Free Republic

From September 16, 2004 through October 1, 2004, a COK investigator worked undercover in the hanging room of the Perdue Farms slaughter plant in Showell, Maryland. Using a hidden camera, he documented horrible—yet routine—cruelty to animals on a daily basis http://www.cok.net/camp/inv/perdue/ Or the government at work. I don't remember signing a consent form: Some Maryland high school students have found a way to trick the local speed cameras into sending other people tickets http://www.ridelust.com/maryland-teens-expose-weakness-in-speed-cameras/

James O'Keefe's foray into filmmaking may cost him a few years in the slammer. O'Keefe and fellow conservative activist/budding investigative journalist Hannah Giles were the ones who dressed up like a pimp and a prostitute, respectively (or not), and went to the offices of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in D.C. and Baltimore looking for advice on how to buy a house. The resulting video caused quite a commotion and resulted in the firing of four ACORN employees, as well as other repercussions for those who support the organization. In Maryland, it's against the law to...

No one would have guessed that Tom DeLay's next career move would involve dancing, so the announcement that the former House Majority Leader would be a contestant on the upcoming season of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" raised the eyebrows of politicos everywhere. The network has now released some promo photos of DeLay with his dancing partner, Cheryl Burke. DeLay appears to enjoying his new role, sporting sweat pants and a shirt from his organization Rio Bend, which works to improve the nation's foster care system. His own slimmer waistline can be attributed to the personal trainer he's been using...

Not content with the mess they created when the university threw innocent lacrosse team players to the wolves following a manifestly false accusation of group rape, Duke university has now instituted a policy for handling rape charges manifestly unfair to the accused. KC Johnson whose work in defense of the lacrosse team was outstanding, has exposed this outrage as well oin his site, Durham in Wonderland. Three Duke University students were the victims of the highest-profile fraudulent rape claim in modern American history. That fact alone should make the University particularly sensitive to the dangers of false rape allegations, and...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A man was arrested and charged with attacking his own daughter with a piece of pizza. Deputies say the 38-year-old father got into an argument with his daughter in Gainesville Friday. The man had asked his daughter to get off her computer. When she would not, he began verbally attacking her, according to deputies. The daughter called 911 when her father threw a piece of pizza that hit her in the back of the neck. The suspect was arrested and charged with felony child abuse. Deputies are not releasing the girl's age or the names of either...

Just days after Sarah Palin left the governor's office, in part because of a crush of what she called frivolous ethics complaints, Alaska's new attorney general is proposing sweeping changes in how such matters are handled. Attorney General Dan Sullivan on Wednesday released a 19-page opinion about the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act and said reforms are needed to prevent bad-faith misuse of the process. As evidence of a troubled ethics system, Sullivan singled out the leak two weeks ago of an ethics investigator's confidential report on Palin just as efforts were under way to resolve the matter. Such breaches...

http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.blogspot.com/2009/08/barack-obamas-alaska-mafia-is-on-run.html http://www.nakedemperornews.com/ Obama’s then campaign chief of staff, now White House advisor, Pete Rouse, is an Alaskan. He is also great friends with former Alaska State Senator Kim Elton. I’ll get to the reason why he’s a former Senator in a second. But those two go way back having worked together on a former Alaska Lt Governor’s staff. Rouse still votes absentee in Alaska. Everyone has heard of "Troopergate" the phony investigation, really a witch hunt, cooked up by the Alaska democrat/communist party with the help of Barack Obama. At the time CNN and others reported that Obama had been...

As late as three weeks ago, two months after court records show the state of Maryland agreed to settle a lawsuit with money and words of contrition over the arrest of a musician accused of e-mailing a bomb threat to the airport, he was still in court fighting to get authorities to say they were sorry.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says recent violent attacks show the need for a tougher hate crimes law. Holder, speaking Tuesday at a luncheon for civil rights lawyers, noted the recent killings of an abortion doctor in Kansas, a soldier in Little Rock, and a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He called the attacks brazen acts committed in once-unthinkable places, and said it is past time for Congress to strengthen hate crimes laws to prosecute violence based on gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

George Torres' future looked pretty bleak: The supermarket mogul had been stripped of his riches by government prosecutors, convicted in a massive racketeering case and was awaiting a potential life sentence in federal prison. But in a stunning reversal of fortune Tuesday, the government released its grip on Torres' assets, a judge tossed out the most serious convictions against him, and he was ordered set free -- at least for now. The turnaround came after prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles turned over tape-recorded conversations that contained information that was potentially beneficial to Torres' defense regarding at...

History and social analysis of the Duke lacrosse case, retold in part from original documents; compared and contrasted with the social history of the Scottsboro trials.

