Free Republic

A Franklin County judge who has been arrested eight times -- most recently Sunday while on vacation in Florida -- says two drunken-driving charges in three years are forcing him to evaluate whether he has a drinking problem. "I definitely am going to have myself evaluated,'' Judge John A. Connor said from Florida yesterday. "What I do from there, I guess, depends on the evaluation.'' Connor, 62, who is serving his second six-year term on the Common Pleas bench, was charged with drunken driving Sunday night in Delray Beach. A jury convicted Connor of drunken driving in Bexley in January...

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge has ruled that the League of Arab States does not have to pay for $243,000 in security improvements that its landlord provided after the terrorist attacks. The 22-nation organization did nothing to cause an increased threat to the building where its offices are located or to other tenants, state Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kapnick said in a recent ruling. The league, which has permanent observer status at the United Nations and has diplomatic immunity, said that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks it told the landlord, 4 Third Avenue Leasehold, it had received bomb...

MANSFIELD TOWNSHIP, N.J. - An argument between two friends over which one had the hairiest buttocks escalated into a brawl that ended when one man slashed the other. Emmanuel Nieves, 23, of Liberty Township, and Erik Saporito, 21, of Independence Township, were talking with some other friends at a Mansfield Township apartment complex when the fight began. Nieves soon pulled out a knife and slashed Saporito's face and ear, authorities said. Saporito was taken to Hackettstown Community Hospital, where he was treated and released. Nieves was arrested later that morning at his home and charged with aggravated assault, terroristic threats,...

ELYRIA, Ohio (AP) -- A woman has been sentenced to three years of probation for smoking marijuana with her 2-year-old nephew. Her friend was sentenced to four months in jail, three years of probation and 30 days in a work-release program. He is accused of rolling the pot and getting high with the toddler. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski said he gave Terrence Craig, 22, of Elyria, a harsher sentence than Danielle Wells, 22, because of previous run-ins with the law. In September, Wells -- who now lives in Columbus -- was convicted of corrupting and assaulting the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's spokesman said Friday the government is not raising its alert status in the wake of an FBI warning that Al-Qaida may be planning a "spectacular" terrorist attack intended to damage the U.S. economy and inflict large-scale casualties. White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited the lack of any intelligence about specific time, date, location or method of possible attack as the reason for keeping the nation's official terrorist threat level at code yellow, the middle of a five-level scale of risk developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "We continue to be on high levels of...

A Columbus woman was sentenced to 18 months in prison yesterday for sending e-mails to the FBI last fall that said she would kill President Bush and send anthrax to schools, the U.S. attorney general said. Alemash Alemayehu, 24, sent the e-mails to the FBI's Web site that collects tips on terrorist activity, prosecutors said. She pleaded guilty to the charges in January before U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley. There is no evidence that Alemayehu possessed anthrax, U.S. Attorney Gregory Lockhart said. In an e-mail Sept. 29, she said she would "destroy the white house and kill the...

The officers from the 6th Precinct approached the dwelling at 1122 E. Hildreth Ave. with caution. Someone had called that the front door was open. Who was inside? A dope-crazed assailant or some other dangerous individual? The three officers searched the two-story dwelling just after noon. Except for a dead dog, they found the place to be abandoned and left. "But when they walked out, that's when they noticed thousands of them on them,'' said Sgt. Marc Dopp. Fleas. The infestation would spread yesterday to five officers and five police cars and close the precinct substation for more than nine...

Vinton County can't ensure fair defense in slaying of Kenyon student, judge says A man accused of murdering a Kenyon College student no longer faces the death penalty because a judge has ruled that Vinton County might lack the money to ensure a fair trial. An aggravated-murder charge still stands against Gregory McKnight. But Judge Jeffrey L. Simmons of Vinton County Common Pleas Court yesterday threw out accompanying death-penalty specifications. Simmons' unusual ruling essentially held that the rural southeastern Ohio county could not financially guarantee that McKnight would receive an adequate defense in a capital murder trial. The cost was...

A judge has ordered a Columbus woman caught with stolen mail to send letters of apology to her Pickerington-area victims. Lancaster Municipal Judge Chris Martin instructed Lisa Sena-Winkler, 23, to apologize in writing to Violet Township residents whose outgoing mail was stolen from their mailboxes on July 16. Sena-Winkler entered a guilty plea yesterday to one count of receiving stolen property. She was credited for 23 days served in jail; the remainder of a 180-day sentence was suspended. She also was placed on probation for two years and fined $130. Sena-Winkler originally was charged with 13 counts of receiving stolen...

Just past midnight on Feb. 2, Brittany Scheerer and her boyfriend were driving home from a friend's house when a car began following them. They had just turned onto Rt. 161 from a New Albany subdivision. The car behind Scheerer was so close that she couldn't see its headlights in her rearview mirror. The car followed her closely for about 3 miles on the dimly lit roadway. Scheerer wondered whether the driver was drunk. Or worse, did he have a gun? As they were about to cross into Licking County, lights atop the vehicle behind them flashed blue and red....

