Free Republic

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had some sharp words Monday for the senators protecting the filibuster amid the voting rights debate, suggesting they are debasing the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. just as the country is honoring the civil rights legend. "If you really, truly want to honor Dr. King, don't dishonor him by using a congressional custom as an excuse for protecting our democracy," Pelosi said during a voting rights event at Washington's Union Station on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is unique among national holidays in that it honors the one American who profoundly described and demonstrated through love and non-violence a picture of the fulfillment of core values expressed in both the country’s founding Declaration of Independence in 1776 and in President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863. The Declaration’s self-evident truth “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” wasn’t realized when the U.S. Constitution was ratified some 14 years after the Declaration....

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. An hour later, he was declared dead. For some 50 years, the federal government has maintained that James Earl Ray was the gunman who assassinated King that day. But within Martin Luther King’s family, there remains a persistent belief that Ray is innocent, and was set up to take the fall.But within a few days of confessing, Ray began to claim his innocence, arguing that that he had been set up by a man he knew only...

Schools should be in full session on MLK Jr Day without exception. Isn’t the encouragement of open dialogue and continuing education the primary reasons for MLK Jr Day? And if so, why aren’t students in full attendance on the very day that honors this man? There is simply no better way to honor the national holiday than dedicating his story, lessons, and experiences to the students for an entire day.

This past weekend, I watched a number of documentaries with my children about an America that no longer exists. We watched as people of our complexion were violently denied access to restaurants, hotels, schools and more. My kids witnessed, from an undeniably changed present, a vile history that defies understanding. It was so hard for them to imagine such a world where they could be so easily rejected and reviled simply because of their beautiful color. A hard-fought Dream has become a reality here in America. The codified systemic racism heralded as “heritage” met its demise because good people—both black...

After finding evidence that the "man of God" and "moral conscience of our nation," the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the rape of a parishioner, engaged in numerous sex orgies, received cash payments from known communists, and admitted that he was a Marxist, King biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Garrow wrote of King, "There is no question that a profoundly painful reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits." *snip* To have been a Christian minister, it is illuminating that King's ideology is anathema to Christianity, manliness, and American freedom. Consider this: after attempting to integrate an all-White hotel...

Baltimore is burning because community organizers and various thugs are tearing the city apart in the aftermath of the strange death of a young black man who was in the custody of police — and President Obama is trying to make things worse.In an incredible non-coincidence the rioting follows a weekend rally by the Occupy Wall Street-like Baltimore Peoples Assembly. There also was a first wave of rioting over the weekend. Outside activists have been flooding into Baltimore, according to reports. Police and civilians have been injured. A CVS store was looted and set on fire. Rioters chopped up fire...

She liked to mimic her grandmother, so a week ago, Nyiah Courtney got her hair braided. “We twins now,” the smiling 6-year-old told Andrea Courtney. It was one of the last times the two talked. Nyiah was fatally shot Friday night while walking to her nearby home with her mother, father and older sister in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Southeast Washington. Police said the shots came from a gray, four-door sedan passing the commercial corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X avenues, striking Nyiah, her mother and four others, among the latest victims in a city struggling...

A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in California was vandalized with “horrific graffiti” in a despicable act that’s being investigated as a hate crime, officials say. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said the likeness of the civil rights icon at Martin Luther King Jr. Park was defaced over the July Fourth holiday weekend. “The LBPD are investigating this as a hate crime and we are working to catch whoever committed this awful act,” Garcia tweeted Monday. “Our MLK statue is a symbol of hope and justice for the community. This hate and desecration has no place in our city.”...

America’s favourite Chinese lab funding coronavirus doomonger doctor Anthony Fauci announced Tuesday that there are now two Americas, a vaccinated America and an unvaccinated America.In an appearance on Dom Lemon’s CNN panic hour, Fauci declared that “When you have such a low level of vaccination super-imposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, states, cities or counties you’re going to see these individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.”“You’re going to have areas where vaccination rate is high, where more...

