Free Republic

<p>BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — Three women were arrested after twerking at an impromptu dance party in the Beaverton City Hall parking lot.</p>

To the trial judge, the case of Daniel Garcia-Mendoza seemed to be a police stop based on "driving while Latino." Plymouth police officer Ryan Peterson said he was suspicious because "the driver had both hands on the steering wheel and was looking straight ahead." What's more, neither driver nor passenger "were looking at me." Checking the license plate, Peterson learned there was no driver's license listed for the car's owner. Peterson pulled over the 2003 Chevy Tahoe on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on March 19, 2012. "Luckily for Peterson, perhaps," neither Garcia-Mendoza nor his passenger had a driver's license, the...

INDIANAPOLIS – FBI agents have seized thousands of artifacts from Native Americans, Russia, China, and other nations from a 91-year-old man's private collection in rural central Indiana. The items, which also came from Haiti, Australia, New Guinea and Peru, were collected by Donald Miller of Waldron over eight decades, FBI Special Agent Robert Jones said at a news conference. "The cultural value of these artifacts is immeasurable," Jones said while refusing to disclose details of any of the individual items taken from Miller's property. Some items were acquired improperly, but Miller, who traveled extensively, obtained others legally or before laws...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – A pair of gunrunners smuggled firearms into New York City by hiding them in luggage they carried on discount buses offering cheap fares and lesser odds of getting caught, authorities said Monday. The men were captured in a police sting that netted 254 weapons in 45 transactions since last year – the largest total from a gun case in recent memory. The alleged smugglers, Walter Walker and Earl Campbell, were among 19 people arrested in New York, North Carolina and South Carolina as the result of a 10-month investigation.

Don’t put it past our politicians to try it in a financial emergency. The breaking of contracts by the U.S. government, unfortunately, has happened before, and what’s under way in Cyprus shows that feckless politicos will continue to try such things. In 1933–34, amid the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. government seized the American people’s gold holdings. From that point, until 1975, it was illegal for Americans to own gold, other than in some forms of jewelry or collectors’ coins. In the panic of the Depression years the courts upheld this unconstitutional confiscation. Yes, people received dollars in...

The Pokémon Plot: How One Cartoon Inspired the Army to Dream Up a Seizure Gun In 1998, a secret Army intelligence analysis suggested a new way to take out enemies: blast them with electromagnetic energy until their brains overload and they start to convulse. Amazingly, it was an idea inspired by a Pokemon episode. Application of "electromagnetic pulses" could force neurons to all fire at once, causing a "disruption of voluntary muscle control," reads a description of a proposed seizure weapon, contained in a declassified document from the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center. "It is thought by using a method...

The Obama administration is making it easier for bureaucrats to take away guns without offering the accused any realistic due process. In a final rule published last week, the Justice Department granted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) authority to “seize and administratively forfeit property involved in controlled-substance abuses.” That means government can grab firearms and other property from someone who has never been convicted or even charged with any crime. It’s a dangerous extension of the civil-forfeiture doctrine, a surreal legal fiction in which the seized property — not a person — is put on trial....

This article is written by Charles B. Frye, Attorney at Law, Houston, Texas.What are the risks of transporting large sums of cash when you’re traveling?  Obviously, you could get robbed or get involved in an accident and lose the money.  Your car could catch on fire while you’re buying gas and your currency could go up in smoke.  A number of bad things could happen if you carry a large amount of cash on you when you travel.  But, one risk that many folks never consider is that a law enforcement officer could decide to seize your cash, even if...

More than $840,000 was awarded Monday to 96 victims of illegal searches, seizures and use of excessive force by the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force, including a dozen juveniles who were targeted by a Brooklyn Park police officer. The scandal-ridden gang unit, shut down by the Department of Public Safety three years ago this month, broke through people's doors without justification, seized property without authorization and injured people who were not suspects, according to reports by Mark Gehan, a St. Paul attorney appointed as special master in the case.

Despite his quick recovery from the seizure he suffered on Monday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. faces a complex diagnosis and a difficult decision. Because the seizure was his second — he had a similar one in 1993 — he meets the criteria for epilepsy, and he and his doctors will have to decide whether he should take medication to prevent further seizures, said neurologists not involved in his care. (Neither the chief justice nor his doctors would comment yesterday.) The decision will involve weighing the risk of more seizures against the risk of side effects from the drugs....

