Free Republic

SAN DIEGO – Former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, driven from office by sexual harassment allegations, was charged Tuesday with felony false imprisonment and two counts of misdemeanor battery involving three women.

"Forced marriage is probably the last form of slavery in the UK." — Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Northwest England. More than a dozen Muslim clerics at some of the biggest mosques in Britain have been caught on camera agreeing to marry off girls as young as 14. Undercover reporters filming a documentary about the prevalence of forced and underage marriage in Britain for the television program ITV Exposure secretly recorded 18 Muslim imams agreeing to perform an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, between a 14-year-old girl and an older man. Campaigners against forced marriage -- which is...

A court has ruled that Belgian anti-Islam campaigners must remove all posters featuring the stilettos of luxury French footwear designer Christian Louboutin. The poster, promoted by the campaign group Women against Islamisation, showed the legs of Anke Van dermeersch, a former Miss Belgium and now a politician for the far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). It showed her wearing Louboutin's trademark red-soled heels, and included a scale of what it said was Islam's view of a woman according to the length of her skirt. The scale went from from "sharia conform" at floor level, to "whore" just above the knee and...

Dry ice bombs have exploded for two successive nights in restricted areas at Los Angeles international airport, the world's sixth busiest. Two other devices that were found on Monday night before they detonated appeared to have been placed outside the main terminal buildings in an area near planes, according to television news footage. Detectives in America are investigating how the bombs, which consisted of water containers packed with dry ice, were planted in locations where access is barred to the public.

Hillary Clinton will campaign with Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (D) this weekend. It will be Clinton's her first public campaign event since she left the Obama administration in February.

Undocumented immigrants may practice law under new California legislation spurred by Sergio Garcia's long, tortured quest It was not Sergio Garcia's decision to head north. His father made that choice. He was 17 months old when a couple with U.S. citizenship carried him across the border from Mexico, pretending he was their baby. It had somehow been arranged by Garcia's father, Salvador, who was in Northern California eking out a living by picking almonds. "We were so poor in Mexico, my father decided to head north, to find the American dream," said Garcia, now 36, who still breaks into tears...

Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal. The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, "should have been mine," he said. The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made "jokingly" during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said. However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than...

When you place power in the hands of inept idiots, then you foster the rule of “ineptocracy.” You give power to the least capable and the least deserving. In the process, you may wonder why there is less and less in society to admire and enjoy. It’s because the idiots given the power they never deserved are not capable of producing anything. I ran across a t-shirt that says everything about the state of our country today: Ineptocracy: A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members...

“This is going to hurt.”

<p>States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice.</p> <p>That’s according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fox 13 obtained a copy from the Crossroads Urban Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Crossroads says if Utah families don’t get food stamps, they’ll turn to the local food pantries, which are already strapped due to the government shutdown. Homeless people Fox 13 talked to, some who use SNAP, say losing food stamps would mean going hungry.</p>

Senior executives from CGI Federal -- the company that won the Obamacare website contract -- enjoyed high-level access to top Obama administration officials, according to White House visitors' logs. CGI Federal is the U.S. subsidiary of CGI Group, the Canadian company based in Montreal that won the $93 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services in December 2011 to build Healthcare.gov, the main Obamacare web site. Prior to the official award, senior CGI executives met with top White House officials and attended a number of invitation-only addresses by President Obama.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending the NSA's bulk call records database as a "vital" counterterrorism tool. While this wouldn't make the program legal even if true, it also seems clear that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has relied, rather uncritically, on the government's assertions of "necessity" to draw the strained conclusion that every American's phone records are "relevant" to FBI counterterrorism investigations. It's thus worth pointing out how extraordinarily weak the case for the program's utility really is. Feinstein begins by recycling the claim that if only the NSA program...

The offer to advise on a film about his own life was too irresistible for a retired Somali pirate. Mohammed Abdi Hassan, also known as Big Mouth, was detained at Brussels international airport on Saturday after a sting operation in which undercover agents persuaded him that they wanted to make a documentary about his acts of piracy. He is now in custody over his alleged involvement in the hijacking of a Belgian ship in 2009.