The ex-wife of assassin James Earl Ray, who killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is facing animal abuse charges in Tennessee, where dozens of neglected dogs were found living in her filthy home, authorities said. Police in Jackson raided the ramshackle property owned by Anna Sandhu Ray, 74, on Monday and uncovered a house of horrors where 44 dogs were found living atop piles of trash or caged while soaked in their own waste, according to national nonprofit Animal Rescue Corps. At least three dead dogs were found in the house and the stench from “dangerously high levels” of ammonia...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first black woman and openly gay person elected to run that city, confirmed the move Tuesday after members of the local press took to Twitter saying they had been denied interviews based on their skin color.

Let us notice this morning how modern man has made a god of science. It was quite easy for modern man to put his ultimate faith in science because science had brought about such remarkable advances, such tangible and amazing victories. He realized that man through his scientific genius had dwarfed distances and placed time in chains. He noticed the new comforts that had been brought about by science, from the vast improvements in communication to the elimination of many dread plagues and diseases. And so after noticing these astounding successes modern man ushered in a new god and a...

How would reparations be funded? Conservative writer Michael Medved estimates that only 5% of whites in America "bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor." Why should anyone but Democrats pay? Scholar Dinesh D'Souza notes that all but a "handful" of slave owners were Democrats. The Ku Klux Klan, at its height of power and popularity, was known by the NAACP as the "terror wing" of the Democratic Party. The KKK was founded by Democrats; I did not say by the Democratic Party, but by Democrats. As a percentage of their party, more House Republicans...

For years I’ve been listening to the hot air produced by Conservative Inc. about the political conservatism of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was dedicated to “self-government based on absolute truth and moral law.” Supposedly King was also a proud member of the GOP. This last claim is not even remotely true, as Alveda King, MLK’s niece and a fan of Donald Trump, revealed to Newsmax in 2013. The closest to a show of bipartisanship from King came when he condemned both parties for being too reactionary, the Democrats for harboring segregationists and “Northern Republicans” for promoting grasping capitalists. The...

Eight people were shot Monday in Chicago, including a 44-year-old man who was shot inside a vehicle in Chatham on the South Side. About 11:15 p.m., he was sitting in his parked car with another person when he was shot in the shoulder and twice in the back, Chicago police said. A man was wounded in a shooting in Woodlawn on the South Side. He was on the street about 6:45 p.m. in the 6100 block of South Rhodes Avenue when someone opened fire, striking him in the shoulder, police said. Minutes prior, a 19-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy...

Police and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed outside City Hall Park on Monday night, resulting in dozens of arrests and several injured officers, authorities said. The confrontation began at about 8:30 p.m. after hundreds of protesters that originally met outside the Barclays Center marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in a demonstration honoring Martin Luther King Jr., according to social media posts. Once they made their way into Manhattan, they were met with a heavy police presence and chaos ensued, online footage shows. Ten police officers were injured in the melee, sources said, and a captain was struck in the helmet...

Biden's minimum wage push faces uphill battle with GOP President-elect Joe Biden and incoming first lady Jill Biden volunteered at a hunger relief organization in Philadelphia on Monday to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Bidens helped pack food boxes at Philabundance, the largest hunger relief organization in Philadelphia, as part of a national day of service two days before Biden will be sworn in as the next president.

Listen in: When listening, ask a few questions to yourself we can discuss: 1. What are differences and similarities between 1963 and today? e.g., BLM and Antifa vs real, genuine need for change, violence vs non-violence. 2. If you are white, what role to you have? If you are mixed race, any differences? If you are black, what is your role? E.g., uniter or divider, how? 3. If you are a Jesus follower, what would the Holy Spirit tell you your role is?

American colonial leaders in the 18th century and Martin Luther King, Jr. both fused religious beliefs with philosophical principles to motivate action. Throughout the Stamp Act crisis of the 1760s — the “Prologue to Revolution,” according to the title of historian Edmund S. Morgan’s published collection of documents — the British North American colonists sent petition after petition to both houses of the British Parliament. These petitions frequently asserted the rights that the colonists possessed as British subjects.According to the Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, the colonists were “entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties” due...