Free Republic

DEARBORN HEIGHTS — A figurative beat down turned literal beating has led to the felony arrests of a group of local high school football players. Police arrested four Star International Academy seniors Wednesday on aggravated assault charges stemming from an altercation in the team’s last game of the season. The players -- Mohamed Ahmed, Fanar Al-Alsady, Hadee Attia and Ali Bajjey, all age 17 -- are accused of gang-beating Lutheran Westland’s quarterback as time expired in Lutheran’s 47-6 drubbing of Star on Oct. 21. According to numerous witness statements gathered by police, Lutheran’s quarterback was set to take a knee...

Pepsi Pays $3.1 Million For Discriminating Against Minorities With Arrest Records Vivian Giang Jan. 11, 2012, 6:43 PM Most major companies conduct criminal background checks, but using the records to rule out minorities could cost you $3.1 million. That's how much Pepsi Beverages Co. has agreed to pay and it's because it ruled out applicants who had arrest, not conviction records, reports ABC News. Pepsi's screening policy excluded more than 300 black applicants. Under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission laws, it's illegal to deny someone employment because of criminal records if it's irrelevant to the job or if the records are...

RUSH: Folks, I realize this is serious out there, and at some point I may have to issue a fatwa to stop this. If I sense it's really getting out of hand, of course I'll take action. I'll stand up and I'll just tell everybody here involved, "Cut this out and get serious." I don't want to bleed on any of you. It's unbecoming (sigh), but you don't know what being surrounded by negativism is. I am surrounded by it. It takes a concerted effort on my part every day to avoid it, to not be affected by it. I...

Reporting from New York— Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing. Nobody lives here, at least not officially. But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America....

In Texas: A burglar in Weatherford, Texas picked the wrong house to burglarize this week. It was the home of a retired Texas state trooper. The intended victim woke up Tuesday as Kristoffer Lynn Knight was inside the home. The homeowner tried to hold the home invader at gunpoint, and there was a struggle after he told the crook to get on the ground. Knight was shot in the left side. He’s now in County jail and is facing felony burglary charges. In Jacksonville, Florida: 67 year old Betty Magnusson heard a loud noise in her living room Sunday evening....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Lisa Gesik hesitates to log into her Facebook account nowadays because of unwanted "friend" requests, not from long-ago classmates but from the ex-husband now in prison for kidnapping her and her daughter. Neither Gesik nor prison officials can prove her ex-husband is sending her the messages, which feature photos of him wearing his prison blues and dark sunglasses, arms crossed as he poses in front of a prison gate. It doesn't matter if he's sending them or someone else is - the Newport, Ore., woman is afraid and, as the days tick down to his January...

The global dominant narrative about China is wrong, claims Gordon Chang. Don't expect it to be the 'pocketbook of last resort' that will rescue world markets from their current malaise. And don't expect its remarkable economic growth to continue. In fact, expect a "hard landing" for China - and soon. Forbes.com columnist and international lawyer Gordon Chang has spent much of his time since the early 1980s working and living in China. His primary knowledge of the country and his relationships there give him a superior understanding to how its economy is actually faring than many analysts based in the...

Reports are coming in of a shooting that resulted in a death in the immediate vicinity of the Occupy Oakland encampment. Details and updates to be posted here as they develop. Man shot, killed near Occupy Oakland encampment OAKLAND, Calif. — A man was shot and killed in downtown Oakland near the Occupy encampment in front of City Hall Thursday afternoon.A KTVU cameraman witnessed the man collapse in front of the Tully’s Coffee Shop at 14th Street and Broadway shortly before 5 p.m. KTVU reporter Janine de La Vega was in the area preparing to go live on the air...

