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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Megan Williams, who was supposed to take back her story that seven Logan County residents beat, raped and tortured her, didn't speak at a press conference at her lawyer's office on Wednesday. Instead, lawyer Byron L. Potts recanted her claims for her. He said Williams told him that the only injuries that weren't self-inflicted were the bruises on her face. "She is recanting the entire incident. She says it did not happen, and she's scared,'' Potts said. He urged prosecutors to re-examine the cases against the seven people convicted in the attack. Authorities don't believe Williams' new...

A senior police chief spoke out tonight about the worrying rise in gang rapes, as disturbing figures showed almost 100 attacks in the capital within the last year. Meanwhile the age of victims has fallen, with 64 per cent aged 19 or younger in the last financial year compared with 48 per cent in 1998-9. The Metropolitan Police has commissioned research from Dr Miranda Horvath, a lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Surrey. She is focusing on the 'cultural context' of gang rape and speaking to officers from forces across Britain and the United States. Jennette Arnold, who...

What are the odds that had a GOP Congressman had been witness to the arrest of his gay lover's marijuana arrest, minor details like this would take two years to come to the surface? Fox reporter Alison Bologna interviews Frank on the details of the arrest and questions what Frank knew and what he seems conveniently oblivious to as well. Frank as usual goes on the offense with feigned outrage: See her interview and report at the link.

Years before Jason Rodriguez allegedly opened fire in a former employer's office Friday, he scared people with his spiral into erratic behavior. "He was a very, very angry man," said his former mother-in-law, America Holloway. She recalled Jason Rodriguez saying that "nobody liked him" at Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc., an architectural-engineering firm in downtown Orlando where he worked as a draftsman until he was fired more than two years ago. In the past three or four years, 40-year-old Jason Samuel Rodriguez struggled with divorce, mental-health treatment, debt, underemployment, personal bankruptcy, and -- according to those who know him --...

While a massive memorial service for slain Officer Timothy Brenton neared its finish at KeyArena on Friday afternoon, fellow officers with the Seattle Police Department shot a man they believe to be responsible for Brenton's death. [...] A note threatening to kill police officers was left at the bombing site [...] Butler has argued that such {jury} nullification may be particularly appropriate in cases where black defendants are charged with nonviolent crimes. "It is the moral responsibility of black jurors to emancipate some guilty black outlaws," Butler wrote in a 1995 Yale Law Journal article, adding: "My goal is the...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry comments on the Ft. Hood shooting, noting that “there were three shooters”.

Fort Hood Texas Shootings Free Republic Archives This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. Our prayers Continue...... *Update:13 Soldiers Killed 31 Wounded Fort Hood Shooting [Muslim terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan] *MAJ. GEN. ROBERT SCALES (RET.) "This was a deliberate act of execution." (FOX NEWS) *Barack Obama Gives "Shout-Out" Before He Comments on Shooting -- FOX News (here's the video) *Transcript: President Obama delivers remarks on Ft. Hood shooting (after shoutout) *NBC CHICAGO: Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting *Obama...

In at best a very tacky action, and at worse an incredibly disrespectful action the commander in chief gave a minute long shout-out and pumped his conference before addressing the tragic deaths of our servicemen and women down at Fort Hood. The President should have discussed our soldiers than praised his advisors for their stupid conference.

At least eight people were injured in a mass shooting inside a downtown Orlando high-rise just before noon Friday, according to the Orlando Fire Department.According to Orlando Fire Department District Chief Michael Droege, an unknown number of people are still in the building and could be injured. He said the SWAT team is still trying to pull people out of the building.WESH 2 reporter Gail Paschall-Brown, who is at the scene on the ground, said that 15 employees came out of the building very distraught. Paschall-Brown spoke with one who said that a former employee came into the office who...

The parents of the 15-year-old girl gang-raped after a Richmond High School homecoming dance spoke Saturday, pleading for people to "be courageous in speaking the truth and in holding people accountable.''Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner spoke briefly to the gathering, announcing her office has jump-started the permit process to build the new fence around the campus. "This kind of gang rape is certainly not normal," she said. "It rises to our attention how we really need to address the heart of the issues." She said economic stresses, foreclosures and other combinations may have exacerbated the horrific crime.

