Free Republic

New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam is facing calls to step down as head of the council’s influential public safety committee after a controversial traffic stop revealed he was motoring around the Big Apple with out-of-state license plates and allegedly illegal tinted windows. Salaam is also taking heat with claims he embellished his Friday night encounter with an NYPD cop in Harlem, during which the officer pulled him over for the tinted windows but cut him a break when the lawmaker ID’d himself. “This is damning,” City Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) said in a post on X. “An elected official...

Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated “Central Park Five,” has officially won the Democratic primary for a seat on the New York city council, almost ensuring his eventual election to the seat. Salaam had a significant lead over his opponents, New York Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor, for the nomination to represent Council District 9 in Central Harlem, but he needed additional votes released Wednesday to clinch victory. Initial unofficial results put Salaam as the clear leader with 50.14 percent of the vote, while Dickens and Taylor had about 25 and 14 percent, respectively. Incumbent Kristin Jordan,...

In the wake of the Chik-Fil-A fiasco, few realize that an anti-gay restaurant is already operating in Chicago, the Salaam Restaurant, backed by Louis Farrakan. Farrakan spoke out recently against Barack Obama's endorsement of gay marriage. If Chik-Fil-A is not welcome in Chicago, Salaam Restaurant shouldn't be either.

FBI agents hoping to break up an alleged interstate crime ring dealing in arson, fraud and possibly stolen vehicles, ended up in a gunfight at a Detroit-area warehouse, after which a suspect lay dead. The FBI sought to arrest Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a.k.a. Christopher Thomas, 53, who a criminal complaint said was the imam of a radical fundamentalist Sunni group called Masjid Al-Haqq that seeks to establish a sovereign Islamic state inside the United States... Abdullah and 10 others were charged today in a criminal complaint with conspiracy and theft of interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of...

The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi has offered to mediate between President Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to avoid what he thinks would be an irrational war. Gadhafi offered his services while speaking to reporters attending a summit of the African Union in Addis Ababa, reports Britain's Sky News. Libyan President Col. Moammar Gadhafi (Courtesy: Sky News) "I wish I could have the opportunity to talk to these two persons, to address them, President Bush and Saddam Hussein," Gadhafi said. "I would like to save international peace." The Libyan leader also has been working behind the scenes to persuade Hussein...