Free Republic

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- A New York judge who jailed a courtroom full of people over a ringing cell phone is off the bench. He demanded that the phone be handed over, threatening to lock up everybody if no one came forward. When nobody did, the judge ordered all 46 people in the room hauled off to the city jail, where they were searched. Those who couldn't post bond were shackled and bused to the county lockup.

Mona el-Fouli is seeking the release of her husband, who has been jailed in Toronto without being charged. TORONTO -- For a long time, Mona el-Fouli lied to her young children. Their father was working, she told them at first. He was on a trip, she said later. But when she took her boys, 5 and 7, to see their father behind a glass partition, they knew he was in jail. "Please mom, can I break this glass and go inside to play with my dad?" pleaded the 7-year-old, she recounted. For 4 1/2 years, el-Fouli's husband, Mohammed Zeki Mahjoub,...

YET ANOTHER reporter is facing jail at the hands of a federal judge for doing his job. Jim Taricani, a reporter for WJAR television in Rhode Island, was convicted last week of criminal contempt of court for refusing to identify the person who leaked him an FBI videotape of a public official in Providence taking a bribe. The story clearly was important. Several local officials, including the one on tape, went to prison in connection with the federal corruption investigation that produced the tape. But Chief Judge Ernest C. Torres of federal district court in Providence appointed a special prosecutor...

Former AG Morales' bond revoked, jailed BY NATALIE GOTT Associated Press Writer AUSTIN - Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, who awaits trial on federal fraud charges, was jailed Wednesday after a judge revoked his bond, saying there was inconsistent testimony in the case. Morales, 46, pleaded innocent in April to charges that he and Marc Murr, a friend and an attorney, tried to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for Murr resulting from the state's $17.3 billion settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998. At that court hearing, Morales sought a public defender to represent him,...