Free Republic

Hey Boehner and McConnell... you got the cojones to  bring this character in for a few questions...? In the wake of the ever-outgoing Charles Manson getting his cell-phone taken away by ruthless class-oppressors at Corcoran State Prison, hardcore lib kooks like Van Jones, Noam Chomsky, and Professor Michelle Alexander have signed a "statement of solidarity" with striking Georgia inmates as they ramp-up a racially-charged "prisoners' rights" offensive in this country... and with a little help from their friends: ...“mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow,” ... “Like the old Jim Crow, this system serves to perpetuate institutionalized racism, economic inequality,...

More than 140 prisoners escaped from a prison near the U.S. border on Friday, media said, the latest breach of Mexico's notoriously insecure jails that are helping to feed a violent drug war... on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo across from Laredo, Texas. In September, 85 prisoners escaped from jail in the nearby border city of Reynosa. Authorities discovered in July that prison officials had allowed convicts out of jail in northwestern Durango state to carry out revenge attacks before returning to cells for the night.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Treasury mistakenly sent more than 20 million dollars in stimulus payments to dead people and prisoners as part of an effort to jolt the US economy out of recession, an investigation has found. The 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act authorized one-time 250 dollar payments to about 52 million people, totalling 13 billion dollars. But an inspector general's investigation found that more than 71,000 of the checks -- worth 18 million dollars -- went out to people who had died. ... "Inaccurate payments are unacceptable," said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration,...

The Israeli military is investigating a video which has surfaced on the internet showing a soldier dancing around a Palestinian woman prisoner who is bound and blindfolded. The video shows a soldier gyrating to music as the woman sits against the wall with her hands tied and her eyes bound. The video has been posted on YouTube and has been broadcast on Israeli television. The Palestinian Authority has condemned the video, calling it deeply offensive to the dignity of women. The Israeli army says military police have launched an inquiry and such an investigation will become standard practice in all...

LIMA (Reuters) – An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday. The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilization that flourished between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war. Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons...

Rats and diseases infested Cuban prison cells so badly that some inmates tried to kill themselves and other did themselves harm, according to freed political prisoners who spoke Thursday in Spain. Those who spoke were among 11 political prisoners released this week and flown to Spain to start new lives. At a press conference in Madrid, they painted a squalid picture of the prison conditions they had endured. "The hygiene and health situations in prisons throughout the island of Cuba are not terrible, they are worse than terrible," freed dissident Julio Cesar Galvez said. "We had to live with rats...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- More than 1,200 prison inmates, including 241 serving life sentences, defrauded the government of $9.1 million in tax credits reserved for first-time homebuyers, according to a Treasury Department report released Wednesday. Treasury's inspector general also found that thousands of people filed multiple claims or made claims outside the allotted time period. In all, more than $28 million was improperly doled out. The Internal Revenue Service program at issue is meant to stimulate the housing market by giving tax credits of as much as $8,000 to qualifying first-time home buyers. "Additional controls are necessary to address erroneous...

Wives and mothers of political prisoners' in Cuba have again been prevented from marching in Havana. Six women - known as the Ladies in White - were surrounded by an angry mob of pro-government supporters and then pushed off the street into a park. The women stood silently for several hours as the crowd shouted insults and pro-revolutionary slogan

Bracing for an influx of newly released prisoners, East Bay leaders are working with social services groups to prevent the former inmates from returning to lives of crime. The concern has reached a critical point because state legislation has relaxed restrictions on parolees and led to the early release of prisoners considered low risk. The state sought the changes to save money and to ease prison overcrowding and health care problems. The state aims to decrease the prison population by tens of thousands over the next two to three years. Though there is no way to know exactly how many...

