Free Republic

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking advantage of a technicality in campaign finance laws, has been collecting rent from political action committees that he controls. During the past three years, campaign committees controlled by Schwarzenegger have paid $166,859 in rent to Main Street Plaza, a three-story building in Santa Monica that the governor owns. Bob Stern, an expert in campaign finance law who helped write the state's Political Reform Act of 1974, described the rental arrangement as "taking advantage of a ridiculous loophole'' in the law. The governor is able to accept the rent only because Main Street Plaza --...

A loophole in US law may allow people to get away with any major crime within a 50-square mile "zone of death" in eastern Idaho, according to a Michigan law professor. This lawless oasis is said to exist on the edge of Yellowstone National Park because of a poorly drafted statute in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution. Criminals are entitled to be tried by a jury drawn from the state and legal district they committed their crime in, the constitution says. But, argues Prof Brian C Kalt, while Yellowstone comes entirely under the district of Wyoming, small parts...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has freed numerous illegal aliens into the community who are dangerous murderers, rapists and child molesters under a legal loophole created by Supreme Court decisions, the Bush administration said on Thursday. In testimony to a Senate subcommittee, a senior Justice Department official said Congress should urgently pass legislation to close the loopholes, which have already resulted in the release of several extremely violent offenders, with others scheduled for release soon. "Among them are vicious criminals who have murdered their wives, molested young children and brutally attacked their enemies," Jonathan Cohn, a deputy assistant attorney...

Microsoft is closing a loophole that enabled unscrupulous resellers to use Windows XP product keys that were stolen from large OEMs. The result: customers who purchase Windows on a new PC will not be able to activate, nor reinstall their operating system without first calling Microsoft.

The Homeland Security Department's No-Fly List has always seemed a bit absurd to me. Only the stupidest terrorist would try booking a flight under his own name (or his known aliases) three years after the 9/11 attacks, and one thing I hope we've all learned is that our most dangerous enemies aren't stupid.

Google Inc founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have said that some new features on the world's top search engine and other services will come from its research centre in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where they are on a hiring spree. "One approach we are taking is that Bangalore is where we run a mirror exactly of what we have in the United States in terms of development," Brin told reporters in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state. Page and Brin said they were visiting India looking for "extraordinary talented entrepreneurial people who want to make a big...

Jailed Assassin 'Weds' Using Loophole Fri Sep 3,10:25 AM ET By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Defying a life prison term in isolation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin has secretly married by proxy, his bride said Friday. Larisa Trimbobler said she hoped her in-absentia wedding to Yigal Amir last month would help overturn a court ban on conjugal visits for the ultranationalist who shot Rabin at a 1995 rally in a bid to block peace deals with the Palestinians. Jewish law requires that two men witness a bride receiving her ring and marriage contract from the groom. According to...

Theresa Heinz Kerry: You pay taxes, I don't Gerard JacksonBrookesNews.Com Theresa Heinz Kerry likes taxes so much she thinks the little people should pay even more. She doesn't put it like that, of course. But what is one to think when the "sexy" Theresa Heinz Kerry supports increased taxes for others while drastically slashing her own taxes. Several months ago I was discussing Theresa Heinz Kerry and her fortune with a friend who had personal experience in that particular field. He reckoned that her assets were yielding an annual average return of at least 8 per cent. Well bless...

Jan 16, 2004 Convicted Sex Offender Who Escaped Mental Health Facility Says He Researched a Legal Loophole The Associated Press ST. LOUIS (AP) - A convicted sex offender says he broke out of a sexual-predator unit in 2001 knowing that a legal loophole would prevent Missouri authorities from charging him with escape. Thomas Ingrassia, 47, said he used the library at the Sexually Violent Predator Unit in Farmington to brush up on the law before he cut through a fence. "Missouri's so quick to make up laws without researching whether it's proper," Ingrassia said in Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "They're...

Nearly half the $9.5 million Arnold Schwarzenegger has poured into the recall race has been in the form of loans that his campaign staff says can be repaid by fund-raising after the election. Most of the loans came late last week, as polls began to show Schwarzenegger's prospects for winning the governor's office strengthening. In announcing his run for governor Aug. 6, Schwarzenegger had said that he did not need money from others. ..... Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles organization that promotes campaign reform, criticized the candidate's arrangement. If Schwarzenegger becomes governor, Stern...

SACRAMENTO - As attorneys argued in court Thursday over whether Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante violated state law by accepting single campaign contributions of up to $1.5 million, the judge who must decide the matter showed obvious frustration with the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing the law. ``I would agree with you that the FPPC pronouncements have been less than clear,'' Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster told Bustamante's attorneys, referring to statements by the Fair Political Practices Commission about how the state's campaign-contribution law is supposed to work. Bustamante is defending himself against allegations that he...

Fake drivers licenses easy to obtain Government investigators easily dupe state agencies, warn of terror loophole NBC's Bob Hager reports on how easy it is to get a fake driver's license. By Bob Hager and Bob Sullivan MSNBC AND NBC NEWS Sept. 9 — Armed with fictitious birth certificates, utility bills, out-of-state licenses and other falsified documents, congressional investigators easily convinced motor vehicle agency employees around the country to issue genuine drivers licenses, a security flaw that could open the door to future terrorist attacks, a government report to be released Tuesday says. THE REPORT from the General Accounting Office,...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Thursday suspended sales of toy guns in its stores throughout the state of New York, only hours after Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer sued the world's biggest retailer, accusing it of selling such toys without required safety markings to distinguish them from real weapons. The toy guns have orange caps on their barrels, as required by federal law, but they don't have nonremovable orange stripes down the barrel's length as New York law requires, Spitzer's lawsuit contends. Safety experts say the brightly colored markings help police officers distinguish toy guns from real weapons, and that the permanent...

Okay folks, This is "It"!!! VAHV had several Board members lobbying the Senate Courts of Justice committee today to determine if SB698, (designed to close the gun show loophole in Virginia) really had any kind of real chance. They have just reported back that if we can flood the offices of the committee members tomorrow with phone calls and faxed letters, then the bill does in fact have a real chance. YOU ARE NEEDED!!! Please take a moment and make a phone call and or send a fax. Simply say that you hope that you can count on your legislative...

'Odd Couple' Senators Join Forces on Gun BillSens. Schumer, Craig join forces on background checksBy Elaine S. Povich, WASHINGTON BUREAU July 31, 2002 Washington - New York Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer yesterday found the unlikeliest of allies to strengthen the instant background-check system for gun buyers - Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, a National Rifle Association board member and longtime Schumer nemesis on gun control legislation. Schumer, Craig and Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the icon of the liberal left, along with John McCain, the maverick Arizona Republican, joined forces on a bill that would give states incentives for forwarding records...