Jon S. Corzine has hired Andrew J. Levander, a leading white-collar criminal defense lawyer, according to three people briefed on the matter, as the former New Jersey governor deals with fallout from the collapse of MF Global, the brokerage firm he has run since last year. Federal authorities including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the $630 million in missing customer funds at MF Global. Mr. Levander could not be reached as he is out of the country, according to his assistant. He did not return an email seeking comment. Daniel O’Donnell, the...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says America should extend work visas to allow illegal immigrants to move freely between the U.S. and their home countries _ but opposes a path to citizenship.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Occupy Wall Street crowd is now hoping to make Oakland, California, the center of their movement, and I want to take you back. Here's me on this program back on October 6th. RUSH ARCHIVE: [T]here's no doubt in my mind that the White House is behind this. I wish I could tell you who, but a very prominent person asked me to never mention his name in this regard, but for months he has been telling me, "You watch, Rush, do not doubt me," he said to me, "Obama is setting up riots. He is fanning...

The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury. That equals about $650 per person for each of the 312,542,760 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States. At the end of September, the total national debt stood at $14,790,340,328,557.15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. By the end of October, it had risen to $14,993,709,044,140.78. The debt increased far more this October than it did last October. Between the last day of September 2010 and the last day of October, the debt rose from $13,561,623,030,891.79 to...

NEW YORK CITY (2011-10-26 23:22:00 ET): Late local news is reporting spontaneous, and deliberate attempts to snarl traffic in Lower Manhattan by left-wing radicals. Reports are it is in response to the Oakland and San Francisco peace officers putting down the insurrection in their respective cities.

A bumbling Bonanno bad guy bizarrely listed all of his contacts -- from capos to consiglieres -- in a Rolodex, The Post has learned. Not-so-wiseguy Mike “The Butcher” Virtuoso recorded every one of the names, numbers, nicknames and even mob titles in a file so complete that the FBI agents who stumbled on it felt like they’d discovered a gold mine. Putting all of that classified information into writing “was an incredibly stupid thing [for Virtuoso] to do,’’ a source told The Post. The treasure trove was discovered in “The Butcher’s’’ butcher shop, Graham Avenue Meats & Deli, in Williamsburg....

Breaking on Fox ...

Two men were arrested in St. Cloud after police say they dialed the wrong number and attempted to buy a pound of marijuana from a police officer. According to St. Cloud Police, a uniformed St. Cloud patrol officer received the call at 11:33 p.m. Sunday. After the officer received multiple phone calls from the suspect, a meeting was arranged on the 1100 block of 15th Avenue South. Police say the men fled when they met with uniformed officers, but were quickly apprehended and taken into custody. The two men have been identified by police as 21-year-old Kewon Donte Johnson of...

Tough-talking sheriffs warned that the Bay State is becoming a “magnet” for illegal aliens and vowed to crack down — with or without Gov. Deval Patrick’s support — during a fiery press conference today that descended into chaos when sign-holding protesters began chanting and shouting counterpoints. “Much like terrorists, they’re looking for a place to go where nobody’s going to notice them,” said Bristol Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. “And if we’re sending out a message that this is where you can basically come and we’re not really going to pay much attention to your status, well, it’s no wonder we’re running...

(NewsCore) - A seven-day operation led to the arrest of more than 2,900 illegal immigrants with criminal records, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said Wednesday. "The results of this targeted enforcement operation underscore ICE's ongoing commitment and focus on the arrest and removal of convicted criminal aliens and those that game our nation's immigration system," said ICE director John Morton.

The Fullerton, California, Police Department was accused Friday of a third case of brutality. The incident involves the same officer accused of being among several involved in the beating death of a 37-year-old homeless man this summer. In the latest allegation Friday, the officer is accused of assaulting and falsely accusing a 27-year-old man of being drunk in public, said Garo Mardirossian, the alleged victim's attorney. Edward Miguel Quinonez, 27, of Anaheim, California, is planning to file a lawsuit against the Fullerton police officer for "slamming" his head against the wall in a June 27, 2010, incident, Mardirossian told reporters...

The Congressional investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) covert program to supply weapons to Mexican drug smugglers has been met by widespread delays, stonewalling, and obfuscation by the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ). However, a recent revelation by Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif), that he has been comparing documents DOJ has supplied to his committee with documents he has received from “third parties” may have inspired Attorney General Eric Holder to take action. Calling these “third party” sources referenced by Issa “a dangerous threat to national...

