Free Republic

A Justice Department prosecutor defied his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday, where he leveled an explosive allegation: top officials in the department gutted a voter intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group because the suspects were black and their alleged victims were white. The prosecutor, Christopher Coates, also said the downgrading of the case against the New Black Panther Party was evidence of a Justice Department culture which discouraged “race neutral” enforcement of civil rights laws, frowned on prosecuting minority perpetrators and folded under pressure from black and Latino rights groups. After...

Well, New York Republicans went out and got themselves an angry man. They may come to regret it. That's the upshot of yesterday's gubernatorial primary, in which Carl Paladino, multimillionaire developer from Buffalo, pretty much expelled the GOP establishment's candidate, ex-Rep. Rick Lazio, from public life. Actually, Lazio can be said to have lost this race far more than Paladino won. To say the former Long Island legislator kept a low profile is putting it mildly: Lazio ran as the Invisible Man -- refusing to debate, speaking in platitudes and generally just boring folks to tears. Even his notoriously uninspired...