Free Republic

Police officers are trained manipulators. They take classes to learn how to read people’s body language and how to ask open-ended and innocent-sounding questions in order to surreptitiously obtain information they can use against you. They also have a knowledge of the laws that you don’t possess — and laws differ from State to State, and even from one jurisdiction in a State to another. Police have also been known to invent “laws,” place “evidence” that can be linked to you and twist your words into meaning something you did not intend.

WINTER HAVEN -- Twice in three years, William Cornwell has had to draw his gun to ward off strangers who broke into his home. Early Sunday, the U.S. Navy veteran and security guard at Winter Haven Hospital shot and killed Christopher Brian Deese, 40, of 119 Moss Road, Auburndale. Deese broke into Cornwell's home and challenged him to a fight after a night of heavy drinking, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. "You wanna fight?" Deese yelled, yanking off his shirt before charging Cornwell, who shot him once in the chest, according to the sheriff's office. The men had...

The film shows a burning crucifix, gun-toting priests and the torture of a young boy. And the Roman Catholic hierarchy is loving it. The film, “For Greater Glory,” hits theaters on June 1 and tells a little known chapter of Mexican history — the Cristero War of 1926 to 1929, which pitted an army of devout Catholic rebels (led in the movie by Andy Garcia) against the government of Mexican President Plutarco Calles (played by Ruben Blades). For Catholics enraged by the Obama administration’s proposed contraception mandate, the film about the Mexican church’s fight in 1920s is a heartening and...

PORTLAND -- Two men interrupted an armed robbery at a Metzger store and held the suspect down until police arrived Saturday night. Deputies were called just after 11:30 p.m. to the report of an armed robbery in progress at the Metzger Market, at 10055 SW Hall Boulevard, according to Sgt. David Thompson of the Washington County Sheriff's Office. The responding deputy arrived to find that the suspect, 21-year-old David L. Hager, was being held down by one of two people who had interrupted the robbery. Investigators said Hager had knocked on the door after the store was closed. When the...

The quickest way to divide people is to have them speak different languages. America has always been a nation of immigrants, but one of the things that has always united us as a nation has been the English language. In the past, it was always understood that if you wanted to thrive in the "land of opportunity" that you had better learn English and learn it well. Unfortunately, times have changed. Today, many radical activist groups are actually referring to the English language as a "tool of oppression"... » If you like this article, please subscribe to Right Side News...

MANATEE COUNTY -- A man was taken a hospital after being shot Saturday in north Manatee County during an argument. According to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, three men got into an argument about 4 p.m. in front of a home in the 4700 block of Canal Road after drinking most of the afternoon. One of the men, Norberto Cortes, brandished a knife and stabbed Fernando Deleon twice. The third man, Jorge Deleon, produced a gun and warned Cortes to stop. Cortes continue his assault, and Jorge Deleon shot him once in the torso, the report said. Fernando Deleon refused...

Conservative super-PACs are attempting to gin up disillusionment among President Obama's supporters and keep their turnout low in November's election, in part by highlighting his ties to Wall Street.Within the past month, three separate ads — two from the American Future Fund and one from Crossroads GPS — have assailed Obama from broadly comparable perspectives. Especially striking are the American Future Fund ads which make the kind of anti-Wall Street argument heard largely on the left. The outside groups' message contrasts with the one being pushed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, who has called the Obama's "the most anti-business...

It appears the Caucasus Emirate’s representatives finally realized that it is no longer enough to talk about “worldwide jihad” and position the war in the Caucasus as part of it. Caucasus Emirate websites normally provide information about jihadist achievements around the world – in countries and territories such as Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Kashmir and so on. However, the leadership of the North Caucasus insurgency now realizes that the region’s ordinary residents are not interested in what is going on in Yemen or Sudan: they are much more concerned with what is happening in neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan, as the latter...

Any info on the button Trayvon is wearing? Appears to be black and white with 75-80% black. You can see it enlarged a bit at theconservativetreehouse.com in the top video.

Convicted Sterling Hall bomber Karl Armstrong was arrested last week in Chicago after state troopers found more than $800,000 cash in heat-sealed bags stashed inside of a motor home that Armstrong was driving, according to a document filed Monday in court. That arrest Thursday led to a search on Saturday by the state Division of Criminal Investigation of a town of Madison trailer home where Armstrong lives for evidence of marijuana trafficking, according to a search warrant filed in Dane County Circuit Court. Neither Wisconsin nor Illinois authorities found marijuana in Armstrong's trailer or motor home.