TAMPA - One photograph shows a beautiful baby girl with a fat, happy face. Another shows a dead 5-month-old with sunken eyes. She weighed 6 pounds. Her autopsy showed no body fat. Without being told it's the same child, you'd never be able to tell. When Polk County deputies responded to a call Sunday about a baby not breathing at the Lakeland home of Tivasha Logan and Chauncey Gardner, they found more beer than baby food, Sheriff Grady Judd said. There only were about 2 ounces of formula inside the one can they saw. The child, Chauntasia Gardner, was pronounced...

A pro-life group is criticizing pharmaceutical company Neocutis’ defense of its use of cells harvested from an aborted fetus in the development of burn treatments and anti-aging creams.The company said it believed “extremely limited use” of fetal skin tissue obtained in a respectful manner can lead to “significant medical benefit.”

Carrie Prejean demanded more than a million dollars during her settlement negotiations with Miss California USA Pageant officials -- that is, until the lawyer for the Pageant showed Carrie an XXX home video of her handiwork. The video the lawyer showed Carrie is extremely graphic and has never been released publicly. We know that, because TMZ obtained the video months ago but decided not to post it because it was so racy. Let's just say, Carrie has a promising solo career. We're told it took about 15 seconds for Carrie to jettison her demand and essentially walk away with nothing....

A judge's decision to reduce a killer's sentence because he has genetic mutations linked to violence raises a thorny question – can your genes ever absolve you of responsibility for a particular act? In 2007, Abdelmalek Bayout admitted to stabbing and killing a man and received a sentenced of 9 years and 2 months. Last week, Nature reported that Pier Valerio Reinotti, an appeal court judge in Trieste, Italy, cut Bayout's sentence by a year after finding out he has gene variants linked to aggression. Leaving aside the question of whether this link is well enough understood to justify Reinotti's...

A 60-year-old man was burnt alive as he tried to kill his wife at their home in Feistritz an der Drau in Carinthia’s Villach-Land district today (Tues). Police said the man had doused himself and petrol and then poured it around his house before shouting "I will burn all of you to a crisp" and setting the home ablaze. The man was killed instantly as he was turned into a human torch but his wife and another man, whom police suspect she was having an affair with, escaped. They were treated for smoke inhalation at Villach provincial hospital.

I'm amazed by the soothsayers: Ayn Rand, for instance, who warned us fifty years ago of the risk of dictatorship or civil war if collectivism persisted. Or economist Friedrich Hayek, who wrote in the 1940s that we'll become serfs if we move toward big government. However, what feels most prophetic lately is an obscure movie from the l970s called Little Murders. The writer, Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, predicted that the '60s would unleash a feral, primitive society. The movie has a checkered history. It started out as a play on Broadway in the mid-'60s that was such a bomb, it...

A former hareidi religious legislator warned the government on Tuesday to stop “bleeding hearts” from making the country a refuge for non-Jews and criminals. Journalist Yisrael Eichler, a former Knesset Member in the United Torah Judaism party, told Arutz 7 that while non-Jews from poor countries come to Israel, “the media prefers to deal with a screwball who puts up posters” and feel sorry for foreign workers and refugees who are flooding the country...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Former Cabell County Magistrate Candidate Amy Walker Irwin, formerly known as Amy Daugherty, was arrested Sunday night and charged with possession of a controlled substance. According to the criminal complaint, Irwin was in her car outside a "known crack house" on 17th Street and Dalton Avenue in Huntington when officers approached the car and saw a small piece of apparent crack in plastic next to the gear shifter. The complaint goes on to say Lt. J.T. Combs conducted a field test on the substance and it tested positive for the presence of cocaine. Magistrate Dan Goheen...

WOODSTOCK, Ill. (CBS) ― If you flip someone off in traffic, you might get angry stares or a nasty honk of the car horn, but if you do it in court, expect much more severe consequences. A McHenry County man found that out the hard way. Kane Kellett, 24, raised his middle finger while he was being sworn in to face home invasion charges at a rights hearing, the Daily Herald reported. He also hurled profanity at Judge G. Martin Zopp. Zopp promptly gave Kellett six months in jail for contempt of court. Kellett was wanted on charges of aggravated...

It sounds like the sort of romantic-mystery potboiler that keeps readers on the edge of their summer beach chairs: A strikingly pretty Florida housewife with a handsome husband and two beautiful young daughters is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held for $50,000 ransom. Or was she? Prosecutors contend the strange case of 37-year-old Quinn Gray, who claims she was abducted and held for four days in hellish captivity, is a cleverly planned ruse.

Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

"This is Mayberry ... Andy Griffith's house is in spitting distance here," said Michael Wood, one of the owners of Wood's TV. The town, population 8,700, has built a tourist trade on nostalgia for the show that continues to thrive in syndication. Watson identified the victims — all residents of the town — as Victor Alfonso Martinez-Jimenez, 22; Javier Manuel Martinez, 21; Juan Manuel Martinez, 26; and Marcos Oviedo Aguliar, 21. Michelle Oviedo, 21, said her boyfriend and brother were among the dead and the alleged shooter is her mother's boyfriend. She said she was sitting on her porch not...

The more I read about the aftermath of the horrific gang rape in Richmond, the more it becomes clear to me that this entire town is one big toilet bowl. Instead of focusing the rage on the attackers, whomever they may be, and calling for these lowlife animals to be strapped to a good old fashioned electric chair as soon as possible, I am hearing excuses.

Michael Caine switches allegiance to Conservatives British film icon Sir Michael Caine has abandoned his support of the Labour party and announced he will vote Conservative at the next general election. By Nick Collins Published: 4:58PM GMT 01 Nov 2009 Michael Caine as Harry Brown The actor, 76, a former Labour supporter, condemned the “terrible state” that has been allowed to develop in Britain and said he planned to change his allegiance at the next election. For his latest film, Harry Brown, about violence on Britain’s streets, Sir Michael spent time with a gang from a tough inner London estate,...

Michele Anderson, who says she killed six members of her family on Christmas Eve 2007, railed against her attorneys in court Thursday, calling them dishonest and unqualified, and asked a judge to appoint new legal counsel. At the same time, Anderson urged King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor James Konat to drop charges against her former boyfriend and co-defendant Joseph McEnroe, saying she alone was responsible for the slayings of her parents, her brother and his wife and their two young children. She also asked that Konat charge her with kidnapping for forcing McEnroe to participate in the killings at her...

On Halloween night the state of Missouri will be enforcing its sex offender law requiring registered sex offenders to stay home with their porch lights off and a sign on the door saying they will not be giving out candy. But there is a challenge to the law.

(Oct. 31) -- Police in Cleveland say at least three bodies have been found at the home of a convicted rapist, and they expect to confirm three more. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Anthony Sowell, 50, and a convicted rapist, has been arrested. Police are asking people with missing relatives to bring in items that might offer DNA samples, to help authorities identify the victims. Police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said Saturday that the bodies were found at the home of 50-year-old Anthony Sowell of Cleveland. He says officers have found three bodies and believe they have discovered three...

Scores of law enforcement officers continued their search for convicted sex offender Anthony Sowell Friday night, while investigators temporarily ended their work at Sowell's home after finding the bodies of possibly six people inside and outside the house. Investigators intend to continue digging at the Imperial Avenue property today in a search for more bodies. Sowell, 50, has lived in the home since 2005. Police found two of the bodies on Thursday. When a third was discovered Friday afternoon in the basement's dirt floor, it triggered a more extensive search. Vans from the coroner's office were lined up outside the...

KNOXVILLE - A Knox County jury this afternoon sentenced convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson to death by lethal injection for the January 2007 murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The jury of five women and seven men deliberated about four hours before returning its decision to a packed courtroom. “The punishment is death,” the jury foreman said. The victims' families gasped at the verdict, but Davidson showed no reaction. Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner admonished those in the courtroom to control any outburst. “The murder was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel,” the foreman said, reading from the verdict form....

A document from the House ethics committee lists an examination into whether the chamber's rules were violated when Rep. Linda T. Sanchez put three legislative aides to her fellow-congresswoman sister on her payroll after an embezzlement scheme had left Rep. Loretta Sanchez's office short of funds. The document, a July tracking report obtained by The Washington Post, says that the sisters, both California Democrats, "shared transferred staff from one office to another after embezzlement," and that a meeting between lawyers for the ethics committee and the congresswomen had taken place June 1. The document also says that lawyers for the...

RICHMOND, CALIF. -- Security was unusually tight Thursday as four young men made their first court appearance in last weekend's gang rape at Richmond High School, a crime that brought anguish to students and leaders in the city and sent shock waves throughout the nation. Later Thursday, police arrested a sixth suspect in the case. A fifth suspect was arrested earlier but has not been charged. Three defendants, all of them juveniles charged as adults, were wearing bulletproof vests when they were led into Superior Court by a corps of Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies. The three - one of...

