Free Republic

A mother is facing action under race discrimination laws after objecting to ethnic minority hospital staff being present at the birth of her child. The woman was about to undergo a caesarean section when she made her demand. It was not clear yesterday whether she was referring to black employees, those of Asian origin, or any other staff working at Milton Keynes Hospital in Buckinghamshire. But an insider said: ‘The mother objected to one type of ethnic minority members of staff being there.’ The woman, who was accompanied by her partner for the delivery earlier this month, gave birth to...

U.S. poised to bring more insider trading cases By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Rachelle Younglai Mon Oct 19, 10:38 pm ET BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fresh from laying charges in the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history, U.S. federal investigators are poised to bring further "significant" cases. The targets will include financial professionals also involved in insider trading, a source familiar with the matter said. It was not immediately clear whether the new cases will be related to the one that ensnared hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and executives from some of the largest U.S. companies. On Friday, billionaire Raj...

Mark Fitzgibbons, President of Corporate and Legal Affairs of American Target Advertising, Inc., Manassas, Virginia, issued the following statement regarding the failure of state attorneys general to take action against ACORN: "Despite years of warning signs about voter fraud, embezzlement and other potentially criminal behavior by and within the Association for Community Organizing and Reform Now (ACORN), only a handful of state attorneys general apparently didn't need to be embarrassed by recent alternative media reporting and videos before taking some action against ACORN. Most state attorneys general have sat by idly, perhaps for political reasons with a trail quite probably...

Will federal prosecutors come after you someday? Bill Anderson explains, in a must read column, about the growing power of federal prosecutors who are able to apply vague statutes to behavior that historically has not been illegal. Anderson details how prosecutors can pile bogus charge after bogus charge on the innocent. Yet, even Anderson's warning does not go far enough to explain how this growing power suffocates a society, kills its ability to advance, and makes life less human for us all. For every person a prosecutor goes after, there are thousands who will be "more careful", meaning less free...

As the U.S. recession cuts into government budgets across the country, some public agencies are struggling more than others. Several state-funded defense attorneys say they have fewer resources to handle the flood of clients accused of crimes or other offenses. Officials in Miami are looking for private attorneys to volunteer to help clear a small part of the backlog. Ben Reiss left his job as an assistant public defender 10 years ago, in favor of a higher paying job with a top private law firm. That did not stop him from appearing in a Miami court recently to defend a...

Barack Obama's critics have long worried that his placatory attitude would project American weakness, thereby emboldening enemies and making real that impression of weakness. That may happen (or be happening), but what seems to have happened first is that President Obama's own weakness has emboldened his domestic allies on the Angry Left. As a result, the administration seems to be on the verge of a political crisis, and the country is at risk of a constitutional crisis.

David Frum makes an important point today about the innovative approach on policy differences unveiled this week in Washington by the Obama Administration and the Senate Intelligence Committee: It appears that winning an election and taking control of Congress will no longer be sufficient for the political mob. Rather, those now out of office will have to spend their time as private citizens being pursued by committees and possibly prosecutors for the views they expressed and actions they took when they were serving in the executive branch under different political management.

After White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told ABC in an interview on Sunday that President Barack Obama will not pursue the prosecution of Bush-era officials who devised enhanced interrogation policy for terrorist detainees, I made the mistake of actually believing something an Obama official said. As I've pointed out on this blog before, it's important to note that Bush policies prevented at least 20 potential terrorist attacks. Yet, the Left would have Americans ignore that fact that we've been safe since 9/11 and prosecute Bush-era leadership for employing the very techniques which kept us safe. Arm yourselves with...

President Obama left open the door Tuesday for charges to be brought against Bush administration lawyers who justified harsh interrogation techniques, though he continued to argue that CIA agents who used those tactics should not be prosecuted. The president showed wiggle room on the issue as he faces calls from Democratic lawmakers and organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union to support such charges. Asked about the possibility of prosecution related to the interrogation program, the president deferred to Attorney General Eric Holder. "With respect to those who formulate those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to...

MADRID – Spain's attorney general has rejected opening an investigation into whether six Bush administration officials sanctioned torture against terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, saying Thursday a U.S. courtroom would be the proper forum. Candido Conde-Pumpido's remarks severely dampen the chance of a case moving forward against the Americans, including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Conde-Pumpido said such a trial would have turned Spain's National Court "into a plaything" to be used for political ends. "If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words...

