Free Republic

Former street crew member Ronald Moten initially dismissed as idle talk the rumors that gang members from the notorious Bloods were attempting to infiltrate Washington. The District never had an organized gang problem, said Moten, who is now an anti-violence advocate in the District. The city's crews were homegrown neighborhood cliques while the Bloods were a Los Angeles gang, a huge criminal enterprise widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. But about six months ago, when a teenager showed him the cigarette burns on his arms — an initiation rite the teen endured rather than get a tattoo under...

A fortuneteller is suing Montgomery County after he learned he would not be allowed to open a shop in Bethesda because the county bans the business of forecasting the future. Attorneys for Nick Nefedro, previously of Key West, Fla., say county officials violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and discriminated against his “Roma,” or Gypsy, culture when they refused to give him a business license. Montgomery code dating back to the early 1950s prohibits collecting cash for predicting the future. “The underlying purpose is to prevent people from being taken advantage of, because it’s a scam,” Clifford Royalty,...

Here's how rising fuel prices affect an organization with a fleet of 1,273 school buses: The Montgomery County school board today will consider giving Superintendent Jerry D. Weast emergency powers to make students walk farther to school, if need be, in the coming academic year. (snip) Should prices continue to rise, the school system could save money by raising maximum walking distances for students, because more walkers means fewer buses. Currently, elementary school students walk up to a mile, middle school students 1.5 miles and high school students two miles.

Bathroom Wars By Chuck Colson6/6/2008 Related Audio/Video Downloads Potty Politics Three months ago, I told you about a new law in Montgomery County, Maryland, that demands co-ed locker rooms and restrooms in all public accommodations. The law was intended to accommodate “transgendered people”—that is, men who say they perceive themselves to be women, and women who claim they consider themselves men. I said, at the time, that we would see extremists in other jurisdictions attempting to pass similar laws. And that is exactly what is happening.Last week, Colorado’s legislature passed—and Gov. Bill Ritter signed—a law that will open all...

A few miles off Interstate 270, in the heart of bustling Montgomery County, a once-thriving neighborhood has taken on the feel of a ghost town. Half the homes are vacant, their windows broken or boarded up. Driveways are strewed with debris. "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs dot trees. Banging sounds come from empty houses where burglars pry copper pipes from the walls. The culprit is not foreclosure but the imminent arrival of the six-lane intercounty connector that will slice through the Derwood neighborhood. This week, highway workers demolished a brick house and will soon raze five more on...

In the community of Shady Grove Woods, trees are becoming more and more scarce. Residents and other anti-Intercounty Connector activists marched through the neighborhood on Saturday, pointing out the trees that were cut down to make way for the six-lane highway. ‘‘It’s just that we didn’t have a say in it in so many ways and we’re not talking about a two-lane road, we’re talking about a major highway running through here,” resident Sam Chim said of the ICC. ‘‘We have a lot of nice, private woods back here and now we’re going to have a highway running through instead....

Montgomery County results explain Clinton's win TRIBUNE-REVIEW By: Salena Zito By all accounts, Pennsylvania's Montgomery County should have been Sen. Barack Obama's low-hanging fruit. From Norristown with its abundant black vote to the Main Line with its affluent well-off latte liberals, "Montco" was tailor-made for the Illinois senator. "I was shocked," said Karen Matthews, wife of GOP Montgomery County chairman Jim Matthews. Karen, who made her own news by switching to Democrat so she could vote for Obama, fully expected a big Obama win. "My only explanation is that people say one thing, and then do another," she said. Karen...

It's an axiom known by every lawyer and judge in every courthouse in the land: A man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client. Try telling that to Harold J. Stewart. Last month, Stewart, a 42-year-old high school dropout, defended himself in a murder case in Prince George's County, where he was accused of beating a sleeping man to death with a baseball bat. The trial lasted three days. Stewart called no witnesses. The jury deliberated less than an hour. The verdict: Not guilty of first-degree murder. Not guilty of second-degree murder. "Everybody told me I...