SNIPPET: "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter in Washington State is seeking religious Muslim volunteers to work with state prison inmates. That has veteran corrections official Patrick Dunleavy concerned that the program could result in the radicalization of prisoners and create security problems. It's not the presence of Muslim volunteers, but the track record of the people and organization involved." Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1816/cair-targets-washington-state-prisons

No one should imagine that American missionary Robert Park is getting the same relatively benign treatment at the hands of his North Korean "hosts" as the two American women who were held in the North for 140 days last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. has released a long-secret list of some 645 detainees held at a military base in Afghanistan. The identities and descriptions of the detainees at Bagram air base had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Washington state will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn a surprising federal court ruling that tossed out the state's 120-year-old prohibition against voting by incarcerated felons, Attorney General Rob McKenna said today. The ruling, handed down Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S> Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, found that Washington's criminal-justice system was so "infected" with racial discrimination that a ban on felon voting violated civil-rights protections. The state hoped to have the case heard during the U.S. Supreme Court's fall session, McKenna told reporters at a hastily-arranged news conference at...

Note: The following text is a quote: Some Guantanamo Detainees to Move to Illinois Prison By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2009 – President Barack Obama’s administration plans to transfer a limited number of detainees held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in rural western Illinois, senior administration officials said here today. The federal government plans to acquire Thomson Correctional Center, a 10-year-old maximum security prison in Thomson, Ill., a farming community about 150 miles west of Chicago, officials said in a background briefing. The administration would need to work...

Currently, the constitution allows prisoners to perform work for governmental agencies during their prison sentence, but the amendment would allow them to volunteer for religious, charitable and educational groups as well. Letting inmates work for non-profits was common practice for jails across the state until the state Commission of Correction determined it was unconstitutional about three years ago, state Sheriffs' Association Counsel Thomas Mitchell said. The nonprofit work could be used as an incentive for good behavior.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s controversial program to charge inmates for rent, haircuts, medical visits and high school equivalency tests raised $750,000, but outraged inmate advocates who said the fees violated their constitutional rights and amounted to an unlawful tax. Five years after a judge struck down the program - ruling that county sheriffs do not have the authority to charge such fees - Hodgson is reviving the proposal. The state’s highest court will hear arguments in Hodgson’s appeal today. When he initially imposed the fees in 2002, Hodgson said he believed they could help teach inmates to accept responsibility...

Even as some Americans await the arrival of their swine flu vaccines, the Pentagon has decided to vaccinate both soldiers and terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There was no word Wednesday on when the the first vaccines would reach the remote base in southeast Cuba. But U.S. military there were notified late last week that service members would get their H1N1 virus vaccinations first. Private contractors and sailors' wives and children could get theirs afterward ``as the supply permits.'' And that means the 221 war on terror captives would also be vaccinated first, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt,...

Being Supreme Leader of the Free World is a tough job; but someone's got to do it. Enter Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm....mmm...mm. When he's not pushing Obamacare, bashing FOX News for linking him to ACORN and other radical associations, hiding in the closet on gay rights, what's he doing? Why he's busy taking heat from all sides in the Afghanistan debate. I guess you just can't please all the people, all of the time. Or in this case, any of the people on all sides of the debate. Health care legislation has been hard for President Obama, but Afghanistan...

CONVICTED criminals are being employed as telemarketers to cold-call people as part of a radical new prison employment program. But those called will have no idea they are talking to an inmate and the State Government will not say which organisations are using the convicts as part of a confidentiality deal. The program is designed to prepare women prisoners from Windsor's low and medium-security Dillwynia Correctional Centre for life on the outside, training them for work and stopping them from reoffending. However it is also being used as a low-cost way for companies to get cheap telemarketing work and for...

Alcohol hand gel meant to combat swine flu has been banned from a prison after inmates became embroiled in a drunken brawl after drinking it. Hand gels supplied to a prison to combat the risk of swine flu have been removed after inmates realised it contained alcohol and began drinking it to try to get drunk. At least one prisoner at HMP The Verne on Portland, Dorset, was found intoxicated. The Prison Service confirmed that this case was being investigated but meanwhile antibacterial gel pumps had been removed as a "precautionary measure". Andy Fear, a member of the Verne's Prison...