Free Republic

Scores of students, activists and others marched through Portland on Friday carrying the reproduced artwork of the imprisoned radical Thomas Manning and scolding the University of Southern Maine for canceling an exhibit of his work. Staff photo by Gregory Rec David Bidler, Rebekah Yonan and Ryan Edwards hold works of art by Thomas W. Manning at the University of Southern Maine in Portland on Friday. About 100 people walked from USM to Congress Square with Manning's art to protest its removal from a USM gallery show last week. Manning is in prison for killing a New Jersey state trooper. Some...

USM Area Gallery , Woodbury Campus Center Bedford Street, Portland Friday, September 1st - Friday, October 20th Opening reception: Friday, Sept. 15, 6-9 p.m. Serving free organic food by Portland Victory Garden Project Remarks by well-known activist Ray Luc Levasseur Followed with a performance by the Boston-based troupe Presente Symposium Wednesday, Oct. 4, 11:45-1 p.m. Area Gallery, Woodbury Campus Center A provocative exhibit Can't Jail the Spirit: Art by "Political Prisoner" Tom Manning and Others will be on view at the Area Gallery, Woodbury Campus Center, Portland Friday, Sept. 1-Friday, Oct. 20. The opening reception, serving free organic food by...

MEXICO CITY, June 27 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a senior police officer in the Mexican resort of Cancun on Monday night, blowing his head open in the latest grisly assassination to hit the country. Police officials in Cancun said local police chief of staff Wilfrido Flores, 56, and his bodyguard were shot dead in their car in a busy avenue in the Caribbean resort, one of Mexico's biggest tourist pulls, just before midnight. However they played down links to a spate of similar killings in cities like Acapulco and Tijuana in a brutal war among drugs cartels and security forces....

Out of the murders of NYPD Detectives Dillon Stewart and Daniel Enchautegui, and the shootings of nine of their brothers in blue since June, some good has come. The state Legislature yesterday passed, and Gov. Pataki was set to sign, two new laws that will make the streets of New York far safer, both for police and the citizens they risk their lives to protect. The legislative centerpiece is the Crimes Against Cops Act, the fruit of a Daily News campaign that began just 10 days ago as a cry for action after the slayings of Stewart and Enchautegui. We...

Gov. George E. Pataki will call state lawmakers into a special session on Wednesday to vote on new legislation that seeks to curb illegal gun trafficking and permit the death penalty for those convicted of murdering a police officer. Mr. Pataki's push for legislative action comes after the recent fatal shootings of two New York City police officers, Dillon Stewart and Daniel Enchautegui. The deaths have prompted finger-pointing among Republican and Democratic leaders in Albany over why antigun measures have stalled. During a news conference in Manhattan yesterday, Mr. Pataki said that he would send two bills, one addressing illegal...

Police today named the three men wanted in connection with the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky. The suspects were named as Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah, 24, originally from Burnley; Mustaf Jama, 25, from the north Kensington area of London, and his brother, 19-year-old Yusuf, from the same area. PC Beshenivsky was shot last Friday while investigating an armed robbery at travel agent in Bradford. Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, leading the hunt for the killers, appealed for information about the suspects.

KINGSTON — A prison guard calmly testified this morning how he fired 11 rounds from his revolver and his wounded partner's pistol during a brazen daylight escape by an inmate and his wife last month. Larry "Porky" Harris testified at a court hearing that he and correction officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan were returning George Hyatte, 34, to a prison van after an appearance at the Roane County Courthouse. He said he didn't notice Jennifer Hyatte, 31, a former prison nurse and mother of three, come up to them in the parking lot until George Hyatte shouted, "Shoot him!" "As Cotton...

BOSTON -- No two fingerprints are exactly alike. For nearly a century, that widely accepted belief has been enough for police, juries and the general public to feel confident that a fingerprint match in a criminal case is all the proof needed for a conviction. But lawyers for a man who is facing his second trial in the killing of a Boston police officer are challenging the accuracy of fingerprint analysis and asking the state's highest court to prohibit its use in criminal trials until its reliability can be proven through scientific testing. The Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to...

KINGSTON - Captured fugitives George and Jennifer Hyatte returned to appear before a judge Monday on first-degree murder charges at the same courthouse where their belated honeymoon began in bloodshed 13 days earlier. The Hyattes wore identical white outfits, and each remained silent in separate hearings as Roane County Sessions Court Judge Thomas A. Austin read them the charges they face, advised them of their rights and appointed their lawyers. "We are very relieved to get this put out of the way," said Kingston Police Chief Jim Washam, whose agency is leading the investigation into the murder of state correction...