Tony Blair's decision to openly court Rupert Murdoch to win power and ensure favorable coverage during his decade-long tenure as British prime minister will come under scrutiny when he faces a media inquiry on Monday. The inquiry, ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron after Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid admitted hacking phones, has tarnished Britain's elite by laying bare the collusion between politicians, the police and the media. Blair kicks off an important week at the Leveson inquiry by answering questions about his often obsessive media management which included courting Murdoch. The inquiry has so far focused...

Jack Hayes, the director of the National Weather Service, stepped down Friday in response to an investigation that top officials at the weather service had misappropriated $43.8 million by giving bonuses and extensions to contractors without proper justification. The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, released the report on May 18, detailing an audit of nine contracts that include incentive pay for good work. The contracts have a maximum potential value of $1.6 billion. The investigators said there may be other contracts that provide additional awards from 2008, 2009 and 2010 but that...

As the lone Democrat seeking to challenge Elizabeth Warren in the Senate primary in Massachusetts, Marisa DeFranco has been ridiculed, admonished and, worst of all, ignored. But for the moment, Ms. DeFranco, an immigration lawyer with high energy and a scrappy band of volunteers, is enjoying a burst of momentum. She surprised party insiders by collecting enough valid signatures by the May 1 deadline — more than 10,000, gathered everywhere from town meetings to town dumps — to qualify for the Democratic primary on Sept. 6. If Ms. DeFranco clears one more hurdle — winning 15 percent of the delegate...

Of all of the evidence that has been released in the Trayvon Martin case, none has been debated and scrutinized more than the alleged injuries suffered by George Zimmerman, the shooter. Photos have surfaced showing Zimmerman with various cuts and bruises on his nose, head and perhaps other places. And, two days after Trayvon was gunned down, Zimmerman’s personal physician claimed Zimmerman had blackened eyes and a broken nose. Well, we all know the devil is tricky. The devil will make you think the victim is the criminal and the murderous stalker was an innocent bystander in fear of his...

Analysis: Kansas governor owns aggressive tax cutsBy JOHN HANNA | Associated Press – Thu, May 24, 2012 TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Plenty of Kansas legislators' fingerprints are on the aggressive income tax cuts signed into law this week by conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, including those of some GOP moderates now describing it as a budget crisis in the making. But Brownback now owns the legislation, even though it strayed significantly from the tax plan he outlined in January and he and his allies sought less aggressive alternatives in the legislative session's final days. He not only signed the bill,...

Obama's Truth Team Being BrainwashedBy L. Vincent Poupard | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 8 hrs ago.. COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama's campaign staff is attempting to invigorate the Truth Team by giving "proof" the president' s reported spending spree never happened, according to ABC News. The president's Truth Team is being directed to a Market Watch report that attempts to refute the facts about the spending spree and the team is asked to report any political attacks they hear. As a political consultant, the idea of the Truth Team does not sit well with me. President Obama has come under...

Full title: Americans James Blackston, Unnamed Teen, Arrested in Connection with Death of Nicola Furlong After Nicki Minaj Tokyo Concert TOP STORY: Two black Americans, one identified as dancer James Blackstone (James “King Tight” Blackstone or James Blackston), and another unnamed teen, (reported as Larry Perry) have been arrested in connection with the death of an Irish exchange student, Nicola Furlong, in Tokyo, Japan.

Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts college 60 miles east of Los Angeles, drew national attention earlier this year when its dean of admissions, Richard Vos, was caught deliberately misreporting the SAT scores that students had achieved before attending CMC. VosÂ’s goal was to reach the coveted 1400 SAT average for highly selective liberal arts colleges. He resigned soon after the scandal emerged in January, but not before touching off a debate about the lengths to which colleges will go to boost their rankings. Journalists and education-policy experts lectured about the corrupting effect of U.S. News and World ReportÂ’s...

Ex-NY Times CEO clashed with chairman's girlfriend-reportReuters – 6 hours ago REUTERS - Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s new girlfriend and the New York Times Co's declining business led to the ousting of Janet Robinson as the newspaper company's chief executive in December. A New York magazine article published this week reconstructs the events that led to Robinson's departure after 28 years of service, working her way up from advertising sales to the corner office in 2004, becoming Sulzberger's most trusted lieutenant in the process. http://tinyurl.com/6oameoz The article is based on interviews with more than 30 sources described as "intimately familiar with...

