Free Republic

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A 15-year-old Coon Rapids student says he wears a rosary as a necklace to feel close to his grandmother, who is suffering from breast cancer. But the Anoka-Hennepin School District told him to take the rosary off – or face the consequences. Jake Balthazor says he prays for his grandmother’s health. “She has breast cancer, and I’m trying to support her for it,” he said. He wears his beliefs proudly. The rosary is one his grandmother gave him, but it’s also what landed him in the principal’s office. “They think it’s like a gang sign,” Balthazor said....

I’m pretty sure we’re watching the progressive end-game unfold after its 100-year incremental march. Like Mexico’s “institutional revolution” we have instituted and indoctrinated our own offspring to lead us exactly to this point: One Party Government. It may turn out differently, but I’ve seen the tipping point with Mitt Romney’s vicious and specious attacks on Newt being repeated by all the media/government players. No, they’re not just the usual suspects of the MSM any more. Now our “new media” allies have fought their way to some imagined significance and so they kowtow to the powerful. We are all Capt. Schettino...

Her (INS Agent Mill's) instructions: Locate Elian, get him safely into a waiting van, and stay with him and allay his fears until federal agents reunited him with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.After Elian was found in a closet, Mills told him in Spanish: ``I know this seems frightening to you now, but it will all be over very soon,'' said Russ Bergeron, director of media relations for the INS. ``She told him: `We're not going to take you to Cuba. We're not going to put you on a raft. We're taking you...

How did a Philadelphia family get hold of $40 million in gold coins, and why has the Secret Service been chasing them for 70 years? U.S. Mint/AP Photo This coin is worth $7.6 million The most valuable coin in the world sits in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. It's Exhibit 18E, secured in a bulletproof glass case with an alarm system and an armed guard nearby. The 1933 Double Eagle, considered one of the rarest and most beautiful coins in America, has a face value of $20—and a market value of $7.6...

The Arizona town that's become a YouTube sensation for its police department hauling away a woman speaking at a town-hall meeting declared a state of emergency this afternoon, leaving many local residents in fear of what officers dressed in full riot gear might do. Jennifer "Jade" Jones, 45, the woman forcibly removed by police from a recent public meeting in Quartzsite, Ariz., despite the vocal objections of the mayor, says an illegal secret meeting was held today with the public locked out of the building. "About noon today, the town council, at the request of the police chief, declared an...

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly. Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow. A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security...

Ann Stanczyk had a Black Friday she'll never forget - the 49-year-old Queens woman says she was humiliated and beaten by two NYPD cops in a dispute over dog droppings. Pictures taken by her son a day after the Nov. 26 incident show Stanczyk with a welt under one eye and a garish purple bruise on her breast, plus injuries to her hands and knee. Yesterday, the Polish immigrant filed a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board and plans to sue. "I just doing it to protect other people from police brutality," Stanczyk told the Daily News. "I don't...

A Thurston County sheriff's deputy tased a man twice early this morning after he interrupted the man having sex with a woman outside a home in the 14000 block of Vail Cutoff Road, according to the sheriff's department. Patrick Bergin, 21, of Yelm, was placed under arrest on suspicion of third-degree assault, Thurston County Chief Criminal Deputy James Chamberlain said. According to Chamberlain: The incident began around 2 a.m. when a deputy was responding to a complaint of loud music outside a residence on Vail Cutoff Road. As the patrol car approached the residence, its lights passed over a couple...

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which...

thatstheguy07 — May 17, 2010 — Since this video has been getting so many views, and ppl have been asking the same questions, I figured Id explaion a ciuple things here. This video was sent to me by someone on facebook. I dont know who the guy is, what the aftermath was, or which crossing this was at.

Isaac Newton formulated three laws of motion, No. 3 being: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If he were still around, he'd propose a fourth: For every action, there is an unequal and opposite overreaction. Lately, Americans seem to be taking advice from Oscar Wilde, who said, "Moderation is a fatal thing." Stupidity can be met and defeated with sensible, proportionate measures. Or it can be met with even greater stupidity. Guess which is the preferred option these days. Last week, a 17-year-old knucklehead exposed his idiocy to the world by venturing onto the field at...