A man beaten unconscious in May after he stopped for gas in north Baton Rouge filed a lawsuit against Stadium Chevron, claiming the gas station failed to provide security at night in a neighborhood long plagued by violent crime. *** The litigation stems from a racially charged assault that generated outrage in Baton Rouge and prompted calls for Dickerson to be charged with a hate crime. Ray, 42, had been on his way to get something to eat with his family when they stopped at the Chevron after dark. Ray’s 15-year-old daughter told police and FBI officials she was worried...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - More Black Mob Violence Denial in AlbanyPosted By Colin Flaherty On October 15, 2013 @ 12:36 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments I wish the liberals would make up their minds.Here is what they ALWAYS say about  the black mob violence documented in the book White Girl Bleed a Lot:1) It is not happening.2) Here is why it is happening.Salon did it. Then CNN. Then MSNBC. The former head of a state-wide NAACP did it on my radio show. Now comes Casey Seiler, a reporter at the Albany Times-Union. Seiler does not approve...

MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA) - When a wild shopping spree fueled by what appeared to be "limitless" Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards ensued at two Louisiana Walmarts, not everyone who receive food stamp benefits joined in. Additional Links Food stamp shopping spree: Who pays? EBT cards: The great debate Walmart shelves in Springhill, Mansfield, cleared in EBT glitch DCFS: All SNAP EBT service restored In cell phone video that is circulating the Internet, several hundred people can be seen filling their shopping carts at Springhill and Mansfield Walmarts, when the stores apparently continued accepting EBT cards even though they weren't showing...

The mother who never reported murdered 'Baby Hope' missing speaks out two decades after her 4-year-old daughter disappeared to say she is 'devastated' For 22 years, police searched for the identity of 'Baby Hope' - the 4-year-old girl sexually assaulted, murdered, then stuffed in a picnic cooler and tossed on the side of a road. In all that time, no one ever came to claim her. She was burned in a grave without a name, paid for by the detectives working her case. But on Monday the girl's mother spoke, saying that she was 'devastated' to learn that her daughter...

A Massachusetts teen was punished for showing up at a party where police arrested about a dozen students for underage drinking – but she didn’t have a drop! Erin Cox, a 17-year-old honor student, says she went to the party to pick up a friend who’d had too much to drink, a story a police officer on the scene corroborates. School officials claim that Cox still violated the school’s zero tolerance policy just by being there. They took away her captain’s position on the school volleyball team and suspended her for five games. Erin Cox told the Boston Herald, “I...

Yesterday I wrote about a disturbing trend in US prisons, a noticeable increase of tattoos on prison inmates, particularly in the Southwest, with script written in Farsi and with graphics depicting Hezbollah imagery. The conversion rates to Islam in the prisons is little talked about. The prisons have become hotbeds of radicalism and jihad. Today I received this email from a former prison administrator in response to my post. Pamela, That authorities have found an increase of islamist tattoos is only part of the story. I worked for the prison system in Texas for five years as an administrator....

House conservative, just before meeting: Income verification provision in Senate deal 'especially bad'…House conservative: 'We are setting a precedent whereby a president can refuse to discharge his Article II duty to take care…'…that the laws be faithfully executed but then can turn around and offer to enforce the law as a 'compromise.''Conservative predicts there will be 'broad opposition' inside House GOP conference…

BRUSSELS (AP) — The alleged pirate kingpin thought he was going work in the movies. Instead he landed in jail. In a sting operation worthy of Hollywood, Mohamed Abdi Hassan was lured from Somalia to Belgium with promises of work on a documentary about high-seas crime that would "mirror his life as a pirate," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said Monday. But rather than being behind the camera as an expert adviser, Abdi Hassan ended up behind bars, nabbed as he landed Saturday at Brussels airport. "(He's) one of the most important and infamous kingpin pirate leaders, responsible for the hijacking...

Aetna's CEO gave a harshly critical review Monday of the federal government's Obamacare marketplace, saying, "There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed." Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" if he knew that the rollout of Healthcare.gov would be problematic, the insurer's CEO, Mark Bertolini, said his giant company's role as an alpha tester for the system gave it a sense of how many problems the health insurance marketplace faced on the eve of its launch. "We were pretty nervous as we got further along," Bertolini said. "As they started...