The hearing today turned contentious when District Attorney David Prater asked the judge not to bar Ersland from access to a gun while at the store. He argued Ersland still has a right to defend himself and pharmacy employees if the store is robbed again. He said the restriction either meant Ersland would be fired from his job or crooks now know it is "open season" at the pharmacy if Ersland is there. The district attorney said his position sounds crazy but under the law Ersland has the right to protect himself. At one point, spectators clapped. Defense attorney Irven...

Not long ago, sports writer Selena Roberts compared the Duke lacrosse players to gang members and career criminals. She claimed that the players’ unwillingness to confess to or snitch about a rape (that did not happen) was the equivalent of drug dealers and gang members promoting antisnitching campaigns. When since-disgraced district attorney Mike Nifong whipped up a media posse to rain justice on the drunken, male college students, Roberts jumped on the fastest, most influential horse, using her New York Times column to convict the players and the culture of privilege that created them. Proven inaccurate, Roberts never wrote a...

WASHINGTON – A judge has dismissed charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct and has ordered a criminal contempt investigation of the prosecutors. "In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in the opening moments of a hearing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has decided to drop all charges against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct, NPR reported on Wednesday, citing Justice officials.

Just heard that Ramos has been released from prison. There will be no media access until March 20, 2009.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Authorities in the South Carolina county where Michael Phelps was photographed smoking from a marijuana pipe have been arresting people as they seek to make a case against the superstar swimmer, lawyers for two arrested people said Thursday. Attorneys Joseph McCulloch and Dick Harpootlian told The Associated Press they each represent a client charged with possession of marijuana who were questioned about the party Phelps attended near the University of South Carolina campus in November. The lawyers said the two clients were renters at the house where the party apparently took place. Harpootlian said his client was...

In a remarkable screw-up, a Department of Justice official today accidentally distributed to the media a document containing the names of nearly 20 confidential witnesses interviewed during a federal probe targeting the operators of a fraudulent investment scheme. In announcing felony charges against two men for their roles in an alleged $15 million Ponziesque swindle, the spokesman for Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (he of Rod Blagojevich- and Scooter Libby-prosecuting fame) e-mailed reporters a 62-page U.S. District Court complaint filed against John Walsh and Charles Martin, principals of the now-defunct One World Capital Group. Included in the document was a...

Allegations that members of a southern Utah polygamous sect are guilty of widespread welfare fraud were raised repeatedly this summer during a U.S. Senate judiciary committee hearing. They surfaced frequently, too, in messages sent to Texas Gov. Rick Perry after an April raid on the Eldorado ranch occupied by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. "Please pull the plug on the freebies for the cult. Why are the taxpayers of your state paying for this illegal group?" wrote a Michigan couple on April 17. But welfare data from Utah, Arizona and Texas do not support the...

SAN ANTONIO - Nearly two-thirds of the families living at a polygamist group's ranch - targeted in a high-profile raid last spring - had children who were abused or neglected, Texas child welfare officials said in a report released Tuesday.

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on...

"...John Harris re-stated Rod Blagojevich's thoughts that they should ask the President-elect for something for Rod Blagojevich's financial security as well as maintain his political viability. Harris said they could work out a three-way deal with SEIU and the President- elect where SEIU could help the President-elect with Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Senate Candidate 1 to the vacant Senate seat, Rod Blagojevich would obtain a position as the National Director of the Change to Win campaign, and SEIU would get something favorable from the President-elect in the future..."

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas – A judge dismissed indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday and told the southern Texas prosecutor who brought the case to exercise caution as his term in office ends. Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra had accused Cheney and the other defendants of responsibility for prisoner abuse. The judge's order ended two weeks of sometimes-bizarre court proceedings. Guerra is leaving office at the end of the month after soundly losing in his March primary election.

A federal judge today ordered the Justice Department to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

Joe the Plumber case still dripping Half-dozen agencies access records of Ohio man By Dennis J. Willard Beacon Journal staff writer Published on Friday, Nov 14, 2008 The election is over, but the Joe the Plumber case is not. Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe...

Drudge Breaking:Democrats prepare to move forward with investigations of the Bush administration... Ahhh yes....here we go...Obama and the Rats getting exactly what they wanted all along.

The woman who North Carolina prosecutors determined falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a team party maintains in a new memoir that she was attacked. Crystal Mangum, who appeared publicly Thursday for the first time since making the allegations more than two years ago, says in her forthcoming book she is not "looking forward to opening old wounds" but that she had to defend herself. "Even as I try to move on with my life, I still find it necessary to take one more stand and fight," she writes in the book, "The Last Dance for...

