Free Republic

“Don’t make this about race.” I’ve heard this sentence a lot recently, read it a lot online. Saw its use launch a Facebook flame war while I waited for my plane to board at the end of spring break. It’s the easiest way for white people to invalidate experiences of oppression and avoid fraught debates about justice in America. But of course it’s about race—everything is. Our country was built on oppression, and race is everywhere, at every moment on my standard trip back to Harvard. The view from my airplane window is about race. Colonizers killed Indigenous people for...

Investigates has learned that a woman who claimed she was a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing is now facing criminal charges. Joanna Leigh, 41, of Jamaica Plain, has been indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury for allegedly stealing almost $40,000 in charitable donations, including money from the One Fund Boston and benefits from the state’s fund for victims of violent crime. Watch video report According to court records, Leigh allegedly faked injuries to obtain services and money from donors, a doctor, young students and the One Fund which was established with private donations to help the many victims...

More than 300 convicted inmates have been released from Massachusetts state prisons in the US as a result of the September 2012 arrest and subsequent indictment of Annie Dookhan, who worked in a Department of Public Health state laboratory and allegedly falsified evidence used in criminal cases. Now the scandal has grown with the prosecution of another Massachusetts state lab chemist for tampering with evidence and stealing drugs seized as evidence. Sonja Farak, who worked at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory in Amherst, was charged with tampering with four drug samples stored at the lab on 1 April. In two...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0902/090210boston.htm February 10, 2009 Boston area man sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison for laundering drug money Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents helped crack the case BOSTON - A Boston-area man was sentenced on February 10, 2009 to seven and a half years in prison on charges of money laundering and drug distribution in connection with a Jamaica Plain money remitting business known as Boston Envio. Claudio Tejeda Andujar, 35, (a/k/a Jose Rivera and a/k/a Dagoberto Lazacha) was a partner in Boston Envio that between 2004 and 2006, wire...

They are going to hand the men cards that say ''Please Respect Me" and spell out definitions of sexual harassment. It's a move designed to educate the men and boost the girls' self-esteem, said community organizers who helped guide them -- but it also puts some Boston police officials on edge as they urge the girls to avoid confronting potentially threatening people.

US military families push to bring Iraq troops home WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 — A group of about 600 U.S. military families, upset about the living conditions of soldiers in Iraq, are launching a campaign asking their relatives to urge members of Congress and President George W. Bush to bring the troops home. ''We're growing more and more disturbed about the conditions that are developing. Our concerns are both for our troops and the people in Iraq,'' said Nancy Lessin, a founder of Families Speak Out, formed last fall to oppose the war in Iraq. Susan Schuman, whose son Justin is...