Free Republic

Supporters of a proposed Los Angeles voter initiative that would allow police to arrest illegal-immigrant gang members solely for being in the country illegally said they collected enough petition signatures before Friday's deadline to qualify the measure for the May ballot. The signatures still need to be verified by the Los Angeles city clerk's office, a process that could take up to three weeks. Proponents, who needed to gather 73,963 signatures from valid registered voters in the city, said they had submitted more than 76,000. Jamiel's Law, as it is known, is named after 17-year-old Los Angeles High School football...

A Swedish hip-hop artist and songwriter has been arrested following a road-rage confrontation on a Hollywood street in which a pedestrian died. Authorities say David Moses Jassy, a 34-year-old musician also known as Dave Monopoly, was to be arraigned today on charges of assault, battery and leaving the scene of a deadly accident. Prosecutors claim that the victim, John Osnes, slapped Jassy's rented sport utility vehicle on Sunday when it crept into his right of way as he crossed the road. Jassy then got out of his car, punched Osnes in the face then kicked him in the head when...

They did it for the money. The four Marines charged with murdering their Brooklyn-raised sergeant and his bride confessed they were looking for an easy score when they burst into the couple's California home with guns drawn, court papers revealed Thursday. Three of them ratted out Pvt. Emrys John as the triggerman who ended the torture of Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his wife, Quiana, by shooting them in the back of their heads. All of the suspects say that Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak was sexually assaulted, but each says it was the other three who did it, the papers say. Shackled...

A Columbia journalism student will tell jurors on Friday how a sadist turned her Manhattan apartment into a "torture chamber" where she was raped, disfigured and nearly blinded. "He ordered her to stab out her eyes," Assistant District Attorney Ann Prunty said Thursday as she opened the trial of 31-year-old Robert Williams with a horrific account of the alleged assault on April 13, 2007. Standing naked in the bathtub with her lips glued and taped shut, her hands and ankles bound, the 23-year-old victim "couldn't do it," Prunty said. "The next thing she heard was the kettle whistling," the prosecutor...

PHOENIX -- Two men opened fire on a marked patrol car Tuesday night, Phoenix police said. Police said the men fired at the two-man patrol car from a maroon Chevrolet Tahoe around 10:40 p.m. in west Phoenix. The officers followed the Tahoe about 5 miles before the men stopped the SUV and fled on foot into an apartment complex, police said. Officers set up a perimeter in the area and used K-9 units to search for the men. Police said both men were taken into custody, though one was bitten by a police dog. The men initally gave police false...

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford will sign the immigration reform bill Wednesday afternoon. Sanford's spokesman says the signing will take place at 4:30pm in his office at the Statehouse. "I'd give real credit to the House for standing strong on the issue of an e-verify requirement, and for leading in that regard -- because we believe that is what will ultimately make this bill effective and enforceable," said Sanford in a statement on May 28. "Working together, we've put forth a bill that will make a difference when it comes to illegal immigration in South Carolina." The bill was given...

LOS ANGELES — Jamiel Shaw Sr. never gave much thought to the immigration status of gang members in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. With his military wife deployed to Iraq and two sons to raise, there were football practices to manage, shoes to buy, college applications to consider. But in the two months since his older son, Jamiel Jr., was gunned down by a man the police say is a gang member who was here illegally from Mexico, Mr. Shaw has been able to think of little else. “I don’t care about illegal people who are working here and taking...

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho -- A man has been charged with raping a 10-year-old girl who later gave birth in eastern Idaho. The girl gave birth less than two weeks ago by caesarian section at Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg, Fremont County Sheriff Ralph C. Davis and other authorities said. Officials would not disclose the gender, date of birth or paternity of the baby. "I wouldn't have believed a 10-year-old could conceive in the first place," Davis said. A hospital spokeswoman would not discuss the condition of the girl or the baby and would not say whether either was still in...

MERRILLVILLE — Friends and family mourned the death of a prominent attorney, a young couple soon to be married and a Mexican immigrant who had long struggled with a drinking problem — all four of them killed in three-car collision Wednesday near the border of Merrillville and Winfield. Only a day after ending a high-profile dogfighting trial, Garry Weiss was driving south on Randolph Street toward his home in Lakes of the Four Seasons after league night at Stardust Bowl in Merrillville. Heading north on Randolph were Steve Hough, 26, and his girlfriend, Amy Bartelmey, 25, who made their home...