The story told here is not a tale of right and wrong. There are no good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in this account. American politics is regularly cast in such moralistic terms, but that has not been our approach here. Instead, our focus has been on the factions within American society, and how the Democratic party has transformed the interests of those factions into public policy. That is the great challenge of a republican system of government such as ours—one in which the people are sovereign and the government operates on their behalf. Such governments are easy...

Obama refines economic pitch by focusing on steady jobs growthBy Amie Parnes - 05/27/12 04:30 PM ET Obama is highlighting job growth and a steep decline in the unemployment rate to convince voters his policies are working. President Obama’s campaign is highlighting job growth and a steep decline in the unemployment rate over the last year to sell the public on the idea that his economic policies are working. Obama’s greatest challenge this campaign cycle is convincing voters to give him another four years to try to improve the economy, the central issue of the 2012 campaign. Republican Mitt Romney...

General Colin Powell said on Wednesday that he supports gay marriage, representing a turning point for the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I have no problem with it," Powell told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview. "In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president's decision."

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most...

More than two dozen people were shot across the city between late Saturday afternoon and early Sunday morning. One died and several others are in critical condition in shootings that left a total of 25 people injured, according to police. A 6-year-old girl was among the wounded.

Spain is spiralling into the vortex of debt-deflation. This has nothing to do with Greece. It is not the result of fiscal extravagance over the past decade, or other such Wagnerian myths. The country’s collapse is the mathematically certain - and widely predicted - result of ferocious monetary and fiscal contraction on an economy struggling to deal with a housing bust. In Spain, unemployment has reached 24.4pc, or 32pc in Extremadura. More than 1.5m households have no earner at all Monetary tightening by the European Central Bank caused Spanish real M1 deposits to fall at an 8pc rate in mid-to-late...

The now-70-year-old Cunningham wrote that he plans to live with his brother and mother in rural Arkansas after his prison release. He said he wants to restore his gun rights so he can hunt and compete in sport shooting contests.

Skip Foppiano of Morada Produce is praying for cool weather. The San Joaquin County grower and packer is thick into cherry harvest season and is short on labor - 20 to 30 percent fewer pickers than he had last year. If it gets too hot, his smaller-than-usual workforce won't have time to get all the cherries off the trees before they rot. Farmers across California are experiencing the same problem: Seasonal workers who have been coming for decades to help with the harvest, planting and pruning have dropped off in recent years. With immigration crackdowns, an aging Mexican population, drug...

Respect, a "newsletter about law and diversity," is a publication of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation. It is geared for middle- and high school students. The recent Spring 2012, Vol. 11, No. 3 article1 entitled "Fear Propels Religious Attacks" by Cheryl Baisden is of particular interest, because while it purports to have a fair-minded stance, the fact that CAIR, or the Council of American Islamic Relations, is cited as a credible source sheds serious doubt about the objectivity of the article. In fact, CAIR receives "financial support from foreign powers who have provided direct support to Osama bin Laden,...

MADISON — Someone, it appears, thinks Terry Moulton might lose, or at least is willing to commit $227,000 toward making that happen. The buzz for a while has been that Democrats’ best chance of winning one of the four Senate seats up for recall on June 5 is in Senate District 21, where Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, is trying to fend off a challenge from his Democratic predecessor, John Lehman. But spending this month — from liberals and conservatives alike — indicates they aren’t quite certain that Moulton, facing former Democratic Rep. Kristen Dexter, can hold onto the District 23...

Elizabeth Warren can no longer count the Harvard University administrator who listed her as "Native American" among her advocates in the unfolding scandal of her professed minority heritage. In the reaction to the Boston Globe's controversial article on Harvard's EEOC reports which listed Elizabeth Warren as a Native American, one particular revelation has gone largely unnoticed. Alan Ray, the former administrator who filed diversity reports during Warren's tenure, distances the university from any responsibility for erroneously listing her as a Native American.

On Thursday, MSNBC's Al Sharpton took the race card to a whole new level by falsely claiming Republicans are like Hitler, and are prepared to kill African-Americans en masse. "It seems like they [Republicans] act as though, some wiping out of people, some of the right-wing, is all right, it’s not all right to do to any innocent people. If you had war and people that’s one thing, but to wipe out innocent people just because of who they are like what was done in Hitler’s Germany or what was done to Native Americans is not justifiable," he said....