A 22-year-old Cobb County woman was charged with the shooting death of a Kennesaw student during a road rage incident that is slowly attracting national attention. Kimberly Kilgore, 21, and Sparkles LaShayla Lindsey’s lives couldn’t be more different. The popular Kennesaw State University student loved country and western music, and she took pride in her vast collection of cowboy boots. Lindsey emulated the thug life that was glorified by the rappers she idolized. According to published reports, Lindsey, of Austell, had a criminal record that most rappers would envy. The two women’s lives intersected on a darkened stretch of Shiloh...

The basic framework of the deal Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid have hammered out is coming to light. The provision the GOP is crowing over — that the Obama Administration will check the income levels of those who receive a subsidy — is already the law. Meanwhile, the GOP will let the rest of the year proceed above sequester level spending, give the unions another carve out of Obamacare, and extend the debt limit to February. I’m sure at the last minute they’ll also delay the medical device tax so it looks like Harry Reid caved on something. Really, it’ll...

Police in Moscow have named Azerbaijani man Orkhan Zeynalov as the suspected murderer of a young Russian whose death sparked major riots targeting migrants. Yegor Shcherbakov, 25, was stabbed to death in front of his girlfriend as the couple were returning home in the Biryulyovo district on Thursday. Ill-feeling has risen towards Moscow's Muslim migrants, thousands of whom gathered for street prayers on Tuesday. The tension came just as Russia was being commended for tackling racism. "Substantial efforts have been made to react firmly to the escalation of racist violence in Russia, and there has been a decline in the...

RICHMOND -- A San Francisco-based group of financiers called Mortgage Resolution Partners has been calling on Sacramento and other California cities for more than a year, pitching a plan to use government powers of eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages and refinance them for the benefit of homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth. Most communities took a pass, saying the novel plan was too risky. Not Richmond, a largely working-class city in the Bay Area. There, a determined and articulate Green Party mayor has helped steer the plan through the City Council in recent months. Today, the...

Governor Dannel Malloy does not understand a law pertaining to “large capacity magazines” that he demanded, promoted and signed, Connecticut Citizens Defense League documented yesterday following statements the governor made on a local radio program. Malloy’s “legal” response to a caller on Milford’s “Chaz & AJ in the Morning” show was dangerously off-base, CCDL charged. Asked if it would be legal to carry two 14-round magazines limited to 10 rounds in each one, the governor’s advice could subject anyone heeding it to prosecution.“First of all what you have to do is disclose,” Malloy told the caller. “There’s a way to...

Police said the two armed suspects entered an apartment and one of the intruders was shot to death. The second intruder fled the scene and police are searching for him. Police said the resident was not hurt

FAISALABAD, Oct 8: Traders subjected two robbers to severe torture, leaving one of them dead, after a vendor was shot dead during a robbery bid at a jewellery shop at Mamunkanjan on Tuesday. Two robbers entered the shop owned by Shahid in Purana Dakhana Bazaar, Mamunkanjan. As the shop owner put up resistance, the panicked outlaws opened indiscriminate fire. A bullet hit Tanveer Ali, a vendor present outside the shop, who died on the spot. The traders retaliated the fire and forced the robbers to flee the market. They gave a chase to outlaws and finally nabbed them. The furious...

By now you have probably heard about the New York incident in which a businessman was dragged from his Range Rover and beaten by a mob of motorcyclists. The attack—which nicely combined elements of The Wild Angels and Bonfire of the Vanities—would have been media catnip regardless, but became a sensation when helmet-cam videos were posted on YouTube. The story just keeps producing spicy tidbits, notably the fact that a half-dozen undercover New York police officers were among the hundreds of rampaging cyclists. Now the New York Post has reported Reginald Chance, who was videotaped using his helmet to break...

RACINE – The suspect in a Tuesday morning home invasion is the same man acquitted this spring in the gang-related killing of a 12-year-old boy, Racine police said Wednesday. Tarence A. Banks, 33, of Racine, allegedly attempted an armed invasion of a home in the 3200 block of 17th Street around 1:56 a.m. Tuesday. A man in the home shot Banks, seriously injuring him, according to police. Banks was taken to Wheaton Franciscan-All Saints hospital, 3801 Spring St., and later to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, police said. An update on his condition was not available...