In the midst of inflation, funding difficulties and halted expansion projects, a budget error on the part of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) may have exacerbated their challenges. "TxDOT does some mysterious accounting," said Rep. Chuck Hopson (D-Jacksonville). "They had close to $1 billion counted in their budget twice." "That was a serious error on our part and we have made changes to try to prevent that type of error from occurring again," said TxDOT Spokesman Chris Lippincott, adding that the amount added twice in their financial statement was unrelated to the $1.2 billion in federal rescissions, which are...

Among the thousands of drivers who have been issued $40 fines after being nabbed by Montgomery County's new speed cameras are scores of county police officers. The difference is, many of the officers are refusing to pay. The officers are following the advice of their union, which says the citations are issued not to the driver but to the vehicle's owner -- in this case, the county. That view has rankled Police Chief J. Thomas Manger and County Council Member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), who chairs the Public Safety Committee. "You can't have one set of laws for police officers and...

Caught speeding on camera, police officers refuse to pay tickets 16 hours ago ROCKVILLE, Md. — No matter what the cameras say, some drivers are refusing to pay dozens of $40 speeding fines. Who? Police officers. In the last eight months of 2007, Montgomery County's new speed cameras recorded 224 cases in which police vehicles were recorded travelling more than 15 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, according to department records. Supervisors dismissed 76 of those citations after determining the officers were responding to calls or had valid reasons to break the speed limit. But that left 148 who...

Mary Ann Andree was drying her hair in the Rio Sport and Health Club in Gaithersburg, Maryland, last month when the door to the women’s locker room suddenly opened. In came a man, wearing a blue ruffled skirt and make-up. As Andree later told reporters, “I was very upset. There is a lot he could have seen.” Andree is far from alone. A lot of other women in Montgomery County, Maryland, are upset over a new law that demands co-ed locker rooms and bathrooms in all public accommodations. Montgomery County, adjacent to Washington, D.C., passed the law last November to...

A war of words has erupted in Montgomery County, Md., where a citizens group is nearing the number of signatures needed to force a new law granting special protections to those with "gender identity" issues to a vote of the people. Citizens for a Responsible Government must present the signatures of 12,500 registered voters to the county's board of election supervisors by Monday, with another 12,500 due Feb. 16. Officials said they have 10,000 and expect to meet the first deadline. "People are energized; they really feel betrayed by their county government," said Ruth Jacobs, president of the group leading...

State dessert on legislative menu ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A proposal to make walking the official exercise of Maryland could get the boot — again. A bill sponsored by Sen. Verna Jones was introduced Thursday, but some lawmakers question what makes the activity so special to Maryland. A previous attempt at the designation was vetoed several years ago by then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich. “It’s like saying breathing is the state activity because everyone does it whether you want to or not,” said Delegate Richard Sossi, a Republican. The state already has 21 state symbols, from the obvious (blue crabs and the...

ANN ARBOR, MI – In oral arguments last week, the Thomas More Law Center asked Maryland state circuit court judge William Rowan III to overturn a Maryland Board of Education ruling that approves of public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, teaching 8th and 10th graders that homosexuality is innate—meaning they are born that way. The schools also show how to use condoms in anal and oral sex. Montgomery educators were forced to defend their new sex curriculum that promotes anal sex, homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestitism despite strong opposition from several pro-family groups. The controversial new curriculum was adopted as a...

Trust But Verify by: Don Irvine, January 18, 2008 As the legislative session began in Maryland, Montgomery County officials were surprised to discover that the school construction funds that they were expecting from the state fell far short of expectations, about $35 million short to be exact. What happened? Well, apparently Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett brokered a deal with Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley to get some of his county’s lawmakers to support O’Malley’s special November session agenda which included the largest tax increase in Maryland history in return for increased school construction funding. Leggett was so sure of this...