SACRAMENTO - State Sen. Gil Cedillo is trying to shine some light on a shocking but little known episode in American history. He faces an uphill battle. The Los Angeles Democrat is the author of a bill that would require public junior high and high schools to teach students about the deportation of about 2 million Latinos, including 400,000 Californians, to Mexico during the Great Depression. Elementary schools would have the option of including information about the deportations in social science instruction. The deportation program was started in 1929 (and ran to 1944) by the Hoover administration, supposedly as a...

<p>LOS ANGELES—Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is asking federal officials to rethink their policy on workplace immigration crackdowns that involve established businesses and to focus on employers that mistreat workers instead.</p> <p>The mayor said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that work-site raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have "severe and long-lasting effects" on the local economy, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.</p>

The parents of a murdered high school football star urged passage Tuesday of a law requiring Los Angeles police to hunt down gang members who are illegal immigrants. Such a law would alter a 30-year policy under which officers do not seek to enforce immigration laws. "My son was murdered by someone that was not in the country legally," Jamiel Shaw told the City Council. "We want him back but we can't get him back," Shaw said, surrounded by his family and choking back tears. "And it hurts every day." "We're not living in Beirut or Iraq. We're living in...

MORE THAN 100 YEARS AGO, Drew Street was a beautiful green spot named by pioneer Andrew Glassell after his son, Drew. For most of the 20th century, it was a tucked-away suburban enclave flanked by the Los Angeles River and Glendale's Forest Lawn cemetery. Then, starting in the 1960s, the city built apartments on its dead-end streets and avenues — and a bad element moved in, seeing the isolated little neighborhood as the perfect lair. Drew Street, with its long, straight rise, offered the perfect viewing base from which to espy approaching cop cars. It turned out to be just...

During a Democratic presidential debate in Austin, Texas, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said they would consider suspending work site immigration raids until Congress passes an immigration overhaul which includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Clinton said she would request such legislation in the first 100 days of her administration. “When we see what’s been happening, with literally babies being left with no one to take care of them, children coming home from school, no responsible adult left, that is not the America that I know,” Clinton said. Other immigration highlights from the debate: Clinton: “We need...

Although the Chino slaughterhouse case triggered national outrage and the nation's biggest meat recall, a second suspect faced only misdemeanor charges when he surrendered this week -- until his aliases and pending drug cases emerged. "His worst problem is the felony possession for sale. It's (punishable by) mandatory state prison," San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Debbie Ploghaus said Thursday of the defendant, whose true name she still doesn't know for certain. "We know him as Luis Sanchez, with a birth date of 3-8-75." Under that identity, he is one of two men charged in the Hallmark/Westland Meat Co. case...

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that a shifting political climate in the U.S. could improve the chances that a new administration in Washington will help bring a comprehensive reform law that would legalize the status of Mexican immigrants. In a wide-ranging conversation with The Times, Calderon, scheduled to visit California next week, also addressed the decline of the government-owned oil fields and the war against drug traffickers that has claimed thousands of lives. "My hope is that whoever the next president is, and whoever is in the new [U.S.] Congress, will have a broader and more comprehensive...

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war. "I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live." McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, was questioned about the language because of a story last month in the Nation magazine reporting his continued use of the slur. Since then, reports of...

CHICAGO -- Leaders of a Chicago church where an illegal immigrant from Mexico took sanctuary for a year before being deported say they plan to house another immigration activist who is set on defying a deportation order. Flor Crisostomo, 28, an illegal immigrant who came to the U.S. in 2001, was slated to report to federal immigration officials on Monday, but the head of Adalberto United Methodist Church said she will seek refuge at the church in the same way as immigration activist Elvira Arellano, who was deported to Mexico last August. "She wanted to continue the struggle," the Rev....

PORTLAND, ORE. -- Fourth Avenue ambles for 30 blocks past high-rise office towers, regional banks, upscale retailers and such urban landmarks as the county courthouse and City Hall. Fourth also rolls through one of Portland's most prominent symbols of diversity: Chinatown. An ornamental red and gold gateway inscribed with dragons and Chinese characters greets visitors and evokes ties to the Pacific Rim. Red and gold street lamps, a gift from Taiwan, line the street near restaurants that specialize in dim sum. This is not the street that Latino activist Marta Guembes wanted to rename in honor of Cesar E. Chavez,...

About 60,000 Bhutanese, now in United Nations camps in Nepal, are to be flown to the U.S. over the next five years by direction of the State Department. Nepal wants Bhutan to take them back in. Bhutan says they are economic migrants and will not. To solve the problem, the State Department will bring most of them here. This will help achieve President Bush's social vision of 70,000 refugees for 2007 and help justify staff and salaries at State. The airplane flights will wind up costing millions. One month after the Bhutanese arrive, they will be eligible for federal, state...