Free Republic

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The California State Senate held an "ethics refresher course" for its members after federal indictments were issued against two senators and a third was convicted. Senate leaders are hoping to regain the public's trust. The purpose of the course is to teach members and their staffs to avoid potentially compromising situations. It's the latest in a series of moves by senate leaders aimed at putting political distance between them and their colleagues facing criminal charges. The leader of California's state senate stopped all regular business on Wednesday so everyone could go "back to school" in a...

DETROIT (AP) - Legal experts say that the heart of the perjury case against Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick—steamy text messages that seem to contradict his sworn denials of an affair with an aide—might be less open-and-shut than many believe. Kilpatrick's attorneys want to keep the intimate and sexually explicit text messages out of a trial, and at least one outside defense lawyer says the admissibility of such high-tech communications is an unsettled legal question. Even if they are admitted, experts say the defense will exploit any ambiguity in the messages, in the questions the mayor and former Chief of Staff Christine...

Phoenix, U.S., January 14, 2003 (EFE)- The governor of Arizona promised visiting Mexican lawmakers that she would sign legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants in that state to obtain driver's licenses. Janet Napolitano met with five members of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies' Foreign Relations Committee last weekend, just days before she was scheduled to be sworn in as governor of Arizona. In 1994, Arizona passed a law prohibiting those without social security numbers from obtaining a driver's license. Since then, undocumented immigrants have been forced to drive without a license and without auto insurance, which requires applicants to have...