They had instructions to carry masks, wear black and converge en masse to foment chaos at specific times and places. They were divided into green, yellow and red risk categories. They were compartmentalized into cells to avoid compromising the secret master plan. They weren’t terrorists, but a so-called flash mob that BART spokesman Linton Johnson said was hell-bent on disrupting train service on Aug. 11. Such flash mobs — seemingly spontaneous gatherings of people organized by mobile phones and social networks — can range from cute forums for creative expression to a powerful tool in the anarchist playbook. From the...

Alabama's illegal immigration law will go into effect this Thursday, but protesters in Montgomery are pushing forward to have their voices heard in opposition to what's considered the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in the country. Hundreds gathered at the capitol steps to oppose Alabama's new illegal immigration law, which will go into effect in just four days. The majority of the people in attendance were families and some said they are worried that this new law will break up their family. "I don't like this law, because I think it is going to tear my family apart," Edward E....

I often hear well-meaning people say, “Political correctness has gone mad.” I beg to differ. Political correctness is mad, period. Past, present, or future, it’s absolutely bonkers mad. Take child sexual abuse now defined as “intergenerational sex” or “complex” when the alleged perpetuator belongs to a media-endorsed tribe. Even the “dwarf card” is used by the abuse minimization crowd. Some history, from the Irish Times first though (“Man admits 26 sex abuse charges,” 03/16/2005): A Donegal man, who is a dwarf, has been given four years in jail having pleaded guilty to 26 charges of indecent assault and attempted sexual...

All sixteen new hires to the Voting Section have far-left resumes — which were only released following a PJM lawsuit. (This is the first in a series of articles about the Civil Rights Division’s hiring practices since President Obama took office.) Recently released documents — disclosed by the Obama Justice Department only after a court battle — reveal that the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks. Typical Washington behavior, you say? Except the hiring in question is nearly unprecedented in scope and significantly eclipses anything the Bush...

WASHINGTON -- Huge increases in deportations of people after they were arrested for breaking traffic or immigration laws or driving drunk helped the Obama administration set a record last year for the number of criminal immigrants forced to leave the country, documents show. The U.S. deported nearly 393,000 people in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, half of whom were considered criminals. Of those, 27,635 had been arrested for drunken driving, more than double the 10,851 deported after drunken driving arrests in 2008, the last full year of the Bush administration, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data provided...

Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been arrested in connection with an investigation into phone hacking and bribery. The 43-year-old was arrested by appointment by Operation Weeting police at a London police station. Met Police said she is currently still in custody. This is the 10th arrest made by police investigating hacking allegations by the News of the World newspaper. She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption allegations. The Operation Weeting team is conducting the current investigation into phone hacking.

Devin Zentmyer of Illinois wants an end to American democracy.A conference convened last month by the Islamic extremist group Hizb-ut Tahrir in Chicago cheered the fall of secular governments in the Middle East and the political rise of groups advocating for the re-imposition of Islamic law and the revival of the global caliphate, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The speakers at the conference also endorsed a similar program in the West, particularly America.One of the attendees at the conference is doing his part to make that dream of Islamic rule in America a reality.Devin Zentmyer, who also goes by his...

A Michigan inmate is suing Gov. Rick Snyder and the state over his prison's ban on pornographic materials, claiming he is being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, the Detroit News reported. In a handwritten lawsuit filed June 10 in US District Court in Detroit, Kyle Richards said the porn ban has "been used as a method of 'psychological warfare' against prisoners, in order to both destroy the morale of inmates and break the spirit of individuals." The Macomb County jail where Richards is imprisoned does not allow inmates to possess porn, the newspaper reported. However, instead of suing the...

EUGENE — An arsonist who avoided federal prison five years ago by helping lock up Earth Liberation Front activists is headed to state prison for selling heroin. ... He was on probation under a 2007 plea deal for his role in arsons by an ELF band known as The Family. Targets included a meat-packing company, car dealership, ranger station and lumber company. Ferguson is depicted as the leader of the group in the documentary "If A Tree Falls." He faces a probation revocation hearing July 14 in federal court.

