Free Republic

Alan Dershowitz is one of the premier civil liberties attorneys in the country. He is the author of Trumped Up: How Criminalizing Politics is Dangerous to Democracy and The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace. Dershowitz has been a longtime supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. It's been decades since the ACLU was a truly non-partisan organization dedicated to the maintenance of our constitutional rights. But, as Dershowitz points out in this op-ed he penned for The Hill, the ACLU has now made it official policy to intervene in partisan politics. A...

Not So Honorable: Docs Show Mueller’s FBI Denied Justice To Four Innocent Men 4:18 AM 06/05/2018 Howie Carr | Host, 'The Howie Carr Show' As FBI director in 2002, Special Counsel Robert Mueller directed his agents to oppose the pardons of four wrongfully imprisoned men because exculpatory evidence was merely “fodder for cross-examination,” newly revealed FBI documents show. Four years later, the four men, or their estates, were awarded $102 million by a federal judge in Boston for their wrongful decades-long imprisonment due to FBI misconduct. Mueller ordered the Boston FBI office to answer a request to him from the...

Police had reason to believe violence would occur, but failed to intervene. Twin Peaks management didn’t take proper precautions to protect customers. One state law enforcement agency was kept completely in the dark. It’s been more than two years since one of the deadliest criminal shootouts in American history. But the bloody clash involving motorcyclists at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco continues to be shrouded by a veil of secrecy. Criminal trials are scheduled to start next week, and thanks to a trove of leaked documents obtained by the Texas Standard, we now gain a fascinating insight into the...

It is unlikely that any of the Waco Twin Peaks criminal conspiracy cases will be resolved before Monday, July 31, 2017. That is the date when federal prosecutors now must present their witness lists to defense attorneys in a federal racketeering case titled United States v. Portillo et al. That indictment in that case never once mentions the Waco biker brawl of May 17, 2015 but charges former Bandidos vice president John Xavier Portillo, former club president Jeffrey Fay Pike, sergeant at arms Justin Cole Forster and club member Frederick Cortez with “various overt racketeering acts including…War with Cossacks Outlaw...

Was wondering why almost no stories appear about IRS raids on individuals and/or businesses? We know they take place, but seldom see stories about such. Have they persuaded the MSM not report such? Just wondering...

Three Waco police officers were cleared Wednesday of wrongdoing in the May 17, 2015, Twin Peaks shootout that left nine people dead and 18 wounded. “Our department, along with numerous local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, has worked tirelessly on the still ongoing investigation of Twin Peaks,” Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said in a statement. “We have completed an exhaustive internal investigation on the officer involved portion of the incident which was reviewed by the Texas Rangers. The three officers have been cleared by the investigation, and the action of the grand jury affirms those findings.” The...

A Waco biker indicted in the Twin Peaks shootout wants to go to trial first and as quickly as possible as a "test case" to prove that prosecutors are working under a "flawed" legal theory, the man;s attorney said Monday. Houston attorney Paul C. Looney, who represents Cody Ledbetter, filed a motion Monday requesting "the earliest possible trial setting" for Ledbetter, a 26-year-old auto mechanic and a member of the Cossacks biker group. Ledbetter was among 106 bikers indicted Nov. 10 on first-degree felony engaging in organized criminal activity charges. > MORE: Grand jury indicts 106 bikers in connection with...

Whatever happened to all those Waco bikers? You know, the 177 people arrested at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas after a motorcycle rally on May 17 ended with nine people shot dead? Immediately following the shooting, I wrote about just how badly Waco authorities screwed up the arrests. Rather than trifle with technicalities like the rules for bail under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Justice of the Peace Pete Peterson set bail at a staggering $1 million for each of the arrestees in order to “send a message.” Then I described how prosecuting nearly 200 bikers was...

Come on. How many will truly be surprised to see the American Civil Liberties Union backpedal away from an enumerated civil right in the Constitution, now that the cognoscenti considers it a form of bigotry? I feel so old. I remember when the ACLU was a civil liberties organization. http://t.co/oe1EiYAXja— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 27, 2015 @Popehat @Lorienen @ACLU well now that Christians use it the ACLU can't support it— Clarence Whorley (@ClarenceWhorley) June 27, 2015 The organization that once went to court to ensure that the American Nazi Party could parade through Skokie, Illinois in an exercise of free...

Serious constitutional and civil rights questions have been raised regarding the blanket fill-in-the-blank arrests of 170 bikers in the wake of the Waco Twin Peaks shooting and the subsequent excessive bail that was set. Breitbart Texas investigative reporter Lee Stranahan and KTSA radio talkshow host Trey Ware recently discussed some of these issues on Ware’s morning show. Ware, a self-admitted motorcycle enthusiast, opened the segment saying, “I have probably a greater interest in this story than most. But, it extends beyond motorcycles. My interest in this goes into civil rights. Now, I have no clue how many of those men...

