Free Republic

Roger Simpson said he looked down the road and saw a little girl running outside her home but didn't give it another thought. Police, however, said the man witnessed a murder in progress. Authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. Severely dehydrated, the girl had a seizure and died days later. Now, her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment were taken to jail Wednesday and face murder charges. Witnesses told deputies Savannah was told to run and...

The takedown of the file-sharing site over copyright violations provides a warning about being careful where you store stuff. Megaupload file seizure shows why many cautious about the cloud Megaupload users are crying foul after their personal files, not necessarily copyright-infringing material, stored with the file-sharing service was seized on Thursday along with a trove of illegally distributed copyrighted works. Some of those users took to Twitter complaining about the loss of their files, as first reported by TorrentFreak. "I had files up there...gone forever..and they were personal recordings! No copyright infringement!" said Twitter user J. Amir. Another user complained...

A Massachusetts fisherman pulled in an 881-pound tuna this week only to have the federal authorities take it away. It sounds like a libertarian twist on the classic novella by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, but for Carlos Rafael, the saga is completely true.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department unlawfully seized up to $7 million worth of property from a Santa Clarita landowner, according to a lawsuit filed in a federal court. Attorney Richard Gibson of Woodland Hills represents the owners of the property that was seized on a 20-acre site near Magic Mountain. Deputies allegedly seized tractors, trailers, boats and cargo containers after discovering a reportedly stolen skiploader that Gibson said was abandoned on the site without the landowners’ knowledge. “For many years, my client has stored a great deal of stuff on the property,” said Gibson. “One of [the owners] had...

CAMDENTON, Mo. (AP) -- Nearly every year, Patsy Riley has gotten unsolicited offers for her house on Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks with its spectacular views of tree-lined bluffs and its ample shoreline, but she never wanted to leave. Now, she and hundreds of her neighbors wonder what will become of their homes after a federal agency declared that many structures built close to the lake may have to go. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, citing restrictions on private developments around dams, says thousands of residences, decks, patios and boathouses appear to encroach on land belonging to the hydroelectric project...

Tegucigalpa, Honduras A series of simultaneous raids were conducted on Monday in different parts of Honduras by members of the Public Prosecutor elements, Directorate for Combating Drug Trafficking, the Army and National Police. This is the first action that is made ​​pursuant to the Act Deprivation of assets of illicit origin , in force since July 2010 and applies through the creation of the post of judge with national jurisdiction. The raid was carried out operating in La Ceiba, Roatan and San Pedro Sula, towns where the nine homes that were deprived by the authorities. Also checks should be made...

ASPEN, Colo. (CBS4) – A former student at Colorado Mountain College says she was forced to drop a class because she had a seizure. Channing Seideman was in the middle of an emergency medical technician class when she had an epileptic seizure. She said faculty members asked her to drop the class, saying the episode was too distracting to other students and there could be more. Seideman said it was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and she’s filed a complaint against the school. She doesn’t want other people to experience the same thing. “They’re allowed to have...

Following on from news of the third phase of ‘piracy’ and counterfeit related domain seizures in 7 months, US Senator Ron Wyden has asked the director of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to clarify some of the most pressing questions. If the domain seizures are to continue, the Obama administration has to be more open about the need for them and the process involved, he argues. Earlier this week we broke the news that US authorities had started a third round of domain seizures. This time, it turned out that the actions were aimed at sports streaming sites....

People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds. .The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer...

The news of Hungary effectively seizing private pension fund assets to pay for the debt obligations of the state last week should come as yet another reminder of the urgent need to get tax-sheltered retirement savings away from the clutches of the state before it's too late. Hungary is just the latest country to decide that it's citizens retirement savings are the property of the state. The last major country to use similar tactics was Argentina who confiscated about $3.2 billion of pension savings in 2001 before the country stopped servicing its debt and then nationalized the $24 billion industry...