SEATTLE -- City leaders expressed shock and disappointment Friday at video that first aired on KIRO 7 Eyewitness News showing two Seattle police officers kicking a man as he lay on the ground. The man was detained during a robbery investigation last month. The two officers have been reassigned as police conduct an investigation amid a firestorm of reaction.

Unless you've been living in a Waziristan cave for the last 24 years, you've heard about the unfortunate misdemeanor-breaking dude who got Tasered at a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park last night. My computer screen here in Center City went all a-Twitter about it even before all the electrons had even stopped flowing through 17-year-old suburban high school senior Steve Consalvi. My gut instinct when I first learned of it was the same as I feel about it a day later: That while it wasn't exactly a Rodney King affair, clearly the officer had used excessive force. I've been...

Senator Hopes To Stop Police Ticket Quotas Some Believe Law Would Make Patrol Officers Less Accountable NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Police won't admit it, but many drivers are convinced officers have a quota on the number of the speeding tickets they are supposed to write. Now, there's legislation that would prohibit all police in Tennessee from establishing quotas. "I think there is, and it always has been a quota system. I don't care what they say," said one Nashville driver. State Sen. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Knoxville, believes ticket quotas are happening because of revenue, not for safety reasons. He...

A 19-year-old college freshman missed class Tuesday when a federal judge decided to teach her a civics lesson by ordering federal marshals to haul her in chains from school to court to explain why she shirked jury duty. Kelsey Gloston stood in ankle and wrist restraints in court Tuesday afternoon wearing flip flops, a tight white T-shirt, short-shorts and sporting green streaks in her hair. Though she rolled her eyes and looked impatient while waiting for the judge, once U.S. District Judge David Hittner took the bench her tears flowed. The judge was incensed that the teen had hung up...

(watch video) Rev Manning was just visited by the CIA regarding his outspoken claims as to Obama's ineligibility to serve as POTUS in not producing not just his BC, but most of his professional and personal records.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of sound," but that legal groups called potentially dangerous. The device, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, concentrates voice commands and a car alarm-like sound in a 30- or 60-degree cone that can be heard nearly two miles away. It is about two feet square and mounted on a swivel such that one person can point it where it's needed. The volume measures 140-150 decibels...

A heckler was escorted by uniformed officers from President Obama’s speech to students at the University of Maryland College Park on Thursday after he briefly interrupted the president’s defense of his health care program. The young man, wearing a grey polo shirt and a beret, began yelling from his second-row seat at the university’s cavernous basketball arena. “Obama you’re a liar. Obama, your health care kills children. Abortion is murder,” he yelled. As the man was being escorted out, another man in the crowd grabbed his beret and tossed it, earning himself a police escort out of the arena. The...

Police use a Taser on an 81 year man with a cane. In Stockton an 81-year-old man is in jail tonight. ... police used a taser .. because he was allegedly attacking a CHP officer with his Cane.

Late last month, Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo took the unusual step of filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department of his own county. The suit stems from a 2008 SWAT team raid on Calvo's house that resulted in the shooting deaths of his two black Labrador retrievers. In pushing back against the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Prince George's County police department, the mayor is helping expose a more widespread pattern of law enforcement carelessness and callousness throughout the state of Maryland. Prince George's police originally obtained a warrant to search Calvo's home...

EPA fugitive who shot at officers expected to change plea A Utah fugitive critically injured March 10 during a shoot-out with law enforcement officers in a Marathon trailer park is expected to avoid a trial by pleading guilty today.Larkin Baggett, 54, formerly of Salt Lake City, was shot in the neck and buttocks after he allegedly pointed an assault rifle at a Monroe County Sheriff's Office deputy and three U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agents.Baggett was the first man shot by EPA officers in that organization's history.A change of plea hearing is scheduled today in the courtroom of U.S. Judge Michael...

Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about. As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down. Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened...

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias. A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority. "It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue,...

(excerpt)... ...In a statement released by Basso's associate to WND, he said he had not yet been summoned to the White House. Jesse Edwards, a Doyle show producer, said it appears that because the "invitation" became public, the White House has let the issue drop. "We went on the air with it. Now he hasn't heard anything," he told WND. read more...

A state security report that's causing an uproar among conservatives has led to an apology from the head of Missouri's Public Safety Department. The 8-page report was produced by the Missouri Information Analysis Center. It was designed to be a training document for law enforcement on how to identify homegrown threats. But considerable backlash from conservatives has prompted an apology from the state. The report, entitled "The Modern Militia Movement," paints right wing groups as a potential domestic security threat. But how those groups are defined is what has caused the uproar. "It seems like it's an attack on a...

At 3 a.m. mountain time, former Border Patrol agent Jose Compean was released from the Elkton Federal Prison in Elkton, Ohio. Former agent Ignacio Ramos was released about five hours later from the Phoenix Federal Prison in Phoenix, Ariz. Ramos and Compean will officially be released from Federal Bureau of Prison custody on March 20th, but on Tuesday both were allowed to rejoin their families. They had been in prison since January 2007. Ramos and Compean were in prison for shooting drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila and then trying to cover it up. On President Bush’s last day in office,...

RICHMOND, Jan. 13 -- The Virginia State Crime Commission on Tuesday declined to endorse closing the so-called gun show loophole in Virginia law, heightening uncertainty about the prospects of success in the General Assembly. The deadlocked vote -- taken before a large crowd that included gun owners, at least one survivor of the Virginia Tech shootings and friends and relatives of other massacre victims -- highlighted an enduring split between country and city that transcends party affiliation in Virginia. Two key commission members bucked their parties' habitual views of gun control measures. The commission's chairman, Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax),...

A family whose lives were shattered by a mistaken police raid a year ago have been awarded a $612,498 settlement by the city of Minneapolis to make amends. -------------------------cut----------------- "It's only a mistake for them, but it changed our lives forever," Moua said Friday at a news conference held at Heffelfinger's office. "We want what's best for our children. It's a miracle we survived that night. No amount of money can fix what we went through that night." Acting on wrong information from an informant, a SWAT team broke into Vang Khang's north Minneapolis house last December expecting to find...

Las Vegas police officers served a search warrant at the Seven Hills home of Emmanuel Dozier on Panorama Ridge Drive in Henderson at about 9:30 last Sunday evening. The officers say they announced themselves, got no response, and opened fire to break the lock off the metal front door. At that point, the suspect, a 32-year-old sheet-metal worker, also opened fire. Three police officers were wounded. Mr. Dozier, who was suspected of cocaine trafficking and is now held in lieu of $3 million bail, says he thought it was a home invasion. "I want you to know something in your...

Look in later today for our On the Road piece from Wilmington, North Carolina. We're a bit ahead of our coverage, which occasionally happens out here with the long distances, input, output and timing demands. Tonight we'll be at the Obama-Clinton rally in Kissimmee, Florida, and we're breaking in from Miami, where John McCain just concluded his "Joe the Plumber" rally at Everglades Lumber. After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment...

Imagine If Obama Loses By One Vote, Liberals Warn Thursday, October 23, 2008 By Susan Jones, Senior Editor (CNSNews.com) – Imagine if Sen. Barack Obama loses the presidential election by one vote, and imagine if you were the person who meant to vote for him but never made it to the polls. Pretend it just happened. That’s the thrust of a new video from a liberal, pro-Obama group. As polls show the presidential race tightening in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, MoveOn.org is pressing a get-out-the-vote message with a “funny, scary video” showing people “what it might look...