Detectives said that John Rose, 82, and Mamie Rose, 83, were in their home when a man tried to break in. John Rose shot the man when he entered the home. The sheriff's office said investigators have been unable to identify the suspect, but he will face burglary and trespassing charges. He is currently in a Salem hospital.

"It's just me," Holmes said, according to documents and testimony. Officers asked Holmes other questions about weapons and explosives. Roughly two hours would pass before the chaos subsided and detectives would read Holmes his Miranda rights - anything you say can be used against you. On Tuesday, Holmes' lawyers will argue that delay violated his constitutional rights and that anything he told the arresting officers should be barred from his trial. Prosecutors will counter that the officers urgently needed to know whether Holmes had an accomplice who could still be shooting and killing people at the Century 16 theater in...

Greenpeace, the world’s biggest and most battle-hardened environmental campaigning organisation, is in a state of shock. Last week, Russian investigators said that they had found ‘narcotic substances’ on board Arctic Sunrise, the Greenpeace vessel they seized after its crew had used it in an attempt to storm an oil rig of the state-controlled firm Gazprom. They added that the drugs included poppy straw, an ingredient for opiates. You would think that Greenpeace might be proud to have been identified as scrupulously organic in its drug use; but its spokesman denounced the Russians’ claim as a ‘smear, pure and simple’. Of...

Nothing Secretary of State John Kerry does should surprise anyone anymore. But in praising Islamic Malaysia as a "multi-faith" model as something of a benchmark for balancing cultural diversity, he shows his true colors. He is a traitor to the United States just like his boss. Malaysia is nothing more than an Sunni Islamic fundamentalist country, where only those who belong to the recognized Islamic sect are not punished. Malaysia is no different than any other Islamic nation. ... Bibles are a direct threat to the Islamic faith and must be destroyed. Too, Hindu temples have been destroyed, and even...

He's due to stand trial over whether he helped plan and conduct surveillance for the bombings of U.S. embassies in AfricaA Libyan who has been held and interrogated for a week aboard a U.S. warship is now in New York awaiting trial on terrorism charges, U.S. officials said Monday. The al-Qaida suspect, known as Abu Anas al-Libi, has been under federal indictment in New York for more than a decade. He's due to stand trial over whether he helped plan and conduct surveillance for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Two U.S. officials said he arrived in...

Jonathan Wald has a difficult job. He’s executive producer of Piers Morgan’s show on CNN, a set of duties that include taming a volatile and sometimes rude television personality. In an “extract” from his new book “Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God and George Clooney” published in the Guardian, Morgan describes an incident when Wald’s counsel came into play. . . .

Police discovered the children and animals after receiving a domestic dispute callPolice say four children and more than a dozen pets, including two boa constrictors, were discovered living in squalor at a Queens apartment. Officers responded to the Richmond Hill apartment on Sunday after receiving a call of a domestic dispute. They say the children are between the ages of 7 and 11. They were placed in temporary custody of the city's Administration for Children's Services. Police say 15 dogs, two boa constrictors and a lizard also were found. A 29-year-old man was arrested for endangering the welfare of a...

President Barack Obama is risking “impeachable” offenses with the way he is handling the debt limit debate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a post on her Facebook page Monday. “Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense,” Palin wrote. In her statement, Palin also accused the president of “scaremongering” on the debt ceiling. She suggested that a default could be averted by paying interest on the debt through daily revenues collected by the United States, an idea that...

A European Parliament report seen by Spiegel estimates that 3,600 international organized crime organizations operate within the EU. The damage done to European economies by organized crime totals hundreds of billions of euros according to a European Parliament special committee investigating crime, money laundering and corruption. The CRIM committee estimates that around 880,000 slave laborers live in the EU, of whom 270,000 are victims of sexual exploitation. Human trafficking alone generates profits of around €25 billion, while the illegal trade in human organs and wild animals makes for a further estimated profit of between €18 and €26 billion annually. …

No New Murders Reported in the Five Boroughs Since October 6th In 2012, New York City saw the lowest number of murders and the lowest number of shootings at any time since comparable records were kept, with 419 murders and 1,374 shootings. Below is a year-to-date update on murders and shootings in 2013. This update is provided every week by the Mayor’s Office. Murders Through Sunday, October 13th, New York City has seen 90 fewer murders than at this point last year: 256 murders in 2013 compared to 346 murders in 2012 – a decrease of 26.0 percent. Murders committed...

