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La Mesa man finds out when free speech is no longer protected, after he is convicted of making threats against a candidate for president. SAN DIEGO, California - Walter Edward Bagdasarian walked out of federal court Tuesday morning the same way he walked in, wearing a stoic expression on his face and clutching the hand of his wife. But, when Bagdasarian came out of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building he was a man guilty of threatening the man running for the country's top spot, now President Barack Obama. "The government's position essentially was that the defendent intended to make...

Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household. In an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Times "America's Morning News," Mrs. Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, said the questions have become "very intricate, very personal" and she also fears ACORN, the community organizing group that came under fire for its voter registration efforts last year, will be part of the Census Bureau's door-to-door information collection efforts. "I know for my family the only question...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mumia Abu-Jamal has lost his bid for a new trial in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. The Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up Abu-Jamal's claims that prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted him of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction but held his death sentence invalid. The appeals court said it would not second-guess state court rulings rejecting Abu-Jamal's claims of bias in the composition of the jury. The high court considered only the conviction....

<p>MONTGOMERY, AL., (WSFA) -- WSFA 12 News is on top of some breaking news at this hour. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has returned a verdict in the appeals of former Governor Don Siegelman and former Health South CEO Richard Scrushy.</p>

U.S. Supreme Crt declines to review fraud conviction of Daley's ex-patronage chief Feb. 23, 2009 (AP) — Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's former patronage chief and two other former city officials have failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to consider setting aside their fraud convictions. The justices, in an order Monday, are letting stand Robert Sorich's conviction and 46-month prison term. Sorich and the others were found guilty of skirting laws that ban political city hiring. The federal appeals court in Chicago earlier upheld the convictions. The court rejected defense arguments that the men couldn't be convicted of criminal fraud...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2008 – A federal jury yesterday found five men guilty of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., but acquitted them of attempted murder. After nearly six days of deliberation, the jury rendered the guilty verdict for three brothers -- Shain, Eljvir and Dritan Duka -- and two other defendants, Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar. They face a maximum of life in prison, according to a Justice Department news release published yesterday. Federal prosecutors said the five men, all Muslim immigrants who were arrested in Cherry Hill, N.J., in May 2007, were planning to...

Dr. Alveda King works with Father Frank Pavone (PFL) in the Gospel of Life Ministry. She personally supports and will vote for McCain-Palin. This is significant as she is a close relative of Martin Luther King, Jr. She is the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. Her father, A. D. King worked with his brother Martin on Civil Rights. She is author of the book: Sons of Thunder (ISBN-13 : 9781413411263). This book about her father (Dr. A. D. King) and her uncle Martin (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Dr. Alveda King is head of African-American outreach for the Gospel of...

With his sobbing family looking on in a San Francisco courtroom, former KGO radio host Bernie Ward today completed his tumble from one of the Bay Area's most popular liberal voices on the local airwaves to a pariah caught up in the world of online child pornography. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker sentenced Ward to seven years and three months in federal prison, calling the disgraced celebrity a "troubled individual'' whose downfall is a "personal tragedy.'' Ward now must turn himself in to U.S. Marshals by noon Friday to begin his prison term.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurdish imam and a Bangladeshi-American pizzeria owner on Wednesday lost an appeal of their convictions for plotting to kill a Pakistani diplomat in what turned out to be an FBI sting operation. The U.S Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Yassin Aref, 37, and Mohammed Hossain, 53, who were sentenced last year to 15 years each in prison for their roles in a fake plot to attack the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations in New York with a missile. Both appealed their convictions of money-laundering and conspiring to provide material...

June 05, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Rezko: GuiltyFor an untouchable change agent, Obama certainly has a lot of questionable associates. By Stephen Spruiell Talk about bad timing. Barack Obama’s friend and fundraiser Antoin “Tony� Rezko was found guilty today of mail fraud, wire fraud, soliciting bribes, and money laundering in connection to a federal investigation into political corruption in the state of Illinois. Rezko now faces sentencing on 16 of 24 counts, some of which carry punishments of up to 20 years in prison. The verdict comes as Obama is securing the Democratic nomination and trying to put behind him...

