Free Republic

LAS VEGAS - O.J. Simpson must face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from an alleged sports memorabilia heist, a justice of the peace ruled Wednesday. Justice of the Peace Joe M. Bonaventure ruled after a preliminary hearing of the charges and arguments against the case by attorneys for Simpson and co-defendants Clarence "C.J." Stewart and Charles "Charlie" Ehrlich. "This is what we expected," Simpson told The Associated Press before he left the courtroom. "If I have any disappointment it's that I wish a jury was here. As always, I rely on the jury system." No charges...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears. "Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home," she said. Adrian McKinnon sent his wife to see her sister while he inspected the piles left behind. As he walked back into the sunroom, a man walked through the back door straight...

WEEHAWKEN, N.J. -- George Clooney suffered a broken rib and some scrapes on Friday when the motorcycle he and a friend were riding collided with a car as the actor tried to pass the other vehicle, authorities said. Weehawken Police Sgt. Sean Kelly said the collision occurred at 3:30 p.m. as Clooney and friend Sarah Larson were traveling north on Boulevard East and sped up to pass on the right a 1999 Mazda Millenia that was preparing to make a right turn. Kelly said it is not known if the driver of the other vehicle, who has not been identified,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign said Monday it will return $850,000 in donations raised by Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who is under federal investigation for violating election laws. Clinton, D-N.Y., previously had planned only to give to charity $23,000 she received from Hsu for her presidential and senatorial campaigns and to her political action committee, HillPac. The FBI is investigating whether Hsu paid so-called straw donors to send campaign contributions to Clinton and other candidates, a law enforcement official said Monday. --

Dustin Chester was job hunting Tuesday — a day after The Home Depot fired him and the general manager for thwarting a thief from running away with a pocket full of stolen cash. Last week, the 24-year-old department manager confronted a man who was standing by a soda machine in front of the Murfreesboro store off Old Fort Parkway holding a crowbar and a wad of cash. When the suspect started running, Chester said his instincts took over. "When he ran, I ran after him," he said. Chester caught the thief and restrained him in the parking lot until police...

Elderly man awakens from beating, fires gun and hits alleged assailant The Associated Press Updated: 5:15 p.m. CT July 27, 2007 EL DORADO, Ark. - An elderly man beaten unconscious by an assailant wielding a soda can awoke and shot the man during an attempted robbery, police said. Willie Lee Hill, 93, told police he saw the robber while in his bedroom Wednesday night. Hill confronted the man and was struck at least 50 times, police said. He was knocked unconscious. Covered in blood, Hill regained consciousness a short time later and pulled a .38-caliber handgun on his attacker. The...

HOUSTON (AP) - A state lawmaker who opposed a bill giving Texans stronger right to defend themselves with deadly force pulled a gun and shot a man he says was trying to steal copper wiring from a construction site, police said Monday. Rep. Borris Miles told police he was fixing a leak on the second floor of the Houston house he's building Sunday night when he heard a noise downstairs and saw two men trying to steal the copper. After Miles confronted the pair, one of the men threw a pocketknife at him, Houston Police spokesman Victor Senties. Miles, a...

MILWAUKEE- A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart. Two men robbed a U-Haul store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed. "He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey baby, you're pretty fine.'" According to Sobocinski, one robber went behind the counter, put...

A thief fleeing a jewelry store was killed when his bicycle was struck by a bus, police said. Authorities said the 42-year-old man snatched a $2,000 gold chain from the Bronx jewelry store on Friday and was making his getaway. A store clerk and two bystanders were chasing the man on foot when he pedaled into an intersection and was hit by a fast-moving bus, police said. The suspect was taken to a hospital, where he died from head injuries. Five passengers who were jostled when the bus slammed on its brakes were also examined at the hospital. "He lost...

Scandal: By voluntarily surrendering his law license, Clinton White House aide Sandy Berger has avoided cross-examination in Trouser-gate. This is the behavior of a man who's still hiding something. The former national security adviser is guilty of stealing classified documents, but it seems there's be more here than the simple or inadvertent theft of few innocuous papers. Berger admitted that while reviewing top-secret dossiers from the Clinton years in the National Archives in preparation for his 2003 testimony before the 9/11 Commission hearings, he stuffed five copies of a memo linked to the Clinton administration's record on terrorism in his...