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The agency that oversees training and hiring standards for police departments in Maryland is looking at a proposal that would let noncitizens with green cards become police officers. The proposal is being championed by Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger. He said it doesn't make sense that legal immigrants can join the U.S. military but can't become law enforcement officers. The Maryland Police Training Commission could vote on the issue next month. Critics said it would be difficult to check the backgrounds of noncitizens applying to be officers, and they said the proposal could allow terrorists to...

A surge of outrage is developing in Maryland, where the governing council in Montgomery County is planning to vote on a plan to open the doors of its public restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities to those who "perceive" they are that gender. "From what I'm reading, the person with the gender identify confusion is being protected by what she or he FEELS he or she is. Thus, we'd have to protect this person's gender based upon what is in his or her MIND. So, if I'm in a bathroom all by myself late at night, and a man walks...

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett will present an alternative personal income tax plan to Maryland lawmakers today that would tax the state's highest earners at a rate one percentage point lower than Gov. Martin O'Malley has proposed. Lawmakers from Montgomery have voiced concern that O'Malley's proposal to redistribute the tax burden to Maryland's most affluent residents would affect Montgomery more than any other jurisdiction and threaten the economic interests of the state's largest and wealthiest county.... Under Leggett's alternative, single filers reporting taxable income above $500,000 and joint filers reporting a combined taxable income above $1 million would be taxed...

Big Government: Washington pundits moan about the "rich getting richer" on Wall Street. But new census data reveal the seat of wealth in this country has shifted to their own backyard. The nation's capital has replaced Silicon Valley and the New York area as the center of affluence in America. The wealthiest Americans are no longer just investors and entrepreneurs, but federal workers and contractors. There's something really rotten about this trend. How can the seat of government in a capitalist society double as its seat of wealth? The late Milton Friedman, who warned about the growing mix of government...

When a high school friend told me several years ago that he and his wife were leaving Washington's Mount Pleasant neighborhood for Montgomery County, I snickered and murmured something about white flight. Progressives who traveled regularly to Cuba and Brazil, they wanted better schools for their children. I saw their decision as one more example of liberal hypocrisy. I was childless then, but I have a 6-year-old now. And I know better. So to all the friends -- most but not all of them white -- whom I've chastised over the years for abandoning the District once their children reached...

Maryland State Highway Administrator (MdSHA) has given contractors the OK to start construction work on the first part of the 30km (18.8mi) long $2.4b InterCounty Connector (ICC) tollroad. The ICC is an east-west connector mainly located in Montgomery County about 10km (6 miles) north of the Beltway (I-495) and about 23km (14 miles) north of the White House. It goes from I-370 at present a short spur off I-270 near Gaithersburg at the western end in direction a bit south of east across upper Montgomery County to I-95 and US1 near Laurel in Prince Georges County. The route is already...

BALTIMORE - Gov. Martin O’Malley and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine called on Congress Wednesday to pass legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions, arguing the health of the Chesapeake Bay is at stake. “We now know with certainty that human activities — including coastal development, the burning of fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions — are contributing to both the causes and consequences of climate change,” O’Malley told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But his testimony did not go over well with critics of the Intercounty Connector — an 18-mile toll road that would connect Montgomery and...

ROCKVILLE, Maryland, September 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Three parents' groups have filed papers in Montgomery Circuit Court on Tuesday to request a halt to the planned start of a homosexual curriculum in county schools. Barring a court decision, the school board, after a lengthy battle, will implement a curriculum that will introduce children to the homosexual movement's political doctrines in the eighth and 10th-grade classrooms this fall. If it is allowed to go forward, the curriculum, that teaches homosexuality is caused by a specific "gay gene," will include a lesson titled, "Respect for Differences in Human Sexuality." It will...

