenbaum before fatally shooting him last year amid rioting and protesting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake. In reality — and according to videos TheBlaze examined just two days after the incident — it was quite clear that Rosenbaum was the aggressor and was, in fact, chasing Rittenhouse that night. It isn't so clear why Kasparian assumed the opposite all this time — though even the prosecuting attorney in Rittenhouse's murder trial last week falsely...

A juror in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial was dismissed Thursday after a court security officer reported that the man told a joke about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, which set off protests in the Wisconsin city where Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three people. Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said the security officer reported the remarks earlier this week. Prosecutor Thomas Binger said the remarks as shared showed racial bias. Blake, who is Black, was shot by a white Kenosha police officer and left partially paralyzed. When Schroeder called the juror into the courtroom to discuss what he...

(CNN)The judge in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, made headlines last week by reiterating his longstanding rule of not allowing prosecutors to refer to people as "victims" before juries in his courtroom. At the same time, Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder said at a pretrial hearing that the men who were shot could be described as "looters" or "rioters" if the defense can show they engaged in such activity during protests after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in August 2020, leaving Blake paralyzed.

After a Norfolk, Virginia, police officer was fired for donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund when a hacker-connected group gave “breached” data about anonymous donations to the media, the Christian crowdfunding site that processed his donation is now collecting donations for him. Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOS), which the Department of Homeland Security deemed a “criminal hacker group,” obtained the email addresses of anonymous donors to various crowdfunding campaigns on the site GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe that allows people to send prayers or money to people. The Guardian, a British newspaper, used the data to dox rank-and-file...

A data breach at a Christian crowdfunding website has revealed that serving police officers and public officials have donated money to fundraisers for accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists, and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans. In many of these cases, the donations were attached to their official email addresses, raising questions about the use of public resources in supporting such campaigns.

The Wisconsin police officer who shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha last August will not be disciplined or charged with any crime and is back on active duty, cops said. Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, 29, in the back seven times on August 23 in front of his children and left him paralyzed from the waist down while officers responded to a 911 call about an alleged 'domestic incident.' Sheskey had been placed on administrative leave after the incident but returned to work on March 31 after the shooting was investigated 'by an outside agency,' the Kenosha Police Department announced on...

In an exceptionally rare move, the Kenosha Police Department on Wednesday issued a public statement stating that a pair of reports from an independent local online news source are “inaccurate.” There have been a large number of inaccurate reports and disinformation regarding the shooting of Jacob Blake and the ensuing protests and riots, as well as the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings. This is the first time, however, is the KPD has publicly said specific reports were inaccurate.

Before the #FightBack Foundation came to be associated with lawyer Lin Wood’s post-election conspiracy theories, the non-profit group known by the Twitter hashtag had been affiliated with Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he was charged with killing two men and injuring a third during protests and riots that broke out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse claimed self-defense, and #Fightback raised the $2 million that his legal team needed to bail him out on Nov. 20, just weeks after a presidential election whose results Wood repeatedly tried to overturn.

A black man who was paralyzed after he was shot in the back by a white police officer in southeastern Wisconsin filed a civil lawsuit Thursday accusing the officer of excessive force. Jacob Blake Jr was shot by Kenosha Officer Rusten Sheskey in August while Blake was about to get into an SUV during a domestic dispute. Blake's federal complaint against Sheskey, the only defendant, is seeking unspecified damages. The shooting of Blake, captured on bystander video, turned the nation's spotlight on Wisconsin during a summer marked by protests over police brutality and racism.

On January 5th, Michael D. Graveley, District Attorney of the County of Kenosha, Wisconsin, called a news conference to explain why charges would not be brought against Officer Rusten Sheskey for shooting Jacob Blake on August 23, 2020. During August anti-racism protests in response to a black man being shot seven times by a white police officer, rioting had led to two deaths and to fifty million dollars in damage to over one hundred businesses in Kenosha, including forty that were shut down for good with the loss of many jobs. Graveley was joined at the podium by Noble Wray,...

When officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back last year, the media wasted no time establishing the standard narrative: another unarmed African-American shot by racist police. In a CNN segment on August 25, anchor Jake Tapper said, “Video shows police shoot unarmed black man.” The Washington Post, CNN, PBS, Buzzfeed, Vogue, and several other outlets referred to Blake as “unarmed.” The day after the shooting, David A. Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, asserted, “It’s nearly impossible to imagine any way that his shooting was justified.” Democratic politicians and celebrities jumped on the story, too....

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced Tuesday afternoon that no police would face criminal charges in the August 2020 shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake Jr., which triggered large riots in the Wisconsin town.Blake was shot seven times from behind after an altercation with police who were trying to arrest him on Aug. 23. Blake was wanted on charges that included sexual assault, and his alleged victim called 911 after he came to her residence. He fought police and evaded a Taser, allegedly reaching for a knife inside his car before he was shot. He is paralyzed from the waist...

A curfew in Philadelphia tonight from 9pm to 6am. Streets in the downtown area closed. Members of the Pennsylvania National Guard deployed... A federal judge in Portland granting a preliminary injunction saying that federal officers denied First Amendment rights to peaceful protesters... Walmart removing firearms and ammunition from display floors...Today Walmart reversing course... The country with the highest coronavirus infection rate in Europe moving to a national lockdown. Belgium shutting down... In Canada Winnipeg the largest city in Manitoba moving to a Code Red coronavirus lockdown... An earthquake measuring 7.0 struck off the coast of Turkey today... The current UK...