Free Republic

Oh my: Michelle Obama electioneering in polling place? posted at 7:15 pm on October 14, 2010 by Allahpundit regular view When Drudge puts up the red font — with italics, no less — we’re almost obliged to blog it, aren’t we? I’m … outrageously outraged?

Top Russian mobster Ivankov dies October 10, 2009 One of Russia's most notorious mafia kingpins, Vyacheslav Ivankov, known by his nickname of Yaponchik, or Little Japanese, has died in Moscow after suffering serious injuries in an assassination attempt in July. "Investigators have received official confirmation from a Moscow clinic of the death of Vyacheslav Ivankov," the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office said in a statement on Friday. Ivankov was shot in the stomach as he left a glitzy Thai restaurant in Moscow on July 28. The shot was fired by a sniper who hid 70 metres away in...

ROSENDALE — A town justice on Thursday dismissed the harassment charge against U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey that was filed by a man who claimed the congressman struck him on the head during the Rosendale Street Festival. The judge, Robert N. Vosper Jr., said the alleged action did not rise to the level of criminal prosecution. He also cited the probability that no charge would have been filed had Hinchey, D-Hurley, not been a public official. Vosper, in a decision dated Wednesday but not handed down until Thursday afternoon, said Hinchey should not be held to "any higher standard than any...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Carlo Gambino are long gone. Murder Inc. is out of business. Las Vegas has been so cleaned up it resembles Disneyland. And Havana? Forget about it since Castro took over. But Albert “Chinky” Facchiano, at 96, is still standing. And like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather III,” he is still very much involved in the family business, according to the FBI. At an age when most people are long retired and happy just to be alive, the reputed mobster was indicted earlier this year in Florida and New York. He is...

It may not be all uphill for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in a run for president. The former first lady - who already appears unbeatable in her re-election bid this fall - has come out as the top Democratic White House hopeful, according to a Time magazine poll released on the publication's Web site today. According to the poll - which will hit newsstands tomorrow - Clinton would be the only Dem to make it a real race against GOP favorite Sen. John McCain. The poll shows a statistical dead heat, with McCain getting 49 percent of the vote to...

CHICAGO - The reputed mob boss known as "Joey the Clown" lived up to his nickname Tuesday, making wisecracks in court as he pleaded not guilty to conspiring in the slayings of 18 people. "Joey," whose real name is Joseph Lombardo, had spent nine months on the lam from federal agents before the hearing. Federal Judge James B. Zagel asked if he had seen a doctor lately. "I was supposed to see him nine months ago, but I was — what do they call it? — I was unavailable," rasped Lombardo, who appeared in an orange prison jumpsuit and leg...

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. - Henry Hill, the former mobster immortalized in "Goodfellas," was sentenced Monday to 180 days in jail for threatening his wife and another man last summer. The judge ordered the sentence to be served concurrently with a six-month term Hill is already serving for attempted methamphetamine possession. Hill pleaded no contest to making terroristic threats. Hill, portrayed by Ray Liotta in the 1990 mob movie, was also given credit for time served after Hill's wife and the other victim wrote letters on his behalf. The victims told the judge they didn't want Hill to receive additional jail...

CHICAGO (AP) — Fugitive reputed mob boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo will surrender if he gets a separate trial on charges that he and other organized crime figures plotted at least 18 unsolved murders, according to a letter made public by his attorney. The letter was sent to attorney Rick Halprin and addressed to U.S. District Judge James Zagel. Halprin said the handwritten, four-page note appears to have been signed by his client. He called federal authorities Tuesday morning after an aide in his office opened the letter, which was postmarked in Chicago on Monday. "I recognize the signature,"...

A Columbia College student took this photo of reputed mob boss Joseph "the Clown" Lombardo-- without knowing who he was--for a school project just over a year ago. The dapper old man on the bicycle looked pretty classy, so Columbia College student Val Carpenter pulled over and asked if she could take his photograph for her class project. "He said sure, he struck a pose--he actually posed," Carpenter, 42, said Tuesday, shortly after she realized the photo she took along Grand Avenue about a year ago was apparently reputed Chicago mob boss Joey "the Clown" Lombardo. The feds wish...

<p>STRANGE CELL-FELLOW: Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the '93 WTC bombing, in 1996, when he began spilling to a jail "friend."</p> <p>April 11, 2004 -- The 9/11 commission has been given an FBI report detailing mobster-turned-spy Gregory Scarpa Jr.'s 1996 prison exchanges with terrorist Ramzi Yousef. The Post's Al Guart reports how a Brooklyn hood became America's unlikely agent in the war on terror.</p>

Mobster gunned down with cigar in hand November 26, 2003 - 11:50AM A New England mobster has been murdered in a scene out of a Hollywood gangster movie, shot dead with his cigar still in his hand after his weekly game of cards at a social club. Adolfo 'Al' Bruno, 57, died in a hail of bullets in the car park outside the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society club in the Massachusetts town of Springfield. Bruno, reputed to be a senior local member of the New York-based Genovese crime family, was shot in the chin, neck, elbow, cheek and...

<p>TRENTON -- Employees at the state Parole Board and the Attorney General's Office are talking about how state investigators, who are looking into whether the governor's office was involved in the parole of reputed mobster Angelo Prisco, damaged a computer believed to contain evidence in the case, sources have told the Gannett State Bureau.</p>

<p>TRENTON -- An angry Gov. McGreevey yesterday welcomed a federal probe into whether someone in his office had secretly helped a reputed mob boss get paroled from state prison.</p> <p>McGreevey said allegations that a top aide helped alleged mobster Angelo Prisco regain his freedom are the result of disgruntled former state Parole Board executives trying to retaliate against him for letting them go.</p>