NUEVO LAREDO - Despite the presence of federal troops and state police throughout the streets, violence continues to plague the Sister City, with six homicides reported over the weekend, including that of a state police officer. The death toll for the year, which still has more than five months to go, stands at 90. The most recent victims were Víctor Manuel Castillo Andrade, 18, who died near midnight Saturday; Noe Vives, a state police officer shot dead Sunday night; and Arturo Puente Alonso, 28, killed early Monday. Authorities had already logged three other deaths, one on Friday and two on...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information, please contact Steve Aiken at (520) 887-2984 June 30, 2005 Graf Campaign Outraged at Kolbe’s De-Facto Support of Cop Killers (Tucson, AZ) “At what point do you stop being outraged and simply say, it’s time for a change?” asked Steve Aiken, Graf Campaign Manager. Aiken is referring to Jim Kolbe’s refusal on Tuesday to join a bipartisan effort to withhold $66 million in U.S. aid if Mexico does not extradite suspected cop killers without strings attached. The measure overwhelmingly passed the House 327-98. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Kolbe called the withholding of...

House vote squeezes Mexico Threat to cut off U.S. aid tied to extraditing suspects in cop killings By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News June 29, 2005 WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives sent a stern message to Mexico on Tuesday night, voting to block $66 million in U.S. aid if the country does not extradite suspected cop-killers without strings attached. Angered by the killing of Denver Police Detective Donald Young, the House voted 327-98 to approve an amendment offered by Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Arvada, to a foreign operations spending bill. Advertisement It calls for cutting off U.S. aid to any...

IN A MATTER of seconds, protest chants fell silent and cops' stone-faced glares faded. Suddenly, it wasn't about power and activism or who was right or wrong outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center yesterday afternoon. It was about one man, a cop of 19 years, who crumpled to the street and died apparently of a heart attack after a standoff between a blue line of cops and a corps of drum-banging idealists fighting the biotech industry came to a head. Paris Williams, 52, who worked in the Civil Affairs Unit, lay motionless on asphalt as cops bent over him on Arch...

PHILADELPHIA -- Violence between biotech protesters and police in Center City Philadelphia has turned tragic. A Philadelphia police officer has died after a scuffle in Center City on Tuesday. The officer, Paris Williams, 52, may have died from a heart attack but homicide is also investigating the case. He is a 19-year veteran. Williams collapsed near the end of a brawl between protesters and police that lasted for several minutes near 12th and Arch Streets. Some protesters were seen being taken away in handcuffs by police after the incident. The fallen officer was taken away in an ambulance. Police department...

Terms: no death penalty, no life without parole Mexican authorities will not return Raul Garcia-Gomez to the United States unless prosecutors agree to spare him from execution and life without parole, the Mexican consul in Denver said Monday. Juan Marcos Gutierrez-Gonzalez, consul general of Mexico in Denver, stressed the cooperation between Mexican and U.S. authorities that resulted in Garcia-Gomez's arrest Saturday night. "We are now having one of the best moments of Colorado-Mexico relations," he said. But the consul said recent court rulings in his country prevent the extradition of suspects facing either of the United States' harshest penalties. A...

The latest attempt to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in California cleared a Senate committee on Thursday but with provisions that restrict how the licenses can be used and what they would look like. The bill, by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would bring California into compliance with federal law. The REAL ID Act, signed by President Bush last week, requires states to verify that people who apply for a driver's license are in the country legally. It also allows states to choose whether to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants as long as they have different markings —...

WASHINGTON, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The House today passed legislation authorizing $40 million to state and local governments for training law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

UN panel sees grave women's rights abuse in Mexico 27 Jan 2005 20:04:47 GMT Source: Reuters (Adds background, detail, paragraphs 4-14) By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 (Reuters) - A U.N. panel accused Mexico on Thursday of "grave and systematic" rights violations for failing to solve the killings of hundreds of women in the past decade near the Mexico-U.S. border. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women said it was "greatly concerned at the fact that these serious and systematic violations of women's rights have continued for over 10 years." The panel, in...

JOSEPH FARAH, HOST: We've got with us a special guest. Alan Keyes is back with us--diplomat, author, talk show host, brilliant orator, statesman, constitutional scholar. And his organization the Declaration Foundation can be accessed on the web at Declaration.net. Welcome to the program, Alan. KEYES: Thank you. Glad to be with you. FARAH: Well, you've got another great essay in WorldNetDaily today on this Terri Schiavo case. And in it you say that Florida Governor Jeb Bush is courting dereliction of duty. Tell us what you mean. KEYES: Well, he has two responsibilities. One, to the Constitutional rights of Terri...

"The native of Princeton, N.J., first created a furor in 1972 when he released a man charged with killing a police officer on $500 bail _ a figure another judge boosted to $25,000. Two years later, he released without bail another suspect accused of the attempted murder of a police officer...He was transferred back in 1978, and quickly created another controversy by releasing without bail a suspect accused of slashing a police officer's throat..."