Free Republic

by Joshua Ford | 24NewsShocking surveillance video shows a ‘street takeover’ mob of thieves ransacking a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles Monday night. “The suspects are facing multiple charges to include grand theft, looting, and vandalism,” the LAPD said in a statement. “We are seeking the public’s help in identifying persons observed on video committing these acts.” No arrests have been made in connection with the robbery. NBC Los Angeles reported: The large crowd gathered for the street takeover on Monday night in the Harbor Gateway area swarmed the store at the corner of Figueroa Street and El Segundo Boulevard in...

by Greg Reynolds Two Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputies, a man and a woman, are in surgery “fighting for their lives” after each was shot in the head in an ambush attack by lone gunman at a Metro station in Compton Saturday night, according to reports and statements by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office. “Moments ago, 2 of our Sheriff Deputies were shot in Compton and were transported to a local hospital. They are both still fighting for their lives, so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. We will update this thread with information as it becomes...

While traveling in the Dallas / Ft Worth area of Texas yesterday afternoon, we experienced a complete LOS on GPS. We had traveled to Irving to get a new bulb for our projection TV, and right afterward had the LOS that lasted well after 9 PM yesterday evening. We eventually were able to find 635 W and then find 80 and I20 E, which placed us back home around 12:30 AM. Needless to say, I was glad I never leave home without my oxygen concentrator--even on good days, but I still ended up getting sick in a gas station restroom...

24358 The Los Angeles Times apparently doesn’t think “women who were born during botched abortions in the 1970s” are abortion “survivors,” as a Wednesday article about two such women featured a title that put the term in scare quotes: “Abortion ‘survivors’ criticize Planned Parenthood on Capitol Hill.” Marcus E. Howard led the item by hyping that “House Republicans on Wednesday fueled an already emotional and partisan debate by hearing testimony” from Gianna Jessen and Melissa Ohden, who “survived failed saline-infusion abortion attempts.” Howard noted that Jessen was “left with cerebral palsy due to a lack of oxygen during her mother’s...

Reports indicate the fire came within 50 feet of the grounds of the Los Alamos lab where plutonium was stored in a fabric material building. This is unexplainable, unacceptable, and came within feet of causing the worst disaster in US history.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is throwing the book at dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations — a major shift in city policy that has him pressing for jail time in types of cases that previous prosecutors had treated as infractions. Some of the activists arrested, including eight college students and one military veteran who took part in a Westwood rally last year in support of the DREAM Act, face up to one year in county jail. Trutanich's aggressive stance is the latest episode in the city's decades-long legal struggle over the rights of protesters.

A wildfire in the foothills north of Los Angeles that has claimed the lives of two firefighters, ravaged more than 250 square miles and destroyed more than 60 homes was caused by arson, the federal Forest Service said. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has begun a homicide inquiry looking for the person or people responsible for the wildfire, which continues to burn. The blaze, known as the Station Fire, has burned for over a week in the Angeles National Forest outside Los Angeles. After a forensic investigation, officials with the U.S. Forest Service determined on Thursday that the fire...

One in five Los Angeles County residents -- nearly 2.2 million people -- are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues. The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 69 computers, including at least a dozen that were stolen last year, a lab spokesman said. No classified information has been lost, spokesman Kevin Roark said. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration that said 67 computers were missing, including 13 that were lost or stolen in past 12 months. Roark initially confirmed those figures, but later updated them. He said a total of 80 computers were lost or stolen...

Lab Managers Accused of Security Breach By DEBORAH BAKER and JENNIFER TALHELM, Associated Press Writers 2 hours ago SANTA FE, N.M. - Officials with the contractor that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory sent top-secret data regarding nuclear weapons through open e-mail networks, the latest potentially dangerous security breach to come to light at the birthplace of the atomic bomb, two congressmen said. The breach was investigated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which rounded up laptop computers from Los Alamos National Security LLC's board members and sanitized them. But NNSA and lab officials who subsequently appeared before a congressional committee...

Los Alamos Disks May Hold U.S. Secrets By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 26, 2006; Page A12 The contract employee at the center of a possible security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory had a high-level clearance that may have given her special access to intelligence intercepts and other closely held national secrets, sources familiar with the case said yesterday. The FBI is examining at least three computer disks that police in Los Alamos, N.M., discovered last week during a search of a suspected drug dealer's trailer home, according to the FBI and other agencies. A woman...

