Free Republic

Robert Lee Thompson didn't fire the shot that killed a Houston convenience store clerk; his accomplice did. But barring Gov. Rick Perry's intervention, Thompson will be the one headed to the Texas death chamber next month while the accomplice serves a life sentence. Thompson, 34, and Sammy Butler, 32, were tried for capital murder for the Dec. 5, 1996 stickup of a Braeswood Boulevard convenience store in which clerk Mansoor Rahim was killed. Under Texas' law of parties, all participants in a such cases are eligible for the death penalty, regardless of who did the actual killing. Thus, Thompson, who...

You're doing it wrong!! The Border Patrol in Brownsville arrested a 22 year old Arizona man over the weekend, on charges that he was attempting to smuggle drugs into Mexico. Officials say James Williams, 22, from Springdale Arizona was attempting to drive southbound over the Veterans International Bridge in a white Ford Taurus, when the vehicle was 'selected for an intensive inspection.' A narcotic detection dog named Cisco alerted officers to the presence of narcotics in a duffle bag in the trunk, and inside they found five bundles of marijuana, 52 pounds in all. "Although southbound seizures of marijuana are...

ELDORADO, Texas — More than 150 potential jurors, including 10 women in prairie dresses and braids, crammed into a makeshift courtroom Monday as jury selection began in the first criminal trial stemming from the raid of a polygamist sect's ranch last year. Raymond Jessop, 38, is charged with sexual assault of a child, stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl. The girl, according to church documents seized by authorities, gave birth at age 16 at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. If convicted, Jessop faces 20 years in prison. He is also charged with bigamy, but that...

Shuffling genetic information has long been framed as a biological mechanism that can generate variety as well as fuel evolution. However, new details of a common cellular genetic shuffling process called “crossing over” reveal a tightly controlled system that operates under strict parameters and requires highly specified cellular machinery. It is as if each generation was programmed to have variation, and that variation had strict limitations—limitations that would preclude Darwinian evolution...

Saying that Republicans have no solutions to the health care crisis is a flat out lie, and an attempt at distraction. The Democrats want the American people to think that there are no other solutions but their plan. They are trying to portray health care as so unfixable, beyond the power of the free market, that the only answer is the hand of government. They want us to believe that government will make it better, that we need the beaurocracy, that we are dependent on the politicians we elect for our basic health needs. They treat us as if we...

A father who allegedly shot and killed his teenage son during an argument over a video game surrendered Sunday to police after a brief standoff with SWAT officers at a southwest Houston apartment, authorities said. Ofelio Antonio Otero, 40, had been drinking heavily when he began arguing with his wife over the whereabouts of a missing video game around 4:15 a.m. at the family's home in the 7700 block of Corporate Drive, Houston Police Department spokeswoman Jodi Silva said. Otero then started fighting with 17-year-old Ignacio A. Otero about the game. During the argument, he loaded his gun, authorities said....

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) acknowledged Wednesday that he failed to disclose nearly $300,000 in profits from the sale of Exxon stock in 2006 and 2007, and his office said he will file amended financial disclosure forms with the House ethics committee as soon as possible. According to Carter’s office, a 2006 sale of Exxon Mobil Corp. stock netted the Congressman just more than $199,000 in profits that were not reflected on his financial disclosure form for that year. A 2007 sale of Exxon stock netted about $97,000 that Carter failed to disclose.

MCALLEN - The U.S. Coast Guard patrols the coasts, and a limited stretch of the Rio Grande, but a bill in the works would change that. Congressman Henry Cuellar wants the coast guard to work out a plan that would help secure the 1200 miles of the river. It's aimed at addressing drug and human smuggling along the river. Right now, the river is only patrolled by local law enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The bill is called the Coast Guard Authorization Act.

His name was Richard "Ricky" Ramirez, but the nation knew him as "The Night Stalker," a silent menace who cut window screens and crept into homes at night to murder more than a dozen people in California. Ramirez, 49, is being held on death row at San Quentin State Prison after being convicted in 1989 in Los Angeles of 13 murders. His body count is likely going to grow, now that he's been linked by DNA to the 1984 murder of a 9-year-old San Francisco girl. In 1989, I found myself face to face with Ramirez in a Los Angeles...