After the immigration bill was killed, we let ourselves breathe a little easier. But just because that battle was conquered doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go. Last week's deportation of Elvira Arellano -- an illegal immigrant who'd been hiding out in a church for over a year -- has lifted the issue to the bubbling surface of controversy once again. My own Montgomery County is the center of a specific battle right now. An ID card is apparantly being issued by immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland. According to the Washington Examiner, the group has provided...

ROCKVILLE, MD, August 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Barring a court overruling within the next few weeks, the Montgomery County School Board is scheduled to go ahead this fall and teach middle and high school students that various forms of sexual deviance are normal, the New York Times Reports.Parents & Friends of Gays & Ex-Gays (PFOX), Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC) and other pro-family groups have been battling the highly controversial material for years. Parents won a victory in 2004 when the courts granted a delay on the issue. After the Maryland State Board of Education (MSBE) approved the curriculum...

After five years, one legal defeat and a challenge on the way, Montgomery County, Md., is at the frontier of sex education in the United States. This fall, barring last-minute court action, the county will offer lessons on homosexuality in its 8th- and 10th-grade health education courses. To school officials, the lessons are a natural outgrowth of sex education and of teachings on tolerance and diversity...The lessons’ central message is respect and acceptance of the many permutations of sexual identity, both in others and in one’s self. School officials said they were not seeking to promote a political agenda, beyond...

A Guatemalan man who is in the United States illegally was arrested early Tuesday on hit-and-run charges after a traffic accident that killed two Baltimore-area men and injured three other highway construction workers on the side of U.S. 29 in Montgomery County, police said. The crash just over the Howard County line was the latest in a series of fatal traffic accidents involving illegal immigrant drivers in Maryland. It also added two names to the list of highway workers killed in on-the-job crashes recently. James Cronin, 37, of the 7200 block of Judy Road in Glen Burnie, was flown to...

Montgomery County will not follow Prince William and Loudoun counties in denying public services to illegal aliens, but neither will the county enact any sanctuary policies, County Executive Isiah "Ike" Leggett said yesterday. "It's not something that would be on the agenda for Montgomery County," he said of policies such as prohibiting police in all cases from inquiring about immigration status or giving identification cards to undocumented residents. "I think it would add to the toxic debate we've had and I don't think that would be helpful at this point." Mr. Leggett, a Democrat, spoke at a forum in the...

Myra Morton told police investigating her husband's shooting death early Sunday in Whitpain Township (Pennsylvania) that he had recently taken a second wife in Morocco and was to have traveled there that very day, according to court papers released yesterday. In documents that painted a sad portrait of their marriage, Myra Morton said her husband, Jereleigh Morton, had persuaded her to approve the marriage, as required by her Muslim religion. snip . . .

ANNAPOLIS, August 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A public school district's program promoting anal sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, and transvestitism as normal sexual variations was recently approved by the Maryland State Board of Education despite strenuous opposition from several pro-family groups. Montgomery County Public School's controversial sexuality curriculum for eighth and tenth grade students is the result of pressure by homosexual advocacy groups. In response, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it will assist the pro-family groups in their appeal of the Education Board's decision to the Montgomery County...

Montgomery County public school employees censored and discriminated against a group opposed to the county's new sex-education curriculum, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney said yesterday in a letter to the county school board president. Teachers and a principal violated the First Amendment right of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, known as PFOX, by encouraging students to throw away the group's literature, said Jeremy D. Tedesco, an attorney for the conservative legal group, which is often involved in issues of religious freedom. Teachers and the principal at Winston Churchill High School put the group's name on school trash cans...

Francisco Carlos Solano... Inés Solano... Consuelo Solano... Juan Faustino Solano... were charged with employing and harboring illegal immigrants, money laundering and structuring deposits to avoid financial reporting requirements... Nine employees of their El Pollo Rico restaurant in Wheaton were taken into custody and will be placed in deportation proceedings...Federal agents say the Solanos deposited more than $6.6 million into a business account between June 2002 and September 2006 in increments of $7,000 to $9,000, which authorities say was done to avoid filing currency transaction reports that must be submitted with deposits that exceed $10,000....Federal agents seized more than $2 million...