Dems worry Bush could pardon Rove, Miers By Susan Crabtree Posted: 10/03/08 12:55 PM [ET] Democrats are worried that President Bush may pardon Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other key administration officials alleged to have played a role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs a Judiciary Committee subcommittee, expressed concern Friday that Bush pardons on the final day of his tenure in the Oval Office could cut off any chance of former White House officials being forced to testify before Congress about their role in the U.S. attorneys' removal in 2006. The Department...

Pasadena officers talked to girlfriend after shootings A woman who knew one of the burglars gunned down by Pasadena homeowner Joe Horn told police she had warned her friend that his habit of breaking into homes would cost him his life, according to recently released police records. As part of a 31-page police report, Diamond Morgan, 24, of Houston, told Pasadena police investigators that she knew Diego Ortiz was a criminal. "Morgan stated that she told Ortiz three days ago that he was going to end up dead for the things that he was doing," police detective M.E. Bruegger wrote...

Boulder District Attorney Mary T. Lacy issues the following announcement with regard to the investigation of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. On December 25-26, 1996, JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in the home where she lived with her mother, father and brother. Despite a long and intensive investigation, the death of JonBenet remains unsolved. The murder has received unprecedented publicity and has been shrouded in controversy. That publicity has led to many theories over the years in which suspicion has focused on one family member or another. However, there has been at least one persistent stumbling block to the possibility of...

Steven Hatfill finally has his life back. Thanks to FBI incompetence, he also has $5.8 million. ... It's worse because it is a virtual confession that the anthrax case is cold. Throughout one of the largest investigations in law-enforcement history, agents were fixated on a "lone wolf" theory that Director Robert Mueller's FBI, for all intents and purposes, now admits was wrong. Helped along by a sympathetic press corps, the obsession with a domestic perpetrator has ended up in a dead end. *** So the FBI needed to cast a wider net all along – which still remains urgent. In...

(Washington, D.C.) – The following is a statement from Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) in reaction to today’s announcement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that it had agreed to pay former Army biowarfare expert Dr. Steven Hatfill $5.8 million in a settlement related to the FBI’s previously naming Hatfill a “person of interest” in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks on the United States. The attacks originated from a postal box in Holt’s central New Jersey congressional district, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents: “As today’s settlement announcement confirms, this case was botched from...

The Justice Department on Friday agreed to pay more than $5.8 million to Steven Hatfill, the former government scientist once branded by the Justice Department a person of interest in the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001. The legal settlement to Hatfill, in cash and an annual payments, signals the end of a civil lawsuit Hatfill brought against the Justice Department and FBI, accusing them of violating his privacy rights by improperly leaking sensitive information about the anthrax investigation to reporters. "I think it's a gratifying end to a very sad chapter in [Hatfill's] life and that of the FBI and...

New York State Police officials are notifying district attorneys across the state that evidence in criminal cases may have been compromised by a forensic scientist who committed suicide last month after auditors discovered that he had not followed proper procedures in some cases, officials said Tuesday. The scientist, Garry Veeder, worked at the State Police crime lab for more than 30 years analyzing so-called trace evidence, such as fibers, physical material and impressions left at crime scenes. The agency is reviewing his work going back at least a decade and cannot yet say how many cases could have been compromised....

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. .... The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk's office and requested 300 voter registration forms, a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Karl Rove, who had been one of President George W. Bush's top aides, was subpoenaed on Thursday to testify before a congressional panel investigating the administration's firing of nine federal prosecutors. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers issued the subpoena after months of failed efforts to get Rove to voluntarily testify under oath. The Judiciary Committee, like its Senate counterpart, has been investigating for more than a year the administration's dismissal of nine of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys in 2006. Despite White House claims to the contrary, critics charge the firings were politically motivated,...

"What is the attitude of the DCFS when confronted with over 3,000 mistakes they made? Spokesman Kendall Marlowe 'acknowledged that mistakes are made, but he said the vast majority of people…were placed there properly… he declined further comment.'"The DCFS chief administrative law judge Meryl Paniak said, 'A lot of what happens at these hearings is it becomes a legal process, not… whether it happened or not, but whether enough evidence is presented.'"Not a hint of apology, not a whiff of promise to a better job. In one word, arrogant."Ned Holstein of Fathers & Families has an interesting post on a...

Durham, N.C. — Attorneys for three former Duke University lacrosse players filed a motion this week asking a judge to lift a stay that keeps them from suing former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January, listing a debt of $180.3 million and David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann – as well as three other players who filed suit – as unsecured creditors, each owed $30 million. Attorneys for Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann, however, say in the April 8 filing that bankruptcy was a tactic he used to avoid a federal civil rights...