MATAMOROS, Mexico — This border city near the mouth of the Rio Grande is eerily quiet on most days — eerie because its streets are largely the lair of the Zetas gunmen, the most feared and savage gangsters in Mexico. On other days, gunbattles ensue in broad daylight between heavily armed Zeta enforcers and those who get in their way — as happened last month when soldiers stopped a suspicious carload of men on a street that runs along the Rio Grande levee through a wealthy Matamoros neighborhood. The gunmen opened fire, tossed grenades. Bullets tore into houses and businesses...

The son of one of the most powerful families within a polygamist Mormon sect goes to trial for sexual assault Monday, a case in which Texas prosecutors will provide their first public evidence that Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints men engaged in sex with underage girls. Raymond Merril Jessop, 38, is the first to face trial among 12 defendants who live at the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado and are accused of arranging or participating in underage marriages. His father, Frederick Merril Jessop is the senior leader of the FLDS because the group's prophet, Warren Jeffs,...

Dallas police wrongly ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English over the last three years, Police Chief David Kunkle announced Friday while promising to investigate all officers involved in the cases for dereliction of duty. Pending cases will be dismissed, and those who paid the $204 fine for the charge, which does not exist in the city, will be reimbursed, Kunkle said. "I was surprised and stunned that that would happen, particularly in the city of Dallas," Kunkle said. "In my world, you would never tell someone not to speak Spanish." The citations were issued in several different...

A Houston city councilman running for city controller owes more than $100,000 in federal income taxes dating back seven years, public records show. Ronald C. Green, a lawyer who has served in the city’s At-Large Position 4 since 2004, owed $120,043.11 to the federal government earlier this year, according to federal tax liens filed with the Harris County clerk’s office this past summer. The delinquent taxes go back as far as 2002.

Speeds of 150 mph were clocked early Friday by Grapevine police as they tried to stop a sports utility vehicle on Texas 114, according to reports. The driver of the 2008 Buick Enclave, Ismael Esparza, 37, of Southlake, was arrested for driving while intoxicated, said Lt. Todd Dearing, spokesman for Grapevine police. An officer was sent at 2:18 a.m. to check on a report of an intoxicated driver on Texas 121, north of DFW Airport, Dearing said. It was unclear if the Enclave was the same vehicle, but it passed the officer's patrol car at a very high speed,...

A Dallas rookie police officer erred when he cited a woman earlier this month for being a non-English speaking driver, police said. Officer Gary Bromley issued a citation Oct. 2 to 48-year-old Ernestina Mondragon after stopping her for making an illegal U-turn in the 500 block of Easton Road, near East Northwest Highway, according to a copy of the citation.

Over the past couple of weeks, the White House has piled on the Fox News Channel, with a trio of high-ranking administration officials publicly criticizing it, followed by words from President Barack Obama himself about Fox News and topped off with the White House attempting to exclude Fox from the White House press pool. That has some members of Congress questioning why they are doing this.. Earlier, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., took on the issue and defended Fox and its audience. However, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, also took on the White House and questioned why it would be something Obama...

Years ago, National Geographic published a remarkable photograph of a polystrate fossil, a fossilized tree that extended stratigraphically upward through several layers of rock in Tennessee. Its roots were in a coal seam, and the overlying deposits included bedded shale and thin carbon-rich layers. An advocate of any form of uniformitarianism would believe that it took many, many years to deposit this sequence of layers (much longer than it takes for a tree to grow and eventually die and decay), yet one vertical fossil extends through them all. This one fossilized tree offered a direct contradiction to the evolutionary mantra...