AN old friend and fundraiser for US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been found guilty of fraud for using his political clout to demand kickbacks and win government contracts.Real estate developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko was also convicted of bribery and money laundering in the case which has dogged Senator Obama during his quest to secure the party's presidential nomination, even though he is not accused of any wrongdoing. In all, jurors found Rezko guilty of 12 counts of fraud, two of aiding and abetting bribery and two of money laundering after deliberating for several weeks. He was cleared on...

RICHMOND, Va. - A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world's top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison. Almost all 50 states have anti-spamming laws. In the 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Jaynes' claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. "This is a historic victory in the fight...

5 Execs Found Guilty of Fraud in Gen Re-AIG Trial By Kenneth J. St. Onge February 25, 2008 A federal court jury in Hartford, Connecticut has found four former General Re Corp. executives and one former American International Group executive guilty of corporate fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from allegations that the five helped cook AIG's books in an effort to boost its stock price. According to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, the four Gen Re executives convicted were former CEO Ronald E. Ferguson, former CFO Elizabeth A. Monrad, and former senior vice presidents...

A federal judge on Friday overturned the conviction of a man on death row for the rape and murder of a woman outside an Orange County bar because of statements made by a prospective FBI agent that allowed him to get on the trial's jury. U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall overturned the conviction of Richard Raymond Ramirez because the jury foreman - who was a candidate to become an FBI agent - made "false and misleading" statements about his employment situation during jury selection in the 1985 trial. The juror, Thomas Alston, is now an FBI agent in...

Timeless principles consistent with where Huckabee remains today and relevant to the recent headlines. Also nine years ago, Huckabee said the1998 Jonesboro shootings were driven by "the winds of spiritual change in a nation that has forgotten its God." "Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does," Huckabee said. "Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed." He gets it. And the message of values grounded in the Word of God are timeless. The winds of spiritual change that...

(CNN) – Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor issued a blistering criticism of the former president's wife on Monday, accusing her of "not telling the truth" on Social Security and taking marching orders from her top pollster. Reich, who has not endorsed a candidate but has written glowingly of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in recent months, ripped Hillary Clinton for saying Sunday that Iowa voters will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk." "I don’t get it," Reich wrote on his blog. "If there’s anyone in the race whose history shows unique...

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Iraqi court to sentence Saddam's deputy to death next week Press Trust of India Baghdad, January 17, 2007 Another deputy of former leader Saddam Hussein will be given the death penalty later this month after the appeals court ruled that his previous sentence of life in prison was too lenient, a spokesman has said. Raid Juhi, a spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal, said a session will be held on January 25 in which a judge will read the new verdict against former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. On November 5, Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to...

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia overturned a terror conviction Thursday against the militant Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who served 2 1/2 years for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he was upset for the families of the 88 Australian victims but was powerless to help. Australia, along with the United States, publicly accused the aging cleric of being a top leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group. "Of course it is the court system of another country and we can't change that," Howard told...

A truck driver was convicted Monday for his role in the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt, in which 19 illegal immigrants died from dehydration, overheating and suffocation. The trial's punishment phase began immediately and jurors will decide whether the driver, Tyrone Williams, should be sentenced to death. The federal jury convicted Williams of 58 counts for the transport and deaths of illegal immigrants during a May 2003 smuggling attempt. His sweltering tractor-trailer was packed with more than 70 immigrants who scraped at the insulation, broke out the tail-lights and screamed for help escaping the tomb-like trailer. Prosecutors said Williams was...

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have asked for congressional hearings and reviews by the White House and Justice Department into the conviction of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who shot and wounded a fleeing drug suspect. The agents, convicted by a federal jury in El Paso in March, face 20 years in prison at a sentencing hearing next month. "It appears the facts do not add up or justify the length of the sentences for these agents, let alone their conviction on multiple counts," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat. "Border Patrol agents have a difficult and often dangerous...

