Free Republic

RICHMOND — Virginia Republicans will reject Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s pick for the state’s newest Supreme Court justice and install their own choice, igniting a political firestorm that will come to a head when lawmakers return to Richmond in two weeks. McAuliffe’s nominee, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush, has already been sworn in, meaning Republicans will take the rare step of unseating a justice after she has taken the bench. Leaders of the GOP-controlled General Assembly announced they plan to elect Virginia Court of Appeals Judge Rossie D. Alston, Jr., who previously served on the Prince William County circuit...

WASHINGTON -- One person was killed in a crash involving a stolen ambulance in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Sunday. Mark Brady, a spokesman with the Prince George's County Fire Department, says that an ambulance from the Branchville Volunteer Fire Station was coming back after dropping a patient off at a hospital in Montgomery County when they saw a vehicle run off the Capital Beltway near Interstate 95 at about 5:30 p.m. When they stopped to help, Brady says, the driver of the vehicle attacked two of the ambulance crew, kicked them out and stole the ambulance. The thief drove the ambulance...

U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) has fired off a letter to the Secretary of Defense, bringing his attention to what she called a "disturbing Facebook page," which includes many negative comments and photos denigrating women in the Marine Corps. NBC Bay Area is not showing all these photos because they are inappropriate, but one shows a woman's breasts and her fingers flipping someone off in an image that is labeled "F'N Wook," and another shows a female Marine putting a colleague in a choke hold with the words, "This is my rape face." Speier said she did not know...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - D.C. police say 11 people have been taken to the hospital after a drive-by shooting outside an apartment complex in northwest Washington.</p> <p>Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham says 11 people reported some sort of injury in the Monday morning shooting on North Capitol Street.</p>

NEWPORT — Cars and trucks filled the parking lot of Atlas Tactical on Tuesday, a small Giles County gun shop on the side of U.S. 460 not far from Virginia Tech. Customers filled out forms for instant background checks and brought in used guns to trade for new ones, particularly the popular AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Shop owner Brooke Stallings said she sold three of the military-style rifles on Tuesday alone. And she said sales of all firearms in the shop were up over the weekend following the tragic shootings in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza, 20, killed his mother, Nancy Lanza,...

KABUL — Hundreds of Afghan protesters took to the streets on Friday, setting fire to an effigy of US President Barack Obama and demanding the death of a film-maker who they say insulted the Prophet Mohammed. The demonstration in Nangarhar province, which borders Kabul to the west and Pakistan to the east, saw clerics in the Shinwari tribe call for a $100,000 bounty on the head of the producer of the film, "Innocence of Muslims". An Obama effigy was also torched, said Zaher Ali, deputy chief of Ghanikhail district's council of clerics, but the protest passed off peacefully and fears...

The Iranian Students' News Agency quoted the head of the government's emergency centre, Gholamreza Masoumi, as announcing the casualty figures. A local official in the area told ISNA that six villages had been completely destroyed and 60 villages had been 50 to 70 percent destroyed. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the first quake at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60 km (37 miles) northeast of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9 km (6.2 miles). A second quake measuring 6.3 struck 49 km (30 miles) northeast of Tabriz 11 minutes later at a similar depth. The second...

Facebook stock plunged to an all-time low of nearly half its IPO price Thursday, but it's not just investors feeling the pinch: The state of California stands to lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the fallout, state analysts say. Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers in June approved a $91 billion budget that included $1.9 billion in expected tax revenue from Facebook employees striking it rich -- a rare projection that helped stave off cuts to schools and programs for the sick, poor and disabled. But Facebook's stock price dipped below $20 a share for the first time Thursday...

Last week I told you that Lenny B. Robinson — I unmasked him as the Route 29 Batman after he was stopped by police in his Lamborghini this spring — had just picked up his new $200,000 Batmobile in Canada and was driving cross-country visiting sick children in hospitals. He was doing so, I wrote, even after the horrible massacre in Colorado during the opening of “The Dark Knight Rises” at a theater in Aurora. “I will continue to portray this iconic superhero, giving courage to sick children around the world that need it most,” he wrote on the Facebook...

The Justice Department’s inspector general found at least seven instances of federal employees engaging in illegal attempts to hire family members at the agency, according to a report issued Thursday. The report is the third investigation in less than a decade that has found numerous examples of illegal hiring practices, amounting to nepotism, within the DOJ.