Prosecuting High-level Americans for War CrimesOn September 13-14, 2008, over two hundred people from the United States and abroad gathered in Andover. Massachusetts for ... Conference on the Planning for Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals... Impeachment of Bush-Cheney... the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney was very much on the table ... Local, state and federal criminal prosecution ...the Brattleboro, Vermont, ordinance that calls for the arrest on sight of Bush and/or Cheney... One particular scenario ... was to charge Bush and Cheney with murder of U.S. soldiers who have died in the Iraq...

When Pennsylvania Congressmen John Murtha charged eight Marines with “cold blooded murder” and “cover up” at Haditha more than two years ago, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld immediately formed a study group to counter the powerful Democrat’s accusations. The study group’s analysis of the political and legal situation was used to help decide what course of action to take against eight Marines accused of massacre and cover up by Murtha in the deaths of 24 Iraqis at Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005. The group was briefed by high ranking Marine Corps lawyers sent by Brigadier General Kevin Sandkuhler,...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A suspected gang member accused of killing a father and two sons escaped prosecution in a weapons case earlier this year when the San Francisco district attorney's office concluded it didn't have enough evidence to connect him to a gun that a passenger in his car was carrying, authorities said Thursday. Edwin Ramos, 21, of El Sobrante, who police say is a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, was formally charged late Thursday with three counts of murder in the shooting deaths Sunday of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16....

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday refused to step into a high-stakes legal fight between the Justice Department and indicted Rep. William Jefferson over the unprecedented raid on the lawmaker's Capitol Hill office. The Justice Department said the court's action would not impede the bribery case against the Louisiana Democrat. The justices declined to review an appeals court ruling that said that, while the office search itself was legal, the FBI reviewed legislative documents in violation of the Constitution. Other documents seized in the raid were provided to prosecutors and were used to support a 16-count indictment of Jefferson...

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes. Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after. Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly -- to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the...

What We Know About Client 9 From a redacted copy of the sealed complaint about the Emperor's Club prostitution ring, we were able to extract the following details about Client 9's dealings with the organization, and his Washington liaison. Client 9, according to the Times, is the one alleged to be Governor Eliot Spitzer. We have no official confirmation of this. But below are the things that we do know about this mysterious player from the legal papers: • He refused to use a "traditional wire transfer" to pay the organization but arranged for an Emperor's Club girl to take...

During some of the bloodiest years of the drug wars of the 1980s, crack was seen as far more dangerous than powdered cocaine, and that perception was written into the sentencing laws. But now that notion is under attack like never before. Criminologists, doctors and other experts say the differences between the two forms of the drug were largely exaggerated and do not justify the way the law comes down 100 times harder on crack. A push to shrink the disparity in punishments got a boost last month when reduced federal sentencing guidelines went into effect for crack offenses. Then,...

San Francisco imprisons African Americans for drug offenses at a much higher rate than whites, according to a report to be released today... *** San Francisco locks up a higher percentage of members of the African American community in drug cases than any other county in the study. In the county, 123 people out of every 100,000 are sent to state prison each year for drug offenses. Of those, whites are incarcerated at a rate of 35 per 100,000 white people, while blacks are incarcerated at a rate of 1,013 per 100,000 black people. "It is not that San Francisco...

A veteran political activist is facing 10 years in prison and a hefty fine for attempting to petition government for redress of grievances. The latest news from Pakistan? No, this is happening in Oklahoma. Last month Paul Jacob, the former head of U.S. Term Limits and current head of Citizens in Charge, was led out of an Oklahoma City courtroom in handcuffs after pleading not guilty to charges that he conspired to defraud the state. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who's overseeing this bizarre prosecution, has accused Mr. Jacob and two fellow petition organizers--Rick Carpenter of Oklahomans in Action and...

Michael Vick's attorneys are engaged in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors and the Falcons quarterback could reach an agreement before new dogfighting charges are handed down next week, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations.

MIAMI - Federal prosecutors rested their case Friday against Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with participating in an al-Qaida support cell. The jury has listened to nearly nine weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and tapes of dozens of FBI wiretaps collected during an investigation that lasted years. Defense lawyers for Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi will begin their case next week, with the trial likely to continue into August. Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen, was originally accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." He was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's...