(GREEN BAY, Wisc.) As she continues to sharpen her attacks against her Democratic rivals, Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of not abiding by his campaign’s own mantra. "Now earlier today our opponent told his supporters to go out and argue with those who disagree with him,” Palin said. “He told them to get in your face, and you know, that doesn't sound like the politics of hope or the politics of change to me.” At a campaign event in Elko, Nevada, on Wednesday, Obama did incite his supporters to argue with people who question his commitment to protecting the Second...

Dem cops cuff, stuff Christian girls Sidewalk chalk messages challenged Obama's moral positions ****************** Posted: August 29, 2008 12:30 am Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2008 WorldNetDaily DENVER – Two teenagers who had been given city permission to write their messages protesting Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's support for abortion on public sidewalks during the Democratic National Convention this week were shoved to the sidewalk, cuffed and arrested for doing just that. [SNIP] "I was peacefully sidewalk chalking when I was forcefully pushed to ground by a police officer from behind," Jayne White, 17, described. "As I was being...

Armed men in street clothes and masks kicked down the doors of innocent citizens, guns blazing, and rounded up the residents. When they left, the floors were smeared in blood. It reads like the first line of an intense novel, a Reuters story from Darfur or Zimbabwe, a history of the conflict in Kosovo, or a smuggled-out account of the Chinese pre-Olympics roundups. Recently deceased Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the scourge of the abusive Soviet leadership, could have written it. Sadly, it comes from far closer to home: Maryland’s Prince Georges County. Last week, the “PG County” Sheriff’s SWAT team stormed the...

He calls himself "Jimmy Justice," a self-styled "cop-arazzi," armed only with a video camera as he prowls the streets of New York looking for law enforcement officers who are breaking the law. His targets are illegally parked city government vehicles -- particularly cars of traffic cops blocking bus stops, sitting in "no parking" zones or double-parked. Cop cars blocking fire hydrants make him particularly incensed. "Something like that is just despicable," Jimmy fumed, pointing to a police enforcement vehicle parked next to a fire hydrant on 33rd Street on Manhattan's West Side on a muggy July afternoon. "They're never allowed...

LHASA, China—Police closed off Lhasa's Muslim quarter on Friday, two weeks after Tibetan rioters burned down the city's mosque amid the largest anti-Chinese protests in nearly two decades. Officers blockaded streets into the area, allowing in only residents and worshippers observing the Muslim day of prayer. A heavy security presense lingered in other parts of Lhasa's old city as clean-up crews waded through the destruction inflicted when days of initially peaceful protests turned deadly on March 14. It was not clear why the area was cordoned off, although rioters had prominently targeted businesses belonging to Chinese Muslim migrants known as...

Sorry if this has already been posted. They were talking about it on the air. The plan is for DC police officers to go house to house in certain areas and search for weapons and if any are found they will NOT prosecute. Last time I checked this was against the law.

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak. The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves. Someone, apparently the unidentified...

'He really abused me,' resident says after arrest by Orem police officer OREM - Two days after Independence Day, 70-year-old Betty Perry experienced an ordeal she said shouldn't be happening in America. The retired military and U.S. government employee answered the door at her home Friday morning to talk with a police officer about her bone-dry lawn and ended up getting arrested and suffering a bloody nose. "What have I done?" she asked. "I'm old now. I can't believe this." The Orem police officer, as yet unnamed by city officials, cited Perry for violating a city ordinance with her "sadly...

Red's Trading Post in Twin Falls, Idaho, is the state's oldest gun shop, opened since 1936. In 2004, a routine BATFE audit revealed minor clerical errors. According to Red's, out of nearly ten THOUSAND firearms transferred between 1996 and 2004, the alleged error rate did not even reach 1%. Even the BATFE acknowledges these are minor paperwork errors -- there are no missing firearms and no willful illegal acts.And yet the BATFE has revoked the ability of Red's Trading Post to acquire firearms for resale, although they're still permitted to sell the firearms in stock ... for now. But that's...

