Free Republic

A man who federal authorities believe was driving from Northern California to Washington, D.C. to kill several notable figures was instead arrested in Iowa. According to the criminal complaint from the United States District Court’s Southern District of Iowa, Kuachua Xiong was arrested along Interstate 80 in Cass County on Dec. 21. The complaint states a Cass County deputy saw Xiong driving erratically heading east on I-80 before pulling him over. Xiong told authorities his journey through Iowa started near Sacramento, California and was supposed to end in the nation’s capital. When he was pulled over, Xiong allegedly told the...

BISMARCK — A Minnesota woman pleaded guilty to voting twice during the 2016 election in a Cass County (N.D.) court Tuesday, Sept. 25, marking a rare prosecution of such an offense in North Dakota. Hannan Yassin Aboubaker of Shakopee, Minn., entered an Alford plea on a Class A misdemeanor "election offense," meaning she didn't admit wrongdoing but acknowledged she may have been found guilty based on the evidence. Her sentence was deferred and she was placed on unsupervised probation for six months, two months after which the case would be dismissed and the file would be sealed.

LUFKIN — Mae Smith, the 64-year-old mayor of the teeny Central Texas town of Holland, seized the civic center lectern like a dragon-slayer ascending the throne. In a fiery red pantsuit and a voice that echoed without the help of a malfunctioning microphone, she and her cohorts revealed to a crowd of about 50 souls clad in denim and plaid a little-known weapon against the foe of all in the room: Gov. Rick Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor. The weapon, Smith said, doesn't involve marching on the Texas Capitol, like more than 1,000 did last year, some on tractors and horses. It...

A state mobility agency wants local input concerning a major corridor that might slice through East Texas. A town hall meeting will be held in Carthage on Wednesday to discuss the Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor study area, according to a Texas Department of Transportation media release. The meeting, slated for 6:30 p.m. at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame located at 300 West Panola Street, will be the first of 11 such discussions held statewide. Interstate 69 consists of two parts — a completed portion from the Canadian border to Indianapolis, and a mostly proposed extension to the Mexican border...