Free Republic

The nation's largest single immigration raid, resulting in nearly 400 arrests earlier this week, violated the constitutional rights of workers at a meatpacking plant, a federal lawsuit says. The lawsuit accuses the government of arbitrary and indefinite detention. It seeks to prevent the government from moving the arrested workers out-of-state as their cases wend through the system. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said he couldn't comment on the lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of about 147 of the workers rounded up Monday at an Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant. The lawsuit was filed against the Immigration and Customs...

Police in Jonesboro say Brian D. Bass, 39, left the half-eaten candy bar on a counter at the Cato Animal Hospital during a Jan. 24 robbery. Detective Jason Simpkins says police sent the chocolate and peanut treat to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock, where scientists pulled off a DNA sample. Simpkins says that sample matched Bass, who now faces felony commercial burglary and theft charges. Sheriff's deputies said Bass remained in Craighead County jail Friday in lieu of $50,000 bond. However, the Snickers bar apparently did not alleviate Bass' hunger. "It was also discovered that the suspect involved...

A 19-year-old flight attendant angry at having to work a route set a fire in an airplane bathroom, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing, authorities say. Eder Rojas, of Woodbury, Minn., was arrested in Minneapolis on Wednesday. He is being prosecuted in Fargo, where the Compass Airlines flight with 72 passengers and four crew members landed safely on May 7, after smoke filled the back. No injuries were reported. Officials said the plane was flying from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan. Court documents said Rojas told authorities he was upset at the airline for making him work that route....

In his tranquil suburban neighborhood, Brodkorb for the last year has used his blog "Minnesota Democrats Exposed" to launch a furious political assault on Franken. He's labeled the former comedian and liberal commentator a "mean-spirited and un-Minnesotan" candidate who's running a "desperate and ridiculous" campaign. That's routine stuff in the world of political blogging, but in the last two months Brodkorb has scored two direct hits that have the Franken campaign reeling. Brodkorb scooped the traditional media by detailing extensive bookkeeping problems in New York and California that ultimately prompted Franken, this week, to pay about $70,000 in back taxes...

<p>A Tennessee couple who lost their son in Iraq want an Arizona merchant to pay more than $40 billion in damages to survivors of soldiers whose names are on the anti-war shirts he is selling online.</p> <p>A complaint seeking class-action status for the lawsuit by Robin and Michael Read says Dan Frazier of Flagstaff has no right to profit from commercial sale of products that use the dead soldiers' names without permission.</p>

American consumers are experiencing the trickle-down effects of the lack of food. People in Haiti, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen and other countries have taken to the streets in recent weeks and months to protest the rising costs of food. The causes are many, including rising fuel prices, the diversion of land to grow biofuel instead of food crops and droughts in Australia, one of the world's main producers of wheat. Additionally, the global population is growing, notably in places such as India and China, where increasing prosperity has allowed more people to buy more and finer food....

The parents of a Tennessee soldier killed in Iraq are suing an Arizona online merchant who included their son's name on anti-war shirts that list names of troops killed in the war. The lawsuit filed by Robin and Michael Read of Greeneville, Tenn., accuses Dan Frazier of Flagstaff of intentionally inflicting emotional harm by including Spc. Brandon Michael Read's name on casualty lists printed on "Bush lied — They died" T-shirts without permission and by ignoring a demand to remove their son's name. The suit seeks $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages. It also asks that Frazier be permanently...

Here are some of the things members of the sect told me about life on the YFZ Ranch – which stands for Yearn For Zion – in Eldorado, Texas: They won’t talk about what goes on inside their temple. They do consider themselves Mormons. They consider jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs a prophet appointed directly by God. They remain evasive when the subject of underage marriage comes up. They don’t call them "arranged marriages." They call them "placement marriages." They claim, again, the bride has the right to say "no" to the marriage. They admit to having multiple wives. It’s...

The Coast Guard launched an intensive search Wednesday for a 44-year-old male passenger of a Carnival cruise ship who disappeared near Cozumel, Mexico, during a seven-day trip, FOX's WSVN Miami reported. Authorities believe the man, who wasn't identified, might have fallen overboard the Carnival Victory, according to WSVN. He vanished after about 1 a.m. Tuesday, when the ship was 38 miles northeast of the coast of Cozumel. "Yesterday evening during a seven-day cruise aboard the Carnival Victory, shortly after the vessel had departed Cozumel, Mexico, a 44-year-old male guest was reported missing by a member of his family who had...

Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist. Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun. He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade. "This...

The next generation of new cars and trucks will need to meet a fleet average of 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, the Bush administration proposed, seeking more fuel-efficient vehicles in the face of high gasoline prices and concerns over global warming. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters outlined the plan on Tuesday — Earth Day — setting a schedule that was more aggressive than initially expected by the auto industry. It responds to a new energy law that requires new cars and trucks, taken as a collective average, to meet 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

A driver nailed by a roving radar truck in San Jose is taking his case to court in hopes of getting back the money he spent on speeding tickets and increases in insurance costs for himself and others mailed fines by the city. The city killed the program that put white radar photo vans on the streets to cut down on speeding after questions were raised in 2006 about the legality of having city engineers - not cops - write citations. But that was after officials had issued about $5 million worth of tickets through the decade-old program. In 2006...

The Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said it was concerned that the basic rights of the children and mothers connected to a Texas polygamist ranch were violated during a recent raid and custody hearing. The ACLU said it had a representative at the court hearing and the organization was concerned about human rights violations. "While we acknowledge that Judge Walther's task may be unprecedented in Texas judicial history, we question whether the current proceedings adequately protect the fundamental rights of the mothers and children," Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said in a written...

Iceland is in trouble, as Mark Landler writes. Inflation is threatening to spiral out of control, so the central bank has raised short-term interest rates to an exorbitant level. Investments abroad have gone to the dogs, and Iceland’s banks look very vulnerable. Is this a story of the global economy run amok, or is there a lesson to be learned? Iceland is a very small country, with a population of just over 300,000 people. But foreign investment and a strong currency led to an economic boom that has lasted since the early 1990s, a boom that also allowed Iceland’s top...

Eighteen pork plant workers in Minnesota, at least five in Indiana and one in Nebraska have come down with a mysterious neurological condition they appear to have contracted while removing brains from slaughtered pigs, U.S. researchers and health officials said on Wednesday. They said the illness is a new disorder that causes a range of symptoms, from inflammation of the spinal cord to mild weakness, fatigue, numbness and tingling in the arms and legs. "As far as we are aware it is a brand new disorder," said Dr. Daniel Lachance of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who presented his...

Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Barack Obama supporter, apologized to John McCain Tuesday for suggesting to a West Virginia newspaper that the Arizona senator does not care about “the lives of people” caught in the wars he champions, dating back to his Navy service in Vietnam. The apology came after Barack Obama’s campaign swiftly criticized the West Virginia senator for the remarks quoted Monday in his hometown newspaper. Rockefeller told The Charleston Gazette that McCain is too far removed from the repercussions of war to deal with them. “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet....

Aer Lingus and United Airlines have today announced that they will commence a codeshare agreement that will enable seamless booking on each other's flights from November 1, 2008. The agreement was signed by Aer Lingus CEO Dermot Mannion and United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton in Chicago. The codeshare agreement will cover all seven of Aer Lingus' U.S. gateways resulting in significant benefits for Aer Lingus customers, by providing access to over 200 additional destinations in the U.S. market on the United Airlines network. U.S. customers will also benefit from greater access to destinations in Ireland and, through Aer Lingus' extensive...

BP PLC and ConocoPhillips said Tuesday they will team on building a natural gas pipeline connecting Alaska to Alberta, Canada, and then to the lower 48 states if needed. The Denali pipeline, which is expected to carry about 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to markets, will cost about $600 million to reach the first major project milestone, an open season, before the end of 2010, the companies said.

A 70-year-old man attacked an 81-year-old man with a pricing gun inside a Wal-Mart, according to an arrest report. The report said Dennis O'Brien and John Esposito began arguing Sunday and O'Brien swung at Esposito with the tool in his right hand. Authorities say Esposito suffered a swollen left eye and cuts on his nose and mouth. Esposito said both he and O'Brien worked at Wal-Mart. He would not discuss the nature of their argument. The report says O'Brien told a sheriff's deputy he acted in self-defense, but security tape showed O'Brien raising his hand first, striking Esposito in the...

The International Olympic Committee will discuss whether to terminate the international leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay if the event, already marred by radical anti-Chinese protests in London and Paris, is disrupted further in San Francisco, the next stage, sources close to the situation said Tuesday. The relay will continue in San Francisco but the entire situation surrounding the event will change if further disruption involving injuries occurs in the U.S. city, the sources said. Asked about the possibility of the IOC ending the remaining portion of the relay, IOC President Jacques Rogge told a news conference in Beijing...