A devout Muslim woman from Pakistan who wed a fellow countryman who did not share her faith tried to stab him to death as he slept in their Staten Island home because she claimed he forced her to drink alcohol, eat pork and dress provocatively, officials said today. Rabia Sarwar, 37, climbed onto her husband Sheikh Naseem’s chest around 3 a.m. yesterday and repeatedly slashed at his neck as he slept, officials said, screaming, "It’s time for you to die!" Naseem, a 41-year-old high school math teacher who goes by the name Eddie, said he woke up with the knife...

An Orange County jury has recommended the death penalty for a white supremacist gangster convicted of murder who requested to get on Death Row because he believed its prison amenities are better. Prosecutors say jurors Thursday recommended death for 46-year-old Billy Joe Johnson in Superior Court in Santa Ana. Johnson was convicted earlier this month in the murder of Scott Miller. Prosecutors say Johnson took Miller to an alley where two other men shot him for divulging gang secrets during a Fox TV interview.

NEW CASTLE, Ind. -- The family of a 3-year-old Henry County girl who police said was beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend is upset the man is now being offered a plea deal. Jeremiah Hoots, 31, was originally charged with felony battery in the December 2007 death of the daughter of his then-girlfriend, Krystal Pollitt, 3-year-old Kaitlynne Jennings. He could have faced 50 years in prison if convicted on that charge. But earlier this week, Hoots was offered a plea deal of 12 years in prison with six suspended, two years suspended on probation and one of those years...

RICHMOND, California — Four teens were charged Wednesday in the gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl outside her high school homecoming dance in Northern California, in an attack that has generated widespread outrage. All four — ages 15, 16, 17 and 19 — were charged with rape and enhancements that they acted in concert, which could make them eligible for life in prison.

Her name is Somer Thompson. She was 7 years old. She's dead. In her last minutes of life, this beautiful little girl suffered inhuman acts of brutality. She was taken and murdered by one of the monsters who live and work among us – one of the pieces of human debris, the living mounds of filth, who are allowed to breathe the same air, live in the same apartment buildings and work the same jobs as genuine human beings. They look like us, but they're not human at all; they're animals who walk on two legs, with hearts full of...

The Christian-Newsom killings are the most shocking racist murders in the early 21st Century America that were ignored by the Leftard Media. Can you imagine the headlines if the two young people were black instead of white and the murderers/rapists/torturers white instead of black? The silence of the African-American community to this Hate Crime indicates tacit approval for the killing of two beautiful and innocent young people in love. I say it is the black community in America that has a problem with racism. Yesterday the KKK lynched innocent blacks; today the KLAN WITH THE TAN murders innocent whites.

Officials in New Jersey's largest city are offering cash to get guns off the city's streets. Mayor Cory Booker on Tuesday announced a gun buyback and amnesty program to begin next month. Anyone turning in a gun at one of five city churches will receive $200. The participating churches are Emanuel Christian, First Trinity Baptist, Paradise Baptist, IBC Calvary Baptist and Independent Church of God. The first buyback dates are Nov. 11 and 12 at Emanuel Christian Church. Newark's homicide rate had fallen steeply in recent years but has crept up this year. Since the beginning of the year there...

One trial down, one restraining order to go. Less than two weeks after state Sen. Hiram Monserrate was convicted of assaulting Karla Giraldo, she's asking a judge to lift an order of protection that has kept the couple apart for more than 10 months. Monserrate's lawyer had announced after the verdict that the separated lovebirds plan to marry, but a wedding would be impossible without the order being vacated. Giraldo's lawyer, Glenn Marshall, wrote to state Supreme Court Justice William Erlbaum, who in a bench trial convicted Monserrate of reckless assault, saying the couple wishes to resume their "intimate relationship...

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The five teenage boys slump against the wall of a dark house and eye the camcorder nervously. Suddenly, a fist enters the frame smacking one of the boys in the face. Then the barrel of an automatic rifle appears and the teenagers’ expressions turn to terror. “Why are you here?” shouts a voice. “For robbing,” one of the boys mumbles. “You see. You were little rats and now look at you,” replies the interrogator. The torture video of the five alleged house burglars was posted on the internet last week. It is the latest sign of...