The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Vacaville man's murder conviction for strangling a 13-year-old girl and allowed prosecutors to use racial statistics when they offer DNA evidence to establish a defendant's guilt. In a unanimous ruling, the court said genetic tests of blood on the victim's and defendant's clothes had been properly used in the Solano County trial of William Curtis Wilson. Wilson, then 19, was arrested in April 2000, hours after Sarah Phillips' mother found the girl's body on her living room floor. She had been strangled with a telephone cord. Police said Wilson had dated the...

NEW YORK - A judge on Friday threw out a racketeering murder conviction against two detectives accused of moonlighting as hitmen for the mob, saying the statute of limitations had expired on the slayings. U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein also granted a new trial to the defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, on money laundering and drug charges. Defense attorneys had argued that the five-year statute of limitations had expired on the most serious allegations against the pair — that they committed or facilitated eight killings between 1986 and 1990 while on the payroll of both the New York Police...

The highest court in France on Wednesday rejected a bid by George Soros, the billionaire investor, to overturn a conviction for insider trading in a case dating back nearly 20 years, leaving the first blemish on his five-decade investing career. The panel, the Cour de Cassation, upheld the conviction of Soros, 75, an American citizen, for buying and selling Société Générale shares in 1988 after receiving information about a planned corporate raid on the bank. Ron Soffer, his lawyer, said Soros planned to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the length of the proceedings...

PARIS - France's highest court upheld George Soros' conviction for insider trading Wednesday in a case dating back nearly 20 years, and the billionaire investor vowed to fight the ruling at the European Court of Human Rights. The Court of Cassation upheld the 75-year-old American financier's conviction for buying and selling Societe Generale shares in 1988 after receiving information about a planned corporate raid on the bank. Apart from this case, Soros' record is unblemished after five decades in finance. Lawyer Ron Soffer said Soros planned to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the...

She tells judge in Lodi case she regrets her guilty vote and accuses jury foreman of misconduct -- other panelists deny it. Sacramento -- One of 12 jurors who convicted a 23-year-old Lodi man Tuesday on charges that he trained for holy war disavowed the verdict late Thursday, alleging that she was bullied into a guilty finding amid a pattern of misconduct by fellow panelists. "I never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty," Arcelia Lopez, a 44-year-old school nurse from Sacramento, said in a 2,000-word affidavit filed to the...

A state appeals court panel has overturned a former Roman Catholic priest's conviction on charges of molesting three boys while assigned to a Los Angeles church from his home diocese in Italy. The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled 2-1 on Thursday that misconduct occurred during Fernando Lopez's trial when the prosecutor expressed her personal opinions to jurors. Lopez, a Colombian citizen, was found guilty last March of molesting the boys during a three-year period that began shortly after his transfer to St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in 2001. The case marked Los Angeles County's first successful prosecution of a...

NEW YORK - High-powered technology banker Frank Quattrone was granted a new trial Monday when a federal appeals court tossed out his conviction on charges he obstructed a government probe of stock offerings at the height of the dot-com boom. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction but that the May 2004 verdict must be thrown out because the jury was improperly instructed on how to interpret the law. It also ordered that the case be reassigned to another judge. The government is weighing whether to retry the case....

NEW YORK - A federal appeals court Friday upheld the conviction of celebrity homemaker Martha Stewart for lying to investigators about selling stock that plunged in price soon after her trade. Stewart completed her sentence in the case last summer but pursued the appeal anyway. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a written ruling upholding the 2004 convictions of Stewart and former stockbroker Peter Bacanovic for lying about why Stewart sold nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems Inc. stock in 2001. The sale came just before the stock took a dive on a negative government report...

Former state Sen. Charles Walker surrendered himself to a federal prison on Thursday afternoon after a last-minute appeal to federal judges failed. Walker was sentenced this month to more than 10 years in federal prison for tax evasion, mail fraud and conspiracy charges. He and his attorneys hoped an emergency petition with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would allow him to remain free on bond until judges made a ruling, but the request was denied Wednesday. Once one of the most powerful legislators in Georgia, the Augusta Democrat was convicted in June of 127 of 137 crimes and...

