Free Republic

When the high school's bus routes changed this year, 16-year-old Rain Price soon found out he'd be going right past his house every single morning. Much to his chagrin, he also found out his dad would be standing outside, waving. . . .The second day of school, there he was again, only this time Price was wearing a San Diego Chargers helmet and jersey. Day three, it was an Anakin Skywalker helmet, and the next day, swim trunks and a snorkel mask. * * * His dad admits it took a lot of effort to keep it up, but said...

ASTON CANTLOW, England—In the 1980s, Andrew Wallbank and his wife, Gail, inherited a small farm here near St. John the Baptist, a historic 13th-century parish church nestled in a leafy churchyard. Shakespeare's parents were married there, and so too were the Wallbanks. But the feel-good story came to an abrupt halt in 1990, when the church began billing the couple for repairs, invoking an obscure law that allows parishes to charge certain neighboring property owners for the work. What started as a tab for roughly £6,000 ($8,600) to fix windows at the church ballooned into a nearly 20-year legal battle...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Marion County Sheriff's deputies arrested one of their own after an undercover operation. Now, a deputy who worked as a guard at the jail, is himself behind bars. "You know there is 775 deputy sheriff's in this department full time police officers and when one gets out of line the other 774 don't care for it," Col. John Layton with the Marion Co. Sheriff's Department said, When women complained about that one sheriff's deputy, Paul Wagner, fellow deputies began a month long investigation. Wagner worked part-time security at a Speedway gas station on the city's east side....

Why did the fried-chicken maker cross the road? To fill the potholes, of course. The folks at K[entucky] F[ried] C[hicken] recently cooked up an appetizing offer for cash-strapped cities: The restaurant chain will fix crater-ridden streets for free if they're allowed to brand repairs with a chalked-on message saying that the road has been "Re-Freshed by KFC." Company president Roger Eaton put the deal on the table last week in an open letter to America's mayors. KFC intends to select four towns to receive "a smooth drive that is fit for a colonel." KFC started the project in its hometown...

When a melee broke out in his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., courtroom yesterday morning, one of Broward County's newest judges didn't make a safety play and retreat to chambers. As a suspect suddenly attacked a witness who had been testifying in a restraining order matter, Judge Ian Richards vaulted over the bench and rushed to her aid, reports the Miami Herald in an article today and an earlier breaking news post. The 33-year-old jurist and an unidentified lawyer representing witness Nicole Word both tried to shield her from her ex-boyfriend . . . .

If the San Francisco 49ers intend to search everyone attending home games, they're going to have to prove it's a reasonable act. In a case being watched closely by professional sports teams nationwide, the California Supreme Court on Monday ruled for the first time that searches at private entertainment venues, such as stadiums, could violate privacy rights. But the court remanded the suit filed by Daniel and Kathleen Sheehan for further proceedings. The couple owns 49ers season tickets and objected to pat-down searches outside San Francisco's Candlestick Park as a violation of their privacy rights. The high court decided that...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) | A church group that owns beachfront property discriminated against a lesbian couple by not allowing them to rent the locale for their civil union ceremony, a New Jersey department ruled Monday in a case that has become a flash point in the nation's gay rights battle. The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights said its investigation found that the refusal of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to rent the oceanfront spot to the couple for their ceremony in March 2007 violated the public accommodation provisions of the state's Law Against Discrimination.

Attorney Aimee Marie Dias, 35, just wanted to use the women's room at an upscale restaurant in Tampa, Florida. But when she entered the women's restroom at SideBern's, at about 11 p.m. on Saturday, she says she saw a man and a woman having sex there, reports the St. Petersburg Times. The man, a local schoolteacher, contended that there was no sex and that Dias threw the first punch, at him, sparking a fight between Dias and his girlfriend, Jodi Jacolow, 32, that spilled out of the restroom into the restaurant bar. "According to Dias' account, she verbally confronted the...

Former Indiana standout Eric Gordon believes drug use caused a rift on last season's Hoosiers, according to a story posted on The Indianapolis Star's Web site Wednesday night. Gordon declined to identify which players allegedly used drugs, but said D.J. White and two others still on the team were among those who did not. "It was the guys that were doing drugs that were separate," Gordon told the newspaper. Gordon, who left after his freshman season and now starts for the Los Angeles Clippers, said some players' drug use led to friction on the team. Gordon said he spent time...