A German teenager has been rescued from a Bosnian couple who are accused of starving and beating her for years and of harnessing her to a horse cart and making her pull it.The 19-year-old, kept in a hamlet near the northeastern town of Kalesija since 2004, had been taken to safety and the couple had been detained for investigation, regional prosecutors said on Sunday. Damir Arnautovic, a spokesman for the prosecution in Tuzla, said the woman had been in a bad physical and psychological state and had no papers. She was not named. He said Milenko Marinkovic, 52, and his...

The Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, today blasted Vice President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for bashing ordinary Americans who believe in governmental fiscal responsibility. Jenny Beth Martin, Co-founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, reacted strongly to accusations that the Tea Party Movement bears responsibility for the financial crisis facing our nation: “Only entrenched career politicians in Washington, D.C., would think living within your means is ‘extreme.’ What is truly extreme are the lengths Vice President Biden and Sen. Reid will go to blame everyone else for their lack of courage to...

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Miami police shot and killed a man on the MacArthur Causeway Saturday afternoon, and police sources told CBS4 they had no choice: the naked man they shot was trying to chew the face off another naked man, and refused to obey police orders to stop his grisly meal. The bizarre shooting happened shortly after 2 p.m., when police responded to a 911 call about two naked men fighting on a bike path along the Causeway, which was packed with traffic on a busy holiday weekend....

The scene in South Florida was surreal Saturday. On one side of the MacArthur Causeway, the side where police had braced for trouble, scantily clad men and women poured beer and testosterone into the streets, cafes and clubs, while thumping to the loud, restless beats of South Beach. Meanwhile, on the mainland side of the causeway, allegedly the quiet side this weekend, a naked man was shot to death by police after he was found chewing on another man’s face. Under the hot sun Saturday in South Beach, long before the nighttime partying began, revelers took videos, posed for photographs...

I guess it's that time of year again. It seems every spring I get stopped by the Portland PD. I got video this time I also wrote an email to the police chief: Chief Sauschuck, On 26MAY2012 at about 17:15 I was stopped by Officer J McDonald. I recorded a video of the stop for my protection. You can view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfdEbe7e9GE Officer McDonald claimed to have received calls that I was walking around with a holstered firearm. This is a legal activity in Maine. He stopped me, put on gloves, and removed my weapon from me. I...

When Dr Harveen Kaur Sidhu travels from her home in an upmarket neighbourhood of the north-western Indian city of Chandigarh, she always slips her lightweight .22 revolver in her bag. The gun is a new purchase – Sidhu got her licence only a year ago – but now the 33-year-old dentist won't travel without it. "I don't have faith in the police to protect me. There are so many attacks on women these days. It's everybody's right to defend themselves. I think all women who are vulnerable should be carrying guns," Sidhu said. She is not alone. A growing number...

DEL PASO (CBS13) – It’s a plot straight out of the movies, but it happened in real-life to store clerks in Del Paso Heights. The owner at the Four Oakes Market says the store has been robbed three times before, and this time he decided to fight back, and it was all caught on tape. It is terrifying to even watch. Two masked gunmen barged into the market, and immediately, one grabbed a clerk and put a gun to his head. “I saw the guy, I saw the gun, the hoodie, everything,” said Mangal Singh. Mangal was behind the counter...

As part of a recent AIM Report, I wrote briefly about the release of documents last week in the George Zimmerman case. Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. But more has come out since then, and attorney Alan Dershowitz has stepped up his criticism of the special prosecutor in Florida who brought the charges. Here is what I wrote: As we are going to press, a trove of documents was released on the George Zimmerman case that appears to bolster his defense that he is not guilty of second degree murder in...

Wisconsin's progressivism faces a recallBy Nick Carey and Brendan O'Brien | Reuters – Fri, 25 May, 2012 COLUMBUS, Wisc. (Reuters) - Tea Party activist Larry Gamble has spent the last few months leading an effort to disqualify the signatures of some of the 1 million residents who petitioned to recall Wisconsin's governor, Republican Scott Walker. The petition protests Walker's Act 10, which eliminates collective bargaining rights for most public workers, among other anti-union measures. Gamble helped launch a "Verify the Recall" website that drew in 17,000 volunteer sleuths to scour public records for fraud. He says they uncovered about 100,000...