Brussels (AFP) - Belgium has arrested a notorious Somali pirate chief after luring him to Brussels on promises of shooting a documentary movie about his life on the high seas, prosecutors said Monday. Federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said Mohamed Abdi Hassan, better known as "Afweyne" or "Big Mouth", was being held in the Belgian city of Bruges after being detained at Brussels airport Saturday when he stepped off a flight from Nairobi. Afweyne and his powerful accomplice, Mohamed Aden "Tiiceey", the former governor of Somalia's self-proclaimed Himan and Heeb statelet, were facing charges of kidnapping, piracy and organised crime, the...

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut. Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there...

UN hides naked male sculpture to please Iranians A relief carving of a naked man at the UN's Geneva headquarters was covered up on Monday, apparently to spare the blushes of Iranian diplomats ahead of fresh talks on the country's nuclear drive. UN officials would not comment on why the wall relief, inspired by Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam", had been masked by a large white screen, referring questions to the Swiss authorities. But Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve claimed that the aim was to avoid offending the Islamic republic's delegation for the talks taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Iranian...

A North Miami-Dade man was justified in fatally shooting a pipe-wielding, drug-addled attacker during a wild confrontation on a sidewalk four years ago, a judge has ruled. The first-degree murder charge against Luis Martinez, 29, was dismissed late last month. It was the fourth Miami-Dade murder case dismissed by a judge since the 2005 passage of Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law. The law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat before using deadly force to counter a deadly threat. The law also gave judges greater leeway in granting “immunity” to people deemed to have acted in self-defense. The state’s Stand...

A school janitor in Michigan was fired after she was caught trying to hire a couple of 4th-graders for $1 total to beat up a 9-year-old boy who spoke disrespectfully to her. Other students and a teacher at Campus Elementary in Grand Rapids overheard the janitor’s offer and told the principal, who fired the employee that day, the New York Daily News reported. “There are no words to describe it,” said district spokesman John Helmholdt. “This is one of those things that make you scratch your head and wonder how any individual could think this was a good idea.” According...

Since 2008, the idea of third parties started to gain more popularity across America.  Principled conservatives and libertarians united against both the Democrat and Republican establishment started to explore methods of opposing Washington elites and the status quo. The Tea Party had some success – and has continued most successfully – with primary campaigns which put principled people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul in races as the Republican candidate.  Once they won the GOP nomination, winning the general election was often pretty straightforward. Yet many liberty activists have become disenchanted by the two party system and are turning to other options....

A crowd of demonstrators converge upon U.S. government property closed to the public. The demonstrators know that they are prohibited from entering the property. Nonetheless, they push through the metal barricades, chanting, “Tear down these walls.” That incident occurred yesterday at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. Not confining their protest to the World War II Memorial, some of the protesters then picked up the government’s metal barricades and carried them blocks away to the White House, where the barricades were deposited outside the gates. Television recorded police struggling to keep the protesters away from the White...

In 2004, the Army decided to scrap the two traditional camouflage uniforms that had long been used by the military—one meant for woodland environments, another for the desert—and claimed to have come up with a universal pattern that could be worn anywhere and blend in with any environment. The $5 billion dollar experiment with the universal pattern is over as the Army is phasing out the uniform after less than a decade of use. But many soldiers and observers are wondering why it took this long and cost this much to replace an item that performed poorly from the start...

**SNIP** When the president himself wanted to initiate discussions prior to shutdown, Harry Reid vetoed it, effectively overruling Obama. The Post report also notes that Nancy Pelosi has permitted dozens of House Democrats to vote with the GOP on a litany of common-sense piecemeal bills to restore funding to popular and essential elements of the federal government. She ran the political calculus and allowed certain members to break with the party in order to avoid being targeted with potent attack ads next year. She did so knowing that these fixes would be dead on arrival in the Senate. In short,...