SI.com has learned that for the first time in history, a major presidential candidate may sponsor a race car in NASCAR's premier series. According to sources, Barack Obama's campaign is in talks to become the primary sponsor of BAM Racing's No. 49 Sprint Cup car for the Pocono race on August 3. **** Obama will also be present for a second private fundraiser on July 30 in Miami, in which team owners Beth Ann and Tony Morgenthau -- staunch Republicans -- will give the Democrat an opportunity to spread his message of change. Randy Moss and Fergie are among the...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A burglar messed with the wrong man Monday morning when he broke into an eastside home. The situation got bad enough for the burglar that he feared the home owner was going to kill him. The incident is likely to be tough for the suspect to explain to the guys in jail or out. He was beaten-up by a man who's legally blind. There's no question that Allan Kieta's vision is limited. But, when the dog started barking, this morning, the burglar didn't know that. "And when I opened my bedroom door and stepped out into the...

Hurricane season is just around the corner, so Americans should know where to turn to if disaster strikes. It's not the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A new study suggests Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's would be a lot more helpful. **** The study, by Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., **** "Profit-seeking firms beat most of the government to the scene and provided more effectively the supplies needed for the immediate survival of a population cut off from life's most basic necessities," Horwitz wrote in the study, which was published by the Mercatus...

In their six seasons on the Discovery Channel, MythBusters hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage have tested the veracity of more than 300 legends. But for their 100th episode (airing Feb. 20 at 9 p.m. Eastern; see a clip from the show, below), they'll take on one of the greatest: TV's MacGyver. First, they'll find out whether MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) really could've blasted a hole in a wall with one gram of pure sodium. Then, their Build Team — Tory Belleci, Kari Byron, and Grant Imahara — will attempt to replicate the ultralight airplane MacGyver constructed out of bamboo...

Updated: An outside lawyer for Eli Lilly & Co. apparently has two people named “Berenson” in her e-mail address book. **** The question is whether her e-mail to the wrong Berenson spurred last week’s front-page New York Times story revealing talks to resolve criminal and civil investigations into the company’s marketing of the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa, as Portfolio.com reports. **** She was trying to e-mail Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin rather than Times reporter Alex Berenson. The Drug and Device Law blog contacted Berenson, the reporter, who said he did receive an e-mail, but it did not contain a detailed...

It isn't easy for Masoud Alikhani to check on his investment. The Iranian-born Briton owns a facility in Mozambique that turns jatropha, a hardy, drought-resistant plant, into biodiesel. **** There's no blueprint for this kind of investing: The best opportunities must be dreamed up and then created from scratch. **** This is the investing world's final frontier, so undeveloped and impoverished that it makes other extreme emerging markets like Colombia and Vietnam seem like marvels of modernity. Airports open and close arbitrarily. Roads are often unpaved and clogged. Gasoline and diesel are scarce, and rolling blackouts common. The medical precautions...

While the NFL has insisted that it is committed to helping disabled former players, the league does not maintain records of which players, or how many, are driven from the game by injury, ESPN.com has learned. That fact is contained in more than 2,000 pages of documents the NFL and NFL Players Association delivered to the House Judiciary Committee last month. It has startled members of Congress who are investigating the NFL's disability benefits. And it has added to a growing feeling among key members of the House and Senate that the league's business practices deserve increased scrutiny and possibly...

Robert A. Levy, a rich libertarian lawyer who has never owned a gun, helped create and single-handedly financed the case that may finally resolve the meaning of the Second Amendment. * * * They started by interviewing dozens of potential plaintiffs in Washington. “We wanted gender diversity,” Mr. Levy said. “We wanted racial diversity. We wanted age diversity. We wanted income diversity.” The lawyers picked three men and three women, four white and two black. “They ranged in age from 20s to 60s,” Mr. Levy said, “with varying incomes and varying occupations.” * * * “We didn’t want to be...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Major League Baseball's all-time home run king Barry Bonds was indicted Thursday on perjury and obstruction justice charges, according to KTVU reporter Rita Williams. The five-count indictment -- four counts of perjury and one of obstruciton of justice -- capped one of the longest federal grand jury investigations in Northern California history -- a proceeding that introduced the sports world to the acronym BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) and led to the downfall of American track and field world and Olympic champions Marion Jones, Kelli White and Tim Montgomery. It touched the NFL with several current and...

ATLANTA -- Georgia's Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager. The court ruled 4-3 that the 10-year sentence Genarlow Wilson received was cruel and unusual punishment, and it directed a lower court to reverse the conviction and release him. He has been in prison since Feb. 25, 2005. Wilson's lawyer, B.J. Bernstein, said she expected Wilson would be released Friday afternoon from the Al Burruss Correctional Training Center in Forsyth, Ga. "His mother is just thrilled. We're all in...

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether hiding the proceeds of an illegal activity, like a drug transaction, can be prosecuted as money laundering under federal law. This straightforward statutory question has roiled the lower federal courts, prompting a complaint by two conservative members of the federal appeals court in New Orleans earlier this year that the government’s expansive interpretation of the most commonly used money-laundering statute amounted to “prosecution run amok.” That complaint, which came in a dissenting opinion, was perhaps what led the Supreme Court to decide, over the Justice Department’s opposition, to review the decision...