Camp Pendleton, California – A vindicated Marine lance corporal accused of war crimes at Haditha, Iraq has been granted testimonial immunity, Defend Our Marines has learned. Former Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt will testify on behalf of two enlisted Marine infantrymen waiting general court-martial in the infamous case. It is expected by both defense teams and courtroom observers that Justin Sharratt will provide testimony beneficial to Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum and Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, the two Marine enlisted men still facing trial for unlawfully killing Iraqi civilians. Tatum was Sharratt’s squad mate during two vicious combat tours in Iraq in...

BRUTAL, unprovoked and pointless murders have always generated public response. Revulsion at the crime draws on the well of primitive responses that include fear, anger and fascination. The person accused can expect little respite from outrage from the moment he or she is identified as a suspect. The worse the crime the less reality there is in the public mind to the legalistic concept of presumption of innocence. For most of the 20th century, newspapers understood sales could be built on extensive reporting of court cases. So most of the 20th century also saw a steady extension of the restrictions...

Roger Clemens, future Hall of Famer, welcome to family court. No, Roger isn't getting divorced--in fact, former teammate Jose Canseco wrote that Clemens was very devoted and faithful to his wife Debbie during his baseball career. What I mean is this--Clemens has been accused in the Mitchell Report of using steroids. Clemens hotly denies this but throws up his hands in exasperation, repeatedly asking, "How do you prove a negative?" Well, how do you? This is exactly the position that so many fathers are in when faced with false accusations of domestic violence or child sexual abuse in family court....

DURHAM -- Former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong is off the hook for the time being from any civil lawsuits. The judge overseeing the Duke Lacrosse lawsuit filed by three exonerated players has put their suit on hold.

Former District Attorney Mike Nifong filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday as city leaders, police and other officials began answering one of the federal civil-rights lawsuits triggered by the Duke lacrosse case. Meanwhile, the first replies from defendants in the Evans/Finnerty/Seligmann lawsuit came Tuesday from Nifong's former investigator, Linwood Wilson, and DNA Securities Inc., the Burlington lab that tested samples gathered from the players and stripper who falsely accused them. Late Tuesday, dismissal motions were also filed on behalf of City Manager Patrick Baker, former Police Chief Steve Chalmers, Deputy Police Chief Ron Hodge, Maj. Beverly Council, Maj. Lee Russ, Capt....

After a two-year investigation into the killings of up to 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder. Instead, two enlisted Marines and two Marine officers will face trial in coming months for the killings and for failing to investigate them. The most serious charges have been leveled against Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of voluntary manslaughter in California next week, the last step before the case officially moves to trial. Initially called a massacre...

WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Conrad Burns is no longer part of a federal investigation of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Burns, R-Mont., narrowly lost re-election to a fourth term in 2006 after Democrats made his relationship with Abramoff a central issue. Abramoff is the key figure in a corruption investigation that has led to convictions of a former congressman, legislative aides, lobbyists and officials in the Bush administration. Burns said in a statement that he "never doubted that the baseless and politically motivated charges leveled against me would be found to be without merit." "My family...

WINDER, GA - A Winder soldier accused of killing a detainee in Iraq will face third-degree murder charges, despite a military investigator's recommendation that those charges be dropped. The Army might be using Spc. Christopher Shore, 25, of Winder and other soldiers as scapegoats to satisfy world opinion about the U.S. presence in Iraq, Sen. John Douglas, R-Social Circle, said. "I am concerned because there is a number of these high profile cases coming out of Iraq and it appears there is a good degree of trying to sacrifice some of our guys in order to satisfy world opinion," Douglas...

Candidates lining up to replace longtime Travis County district attorney. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who has led that office since 1977, told his staff today that he will not seek re-election. He was expected to issue a statement later. Earle, 65, will serve the one year remaining on his term, but his retirement will end an era. "Is the district attorney's job an elective office?" Ken Oden, a former county attorney, once quipped about his friend's long tenure. Earle, a Democrat, might not be done with politics. By retiring, he would be available for a gubernatorial bid in...

Barry Bonds is being shafted by the legal system. His case is, sadly, part of a pattern of judicial abuse, the stretching of the law like rubber to allow prosecutors to go after unpopular figures in business, politics and, now, sports. The indictment recently returned against him could have been rendered years ago. Why now? Because this season Bonds, an ill-tempered, arrogant, disliked athlete, broke the record for lifetime home runs. Had he not set a new record or had he been a friendly figure beloved by the fans, prosecutors would never have touched him...

Since its inception in 1870, the U.S. Department of Justice has had among its chief duties "to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior" and "to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans." Within that context, it is very difficult to accept the Justice Department's Dec. 3 decision not to investigate modern America's highest-profile case of prosecutorial misconduct, also known as former Durham district attorney Mike Nifong's handling of the lacrosse case. The justification for such an inquiry was undeniable: As Jim Cooney, the leader of Reade Seligmann's defense team, explained in an October 2007...