WASHINGTON -- Commerce Secretary John Bryson has resigned, saying the seizure that he suffered on June 9 that led to two San Gabriel Valley hit-and-run accidents could be a distraction in the job. "I have concluded that the seizure I suffered on June 9th could be a distraction from my performance as Secretary and that our country would be better served by a change in leadership of the Department," Bryson wrote to President Obama in a letter dated Wednesday.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson said Monday night that he is taking an indefinite leave of absence to deal with health problems, after officials said the Cabinet member had a seizure while driving Saturday and was involved in three traffic collisions.

In November 2008, when he was just 6, William Moller had his first epileptic seizure, during a reading class at school. For about 20 seconds, he simply froze in place, as if someone had pressed a pause button. He could not respond to his teacher. This is known as an absence seizure, and over the next year William, now 10, who lives with his family in Brooklyn, went from having one or two a day to suffering constant seizures. Not all were absence seizures; others were frightening tonic-clonics, also known as grand mals, during which he lost consciousness and convulsed....

In 2006 California’s Senate Bill 107 codified a requirement that by 2010 all electricity retailers in the state were to procure 20% of their electricity from “renewables.” That same year L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich established Nuisance Abatement Teams that started combing the Mojave desert hitting isolated residents with ever-expanding lists of code violations, imposing whatever it took to drive residents out, and they made their intentions perfectly clear . . . . . . Apparently it is not enough that our green crony capitalists are getting billions in taxpayer subsidies, or that that rate-payers are forced to buy their...

Roger Simpson said he looked down the road and saw a little girl running outside her home but didn't give it another thought. Police, however, said the man witnessed a murder in progress. Authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. Severely dehydrated, the girl had a seizure and died days later. Now, her grandmother and stepmother who police say meted out the punishment were taken to jail Wednesday and face murder charges. Witnesses told deputies Savannah was told to run and...

The takedown of the file-sharing site over copyright violations provides a warning about being careful where you store stuff. Megaupload file seizure shows why many cautious about the cloud Megaupload users are crying foul after their personal files, not necessarily copyright-infringing material, stored with the file-sharing service was seized on Thursday along with a trove of illegally distributed copyrighted works. Some of those users took to Twitter complaining about the loss of their files, as first reported by TorrentFreak. "I had files up there...gone forever..and they were personal recordings! No copyright infringement!" said Twitter user J. Amir. Another user complained...

A Massachusetts fisherman pulled in an 881-pound tuna this week only to have the federal authorities take it away. It sounds like a libertarian twist on the classic novella by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, but for Carlos Rafael, the saga is completely true.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department unlawfully seized up to $7 million worth of property from a Santa Clarita landowner, according to a lawsuit filed in a federal court. Attorney Richard Gibson of Woodland Hills represents the owners of the property that was seized on a 20-acre site near Magic Mountain. Deputies allegedly seized tractors, trailers, boats and cargo containers after discovering a reportedly stolen skiploader that Gibson said was abandoned on the site without the landowners’ knowledge. “For many years, my client has stored a great deal of stuff on the property,” said Gibson. “One of [the owners] had...

CAMDENTON, Mo. (AP) -- Nearly every year, Patsy Riley has gotten unsolicited offers for her house on Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks with its spectacular views of tree-lined bluffs and its ample shoreline, but she never wanted to leave. Now, she and hundreds of her neighbors wonder what will become of their homes after a federal agency declared that many structures built close to the lake may have to go. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, citing restrictions on private developments around dams, says thousands of residences, decks, patios and boathouses appear to encroach on land belonging to the hydroelectric project...

Tegucigalpa, Honduras A series of simultaneous raids were conducted on Monday in different parts of Honduras by members of the Public Prosecutor elements, Directorate for Combating Drug Trafficking, the Army and National Police. This is the first action that is made ​​pursuant to the Act Deprivation of assets of illicit origin , in force since July 2010 and applies through the creation of the post of judge with national jurisdiction. The raid was carried out operating in La Ceiba, Roatan and San Pedro Sula, towns where the nine homes that were deprived by the authorities. Also checks should be made...