Free Republic

McGrath probing service preventing identity theft By ERIN MADISON Tribune Staff Writer The Montana Attorney General's office is investigating LifeLock, a company profiled in Sunday's Tribune. LifeLock is an identity theft prevention service. Customers pay $10 per month to have a fraud alert placed on their credit reports and be opted out of pre-approved credit card offers. If one of LifeLock's members has their identity stolen, the company covers any losses up to $1 million. LifeLock previously ran a full-page ad in the Tribune, which included the Social Security number of the company CEO Todd Davis. That ad piqued the...

ACLU and Planned Parenthood Shhh, kids, don't tell mommy and daddy we're taking you out to kill their grandchild! Doesn't anyone find it strange how these 2 organizations are teaming up together to fight to end the parental notification law when a minor student is pregnant? How dare these people - what gives them the right to come between family? If parents have a girl who is a minor who is in the public school system, they have a right to know if she gets pregnant. Their right to know overpowers the girl's right to privacy. The ACLU and Planned...

CHICKASHA, Okla. (AP) - The millionaire producer of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series has accused guards of abusing him during his brief stay at an Oklahoma jail, a newspaper reported Friday. Guards at the Grady County Law Enforcement Center denied Joe Francis food and blankets and threatened to strap him naked to a chair for 48 hours, Francis' attorneys alleged last month in court papers seeking his release on bail in a Florida case, The Oklahoman reported. Francis, 34, was held at the jail from May 17 to June 4 while being moved from a Florida jail to a...

The Alaska Supreme Court threw out an embattled state law Friday that required parental or judicial consent before a teenager can have an abortion. In a 3-2 decision, the court said the consent requirement robs a pregnant teen of her constitutional right to make such an important decision herself and transfers that right to her parents or a judge. However, a law that required parents to be notified of a juvenile daughter's plan to have an abortion would probably be all right, said Chief Justice Dana Fabe in the majority decision for the court. It's a option many other states...

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The batting coach for the Tulsa Drillers was pronounced dead at a hospital Sunday evening after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach's box during a Texas League game with the Arkansas Travelers, police said. The game was suspended in the ninth inning after Mike Coolbaugh was hit by a hard-hit foul ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez and taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock. Phil Elson, spokesman for the Travelers, said Coolbaugh was struck by the ball on the right side of his...

PHOENIX — People who insist on drinking before they turn 21 could end up walking. Legislation awaiting a House vote would automatically suspend the licenses of minors who are found guilty of possession of alcohol. A first offense would mean 90 days without driving privileges; subsequent violations would require suspension for at least six months — and possibly up to two years. And that's just for having alcohol anywhere. Minors who have been drinking and driving already face a mandatory two-year license loss. Current laws on minors in possession of alcohol cover only those younger than 18. The law allows,...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- A state law that would ban sales of violent video games to minors violates free speech rights and cannot be enforced, a judge ruled. U.S. District Judge James Brady said the state had no right to bar distribution of materials simply because they show violent behavior. Brady issued an injunction, calling the law an "invasion of First Amendment rights" of producers, retailers and the minors who play the games. ----snip----

Senate Passes Interstate Abortion Bill (AP) WASHINGTON A bill that would make it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge passed the Senate Tuesday, but vast differences with the House version stood between the measure and President Bush's desk. The 65-34 vote gave the Senate's approval to the bill, which would make taking a pregnant girl to another state for the purposes of evading parental notification laws punishable by fines and up to a year in jail. The girl and her parents would be exempt from prosecution, and the bill...

Massachusetts Tuesday called on popular teen social networking Web site MySpace.com to strengthen protection of children against sexual predators, including raising the minimum age for users to 18 from 14. The arrest Tuesday of a 27-year-old man in Connecticut on charges of illegal sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through MySpace underlines the risks of the fast-growing Internet site that boasts about 60 million members. "MySpace has not taken sufficient steps to ensure that the MySpace Web site is a safe place for minors," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly said in a letter to MySpace. He said a...

A Claremont mother said she is “devastated and scared” after being charged with facilitating an underage drinking party Saturday. “I am a wreck,” Lori Helie, 40, of 49 Prospect St., said yesterday. “I have a year in jail hanging over my head. I spent one night in jail over this and I can’t imagine what a year would be like. “I was not hosting a party. I had gone to bed . . . I bought alcohol for no one,” Helie told the New Hampshire Union Leader. Helie said she had no idea that New Hampshire passed a law in...

