Free Republic

FRAMINGHAM -- A Framingham dad who failed to appear in court for his arraignment on time Tuesday avoided being arrested on a warrant by getting to court minutes before it closed. Judge Robert Greco ordered a warrant for the arrest of Luis Lala Lema, 24, when he did not show up for his Framingham District Court arraignment. The appearance was scheduled for 9 a.m. Later in the day, Lema showed up at court. He is accused of passing out drunk on Saturday behind the wheel of his truck with his 3-year-old daughter, who was not wearing a seat belt, next...

by Mark Finkelstein July 26, 2006 - 14:00 All those millions the taxpayers have lavished on the Public Broadcasting System over the years haven't been for naught. They've achieved at least one significant thing: given Bill Moyers a base from which to launch a presidential campaign. At least in the mind of Molly Ivins. The headline of her latest column says it all: Run Bill Moyers For President, Seriously While Molly doesn't expect Moyers to win the election or even the nomination, she believes his candidacy would have a salubrious effect on other Democratic contenders. Here's the essence of her...

South Bend, IN - A South Bend police officer, found guilty for drunk driving, learned Wednesday that he's being demoted. Sergeant Ronald Nowicki will be demoted to a corporal. The South Bend Board of Public Safety went above and beyond the police chief's recommendation of a 21-day suspension. Nowicki will also face that 21 day suspension without pay beginning Thursday. In late December, Nowicki pleaded guilty to operating while intoxicated. Nowicki did not attend Wednesday's hearing, but NewsCenter 16 did speak with him about the decision. He says he does plan to appeal the decision.

Sen. Ted Kennedy blasted the Bush administration Sunday morning for "subsuming" the nation in "scandal after scandal," saying: "Clearly there has to be a cleaning of the White House." Asked about reports Saturday that Bush ordered his staff to attend ethics training classes, Kennedy told NBC's "Meet the Press": "I think ethics has to be more than a class, doesn't it . . . Ethics has to be a much more basic and fundamental issue." "Clearly there has to be a cleaning of the White House," Kennedy railed. "We have a damaged presidency and a tarnished White House . ....

GASTONIA, N.C. -- Reacting to the death of a North Carolina man in drunken driving accident involving an illegal immigrant, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick on Monday unveiled a proposal that she said would make local police more responsible for tracking illegal immigrants, Myrick said.The legislation would require all state and local law enforcement agencies to report immigration status, deportation orders and failures to appear to the FBI's National Crime Information Center database within 30 days of the incident.

OLYMPIA – Three years after getting drunk, blowing through a stop sign and triggering a wreck that left her passenger critically injured, a former Idaho resident has filed a $1.5 million claim against Washington's Pend Oreille County for not detaining her before she caused the crash. In her claim, Ashlen Lee says that on June 12, 2002, a county sheriff's deputy stopped her truck around 3:30 a.m. and could see that she had been drinking. But after quizzing her, the deputy let the 17-year-old drive away. The officer said he'd give them a warning," said Lee's attorney, W. Russell Van...

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) - A man who has 14 previous DWI convictions in other states has been arrested for DWI in Farmington. Jones Manheimer, who is in his 60s, was released from the San Juan County Detention Center Wednesday after Magistrate James Atcitty reduced an initial $100,000 bond to $5,000. District Attorney Lyndy Bennett says he will try to have the higher bond reinstated. The case has been bound over to district court. It has not been assigned to a judge. Bennett said Manheimer is both a flight risk and danger to the community. Public Defender Raymond Archambeau says his...

Police say one man is responsible for a car accident that killed a mother and her two small children. According to officials, the suspect was drunk when he slammed into the family’s car, and now he could face murder charges. Officers told 7 Action News that they are investigating the events leading up to the accident. They want to know where the suspect spent his time beforehand, where he could become so intoxicated that his blood alcohol level was more than 5 times the legal limit. Chief William Dwyer, of the Farmington Hills Police, said during a press conference, "Now...

MARTINEZ - While police were seeking Jimena Barreto in connection with the hit-and-run deaths of two Danville children, Barreto asked her building manager to remove cocaine from her apartment, the manager testified Thursday. The jury was not supposed to hear that statement and it could lead to a mistrial. It came after a morning when witnesses testified they saw Barreto, 46, intoxicated and preparing to get behind the wheel on various occasions. "I knew she was a ticking time bomb," said Kathleen McNamara, who met Barreto in a bar a few weeks before the crash. Prosecutors allege that Barreto drove...