TWIN FALLS - Red's Trading Post, one of Idaho's oldest gun shops, can trade no longer. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has revoked the business's license to buy, trade or obtain guns after an ATF audit found Red's employees sold guns improperly numerous times between 1999 and 2004. Red's manager, Ryan Horsley, admits when the business sold guns it sometimes left blank required parts of a gun purchase form, omitted a background check on a special order, failed to log multiple handgun sales to the same customer in five working days, did not keep track of...

Radley Balko, who has tirelessly publicized the problems created by the promiscuous use of SWAT teams, reports that federal police in Atlanta have used a SWAT team to help the recording industry enforce copyright law. Even worse, the target wasn't even a commercial piracy operation: Last night, a federal SWAT team assisted the RIAA in a raid on the studio of Atlanta musician DJ Drama. This local news report says the locally famous mixtape DJ is under investigation for piracy. But Drama's supporters say the DJ is a mix artist, not a bootlegger. They say news footage of the raid...

A wave of immigration raids in Concord, Pacheco and west Contra Costa County has prompted a local Latino advocacy group to file a complaint. Officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, falsely identified themselves as police, refused to show identification proving their agency affiliation and prevented detainees from taking prescription medication with them, according to a draft of a complaint by the League of United Latin American Citizens. The league also claims that agents wrongfully searched apartments of Latinos without permission under the pretext of picking up those with outstanding warrants, said Jerry Okendo, president of the league's Bay...

92-year-old woman was killed after she shot three Atlanta narcotics officers Tuesday night when they broke down the front door of her home trying to serve a search warrant, police said. One officer was hit in the arm, one was struck in the shoulder, and one was shot in the thigh. All were rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where they were in stable condition late Tuesday night. Police did not release their identities.

[...] Organizers blasted the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for targeting businesses that are legal under Proposition 215, a California law that permits marijuana use for medical treatment. Demonstrators said the action would restrict access to regulated pot shops for seriously ill patients. [...] "They didn't do any arrests, just took drugs and computers," said Paula "Cookey" Brown. "It just seems like a straight armed robbery." [...]

Two of the Moss Landing Harbor residents who were the subjects of random boat searches during Labor Day Weekend say their experiences were closer to armed invasions than the friendly "safety inspections" characterized by U.S. Coast Guard officials. Both residents said search crews entered the harbor in inflatable boats with machine guns mounted on their bows. Then, carrying M-16 rifles, they approached residents and boarded and searched their boats in the name of safety and "homeland security." One resident, who asked not to be identified for fear or retribution, said his experience was "very intimidating, very frightening." "To me it...

Disaster Can’t Destroy Gun Rights Monday, September 12, 2005 National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre slammed New Orleans authorities Monday for seizing legal firearms from lawful residents."What we’ve seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, " LaPierre said."When law enforcement isn’t available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others - the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be...

Most visitors just knock on the door. But when a detective approached Troy Levi Miller's home one day last year, he made no attempt to contact anyone inside. Instead, he wiped a sterile cloth over the doorknob and left. A test on the cloth allegedly revealed traces of methamphetamine, and those results helped a narcotics task force get a warrant to search the South Salt Lake house. But now, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball has thrown out the test as a violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. Kimball's ruling was the third one from a...

Some home schoolers say they were having a meeting in Simpsonville Park when an officer started bullying them. The group of home schoolers included 6 mothers and about 15 to 20 kids, every Wednesday for the past 5 years the group has come to Simpsonville Park to socialize and meet with each other, but they say this past Wednesday was like no other. One of the mothers in the group, Jan Blanchard says, "We were just sitting there talking..." "I heard a man yelling take your hands out of your pocket and I turned around and he was yelling at...

It appears the Brits have climbed the Cliffs of Insanity and taken a collective nosedive into the River of Outright Absurdity. My friend, author Michael Z. Williamson, and I used to laugh about Britain, their unreasonable ban on armed self defense and their hysterical attempts to further correct the problems caused by said ban by implementing yet more stringent and bizarre restraints on people's rights. Mike was born in the UK. I used to kid him about the future of Great Britain. I used to tell him that soon, sharp implements will be banned, and people will be forced to...