STORRS, Conn. -- Two of three people charged in connection with the stabbing death of UConn football player Jasper Howard are scheduled to face a judge Wednesday. John Lomax, 21, of Bloomfield, Hakim Muhammed, 20, of Bloomfield, and Jama Todd, 21, of Hartford, were arrested Tuesday in connection with Howard's death.

Amid the recent financial crisis, the United States made some progress towards solving its biggest economic problem of recent years: the lack of US savings. Regrettably, in the latest figures, the beginnings of economic recovery have brought backsliding, with the savings rate dropping back to 4.3% from 6%. Without more savings, as global liquidity declines, the United States will quickly become a capital-starved economy, losing investment to capital surplus countries where savings are plentiful. The difficult questions are: what caused the savings decline, and what can be done to reverse it? During the halcyon years of the 1950s and 1960s,...

An attorney for a Bloomfield man said Tuesday that his client has been charged with murder in connection with the death of UConn football player Jasper Howard. Attorney Deron Freeman said his client, John William Lomax, was charged Tuesday morning with murder in connection with Howard's death. Freeman maintained his client's innocence in Howard's death.

A premiership footballer groped a woman in a nightclub before breaking her nose when she rejected his advances, a court has heard. Marlon King, 29, allegedly shouted: 'Don't you know who I am? I'm a millionaire - you're not even in my league', before hitting the petite student in the face. The £25,000-a-week Wigan Athletic striker is said to have approached the woman while she was with friends in the Soho Revue Bar in London last December. She had never met

The mayor of San Francisco is waging war against his own city hall over its decision to protect juvenile illegal immigrants from being deported -- even when they stand accused of felonies. Overturning the city's current policy, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted last week to stop handing illegal minors over to the feds unless they've been convicted of a serious crime. Their vote upends a year-old policy that sent more than 100 suspects into federal custody for deportation. The measure's sponsor, once an illegal immigrant himself, says innocent youths were being deported and their families were being torn apart...

Danny Baker spoke emotionally and began to tear up as he talked about how his daughter will never be able to graduate high school, get married or have children. He said she wrote “I finally made it” on the calendar for the day of her 13th birthday, and he lamented that she never reached her 14th year. “There are no words to adequately convey the loss our friends, family and community have felt,” he said. Cori Baker disappeared Nov. 9, 2007, after being picked up from Union Alternative School, 5656 S. 129th East Ave. Some of her bones were discovered...

A 15-year-old Richmond girl who had left the homecoming dance was hospitalized in stable condition after being assaulted and allegedly raped by several men on the Richmond High School grounds, police said. Police received several reports shortly before midnight Saturday and when officers arrived at the high school several men ran away. One was caught. The 19-year-old Richmond man was in the county jail in Richmond on rape charges, said Richmond Police Sgt. Bisa French. She would not release his name, saying they were trying to get more information from him and police were concerned that if his name were...

But a row broke out after it emerged that the Ministry of Justice had changed the way the figures are compiled and published, making it impossible to compare the total number of violent and dangerous offenders supervised in 2008-9 with numbers for previous years. In addition the total number of dangerous, violent and sexual offenders under the most intensive supervision are now being counted as a snapshot on March 31 each year rather than the total number monitored throughout the year. The annual report shows that on March 31 2009, there were 898 dangerous offenders under the most intensive supervision...

DAVIE, Fla. -- Police have jailed the father of a 3-year-old boy who allegedly battered a man his son accused of molestation.Now, 27-year-old Manuel Vega and an alleged accomplice could receive a much stiffer sentence than the man police say they attacked.Thirty-eight-year-old Luke Petruschke had to be placed in a medically induced coma after the weekend attack. Police say Vega and 43-year-old Krish Carter slammed the man with concrete blocks, punched and kicked him.The two were being held without bond on attempted murder charges. If he recovers, police say Petruschke will face charges of lewd and lascivious molestation.

Charles Bronson is dead. But if he were still with us, where would he find roles to play? Now many movie heroes are cartoon characters like Spiderman, or magical characters like Harry Potter. Young people may be entertained, but they cannot emulate such fantasy heroes. Many people have become pacifists. They sit on the sidelines of life, watching with smug indifference. They are apathetic spectators, both in our struggle against violent criminals at home, and in our war against terrorists abroad. Many people have been taught not that they should fight evil, but that it is evil to fight. But...