Disaster drill preps Los Angeles for the inevitable by Zachary Slobig Fri Jul 21, 12:15 PM ETAFP Photo: LA Metro Police practice riot control during an exercise to simulate the response of local... LOS ALAMITOS, United States (AFP) - Helicopters swooped in and unloaded cops to quell angry crowds -- with batons that never made contact and rubber bullets that were only props in a disaster response drill. Federal military and Southern California law enforcement teamed up for an elaborate simulation of a disaster response system that authorities hope would avoid the horrors following Hurricane Katrina last August. US Marines...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2006 – Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to fly a plane into the tallest building on the West Coast not long after they'd launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, President Bush said here today. The terrorists' target was a notable Los Angeles office building, he said during a speech given at the National Guard Association of the United States' headquarters. The 73-story Los Angeles office building, the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River, was called the Library Tower at the time of the terrorist plot. It was renamed US Bank...

A formerly Spanish-only radio station in Los Angeles has become the first in the area to go bilingual – and it’s shot to the top of the ratings. KXOL-FM, better known as "Latino” 96.3, has soared from 18th in the ratings to second overall since the changeover in May, and it now ranks first among 12-to-24-year-olds. The station’s music and ads switch back and forth from one language to the other. "Sometimes the station’s back-and-forth by its disc jockeys comes much faster, even sentence-to-sentence or phrase-by-phrase,” the Los Angeles Times reports. "It’s not unusual to hear callers intermix their languages...

LOS ANGELES – The killers cross the U.S.-Mexico border, assume new identities, get jobs, blend in among Spanish speakers and sometimes enjoy freedom for years. But these fugitives from the law aren't border-jumpers heading south. As the recent arrest of one of Mexico's most notorious fugitives at a modest home outside Los Angeles showed, some criminals escape justice by heading north. In the last 10 months, federal immigration officials have helped locate 13 Mexican murder suspects, along with hundreds of other criminals, hiding in plain sight in the Los Angeles area. Alfredo Ríos Galeana, wanted for bank robberies, kidnappings, murders...

Conclave Confidential: One Cardinal's Secret DiaryLocked down amid the frescoes and thoughts of flan. Patt Morrison April 20, 2005 The conclave journal of Roger Cardinal Mahony:Opening Day, minus 1. Checked into the Casa Santa Marta hotel — and I got a top-floor room! I asked about a low-carb menu; I don't want to nod off after a big pasta lunch — huge embarrassment. Isn't it funny — I have to come all the way to Rome to cast a vote that actually counts. The first ballot is tomorrow, but even four votes a day plus prayer surely can't take up...

League of the South stages demonstration At SPLC Headquarters in Montgomery. SPLC called 'hate institution' By Crystal Bonvillian Montgomery Advertiser October 23 2004 Anissa Jackson, 14, of Houma, La., runs past the Civil Rights Memorial with two Confederate flags Friday as members of the League of the South protest at the Southern Poverty Law Center. -- Photos by Julie Bennett Advertiser Driving past the Southern Poverty Law Center, motorists honked, hooted and hollered Friday afternoon at a group of Southerners protesting the center's perceived attitude toward the South. About 30 protesters,[insert- more like 80] in Montgomery for the National League...

Test data missing U.S. intelligence officials say the missing classified data at Los Alamos National Laboratory is related to secret nuclear tests conducted by computer simulation. The data is considered extremely sensitive because it is used in the maintenance and development of nuclear weapons. It is contained on several computer disks that were stored in a top-secret facility at Los Alamos, N.M. The disks were last used in April. When lab researchers went to use them in July, they were gone from a secure vault within the X Division. Los Alamos is currently studying the possibility of a nuclear warhead...

Storm troopers of the American Civil Liberties Union have chalked up their latest victory in their ongoing campaign to stamp out any hint of religion in American public life. Under threat of an ACLU-initiated lawsuit, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to remove a small cross from the seal of the State of California because of its alleged unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity. Contrary to ACLU claims, these actions make our country less rather than more free. This is of more than academic interest to me. The ACLU has invaded my home turf. The headquarters of my organization, the...

Assembly salute to Wen Ho Lee put offAsian caucus cites patriotic group's 'inflammatory remarks' By Steve Geissinger, SACRAMENTO BUREAU SACRAMENTO -- An Oakland Tribune report triggered such an uproar throughout the state that the Asian legislative caucus -- and its Bay Area members -- announced Saturday it was "regretfully" canceling an Assembly ceremony honoring former accused spy Wen Ho Lee. The Asian caucus said it was "outraged" by a patriotic group's "inflammatory remarks in Friday's Oakland Tribune" story on the event, and the resulting plans by the Assembly Republican Caucus to fight the ceremony. The six-member Asian caucus, which...