WASHINGTON — Internet cartoons show him with horns and the word "TRAITOR" branded on his forehead. Conservative talk radio derides him as "Johnny Satan." At least two Republican congressmen, normally staunch defenders of the Bush administration, have castigated him on the House floor. If the White House and Justice Department had added Johnny Sutton to the list of federal prosecutors to be fired, his ouster probably would not have raised an eyebrow among Democrats, and it would have pleased much of the president's conservative base. Sutton is the U.S. attorney in west Texas. Based in San Antonio, his border district...

"After a thorough reading of the report it would not be unreasonable to conclude as I have that there was a cover-up at high levels of our government and, it appears to have been substantial and coordinated...The question is why? And that question regrettably will go unanswered. Unlike some other cover-ups, this one succeeded.” – Independent Counsel David M. Barrett on the censoring of The Barrett Report. If you have been experiencing a sneaking suspicion that there is a lot of one-sided interest where investigations into political malfeasance are concerned at the US Justice Department, you’re not alone. From the...

In April 2006, three members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team were accused of raping a black stripper, Crystal Gail Mangum, during a March 13 party at an off-campus residence. Three players, David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty, were charged with forcible rape, first degree sexual assault, and kidnapping. What the three young men did not know was that they were about to get a lesson in Democrat Party politics that no political science course at Duke could ever teach. 2006 was an election year in North Carolina and Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, a Democrat, was in...

Former Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez was sentenced to 12 months plus one day by Federal Judge Robert T Dawson. We will have a full story and pictures by 4 p.m. Hernandez was convicted December 1, 2006 for violating the civil rights of an illegal alien when the Suburan in which she was hiding attempted to flee a traffic stop made by then-Deputy Hernandez. Hernandez fired his handgun at the Suburban's tires and a bullet fragment struck the illegal alien in the mouth.

STAFFORD, Va. — A woman convicted of a felony for throwing a cup of ice into a car that cut her off in traffic was sentenced to probation instead of prison, a judge ruled Wednesday. Jessica Hall faced between two and five years in prison after she was convicted last month of maliciously throwing a missile — the cup of ice — into an occupied vehicle. No one was injured in the incident last summer. "The facts of this case ... suggest that the sentence in this case should be reduced," Judge Frank A. Hoss Jr. told Hall, who thanked...

A Texas deputy sheriff who fired shots at a fleeing vehicle after the driver tried to run him down faces 10 years in prison for injuring one of the passengers, a Mexican national being smuggled illegally into the United States. The U.S. attorney, who won lengthy prison terms last year for two U.S. Border Patrol agents in the shooting of a drug-smuggling suspect, also prosecuted Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, who is to be sentenced next month. The deputy's boss, Sheriff Donald G. Letsinger, said his officer -- who had been on the job for a year --...

It is unfortunate to see Wendy McElroy, a former writer for my website intellectualconservative.com (who has always been very open about her libertarian views on pornography) drink the kool-aid of 20/20 and other media spin regarding the prosecution of Matt Bandy. The prosecution by my boss Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was not about adult pornography, it was about child pornography. Bandy admitted to frequenting a Yahoo child porn group and a CD was found next to his computer with child pornography on it. That's no "trojan virus." Read the full article on Fox News McElroy's article defending Bandy McElroy's...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prosecutors in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial showed chilling videos of gassed children lying in a field and villagers fleeing clouds of white smoke, arguing Tuesday that the former president and his regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq in the late 1980s. "These children are the saboteurs that the defendants talk about," prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said sarcastically as the footage showed scores of dead children on the ground, partially covered by blankets. Defense attorneys had argued that Saddam and his co-defendants were fighting Kurdish insurgents during the 1987-88 military offensive that was code named...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein on Tuesday attacked prosecution witnesses in his trial for genocide against the Kurds, accusing them of sowing division among Iraqis for the benefit of Israel. The deposed leader addressed the court after two Kurds testified that during a military offensive in northern Iraq in 1988, they were detained in a camp where conditions were so bad that hundreds of prisoners died of malnutrition. "This will only serve the separation," Saddam said, referring to the deepening division among Iraqis as shown by the rising death toll in the insurgency and sectarian fighting. "The Zionists are the...