WASHINGTON — Washington's delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said a rally being held on the National Mall by conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck will "change nothing," unlike Martin Luther King's march 47 years ago. <snip> Norton said she . . . also remembered being at the March on Washington, which she said prompted change and ended segregation in public spaces. "Glenn Beck's march will change nothing," Norton said, adding he has "March on Washington envy."

Brian Cowen's critics might say that they've heard all of his speeches before. Last night, they would have been right. As the Irish Taoiseach delivered his St Patrick's Day speech at a White House dinner party, it emerged that he was accidentally reading off the teleprompter one made by President Obama only minutes earlier. "We begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States," he began and continued in that vein for about 20 seconds before - realising he was experiencing more than the usual case of déjà vu - he looked back at the US President and...

WASHINGTON - Two officials in the D.C.'s Office of the Chief Technology Officer have been arrested in a federal bribery sting, sources tell WTOP. D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer employees Sushil Bansal and 40-year-old Yusuf Acar have been arrested, sources tell WTOP. Acar was taken into custody Thursday morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest D.C. The FBI is now serving a search warrant at the office of D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer, WTOP has learned. "We are there as part of a continuing ongoing criminal investigation," FBI Washington Field Office spokesperson Katherine Schweit tells WTOP. Schweit...

WASILLA, ALASKA (Dec. 19) - The mother of the man engaged to Gov. Sarah Palin's teenage daughter was arrested at her home as part of an undercover drug investigation Thursday, according to the Anchorage Daily News. The newspaper reports that Sherry L. Johnston, 42, the mother of Levi Johnston, faces six felony counts of "misconduct involving a controlled substance." The arrest came after Alaska State Troopers searched her home. Law enforcement officials released little information to the paper, saying the investigation was continuing. The charges against Johnston include second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance, which the Daily News says generally...

The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a young woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle isn't immune from civil liability because the care she rendered wasn't medical. The divided high court appeared to signal that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued. Lisa Torti of Northridge allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by Alexandra Van Horn by yanking her "like a rag doll" from the wrecked car on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Torti...

Since war became a geographically distant but very real way of life after Sept. 11, 2001, no Hollywood star has stepped up to support active duty U.S. military personnel and wounded veterans like Gary Sinise. There is no close second. And quietly, as is in his nature, he is becoming something akin to this generation´s Bob Hope. One step in conferring this worthy title on the award-winning actor, director and producer occurred last week when President Bush bestowed on him the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian honor awarded to citizens for exemplary deeds performed in service of the...

(Woodbridge, VA) -- There will be no school on Inauguration Day, January 20th, in Prince William County and Manassas Park. The Prince William School Board voted Wednesday to open schools on Presidents Day, February 16th, to accommodate the January 20th closing. The school board also decided that they will repeat this year's change every four years. In exchange for Manassas Park schools closing on January 20th, schools will be open January 26th, which had been scheduled as a teacher workday. Manassas Park has not decided whether to follow Prince William's lead on making a similar change every four years. Manassas...

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (Dec. 3) - The family of a worker trampled to death in a "Black Friday" crush of bargain hunters at a Long Island Wal-Mart store filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming store ads offering deep discounts "created an atmosphere of competition and anxiety" that led to "crowd craze." The lawsuit claims that besides failing to provide adequate security for a pre-dawn crowd estimated at 2,000, Wal-Mart "engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem and was otherwise careless, reckless and negligent." <snip> In...

In March we introduced you to Mehbooba Ahadyar, a 19-year-old runner who was expected to be the only female on Afghanistan's Olympic team. She has qualified in the 1500 meters and the 3000 meters, and she was a source of great pride to many Afghan women, who were not permitted to participate in sports under the Taliban. But now Ahadyar is missing. Time Magazine reports that Ahadyar was training in Italy with other Olympic athletes when she disappeared, apparently voluntarily, taking her bags and her passport with her. "It was quite a surprise to us," a spokesman for the worldwide...

District police are warning people in the Grover Park and Cleveland Park neighborhoods to make sure their doors and windows at night after investigators linked three sexual assaults in the past two months. Police say women were attacked May 16, May 25 and June 26 in Northwest. Investigators say in each incident, a woman was awakened early in the morning by a man who got into their homes by unknown methods. The first incident happened in the 2400 block of Huidekoper Place, the second in the 3000 block of Newark Street and the third happened in the 2400 block of...