Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Wednesday that he is authorizing the city to shut off utility service to properties where large parties and gatherings are held, CBS Los Angeles reports. Garcetti said that, starting Friday, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will cut off water and power service in "egregious" cases where unpermitted large parties and gatherings take place. The announcement came hours after City Councilman David Ryu introduced a motion to increase penalties for property owners who hold large house parties in violation of public health orders. It wasn't clear whether Garcetti's announcement was related...

French police arrested a man on Sunday evening after he deliberately mowed down a dozen pedestrians in the eastern city of Dijon, badly injuring two of them and shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is the greatest"), authorities said. The previous day, French police in central France shot dead a man who stabbed and wounded three officers in a police station while shouting those same Arabic words.

The apparently conventional ending to Jose Padilla's trial last week -- conviction on charges of conspiring to commit violence abroad and providing material assistance to a terrorist organization -- gives only the coldest of comfort to anyone concerned about how our legal system deals with the threat he and his co-conspirators represent. Jose Padilla, in an undated driver's license photo He will be sentenced -- likely to a long if not a life-long term of imprisonment. He will appeal. By the time his appeals run out he will have engaged the attention of three federal district courts, three courts of...