As Wisconsin heads toward lifting a ban on carrying concealed weapons, researchers at the University of California-Davis have turned up some unsettling information about those who may take advantage of the law. In a study using 15-year-old data -- the most recent available -- published online in the journal Injury Prevention, the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program says those who carried concealed weapons or who had confronted someone with a gun were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers than non-gun owners. Gun owners who drove with loaded weapons were four times more likely to hop behind the wheel...

"ATF served Special Agent Vince Cefalu with termination paperwork today." That's the word from Jay Dobyns, himself a subject of Bureau retaliation, in a post on CleanUpATF. Gun Rights Examiner reported on Cefalu in May of last year--He was the agent assigned to do nothing because he came forward to complain about ATF mismanagement.From Dobyns post:

Milivoj Asner Austria has been branded as a "paradise for Nazis" after it emerged that an alleged war criminal deceased in a care home in Carinthia. A spokesman for a Caritas retirement centre in Klagenfurt confirmed newspaper reports claiming that Milivoj Asner passed away today (Mon). He said the Croat perished aged 98 in the institution last week. Asner is suspected of being behind the deportation of hundreds of Serbs, Roma and members of the Jewish community in Croatia’s Ustasa movement during World War Two (WWII). Asner changed his name to Georg Aschner after fleeing to Austria when the Communists...

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed brief on behalf of a 16-state, bipartisan coalition that opposes the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) proposal to punish employers for creating new jobs in right-to-work states. In Texas, as in other right-to-work states, workers cannot be forced to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment. Workers in states that have not enacted right-to-work laws do not have a choice to join or not join a union. All employees at unionized facilities must join the local union and pay union dues – even if the employee prefers to not...

Not everyone has the right to be in AmericaIf the U.S. Supreme Court says California has to create room in its prisons by releasing convicts, the least the federal government can do is send those who are illegal aliens back over the border. The message is simple: If you come to our country and don’t follow the rules, you’re outta here. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of “Brown v. Plata” that overcrowding in California prisons constituted a violation of the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The court affirmed the judgment of a three-judge...

More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government by fraudulently claiming a first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, according to federal investigators. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit, which was worth up to $8,000. Meanwhile, one other IRS employee has been charged with...

~ EXCERPT~ WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that "needless suffering and death" had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions. It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation's history, and it sharply split the high court. Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total...

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General plans an investigation of an immigration enforcement program that purports to target "serious convicted felons" for deportation but has ensnared many illegal immigrants who were arrested but not subsequently convicted of crimes or who committed minor offenses, a letter obtained Wednesday shows. The letter from acting Inspector General Charles K. Edwards to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), who requested an investigation late last month, said the watchdog agency had already scheduled a review of the program, known as Secure Communities. Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency launched the program in...

Link to Wild Bill

Newly released research indicates that the more pro-gun control the administration, the less likely they are to prosecute the real criminals. A new report from Syracuse University researchers notes that the Obama administration fails to prosecute violent criminals who most likely contribute to gun-related violence. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is supposed to investigate and arrest those who violate federal gun laws (e.g., felons in possession, straw purchasers).Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reports that January 2011 was “the lowest level to which federal weapons prosecutions have fallen since January 2001, when they were 445...

Well, our bold and spunky congressional pals finally crossed the line. They spent our tax dollars so carelessly, and at such an alarming rate, that we were forced to stage what amounted to a national public fiscal intervention. Suddenly, the boring federal budget became big news, as Americans demanded that Washington restore our nation’s economic health and cut all wasteful and inappropriate spending, including the government funding of NPR and Planned Parenthood. This signal from the citizens was valuable despite an eventual Republican surrender in the most recent budget battle. And while I’m pleased that the overspending was exposed, I...

Hundreds of people rallied at a church in Charlotte's Belmont neighborhood Wednesday night, calling for an end to deportations that break up families. The event was part of a nationwide tour by U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez of Chicago. In an at-times passionate speech, he told the crowd the U.S. immigration system is broken. He called on President Obama to use the power of his office to stop deportations that break up families. Many who came to St. Paul's Baptist Church for the rally had personal stories of how deportation has affected their loved ones. One woman who's a U.S. citizen...