A 24-year-old woman who's been convicted of raping a 31-year-old man had a new day in court on Monday, when her appeals trial started in Bergen. The case has sparked international interest. The female defendant once again denied all guilt when her trial opened. She now must testify in front of a 10-member jury. A city court in Bergen found her guilty earlier this year, and sentenced her to nine months in prison. She was also ordered to pay NOK 40,000 (about USD 6,500) in damages to her alleged victim. He's a 31-year-old man who claims the woman performed oral...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction and death sentence of a man condemned for the 1982 killings of two Riverside police officers. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Jackson Daniels Jr., 67, had ineffective counsel, and that the judge should have moved the trial from Riverside County because of intense pretrial publicity. The appeals court ruled Daniels had two rookie criminal defense attorneys who had never tried a murder case, and that a judge had given them only three months to prepare. The attorneys failed to...

A Pakistani, convicted of exporting missile parts to Iran almost 20 years ago, is being accused in a San Diego court of conspiring to smuggle jet engine components from the United States to Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium (and IRAN). Arif Ali Durrani, 55, was initially accused of illegally exporting through his defunct California-based company called Lonestar Aerospace, 110 compressor blades for the General Electric J-85 military aircraft engine to Jordan. Those charges were dropped on Sept 23 after the US Attorney?s Office determined that the Jordan government had a license to receive the goods. The same day,...

In a little-noticed blurb in yesterday's London Times, India sentenced an al-Qaeda operative for his participation in the 9/11 attacks..... .....Mohammed Afroze was sentenced to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al-Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne and the Indian Parliament.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005; 12:57 AM KETCHIKAN, Alaska -- A jury found Greenpeace guilty Monday on two misdemeanor criminal negligence charges that were filed after the group's ship entered Alaska waters for an anti-logging campaign without required paperwork. Greenpeace's ship came to Alaska to conduct an anti-logging campaign in the Tongass National Forest. The ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products" at the time, court papers said. Under state law, a large non-tank vessel must file an oil spill response plan application five days before entering state waters. Greenpeace had not,...

SAN FRANCISCO – A state appeals court reinstated the second-degree murder conviction of a San Francisco attorney whose giant dogs mauled and killed a neighbor in the hallway of an apartment building here. The appeals court, in reversing a lower court judge who vacated the jury's finding against Marjorie Knoller, said Thursday that Superior Court Judge James Warren erred when he reduced the conviction to manslaughter. The 1st District Court of Appeal said Warren erroneously concluded that in order for Knoller to be convicted of murder, she had to know that one of the two giant Presa Canario dogs would...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - An Islamic scholar who prosecutors said enjoyed "rock star" status among a group of young Muslim men in Virginia was convicted Tuesday of exhorting his followers in the days after Sept. 11 to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops. The convictions against Ali al-Timimi, 41, carry a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole. But the judge left open the possibility that she will toss out some of the counts. The jury reached its verdict after seven days of deliberations and convicted al-Timimi of all 10 counts. Prosecutors said the defendant - a...

One would think that our journalists, who profess a commitment to the Bill of Rights, would raise the alarm. But they're too busy filling out grant applications to the Soros Open Society Institute. Last fall, in our report on George Soros,we noted that "The media consistently ignore the fact that this so-called 'philanthropist' has had several brushes with the law," including a conviction in France for insider trading. On March 24, that insider trading conviction was upheld. The Washington Post gave the story one paragraph on page 2 of the Business Section of the paper. By contrast, the story was...

What happened? Hello? Hello? Anybody home? "MESSAGE TO DISABLED FLORIDIANS" December 1998, Florida By Governor-elect Jeb Bush "Talking with a variety of Floridians with disabilities and their families has helped understand a lot more about the lives, challenges and dreams of those with disabilities. However, I know that my education continues with everyone new I meet. People with disabilities are no different than anyone else. They want to work, have families, and live independently. As Governor, I would work hard to create an environment that gives people with disabilities every opportunity to be independent and play an active role in...