Lawyer Christopher T. Cicero has been having trouble keeping clients lately. On Friday, a judge removed him from a death-penalty case because the state plans to call Cicero as a witness against his client. Yesterday, he was accused of striking a different client during an argument in the courtroom about which witnesses to call in the man's murder trial. Although the jury was not in the courtroom at the time, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John P. Bessey declared a mistrial and said he will report Cicero's conduct to the Ohio Supreme Court's Disciplinary Counsel. Witnesses said Cicero might have...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - U.S. warplanes bombed an air defense site in northern Iraq on Wednesday after coming under attack from Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery, the U.S. military said. The attack in Ain Zalah, close to Iraq's border with Syria, came during a routine patrol of the zone, the Stuttgart, Germany-based U.S. European Command said in a statement. The planes, based at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, left the area safely. U.S. and British warplanes have been monitoring "no fly" zones over southern and northern Iraq since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the Kurdish minority and Shiite...

For the third time in 27 years, candidates from Columbus and Dayton will square off Thursday night for the chairmanship of the ailing Ohio Democratic Party. Franklin County Democratic Chairman Dennis L. White and Montgomery County Democratic Chairman Dennis. A. Lieberman each predicted yesterday that he has the votes to succeed David J. Leland as party leader. The party's executive committee, composed of the 66 central committee members, will elect a chairman during a 6:15 p.m. meeting at the Airport Hotel in Columbus. Leland, chairman since 1995, will resign after the meeting to become national director of Project Vote, a...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal agencies in Washington ordered 350,000 potassium iodide pills this week from a North Carolina company to protect people from cancer caused by radioactive iodine, which can be released in nuclear explosions. The agencies are stockpiling the pills "in case of a nuclear event," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security. "It's been an ongoing effort," Johndroe said, adding that it is not a direct result of the arrest of Jose Padilla, a suspected al-Qaida member who may have been planning a "dirty bomb" attack on Washington. The government orders Monday and Tuesday represent...

In a decision gun-control advocates hailed as their greatest legal victory yet, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4-3 yesterday that Cincinnati may pursue its lawsuit seeking damages from gunmakers for violent crime there. Justice Francis E. Sweeney wrote for the majority: "While we do not predict the outcome of this case, we would be remiss if we did not recognize the importance of allowing this type of litigation'' to go forward. The high court sent the case back to Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, which had dismissed the lawsuit without a trial. Sweeney said the court agreed with decisions in...

CLEVELAND -- The supervisor at FBI headquarters accused of blocking the investigation into the only person facing criminal charges in the Sept. 11 attacks is working in Cleveland on a terrorism task force. Michael Maltbie, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, was criticized in a scathing letter sent to FBI Director Robert Mueller by Coleen Rowley, a lawyer in the FBI's Minneapolis office. She said Maltbie and others at FBI headquarters thwarted her office's investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged as an accomplice in the hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people. Although Maltbie was...

PALOMINO VALLEY, Nev. (AP) - A federal judge on Friday denied a last-minute request to block the Bureau of Land Management from auctioning off cattle confiscated from an Indian tribe in northern Nevada. U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben ruled at 7:58 a.m. in Reno that the 8 a.m. auction could go forward in Palomino Valley, about 15 miles to the north. The judge rejected an argument that selling the 157 animals would irreparably harm the Western Shoshone tribe. However, he ordered the federal government to hold on to any money it gets from the sale until legal issues are worked...

PATERSON, N.J. -- Once again, FBI agents are heading to this heavily Arab-American community where at least six of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived. But this time they are not looking to lock anyone up. Instead, the bureau wants to sign them up -- as FBI recruits in the war on terrorism. It may prove to be a hard sell in a community where many Muslims can tell of relatives and friends grabbed for questioning and not seen again for months. "I don't think I'd be terribly interested in that," said Ali Erikenoglu, 40, an American-born Turk who was interrogated...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A college class devoted to Bill Clinton's presidency, said to be the first of its kind, will be offered in his native state next year and a Republican will teach it. University of Arkansas at Little Rock political science professor Margaret Scranton is developing the curriculum and will teach the class, slated to serve as the prototype for the planned Clinton School of Public Service at the Clinton Presidential Library. It will begin in January and was believed to be the first college class in the country on Clinton's life, school officials said Wednesday. The...

On the heels of terrorist alerts for New York landmarks, Ohioans were warned yesterday to add food and farmland to the growing list of potential targets. An attack on crops and farm animals is inevitable, law-enforcement and emergency officials were told during a homeland security conference at the Hyatt Regency. "Terrorists seem to like the big-bang result,'' said Dr. David Glauer, state veterinarian. "The release of a biological agent is easy.'' As an example of how contagions can spread, Glauer pointed to foot and mouth disease that killed livestock in the United Kingdom. And Ohio recently banned poultry from Virginia...