I am writing a college essay for an English Composition class. The assignment is an argument essay with the topic of adult punishment for minors who commit violent crimes. My stance on the subject is, indeed adult time for adult crime. I am looking for a selected group that would be known to be against adult punishment for minors in violent crimes. Does anyone have any suggestions? Also, do you know who is it that determines the case be tried in adult or juvinile court?

Commentary: The following dissent appears in a case where an individual who was 17 at the time he committed a heinous murder should suffer the death penalty.  The majority opinion held that, although Stanford v. Kentucky, rejected the proposition that the Constitution bars capital punishment for juvenile offenders younger than 18, a national consensus has developed against the execution of those offenders since Stanford. Commentary: The text of the opinion is in italics. The times opinion is in bold: Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting. In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power...

WASHINGTON, United States, January 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) –The Supreme Court’s first abortion ruling in over five years has been claimed as a partial victory by life and family organizations. Last week the Court ruled in favor of a New Hampshire law requiring parental notification before a minor girl obtains an abortion, but called for further hearings to ensure cases requiring emergency medical treatment are provided for under the law. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England had challenged the law as unconstitutional, since it did not allow immediate abortion access in cases of non-life-threatening health concerns for the young mother. A...

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning handed down a 9-0 ruling in the vitally important case of Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood. In this case, Planned Parenthood challenged a New Hampshire law that required abortionists to give parents of minor girls at least 48 hours notice prior to doing an abortion. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in what will likely be her last opinion as a member of the Supreme Court, wrote for the unanimous court. "We hold that invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified..." In this instance, the Court stepped back from a radical ruling that would...

When Brandon Balch's 13-year-old daughter got married in Georgia, he wasn't there to give her away. The Boynton Beach man didn't even know about his daughter's union to a 14-year-old boy until after they got married, a license from a Georgia judge in hand. Georgia law allows minors to marry without parental consent if the bride-to-be is pregnant. A similar statue in Florida gives a judge discretion to issue a marriage license to minors without parental consent if the couple is expecting a child. ''I was never informed of the marriage. I didn't consent, much less know about it,'' said...

Apparently abortion advocates will go to any lengths to misrepresent the truth about Parental Involvement laws in order to defeat Proposition 73 (The Parental Notification Initiative) on the upcoming special election ballot in California. Well this time one of their own is blowing the whistle on them. Dr. Joseph Zanga says: “The AAP authors cited the Henshaw study for four points, and in each case they misrepresented the results of the study. Unfortunately, this misinformation has been repeated countless times by opponents of Proposition 73 and extensively reported in the media. We hope that AAP, Planned Parenthood, and the media...

Charges dropped against social worker in rape case WILMINGTON (AP) - Obstruction of justice charges were dropped Monday against a New Hanover County social worker accused of helping get an abortion for the teenage victim in a suspected statutory rape. Authorities said the procedure resulted in the destruction of DNA evidence investigators wanted to pursue charges against the suspected father of the baby. The New Hanover County Department of Social Services will continue its own probe to determine if rules or laws were violated when Susan L. Taylor, 57, refused to tell a detective her 14-year-old client's plans. She also...

Long Island attorney has been charged with being an oline sexual predator. Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon says 46-year-old Thomas Sheehan of East Setauket is accused of having explicit sexual conversations with a person he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. Dillon says Sheehan is an attorney with an office in Jackson Heights, Queens. DA Dillon says Sheehan visited a chatroom where he began a conversation with an udnercover officer posing as a teen-age girl. Sheehan allegedly talked about meeting the girl for sexual activity. Dillon says at the same time Nassau officers were zeroing in Sheehan -- New York...

As recently as October 1, 2005 the plea for the Supreme Court to reinstate the Partial Birth Abortion Act is still being made. The ban on partial abortions would prevent the fetus (usually in its second or third trimester) from being delivered and then executed. The ban was officially signed into law by President Bush in 2003. Recent upheaval about the reinstitution of the ban has resulted from many loopholes in the abortion process. According to Susan B. Anthony List.com, one example of an abortion violation occurred in the state of Minnesota during 2002. The following case was performed only...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ignored strong lobbying from software makers and signed legislation Friday that bans the sale of violent video games to children. Passed by the California legislature last month, the measure follows heated national debate after game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. pulled its best-selling game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" from retailers this summer because of hidden sex scenes. "I am a parent myself and I think this is extremely important that we know what our kids watch or what kind of games that they play," Schwarzenegger told reporters. "I am a big believer...