Free Republic

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. (WCCO) – In this season of giving, someone has taken part of the nativity scene from a Minnesota church. Mary and Joseph are among the figures stolen from a display outside the Church of St. Joseph, located in the town of St. Joseph. The church is led by Father Jerome Tupa, who says the manger’s appearance signals the beginning of the advent season, placed near the intersection of Main and Minnesota Streets.

A truck carrying potentially "extremely dangerous" radioactive material has been stolen in Mexico, the UN atomic watchdog said Wednesday. The truck was transporting a cobalt-60 teletherapy source intended for medical use to a storage center when it was stolen on Monday in Tepojaco, near Mexico City, the International Atomic Energy Agency said, according to Agence France-Presse

<p>A store manager in North Carolina donated $100 into a replacement Salvation Army kettle after police say a thief swiped one from a bell ringer helping a grandmother at the Hanes Mall in Winston Salem.</p>

You won't see the mainstream media reporting on this story. Lisa Martinson called customer service after she forgot her password. That’s when she was told that three different people were given the password to her account, her address, and her Social Security number.

If you needed more proof that art theft is a futile, dead-end job, look no further than the Kunsthal heist of 2012. After the theft of seven masterpieces worth tens of millions of dollars ——a Picasso, two Monets, and a Matisse, among others—it appears that the mother of one of the suspects said she burned their cache of high-priced art partly because the thieves couldn't find any buyers.

The driver called his boss, and the police, and reported the truck stolen. A short time later, after leaving the supermarket with his boss, the driver spotted his truck being driven along Harry Hines Boulevard. The driver again called the police, who were able to stop the driver and take him into custody. A quick search of the truck revealed that, according to the driver's statement in the police report, 100 boxes, or more likely cases, worth an estimated $5,000, were missing from the truck.

KENNEWICK, Wash. (CBS Seattle) — A McDonald’s employee found her own stolen car in the fast food restaurant’s drive-thru. Kennewick authorities tell KEPR-TV that 22-year-old Katherine York was driving Virginia Maiden’s stolen Toyota SUV while going through the McDonald’s drive-thru Tuesday. Maiden told police that her vehicle was stolen from her apartment complex Tuesday morning. After Maiden spotted her car, she called Kennewick police who responded to the scene as York was pulling out of the drive-thru. York and a male passenger were detained, but the unidentified man was later released.

DURHAM — A stolen-identity tax refund scheme uncovered by a Durham retiree in March apparently is so widespread that one federal official has described it as the “No. 1 tax scam for 2013.” It’s called SIRF, stolen identity refund fraud, and it affects an untold number of innocent taxpayers, costing the federal government billions. It relies on two weaknesses in the operations of the Internal Revenue Service: its desire to get returns to taxpayers quickly, and a timing gap in how it deals with employees and employers. In short, criminals file fake tax returns in the name of a taxpayer,...

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — For almost 12 years, a Houston elementary school teacher and an illegal immigrant living in Topeka have engaged in a tug of war to claim the identity of Candida L. Gutierrez in a case that has put a face on the growing crime of "total identity theft" in the United States. On Monday, the real Candida L. Gutierrez saw her identity thief, Benita Cardona-Gonzalez, for the first time. Their encounter came inside a federal courtroom in Wichita, where Cardona-Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing fraudulent identification documents. The plea...

A screenshot of guns collected at Bensalem Township's gun buyback events. Credit Bensalem Township The Bensalem Patch notes that only two of 586 firearms turned in at the two recent turn in events were identified as stolen. From the Bensalem Patch: Nearly 600 firearms, two of which were stolen, were collected at Bensalem Township's anonymous gun buyback events held in February, according to the police department. Sgt. Andrew Aninsman claims that the program was conducted without cost to the taxpayers: "Over the course of two days we received 586 firearms at no cost to taxpayers," Sgt. Andrew Aninsman said. Cash...

OAKLAND -- Thieves smashed a window of a KTVU news van parked in West Oakland for an assignment Thursday and stole roughly $20,000 worth of laptops and other electronic equipment, the latest in a long string of heists against reporters and photographers. --SNIP-- News photographers and reporters have been robbed and burglarized so many times since last spring that some stations are sending armed guards with media crews doing stories in Oakland.

LOS ANGELES – Katt Williams, the comedian who has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of the law, is out on bail after being arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of child endangerment and possession of a stolen gun. Police Officer Norma Eisenman said Williams was taken into custody Friday after the LA County Department of Children and Family Services did a welfare check at his home. Authorities found more than one firearm, one of which had been reported stolen. Eisenman says the DCFS did not specify how many children lived at the home or whether they were removed....

Many Americans didn't bother to vote in the past presidential election, some out of apathy or a belief that the election would hardly affect them. They are in for a rude awakening now that Obama has won re-election. His Santa Claus false promises are unsustainable, so there are going to be few winners and a lot of losers as he redistributes wealth. Obama ran on a platform of making the rich “pay their fair share of taxes,” but raising taxes on the wealthy will only fund the federal government for eight days a year. In order to even partially keep...

Ship with 700 tons of gold ore disappears off Russia MOSCOW – A vessel with a nine-person crew and 700 tons of gold ore onboard has disappeared in stormy seas off Russia's Pacific Coast. The ship sent a distress call on Sunday as it was sailing from the coastal town of Neran to Feklistov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. The vessel, hired by mining company Polymetal, was carrying 700 tons of gold ore from one deposit to another where it was to be processed. Gold ore is the material from which gold is extracted and contains only a small...

____________________________________________________ -h/t Donna-

Story after story has come out showing the populace somewhat evenly divided between the two Presidential candidates. However, on the street where the "real" people live, we all know the story is VERY different from the polls. The ONLY people I hear advocating for the Democrat Party are the individuals like the "Obama gave us a cellphone" woman and they do not make up a significant part of the population. Very few cars now sport Obama stickers anymore. They've all been peeled off. The invective used by people when discussing the Democrat Party and Obama is severe. The only conclusion...

Talk about sticky-fingered thieves. They've struck in Quebec, snatching millions of dollars worth of maple syrup from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, between Montreal and Quebec City. Up to 10 million pounds of syrup was in the warehouse, according to a statement from the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which bills itself as keeper of the global strategic maple syrup reserve.

Updated: 9/3/2012 12:59:32 PM U-Haul truck carrying Biden gear stolen in Detroit DETRIOT (WLS) - A U-Haul truck carrying equipment for Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign event in Detroit Monday was stolen this weekend, ABC News confirmed with United States Secret Service. Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, told ABC News the truck carrying equipment was stolen between late Saturday night and early Sunday morning at the Westin Hotel in Detroit. He would not specify what kind of equipment was in the truck.

Texas Man Finds Stolen Car 42 Years LaterBy ALON HARISH | Good Morning America – 13 hrs ago Bob Russell could not be blamed for losing hope that he would reunite with his 1967 Austin-Healey. Stolen outside his Philadelphia apartment 42 years ago, the British roadster seemed a lost cause. But thanks to the Internet and some creative police work, Russell has his pride and joy back. When Russell, then a graduate student at Temple University, returned home the morning after a date with his future wife, his car was nowhere to be found. For decades since, he searched for...

Court tosses law about false claims on medals Published June 28, 2012 Associated Press WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a federal law making it a crime to lie about receiving the Medal of Honor and other prized military awards, with justices branding the false claim "contemptible" but nonetheless protected by the First Amendment. The court voted 6-3 in favor of Xavier Alvarez, a former local elected official in California who falsely said he was a decorated war veteran and had pleaded guilty to violating the 2006 law, known as the Stolen Valor Act. The law, enacted...