About five people who say they are part of a group called "Come and Take It" showed up at the rally openly carrying rifles. They said they do not own motorcycles and arrived in cars. Many of the bikers took pictures, gathered and chatted while holding their signs. By 2:45 p.m. many of the bikers had left the area. Update 1:56 p.m.: McLennan County Sheriff's Capt. John Kolinek says there are about 500 bikers gathered for the rally and protest in front of the courthouse. Groups are still arriving, however. Many are carrying signs demanding freedom for the bikers that...

An Austin attorney on Thursday filed a petition asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to intervene in the release of more than 100 bikers that have remained incarcerated since the deadly May 17 shooting in Waco that killed nine. Austin attorney Keith S. Hampton is asking the court to order the district judge who presides over the Waco region to start arrangingbond hearings for the bikers still in McLennan County Jail on $1 million bails. To help with the large amount of suspects, the bond hearings would be conducted by judges outside McLennan County. “If the county gets deluged...

First came a few pistol shots, several witnesses said, then a barrage of rifle fire during the shootout last month at a Waco restaurant favored by bikers. But authorities still have not said how many of the dead and wounded were the result of police fire. Police have identified only one assault weapon, a semi-automatic gun that fires high-powered ammunition, among the firearms confiscated from bikers, and that was found in a locked car after the shooting ended.

Senior Judge Doug Shaver of Houston denied a motion to recuse McLennan County judges Matt Johnson and Ralph Strother from hearing cases involving the bikers who were arrested after the shootout. Shaver also encouraged local officials to expedite bond hearings for the bikers who remain jailed. As of Thursday morning, prosecutors and defense attorneys said they had negotiated the release of 58 of the bikers on reduced bonds. Return here for updates and read the full story in Friday's Tribune-Herald. Earlier Nine bikers held on $1 million bonds after the May 17 shootout at Twin Peaks restaurant are seeking to...

When her husband was arrested after a shootout at a biker club gathering at a Twin Peaks restaurant here May 17, Sheree Clendennen figured security camera video would soon clear him. “At first I just thought they’re going to take all these guys, look at the video, see who’s innocent and let all these guys go,” said Clendennen, 29, of nearby Hewitt. “Then Week 2 it was like, ‘Oh my gosh -- they’re not letting people go. They don’t care what’s on the video’,” she said of police, “With all of the security cameras and all of them out in...

What was initially reported as a motorcycle gang shootout that killed nine and wounded 18 to which police heroically responded last month in Waco, TX, at the Twin Peaks restaurant seems a bit more complicated, and bit worse for the cops, than that as further details have been revealed. This week one of the people arrested at the scene, Matthew Clendennen, filed a lawsuit directly against the officers involved in the incident (Manuel Chavez by name, the others as John and Jane Does) as well as the city. From that suit filing, in which Mr. Clendennen presents himself as a...

A Dallas attorney who represents a biker in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Waco and McLennan County filed a complaint Tuesday against McLennan County Justice of the Peace W.H. “Pete” Peterson. The complaint, filed with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct by attorney Clinton Broden, alleges Peterson violated several judicial ethical canons in the manner in which he set bonds for the 175 bikers jailed after the May 17 shootout at Twin Peaks restaurant. snip Broden’s complaint also alleges Peterson set bonds “in mass, group hearings without considering the rules for establishing bonds under the Code of...

The McLennan County Re-Education Camp Neither the United States Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Governor of Texas, the President of the United States nor any of the score of smurfs and fools currently running for President has so far dared to come to the defense of the scores of men and at least two women who remain unjustly imprisoned under cruel and unusual circumstances in the McLennan County Jail. The Southern Nevada Confederation of Clubs has stated that the jail is desperately overcrowded, that some prisoners are not being fed and that others cannot...

A San Antonio man has lost his job because he’s unable to post bail after he was arrested in the aftermath of the biker melee in Waco. Diego N. Obledo, 40, doesn’t have a motorcycle but was arrested after driving friends in his Toyota Venza to the Twin Peaks restaurant where the brawl broke out, according to San Antonio lawyer A.L. Hernden, who is helping the family. Hernden said Diego Obledo was “just standing around” but was caught up in the sweep as 170 people were arrested by Waco law officers. More than 30 are from this area. Obledo has...

“It appears the public defenders office in McLennan County is involved in this scurrilous activity,” said Paul Looney, a Houston attorney with Looney & Conrad, P.C. “I’ve never seen anything like the lawlessness that the authorities have perpetrated on these people and now to add insult to injury they are trying to cover their own tracks in exchange for bond.”