In the last few years, we've witnessed the ongoing battle between newspapers like the New York Times and the federal government and the "right" of newspapers to hold their sources confidential. The audacity of the Times to release classified secret or top secret information because of the industry's classic "the people have a right to know" argument was highlighted by NYT executive editor Bill Keller's decision to release info about the National Security Agency's efforts to monitor phone calls without court-approved warrants. The Times had held back on the story for over a year, but now, President Bush had stepped...

Members of Congress petitioning the president to pardon two U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of assaulting an illegal alien who was trying to smuggle drugs into the U.S. are now calling for an investigation of the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the agents. "These were good agents doing their job," said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). "There is something that stinks to high heaven." On Feb. 17, 2005, U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were on duty when they encountered Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila in a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana. When the agents tried to stop Aldrete-Davila, he...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government has fallen back to prosecuting international terrorists at about the same rate it did before Sept. 11, according to a study based on Justice Department data. The surprising decline followed a sharp increase in such criminal prosecutions in the year after the attacks, according to a study released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University. The analysis of data from Justice's Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys also found: _In the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10...

So much for having Karl Rove "frog-marched" out of the White House "in handcuffs." That's the fate Democratic partisan Joe Wilson once predicted for President Bush's political guru, and yesterday his hope and accusations vanished like fog on the Potomac. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed Mr. Rove's lawyers on Monday that he'll bring no charges as part of his investigation into who leaked the CIA identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. Mr. Wilson's original claims that Mr. Bush lied about Iraq intelligence have been discredited many times over, including in a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. And...

NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, April 27, 2006 – The chief prosecutor for military commissions here today reaffirmed that the prosecution believes detainees should have the right to self-representation. The prosecution supported defense lawyers when they sought self-representation for a detainee in 2004, and the prosecution still supports the defense's attempts for that right in other cases, Air Force Col. Morris Davis said at a news conference. "It's their name on the charge sheet, and I think they ought to have the right," Davis said of the detainees. Self-representation has been an issue in many of the commissions cases since...

Mary McCarthy is a new name on the public's radar screen, although she's apparently been known to some members of the mainstream media (MSM) for quite some time. Well, what has this woman wrought? To any discerning mind, her actions -- unauthorized disclosures of classified information -- are treasonous in nature. According to news reports, CIA officer Mary McCarthy provided classified information to the Washington Post and other news organizations regarding the transfer of terror suspects to overseas prisons for questioning, a practice often referred to as "rendition". The implication is that these suspects would be subjected to rougher treatment...

WHO WILL SAVE ABDUL RAHMAN? By Michelle Malkin   ·   March 21, 2006 01:31 PM Italy and Germany have raised their voices: Italy has joined with Germany in protesting a death threat reportedly hanging over an Afghan who became a Christian in Germany and is now charged under Afghanistan's religious laws . The sharia laws, which rule many Muslim countries, forbid conversion to other religions on pain of death . Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini on Tuesday said Italy would raise the case of Abdul Rahman with the Afghan ambassador in Rome, European Union diplomatic representatives in Afghanistan and EU human...

Afghan Man Prosecuted for Converting 24 minutes ago An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday. The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws. Rahman, who is believed to be 41, was charged with rejecting Islam when his trial started last week, the judge said. During the hearing, the...

Prosecution has finished investigation of armed assault on people of the Moscow synagogue in January 11. The accused, Alexander Koptsev, confessed in the crime, so case will be transferred to the court in near future, stated Moscow Prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev. The crime has been investigated for around three weeks. During the investigation, one discovered the circumstances of the attack and reasons of Koptsev’s actions. The investigators questioned his relatives, classmates, teachers, and found “nothing abnormal”. The investigation also found that Koptsev had no accomplices, and that he was sane in the moment of the attack disregarding his present schizophrenic disorder,...

The N.C. State Bar has challenged the dismissal of disciplinary charges against two former Union County prosecutors, saying they committed felonies to win a death penalty conviction. Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer were charged with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in the 1996 murder trial. Honeycutt, the former district attorney in Union County, has since returned to private practice; Brewer is now a District Court judge in Richmond County. Last week, the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission cited a missed deadline in dismissing the case against them. But the bar's lawyers say there is no deadline to bring charges because the...

