Free Republic

On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor told a judge in D.C Superior Court that accused murderer and gang member Ingmar Guandique, 28, along with members of the MS-13 gang threatened to kill a witness and his family, if he testifies at Guandique’s January trial.A Salvadoran national in this country illegally, Guandique was arrested last April for the murder of missing intern Chandra Levy, who disappeared in 2001. Her skeletal remains were discovered a year later in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park.At the time of his arrest for the Levy murder, he was already in prison for the assault of two...

President Obama is committed to making sure middle class families do not see a tax increase, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday, after two top economic officials seemed to leave the door open to such a tax hike. "The president's clear commitment is not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year," Gibbs said, repeating Obama's pledge from the presidential campaign. That was after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner suggested Sunday that taxes increases are inevitable. "We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we ... can...

Reporting from Sacramento -- California could run out of money as soon as July, the Legislature's chief budget analyst warned Thursday, as a new poll showed voters poised to reject five budget-related measures on the May 19 ballot. If the propositions do not pass, the state could find itself as much as $23 billion short of the money it needs to pay its bills over the next year, according to a new forecast by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor. The poll, from the Public Policy Institute of California, found that even as voter interest in the ballot measures rises, all are...

NEW YORK (AP) - An FBI informant testified Tuesday that he wanted to put "the world on notice" when he set himself on fire outside the White House, throwing the terror-funding case against a Yemeni sheik into turmoil. Testifying for the second day as a hostile witness for the defense, Mohamed Alanssi said he had not intended to kill himself, even though he sent suicide notes to the FBI and The Washington Post. "I did not have the intention but I wanted to put the government and the world on notice," Alanssi said. Until he set himself on fire outside...