A New Jersey jury has assessed $105 million in compensatory and punitive damages against Aramark Corp., the nation's leading arena concessionaire, in the case of a girl paralyzed in a crash with a driver drunk on beer served at a Giants football game. The father of the victim says the award will make liquor vendors and arenas do a better job of enforcing their rules against selling alcohol to fans who appear to be intoxicated. The evidence in the case against Aramark showed the driver had consumed the equivalent of 16 12-ounce beers, mostly at Giants Stadium in the Hackensack...

A Columbus police officer responding to a prowler call was killed in a head-on crash with another motorist early Saturday.

HICCUP KENNEDY!!! He's speaking at a black church on Sunday. Clinton Monday?! SKerry's internals must be BAD BAD BAD!

<p>April 6, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Kennedy yesterday charged that President Bush's credibility was no better than Richard Nixon's - drawing an immediate rebuke from Republicans. A Kennedy spokesman said Sen. John Kerry's campaign was given advance warning of the scathing speech from one of its top supporters, but denied that Kerry consulted with Kennedy on it. In his remarks to the Brookings Institution, a think tank in D.C., Kennedy also said, "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam."</p>

<p>Ronald Young Jr., 20, was struck and killed while walking with his family Tuesday night. Sherita Wilson, 19, and her and Young's daughter, Deborah Young, 16 months, were injured.</p> <p>Robert Gallas told authorities he thought he'd just hit a branch with his Jeep Liberty -- so he kept driving, unaware he had dragged a baby in a stroller for a mile after killing her father in a collision on an unlit road.</p>

Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was. As former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recently confirmed, the debate over military action began as soon as President Bush took office. Some felt Saddam Hussein could be contained without war. A month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, he said tellingly that Hussein "has...

SAN DIEGO -- James Bond says he didn't do it. The Westminster, Calif., man who police allege led them on a chase throughout San Diego County from Carlsbad to San Diego at speeds of up to 125 mph pleaded not guilty Friday to reckless driving and driving under the influence charges. Bond, 55, refused to yield to police when he was instructed to stop, say prosecutors, and was also under the influence of drugs, resisting arrest and possession of a switchblade in a motor vehicle. Officers allege that they stopped Bond on Interstate 5 south at Washington Street when he...

At the risk of letters saying we are upholding national stereotypes, we include today a small piece that describes one of the more bizarre examples of what can happen if you mix drinking and driving. On Tuesday an intoxicated Finnish man was run over by his own car in Kokkola, on Finland's west coast. The unlikely incident took place in the parking lot of a store. The man was attempting to get his car started, and having failed to do so using the traditional key-in-the-ignition method, he got out and opened the hood, jump-starting the car from there. Unfortunately, the...

. . . . Wednesday, April 16, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal TRAFFIC RAMPAGE: Dad killed, son hurt Man charged with DUI, hit and run after four crashes By FRANK CURRERI and MICHAEL SQUIRES REVIEW-JOURNAL Photos by John Locher. A tarp covers the body of Chris Holt, 44, who was struck while bicycling with his son Tuesday. Police said the driver of the pickup that struck Holt traveled about a mile before dumping the body on Mustang Street, just off Cheyenne Avenue. Damage is apparent on a 1988 Chevrolet pickup that police say was involved in several accidents Tuesday...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German father and son lost their driving licences within hours of each other for being drunk at the wheel, after the son got caught and the inebriated father went to pick him up, police have said. "First the son came off the road under the influence, so police took his licence. Then the father set off for the scene of the accident, got stopped and was also found to be over the limit, so he had his taken too," said a police spokesman in the southern town of Hildesheim on Monday.

Drunken driver convicted of murder Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — A jury has convicted a drunken driver of felony murder and sentenced him to 55 years in prison for the death of five-year-old girl. "It's the first time a jury has convicted someone in Texas of murder in a DWI," prosecutor Warren Diepraam said. "It's important because Harris County is the DWI capital of the United States." Mark Wayne Lomax, 35, a mechanic, had a blood alcohol content of 0.23 percent — almost 4 times the 0.08 percent legal limit for drivers — when he slammed into a vehicle on...