Teacher Accused Of Stealing Student's Coat, Putting It On eBay By HOLLY DANKS And MELISSA NAVAS  — Thursday May 03, 2007   Teacher Elizabeth Logan is accused of stealing a third-grader's coat and trying to sell it on eBay     HILLSBORO, Ore. — "I told her, 'Be sure not to lose this coat,''' the third-grader's mother remembers reminding the girl."It's expensive, and I usually didn't let her wear it to school. But it was cold.''The 8-year-old promised. But on Jan. 10 she came home in tears. She had become warm during recess on the Jackson Elementary School playground and took...

Maine Mouse taunts man, steals his dentures Never underestimate a mouse's determination. There's a mouse in Bill Exner's house that he says he has captured three times. Each time, the mouse escaped, and the last time the rodent made off with his lower dentures. Exner, 68, of Waterville, Maine, said he and his wife Shirley scoured his bedroom after the dentures disappeared from his night stand. ---ADVERTISEMENT--- "We moved the bed, moved the dressers and the night stand and tore the closet apart," he said. "I said, 'I knew that little stinker stole my teeth' - I just knew it."...

A 62-year-old woman known as the "Black Widow" is being held in a North Carolina jail on $1.5 million bond for relatively petty charges, while police race to unravel a web of mysteries — including the deaths of her two husbands and a female "best friend" — before time runs out and "she's outta here."

Until two years ago, the Roman Catholic diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., ran audits of its parishes only when they changed pastors. It was a risky, even foolhardy policy when you consider that a parish like St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, in Delray Beach, hadn't changed pastors in 40 years. In September 2003, upon the retirement of St. Vincent's pastor, the Rev. John Skehan, diocesan accountant Denis Hamel dutifully showed up to inspect the books and the procedures for counting Sunday collections. The new pastor, the Rev. Francis Guinan--a close buddy of Skehan's--told him to beat it. But the new...

Comedian Al Franken said today he will run for U.S. Senate in 2008, confirming his long-suspected plans to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. Franken's announcement came on the final day of his radio show on Air America. The former "Saturday Night Live'' performer's celebrity instantly makes him a heavyweight contender and brings national attention to the Minnesota race. "Minnesotans have a right to be skeptical about whether I'm ready for this challenge, and to wonder how seriously I would take the responsibility that I'm asking you to give me,'' Franken said in a video clip...

WASHINGTON. Some classified documents that were unlawfully removed from the National Archives three years ago may never have reached their intended destination -- the Sept. 11 commission, a House Republican report concluded Tuesday. The report contradicted Justice Department conclusions that the commission received all the necessary documents. The records were reviewed at the archives by the Clinton administration's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty in April 2005 to unlawfully removing several documents.

Investigation into pilfered documents reveals former president signed letter President Bill Clinton signed a letter authorizing former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later came up missing, according to a newly released investigation report by the National Archives and Records Administration. The sensitive drafts of the National Security Council's "Millennium After Action Review" on the Clinton administration's handling of the al-Qaida terror threats in December 1999 suspiciously disappeared after Berger said he intended to "determine if Executive Privilege needed to be exerted prior to documents being provided to the 9/11 Commission." Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft testified...

Scandalous new details of how Bill Clinton’s national security advisor schemed to remove highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives paint the picture of a desperate man who tried to bully a trash collector into helping him commit the crime. Sandy Berger took the sensitive documents in 2003 as he prepared to testify, on behalf of the Clinton Administration, before the September 11 Commission. He stole the documents, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to get a trash collector to retrieve them. Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing the classified files and got a tiny slap...

Bill Clinton's former National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, has already recanted his initial claim that he removed documents from the National Archives "inadvertently" back in 2003 while preparing for testimony to the 9/11 Commission. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2005 and paid a $50,000 fine. But now the report of the Archives' Inspector General has come to light, and it suggests Mr. Berger knew he was engaged in a bit of hugger-mugger when he secreted the after-action memos he was reviewing out of the building. According to the report, obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of...

Equal Justice: Sandy Berger deliberately pilfered and hid classified documents. So why is Scooter Libby the one facing prison time? And why aren't these docs on the front page of the New York Times? National Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfield on Wednesday released a report showing that in 2004 Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, "knowingly removed classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and stored and retained such documents at places," including temporarily under a construction trailer outside the main National Archives building. This seems to blatantly contradict the feeble mea culpa Berger issued when in the...