The leftists visited several homes in the Samaria village, including that of the Awad family, which spawned the murderers. The identities of the confessed murderers were released for publication on Sunday, the day after the visit. The murderers were already in IDF custody at the time of the leftists' visit and their arrest - including the fact that they are relatively young - was already widely rumored and hinted at by the press. A photograph from the visit which can be viewed here, posted by one of the activists on her Internet blog, shows Raya Yaron, spokeswoman of Machsom Watch,...

Thief spared jail to feed his cat By ANDY CRICK Published: Today A SOFT judge spared a thief from prison - so he could go home and feed his CAT. District judge David Cooper was set to jail Steven Thorne, 55, for repeatedly shoplifting booze. Let-off ... thief Steven Thorne But he changed his mind after hearing about Thorne's pet Laura.Julie Brice, defending, told Colchester Magistrates' Court that there was no one to feed the cat, which was trapped indoors as Thorne did not have a cat flap at his home in Clacton, Essex. The lawyer added: "She's been...

April 12th 2011--Mr. Michael Warnken Is A Voting Rights, Redistricing and Constitutionally Apportioned Representation Subject Matter Expert. As He Reports To The Solano County Board Of Supervisors He Is Given The Short Shrift And Is Dismissed By Supervisor Reagan And County Counsel Dennis Bunting. The Supes Are Entrenched In Power And Want To Include Illegal Aliens And Convicted Felon Prisoners In Their Redistricting Schemes.

ANALYSIS: Defensive TEPCO fears ballooning compensation to evacuees 2011/04/15 Masataka Shimizu, the embattled president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., promised compensation to evacuees who fled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but he stopped short of providing specific amounts or a timetable. "We will respond in a sincere manner based on the compensation system for damage from nuclear power plants after consulting with the central government," Shimizu said at a news conference Wednesday. "Because the evacuation has become a prolonged one, we want to make provisional payments as soon as possible. We still have to decide on a specific...

A man police describe as "troubled" allegedly broke into Flint City Hall on Sunday and vandalized the inside of the building. Police responded to a call at City Hall and found the windows in the front door broken. Inside the building, police found signs of vandalism, according to a news release. Police found the male suspect in the bathroom. "We found the suspect in the bathroom washing his hands. We have no reason to believe that anyone else is involved," Police Chief Alvern Lock said in the statement. "We are still investigating, but right now everything points to just an...

Six alleged robbers were beaten to death and five injured by mobs in Kapasia of Gazipur and Lakhai of Habiganj yesterday. In Kapasia, villagers at Dighirkandi of Kurihata union caught nine robbers at around 8:30pm. They killed four before police could reach the spot. The five others were rescued critically injured and rushed to local hospital, said Kapasia police. Of the dead, only one--Masud, 35, of Mymensingh--could be identified. The gang was preparing to commit robbery in the houses of Monir and Zakir, who have recently returned from Saudi Arabia, Officer-in-Charge Jamal Uddin Meer of Kapasia Police Station told The...

A group of eight illegal immigrants have been arrested by Atlanta police after they blocked a downtown street to protest their lack of access to higher education.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Rook told Grant he remained a ‘very dangerous man capable of committing heinous crimes and causing incalculable harm’ and warned him he could die in jail. The judge said: ‘You targeted elderly victims living alone. Your actions blighted the remaining precious years of their lives. Their homes, where many of them had lived for years, should have been their safest refuge where they could have expected to live their lives undisturbed and at peace. ‘You chose to invade their homes when they were in their beds at night. ‘It’s hard to imagine the extreme fear that...

Border Patrol agents recently arrested 13 illegal immigrants disguised as U.S. Marines and riding in a fake military van, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday. The illegal immigrants were clad in Marine uniforms when they were apprehended at the Campo Border Patrol Westbound I-8 checkpoint at 11 p.m. on March 14 near Pine Valley, Calif., border officials said. Two U.S. citizens in the van also were arrested.