Toledo, OH (WTVG) -- Some parts of the Safety Building downtown were under quarantine Tuesday evening as several police officers underwent decontamination by hazmat crews. It began as a domestic violence 911 call to the 4700 block of Douglas. Responding officers found some highly toxic chemicals inside the home. Toledo police say officers seized mushrooms and a cultivation of castor beans, used to make the chemical ricin. Hazmat was called. As a precaution, the half dozen officers exposed to the chemical underwent a decontamination process. None exhibited any signs of abnormalities. FBI agents from Detroit are on the scene and...

In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 NRA-Backed "Protecting Gun Owners in Bankruptcy Act of 2010" Passes U.S. House Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Fairfax, Va. -- Today, by a margin of 307-113, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to amend the federal definition of protected “household goods” to include firearms on the list of items that cannot be seized by creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding. NRA-supported H.R. 5827, offered by U.S. Representative John Boccieri (OH-16), would ensure that a person who files for bankruptcy would not lose the constitutionally- protected means of protecting themselves and...

he feds are coming to inspect your home if you want to sell it, according to regulations buried in cap-and-trade legislation and standards decreed by the Secretary of Energy. But there are numerous legal difficulties inherent in DOE "inspections." Here are a few: First, the regulations purportedly require homeowners to submit to a warrantless search of their property. The result of this inspection ("looking in") of their home would be to condemn real property (fixtures and things attached to the land are real estate in many states) and/or personal property.

Bank seizes money from school districts embroiled in risky investments By Amy Hetzner of the Journal Sentinel Posted: March 24, 2010 7:06 p.m. |(1) Comments A European bank that loaned money to five Wisconsin school districts that made risky investments has seized $5.6 million from district-controlled trusts to try to compel district officials to repay the debt. DEPFA Bank took the action earlier this week after a year of fruitless efforts to work out a restructuring of $165 million worth of loans to the district trusts that have been in technical default for more than two years. "We are taking...

More than six months after government officials seized his rare vintage military aircraft, Claude Hendrickson said he is still in the dark about why the airplane was confiscated and when and if it will be returned to him. Until the 1952 airplane -- believed to be one of only a handful of Douglas AD-4N Skyraiders in the U.S. -- is released from federal custody, Hendrickson said the aircraft will slowly deteriorate because he can't maintain it. ---- Virginia Dabbs, spokeswoman for Customs and Border Patrol, said she could not comment on Hendrickson's claims. "We don't harass people," Dabbs said.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- LSU's governing board has agreed to the expropriation of property to build a new public teaching hospital in New Orleans and a nearby new veterans hospital. Without objection Friday, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved the use of expropriation. The resolution allows state officials working on the projects to seek a court order to seize private property if the owners refuse to sell. A judge would decide the purchase price the state must pay. More than 450 separately-owned parcels of land are located in the footprint of the planned U.S. Veterans Affairs' hospital and the $1.2...

Hezbollah will underscore its case against Tehran in the international community, observers said Thursday. "Officials in Jerusalem had not dared even to dream of better timing for the capture of the vessel carrying so much arms and ammunition bound for Hezbollah," an editorial in Israel's Maariv newspaper said. "The capture of the ship was, for Israel, like a gift from heaven." The Israeli navy on Wednesday seized a ship carrying what it described as "hundreds of tonnes" of weapons, including rockets, grenades and ammunition, that it said was sent from Iran to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. A UN Security Council...

The “innocent until proven guilty” concept is at the very heart of our legal system. Government ought not be able to exact punishment for a crime until proof has been established, beyond a reasonable doubt, by a jury of one’s peers.But this foundational principle of justice has been tossed out the window in recent years, at least in one realm, that of civil or asset forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize more than $1 billion worth of property each year — cash, cars, boats, etc. — that is alleged to have been used in the furtherance of a crime.The...

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director U.S. Congress Washington, DC 20515 July 22, 2009 Honorable Steny M. Hoyer Majority Leader U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Mr. Leader: This letter responds to your request that we review an amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2009 (the amendment), provided to CBO on July 21, 2009. On July 14, 2009, CBO provided an analysis of the version of H.R. 2920 that was introduced on June 17, 2009, which would establish new statutory pay-asyou- go (PAYGO) requirements and authorize the Administration...