ROCKVILLE, Maryland, July 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Maryland State Board of Education will not interfere with a local school board's efforts to insert curriculum material legitimizing homosexuality. The board agreed that while parents may have some say in what is taught to their children, that "right is not absolute. It must bend to the State's duty to educate its citizens." Parents in Montgomery County have been battling the school board on the insertion of homosexual material in schools for two and a half years. In November 2004 the parents won a delay in the courts after the Montgomery Board...

The Maryland State Board of Education has ruled that the right of the state supersedes the rights of parents in teaching children about homosexuality. The Board said the "right (of parents) is not absolute. It must bend to the State's duty to educate its citizens." The ruling means that the teaching of homosexuality as an accepted and approved lifestyle in Maryland public schools can move forward

The Maryland State Board of Education has ruled in favor of a sex-education curriculum adopted last month for use in Montgomery middle and high schools, finding nothing illegal in the new lessons on sexual orientation and condom use, school officials said yesterday. In a 17-page June 27 opinion, the state panel declined to "second guess the appropriateness" of the curriculum approved by the Montgomery County Board of Education. Instead, the state panel said it could reverse the county's action only if it violated the law. And after reviewing more than a dozen claims alleged by curriculum opponents, the state board...

Montgomery County, where only county-run stores can be trusted to sell liquor and where the county has tossed smokers out of bars and restaurants, is now the first county in the nation to ban trans fats. The county council voted yesterday to prohibit restaurants, bakeries and delis from using the unhealthful fats in their cooking and food preparation. Apparently oblivious to the fact that a trans fat ban in New York City is forcing some chefs there to abandon butter because it contains small amounts of natural trans fat, the nannies who run Montgomery County unanimously voted to take choices...

Roughly 10 percent of Montgomery County students did not attend the school system's new sex-education classes that include lessons on homosexuality and condom use.Three lessons were taught last week for 10th-graders at Watkins Mill and Bethesda-Chevy Chase high schools. And two lessons were held for eighth-graders at Argyle and Julius West middle schools.Of the 488 students enrolled in the classes, 24 presented a parental-permission slip excusing them, and 17 failed to bring a permission slip allowing them to take the classes, said county schools spokesman Brian Edwards.

The Maryland State Board of Education ruled yesterday that a sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County public schools that includes discussions on homosexuality and condom use can continue, denying a request by resident groups to stop the classes. Though the board denied the appeal from a coalition led by the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC), members said they would hear the appeal this summer.

COURTHOUSE - Democratic poll worker Jacqueline A. Kilroy, accused of lying to detectives when she claimed that she heard Republican state House candidate Jay R. Moyer make racial slurs against Democratic challenger Netta Young Hughes, is now in custody. And authorities now believe that the 41-year-old Kilroy was responsible for a second racial complaint filed in connection with that campaign. "We believe that Jacqueline Kilroy is responsible for the racial text messages," said county District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. "Jay Moyer and his campaign workers had absolutely nothing to do with either incident," Castor emphasized. Authorities last Friday had...

A parcel in the County Service Park, a county-owned cluster of industrial facilities just south of Shady Grove Road, will be the site of a new employment center for day laborers, county officials announced Thursday. The center will be located on a half-acre parcel behind a Department of Liquor Control warehouse at 16640 Crabbs Branch Way. According to a statement from County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), the location is more than half a mile from the closest residential area. It is also about 700 yards from the nearest bus stop. The Shady Grove Metro station is a little more than...

Montgomery County school officials announced yesterday that they are temporarily banning outside groups such as parent-teacher associations and the Boy Scouts from distributing fliers about activities and events in student backpacks. The decision comes less than a week after a federal appeals court ruled that the school system's policy for flier distribution was unconstitutional because it gave educators unlimited power to approve or reject materials. The case is the outgrowth of a dispute between the school system and Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland. The group filed suit in 2001 after the school system denied its request to distribute fliers about...