Michael S. Dukakis, former ultra-liberal Governor of Massachusetts observed, "Who would have thought he'd turn out to be a poet?" That “who” is Norman A. Porter, also known as J. J. Jameson, one of Chicago’s prominent anti-war figures and a member of the community of leftist anti-war poets.  Jameson, the author of two books, a congregation leader at a church, and named Chicagopoetry.com's poet of the month in March 2004, was the very model of a modern “enlightened” cultural leader.  He is also a man whose two life sentences were commuted by Mike Dukakis. Porter is a double-murderer.  He...

Democrats Hammered In Memo March 3, 2005 Now, I mentioned earlier, ladies and gentlemen, that I had a revealing quote from the latest memo from James Carville and Stanley Greenberg to the Democrat rank and file. And here's the revealing paragraph as written by -- it's the Democracy Corps memo -- it's Greenberg and James Carville that came out yesterday. "So, we ask progressives to consider, why have the Republicans not crashed and burned? Why has the public not taken out their anger on the Congressional Republicans and the president? We think the answer lies with voters’ deeper feelings about...

PIERRE, S.D. -— The second-degree manslaughter and reckless driving convictions of Bill Janklow, a former congressman and four-term governor, have been unanimously upheld by the South Dakota Supreme Court. A decision released today said Janklow received a fair trial and there was enough evidence to convict him. Janklow was found guilty of killing Randy Scott, 55, of Hardwick, Minn., when his motorcycle collided with a car Janklow was driving on Aug. 16, 2003, near Trent. Authorities said Janklow sped through a stop sign at an intersection of two rural highways. Janklow has said he was in a diabetic stupor and...

Attorney Lynne F. Stewart is a progressive icon. A protege of Ramsey Clark and the late William Kunstler and a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights, Stewart embodies the committed professionalism of the radical "legal left." Under this code, attorneys select clients whom they regard as the put-upon victims of an oppressive system or the persecuted champions of a just cause. Stewart represented Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric convicted in 1995 of masterminding the first World Trade Center bombing. She is now on trial as a terrorist herself for aiding and abetting...

I have to admit I'm impressed by the achievement of the federal prosecutors who call McLean, Va., pain doctor William Hurwitz "a major and deadly drug dealer." Though the evidence at his trial made it clear Dr. Hurwitz was not a drug trafficker, they still managed to get him convicted. The prosecutors did not dispute Dr. Hurwitz had helped hundreds of patients recover their lives by prescribing the high doses of opioids they needed to control their chronic pain. Instead they pointed to the small minority of his patients -- 5 to 10 percent, by his attorneys' estimate -- who...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

There are two extremely important words that begin with “R.” They go together, and they should never be separated. They are: “Rights” and “Responsibility.” People who have actually sacrificed their selfish desires to protect our rights, sometimes to the point of death, would be appalled at the concept that we can have rights without responsibility.

President Bush is likely to be re-elected because the American people believe this presidential election is the most important one in memory. A USA Today/Gallup poll revealed that 72% of respondents think it is, compared with 47% who thought so in 2000 and 41% in 1996. Much of that feeling is based on the insecurity created by 9/11, and it is shifting the voting patterns. The veterans' and married women's vote will be stronger for Mr. Bush than they were four years ago. Both perceive, as many Americans do, that a victory for Mr. Kerry would be a signal to...

Conviction. Resolve. Vision.All words that local supporters of George W. Bush have been using to describe the President since I returned from the Democratic convention.Those descriptions aren't surprising. People have said these things about Bush at least since Sept. 11, 2001. But what struck me was that the words could apply to the supporters themselves. They are as fervent in their support of the President as his detractors are in their fear and loathing of the man. It's not a blind faith. They are quick to point out flaws in policy and disagree on issues.And they will acknowledge that this...

The police crime laboratory in Houston, already reeling from a scandal that has led to retesting of evidence in 360 cases, now faces a much larger crisis that could involve many thousands of cases over 25 years. Six independent forensic scientists, in a joint written report to be filed in a Houston state court today, said that a crime laboratory official -- because he either lacked basic knowledge of blood typing or gave false testimony -- helped convict an innocent man of rape in 1987. The panel's report concluded that crime laboratory officials might have offered "similarly false and scientifically...