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Authorities have reached a $20 million settlement with a man who spent two decades in prison before he was cleared by DNA of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Waukegan, ending a controversial chapter for Lake County's troubled justice system. Lawyers for Juan Rivera said the agreement with the city of Waukegan and other governmental bodies marks the largest settlement for a wrongfully convicted person in Illinois. "No amount of money could ever sum up to 20 years in prison," Rivera, who hopes to go to college to study business management, said Friday at the offices of...

Greetings and Salutations, readers! My Nome de Guerre in the battle for truth and objective journalism is Jeremiah Johnson. I hope to pique your interest with a Montana issue that, regardless of the outcome, will have severe ramifications and set a precedent nationwide. This article covers the CSKT (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes) proposed water-rights compact that threatens to take away the private ownership of water for roughly 100,000 Montanans. Should this measure pass, it can set a precedent for the courts throughout the United States by the Federal Government to deprive us of our water rights. The tale of...

FITCHBURG -- A former Fitchburg charter school sex-education teacher pleaded guilty Friday in Worcester Superior Court to a charge she raped a 14-year-old student, according to a report. Rachelle Gendron, 28, reached a plea agreement and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years of prison time and 10 years of probation, according to Tim Connolly, spokesman for Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.

The latest example of cellphone video vindicating someone from false charges is a doozy. It comes from Washington Parish, La., and WWL TV. One of the worst days of Douglas Dendinger’s life began with him handing an envelope to a police officer. In order to help out his family and earn a quick $50, Dendinger agreed to act as a process server, giving a brutality lawsuit filed by his nephew to Chad Cassard as the former Bogalusa police officer exited the Washington Parish Courthouse. The handoff went smoothly, but Dendinger said the reaction from Cassard, and a group of officers...

The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature...

In an exit interview, the attorney general says his critics may be partly driven by race.

She’s soft-spoken, has 23 grandkids, professes love for the gay customer who tried to hire her for his wedding and helped him find another florist when she politely declined (it was Washington’s AG, not the customer, who filed the discrimination complaint against her), and stands to lose her business and possibly her home if the state keeps coming after her for this. There may be more sympathetic spokesmen for religious freedom out there but offhand I can’t imagine one. The polling on whether businesses should be required by law to cater to gay weddings is mixed, but I wonder...

William Wingate had been standing on a busy Seattle street corner in July, leaning on a golf club he uses as a cane, when a police cruiser pulled up and the officer inside yelled at Wingate to “put that down.” The resulting exchange — in which the officer claims that Wingate swung the club at her after she asked him to “shut it down” before she arrested him – was captured on the cruiser’s dashboard camera, the footage of which Seattle Police released this week as it apologized for the 2014 incident. The response to that video prompted Seattle Police...

AUSTIN – A state judge on Tuesday refused to throw out an indictment accusing former Gov. Rick Perry of abusing his veto authority to try to force out a local prosecutor. Perry, who is actively eyeing another presidential bid, was indicted last summer. The charges stem from his 2013 threat to veto funding for a public corruption unit overseen by Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg unless she resigned after a drunken-driving arrest. Lehmberg stayed in office after serving jail time, and Perry axed the funding. The Republican said that Lehmberg, a Democrat, had lost the public’s confidence. A grand...

AUSTIN, Texas – A Texas judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a felony abuse-of-power case against former Gov. Rick Perry on constitutional grounds, ruling that criminal charges against the possible 2016 presidential candidate should stand. In 44 pages of decisions and orders, District Judge Bert Richardson, who like Perry is a Republican, rejected calls from Perry's pricy defense team to toss the case because its client was acting within his rights as chief executive of America's second-most populous state when he publicly threatened, then carried out, a 2013 veto of state funding for public corruption prosecutors.

"First he came for the whistleblowers and I didn't speak up because I was a liberal...." A conference called "Sources and Secrets" was held a few days ago at the Times Center in New York. The conference is described as "A conference on the press, government and national security." It's supported largely by left wing organizations and news outlets. At the meeting James Risen of the NY Times expressed an interesting opinion: New York Times reporter James Risen, who is fighting an order that he testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer accused of leaking information...

In 2011, concerned about the growing debt crisis, Standard & Poor, the venerable credit rating firm, downgraded the U.S. bond rating for the first time from “Triple-A” to “AA-plus,” a move that sent shockwaves through the financial markets raising troubling questions about the government’s growing debt. The move hit a nerve with a White House gearing up for a massive re-election campaign. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called the Chairman of McGraw Hill, the owners of S&P, declaring that the government would hold S&P “accountable” and their conduct would be “looked at very carefully.” Geithner wasn’t bluffing. The Obama Administration...

I have just recently become an active poster (responder), and have seen the term "Crony Capitalism" used without explanation. Recently I saw the term associated with Communism, which confused me further. A "google" does little to clear things up, particularly in regards to how it might be interchangeable with communism. Can anyone help clear things up?

The NAACP’s legal group has sent a letter to a Missouri judge asking that a new grand jury convene to consider indicting former Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown back in August. On November 24, a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson for killing Brown, and as a result, already riled protesters and activists took to the streets seeking justice. Now, in the almost two months since the decision was reached, the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund has penned an open letter to Missouri Judge Maura McShane asking that a...

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in United States v. June, a case that has received little attention, but will have far-reaching implications. The case boils down to this: Can the federal government actively conceal material evidence in order to escape liability? Common sense says no. The Obama administration says yes. June involves the Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) and a doctrine called “equitable tolling.” Prior to 1946, the doctrine of sovereign immunity prohibited citizens from filing suit against the government. That all changed in 1946, when a military plane crashed into the Empire State Building, killing and...

Midland, TX — Rosendo Gino Rodriquez, 49, was shot dead in an altercation Monday while Midland Police were conducting a routine welfare check. The Midland County mental health unit was conducting a regular welfare check at a home on the 2700 block of Washington Street, when things went sour. According to the Midland police, Rodriquez became “aggressive” during the welfare check. The term aggressive is used loosely by the MPD, as they claim he acted out said “aggression” by running away from them, back into his house, and barricading himself in a room. The Free Thought Project would like to...

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson stood by his controversial comparison of the United States to Nazi Germany in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. Asked by Blitzer whether he would amend or take back his comments, Carson said "Absolutely not." Carson made the comments during a March interview with conservative news outlet Breitbart.com. He noted that the Third Reich was "using its tools to intimidate the population," and said that "we now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe." "The point of what I'm saying...is a major fundamental shift of power has occurred,"...

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system. “They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

The Internal Revenue Service, which claims to be so understaffed that it can’t bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup tapes for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!). William Jacobson, one of the best-informed and most effective critics of the agency, writes on Legal Insurrection: Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in...

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) argues that despite the fact that President Obama’s executive amnesty will not have the force of law, it would be very difficult for another president to rescind. “This is something that is fair and the right thing to do,” Reid said on Thursday. “They have the opportunity at some later time, some president to say, ‘I want this all changed.’ I wish that person luck to try to tell these millions of people and their families -- who many at that time will have many, many more United States citizens -- are going...