Something the other day caused the memory of last June's mock impeachment hearing to pop to the front of my head, and made me think "why not turn the tables?" Why not stage a full-blown treason trial to lay out, point-by-point in a single event, how liberals (especially those in power) are providing aide in comfort to the enemy? Charges against those that provide actual goods, such as Code Pink's furnishment of money to terrorists in Iraq, would likely be far easier to prove than propoganda (ie John Murtha). However, that, and similar statements by others, is clearly and purposefully...

London 15.09.05 | The existence of systematic political prosecution in Venezuela, as established in article 7 of the Rome Statute, has been been argued for some time now. Apologists of Hugo Chavez maintain that it is nonsense, just another cry wolf allegation against the 'democratically elected' leader. Many people have complained about the existence of a list, compiled by chavista assemblyman Luis Tascon with a group of collaborators, that is widely utilised by government officials at all institutional levels to deny passports, contracts, IDs, employments, benefits, etc. The creation of said database was ordered by Hugo Chavez himself, who in...

With the conviction of Mounir el Motassadeq, Hamburg's judges wanted to prove that the German judiciary was capable of combating Islamist terror. Terrorism cases continue to pose a dilemna for German courts due to a lack of solid evidence against suspects.

THE editor of a Scottish weekly newspaper is facing possible prosecution under Britain's anti-racism laws, following the publication of an article claiming that a massive refugee camp could be built in Scotland. Alan Buchan, the publisher and editor of the North East Weekly, a free sheet based in Peterhead, was arrested by officers from Grampian Police in connection with the publication of an editorial in the latest issue of the newspaper, headlined "Perverts and Refugees". Mr Buchan was charged under a section of the Public Order Act which gives the police powers to arrest any person whom they suspect of...

OTTAWA -- A sharp drop in the number of refugee claimants arriving in Canada this year is the result of a new pact with the United States that's turning out to be a "silent killer," a national refugee group says. The Canadian Council for Refugees issued a report yesterday urging the federal government to tear up the so-called safe third country agreement, saying it is having "a devastating effect on the ability of refugees to find protection." The Immigration Department insists that the agreement has been a success and that Canada's commitment to protecting refugees has not wavered. Under the...

Last month it was my duty to serve on the jury in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen. It was my unpleasant charge to decide the fate of a fellow human. In the course of my 55 years I have survived a war, earned a bachelor's degree, suffered and exalted, traveled the world and worked my way from high school dropout to senior engineer. Still, nothing prepared me for this, nor did any of the other 11 jurors seem any less humbled by this task. No one took this lightly. My fellow jurors seemed to be a good representation of...

You'd think by reading this e-mail that only Republicans are engaging in corruption in Congress. But with over 200 lawmakers filing late reports like Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif, reporting 21 trips and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., reporting 20 past trips, it comes as a surprise to learn there are just as many Democrats engaging in the time dishonored practice of junkets. The biggest traveler with privately funded trips is a Democrat also. Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., a Tennessee Democrat who is running for the Senate, holds first place as Congress' most prolific traveler since 2000. While his travel reports...

The medical field of treating chronic pain is still in its infancy. It was only in the late 1980s that leading physicians trained in treating the chronic pain of terminally ill cancer patients began to recommend that the "opioid therapy"(treatment involving narcotics related to opium) used on their patients also be used for patients suffering from non terminal conditions. The new therapies proved successful, and prescription pain medications saw a huge leap in sales throughout the 1990s. But opioid therapy has always been controversial. The habit-forming nature of some prescription pain medications made many physicians, medical boards, and law enforcement...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Two powerful defendants, two courtrooms, two similar outcomes: Charges are dropped in high-profile cases that moved even a magistrate to wonder aloud at the state of justice in this former British colony. In one, a court dropped murder charges against the grandson of one of Kenya's first white settlers who was accused of killing an African game warden and member of the tribe that says its lands were taken by the settler family a century earlier. In the other, Attorney General Amos Wako said neither police nor prosecutors had had time to investigate whether Kenya's first...

The county attorney's office has some explaining to do. Why are hundreds of drug cases being dropped and now, Eyewitness News 4 has learned that more than 300 summonses involving domestic violence haven't been served. This latest problem, involving domestic violence cases, could be particularly troubling for County Attorney Barbara LaWall. Lawall has run for office on a platform to fight domestic violence. Yesterday, Eyewitness News 4 broke the story that the county attorney's office was dropping over 500 drug cases. A letter went out to law enforcement agencies telling them about the drug cases the county attorney's office is...