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- A Silver Spring woman reported to police Tuesday evening that she was raped early Monday morning. According to police, the 35-year-old woman said she was walking home from work between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Piney Branch Road near Long Branch Park when a man armed with a machete approached her. "He forced her into a wooded area of Long Branch Park and there raped her," said Montgomery County Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur.

• Bill of rights Several Montgomery County Council candidates last week rallied behind a "bill of rights" proposal that would create a living wage for immigrant and illegal alien domestic workers in the county. Democratic contenders Duchy Trachtenberg, Cary Lamari and Valerie Ervin were among the candidates who attended a press conference Tuesday to present a George Washington University study on the abuses of domestic workers -- nannies and housekeepers who are the female equivalent of predominantly male day laborers.

Two Potomac teens were arrested for flashing a toy gun at a woman last week... (snip) At about 9:55 p.m. on Thursday, a 29-year-old Rockville woman reported that two boys had aimed a gun at her while driving near the intersection of Westlake Drive and Tuckerman Lane in Bethesda... (snip) The brothers were arrested and charged as juveniles with first-degree assault and released to the custody of their father, police said. Under state law, first-degree assault is a felony that can carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. Using a toy weapon in a crime carries the same...

<p>A teacher at a Chevy Chase day-care center was arrested over the weekend for allegedly fondling a 14-year-old male in a restroom stall at a Rockville bookstore, Montgomery County police said yesterday.</p> <p>John P. Salinas, 37, of Silver Spring was charged with attempted third-degree sex offense and fourth-degree sex offense following an alleged May 20 incident in which he forcibly pulled down the pants and underwear of a teenager who was using the restroom at the Barnes & Noble store on Rockville Pike.</p>

CHEVY CHASE Panel Says House Is Over the Line Unhappy Neighbors Want Walls Moved By Miranda S. Spivack Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 8, 2006; Page B02 Marianne and Marc Duffy say their dream home renovation in Chevy Chase has turned into a suburban nightmare. Their neighbors say the Duffys intentionally flouted building rules when they expanded their $725,000 house on Thornapple Street and have no one to blame but themselves. Yesterday, a Montgomery County appeals board reaffirmed an earlier ruling that the Duffys had rebuilt their house too close to the street and to neighbors. The Duffys say...

A Chevy Chase couple has been ordered by the county to demolish their partially renovated home — or to move it 1.7 feet back from the property line. Marc and Marianne Duffy believe they are victims of a backlash against oversized homes being squeezed into small lots in older neighborhoods. They say they are being punished for a county agency’s mistakes. Neighbors who opposed the construction believe the Duffy’s problems are their own creation. Marc Duffy, an attorney, and Marianne Duffy, a stay-at-home mom and former attorney, served as their own general contractors on the project. ‘‘Three times my husband...

Montgomery's Unseemly Windfall How the rich get richer Monday, April 17, 2006; A12 AN UNHERALDED, fine-print change in federal tax law means that Montgomery County will reap an accidental windfall in state education funding, in the range of $20 million or more annually, starting in July of next year. That's nice for Montgomery. The trouble is, the windfall is largely at the expense of 20 of the 23 other jurisdictions in Maryland, especially Prince George's County. As a result of the federal change, Prince George's schools would be shortchanged by roughly the same amount, an estimated $20 million. The arrangement...

Many parents are outraged over learning that their kids are being used by school administrators and teachers to further their own political agenda. Officials with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland say those students who attend the upcoming pro-illegal immigration rally can get credit for their Student Service Learning hours. However, no credit is being offered for attending rallies that are opposed to open borders or illegal immigration. The immigration rally scheduled to be held in Montgomery County on Monday is expected to attract thousands, including some children from a local school district. Every high school student in MCPS must...