Van Jones Slams the Tea Party Again: ‘The So-Called Patriots…Smashing Down Every American Institution’By Madeleine Morgenstern | The Blaze – 14 hrs ago **SNIP** “At this point in this struggle, it’s the so-called patriots who are the ones who are smashing down every American institution….It’s the so-called patriots, the ones who come out here with their Tea Party and the flags and call themselves patriots — they’re the ones that are smashing down our unions, smashing down public education, smashing down every American institution that we built, and our parents built, and our grandparents built to make this country great.”...

By Peter Nickeas Tribune reporters Chicago Tribune (via Drudge) 6:27 a.m. CDT, May 27, 2012 Two dozen people were shot across the city between 6:45 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 a.m. Sunday. One died and several others are in critical condition, according to police. A 6-year-old girl was among the wounded.

Mérida, 25th May 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – From 1 June the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition will be banned in Venezuela, confirmed Venezuelan Justice and Interior Relations minister Tareck El Aissami yesterday. Since the measure was first passed on 29 February over 805,000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered by Venezuelan authorities as part of an auditing process of gun stores. These are now held by the Venezuelan Anonymous Company of Military Industries (Cavim), which manufactures ammunition for state security bodies. The announcement was part of the first annual presentation by the Presidential Commission for Disarmament and Control of Arms...

Alan Simpson Decries 'Wretched Group of Seniors' Over Social SecurityBy Michael Ono | ABC OTUS News – Wed, May 23, 2012 Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson sent an fiery letter filled with expletives to the California Alliance for Retired Americans for a flyer the group sent out slamming the Bowles-Simpson commission report for proposed cuts to Social Security as one way to deal with the long-term deficit. "Your little flyer entitled "Bowles! Simpson! Stop using the deficit as a phony excuse to gut our Social Security!" is one of the phoniest excuses for a "flyer" I have ever seen," said...

Firing of Dobbs Elementary teacher upheld for aiding students on testsBy Jaime Sarrio The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 5:59 p.m. Wednesday, May 23, 2012 The firing of a fifth teacher in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal was upheld Wednesday by a tribunal. Derrick Broadwater, a teacher at Dobbs Elementary, was accused of helping students with words they didn't know and prompting them to recheck answers if he suspected something was incorrect. The tribunal voted to uphold APS' decision to terminate Broadwater after hearing recordings of the teacher talking to GBI investigators in March 2011. “I always tell my kids to go...

SAN DIEGO — Just months away from being released from federal prison, former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe wrote to a federal judge earlier this month asking help to get his rights to carry a gun restored. But the plea, made in a rambling and sometimes disconsolate letter sent to Judge Larry A. Burns on May 2, was for naught. Burns, who sentenced Cunningham to eight years and four months in prison in 2006, replied he had no power to help him. The correspondence is the latest missive from the Tucson, Ariz., federal prison where Cunningham has...

France's new president, François Hollande, has put the German chancellor on the defensive with his growth agenda. Now Angela Merkel is planning to strike back. She is calling for structural reforms to save the euro with a six-point plan aimed at harmonizing austerity and growth in Europe once again. The more European leaders talked at a dinner last Wednesday, the grimmer Angela Merkel looked. One after another, they spoke out in favor of the joint assumption of debt and against the strict austerity course Berlin is calling for. The chancellor stared silently at the man who was responsible for this...

This euro crisis is now getting extremely serious. Events are happening quickly, closing-in on policy-makers and threatening to engulf us. Across the single currency zone, fears are rising and, even in the most moderate nations, populations are becoming more restive. History is locked on fast-forward. Some say that seemingly arcane economic policy debate doesn't matter. In the UK, in particular, but across much of the rest of Western Europe too, the political and media classes have long displayed a tendency to roll their eyes whenever anybody with even a smattering of economic insight has had the audacity to show it....

In addition to going to Hawaii to gain access to documents to assist in his investigation of Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president, perhaps Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio should send his Cold Case Posse to New York City to solicit a donation from Donald Trump. That was the suggestion of Steve Malzberg, guest host on yesterday’s Morning Show program at KTSA Radio, San Antonio. Arpaio was being interviewed on the Trey Ware Morning Show about the progress in his investigation. Noting that his investigative team, made up of volunteer attorneys and ex-law enforcement personnel, were making...

Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday that the United States can now focus on new global challenges after a long decade of war in an election-year commencement address to jubilant graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "Winding down these longs wars has enabled us to replace and rebalance our foreign policy," Biden told the Army cadets and their families at the storied academy's football stadium. Biden's speech echoed some of the themes of military success struck by President Barack Obama in his commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy last Wednesday. Biden, like Obama, said U.S....