A San Marcos man broke into a home in the 700 block of Oscar Smith Drive in San Marcos and was shot by one of the residents, police said. At 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, the 21-year-old man, armed with a BB gun resembling a real pistol, forced his way through the back door while three residents were inside. One of the residents shot the intruder three times with a handgun, San Marcos Police Commander Penny Dunn said. The man fled on foot and went to Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos. He was transferred to University Medical Center Brackenridge in...

Former President Bill Clinton is expected to speak to UTPA students and Rio Grande Valley residents on Thursday. Sources told Action 4 News that Clinton is visiting the University of Texas Pan American campus late Thursday afternoon. The former president is expected to speak to speak to UTPA students about his William J. Clinton Foundation. The organization is trying to encourage world leaders and students to develop commitments and take action to address global challenges. Clinton will speak at 6:45 p.m. in the UTPA Fine Arts Auditorium. Students and staff get priority seating but event is FREEand open to the...

Washington, D.C. – The issue is resolved, but it means an Idaho Congressman no longer has an excuse to slip out his pocketknife at a committee meeting. Last week, the House of Representatives approved the conference report setting appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security. This final bill included language preventing spring-assisted knives from being classified by the Department as switchblades. The language was first championed by Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio.) “This amendment was necessary to prevent commonly-used pocketknives from being branded as illegal switchblades,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “The National Rifle...

The Human Methylome: What Do These Patterns Mean? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* For decades, researchers have noticed that tiny chemicals called “methyl groups� piggyback on DNA molecules, and that they occur in certain patterns. Intrigued by the meaning and function of methylation patterns, especially as they relate to medicine, a five-year, $ 190-million-dollar research effort funded by the National Institutes of Health began in 2008. In one of its studies, researchers have stumbled upon a new intricacy of cell function.Joseph Ecker of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies led a collaboration to generate the world’s first complete map of human...

Late in September, a Muslim named Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, was arrested after placing an inert car bomb at a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas. In March 2009, according to his indictment in U.S. District Court, Smadi declared his intention to wage war in the name of Islam. Yet characteristically, if dispiritingly, Muslims in the Dallas area are now expressing fears of a “backlash,” rather than taking the hard steps necessary to make sure there are no more jihad plotters who are inspired by Islamic teachings, as was Hosam Smadi. Smadi was very clear about the Islamic motivation for...

Ciudad Juarez passed the 2,000 mark in homicides Tuesday — setting a record for violence in the border city that has become ground zero in Mexico's war on drugs and cementing its place as one of the most murderous cities in the world. Before 2008, Juarez, a city of 1.5 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, formerly had about 200 homicides annually, a rate comparable to or lower than such U.S. cities as Houston. But last year, Juarenses — as residents of Juarez are known — saw 1,600 lives lost in an alarming and mostly unsolved crime wave....

Many species of marine creatures are very well suited to their watery environment, with precisely arranged gas exchange organs, properly angled eyeball parts, and streamlined bodies with appropriate musculature for expert swimming. They also have a continuously sloughing slime layer that lubricates their underwater motion. Rahul Ganguli of Teledyne Scientific in California is experimenting with ways to provide a similar slime for ship hulls to glide through water more efficiently...

On Monday, former President George W. Bush will be the "special guest speaker" at the "Get Motivated! Business Seminar" in Fort Worth, Texas, according to the event's Web site. "Attend This Dynamic Seminar to INCREASE Your Productivity and Income!" the Web site says. Other listed speakers include Gen. Colin Powell, who will discuss leadership, former football player Terry Bradshaw (speaking on competitiveness), former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (perseverance), and a trio of motivational speakers – Zig Ziglar, Dr. Robert Schuller, and Tamara Lowe. Lowe, the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Get Motivated! Seminars, told Hotsheet that Mr....

DALLAS — Drug Enforcement Administration agents — helped by an army of local and state police — raided homes and businesses across North Texas on Wednesday, targeting what they called one of the largest methamphetamine rings in the nation. DEA says a notorious and violent drug cartel called "La Familia" was distributing the meth and cocaine out of Dallas. SWAT teams arrested dozens of people, confisicated numerous weapons and drugs. Sources said the La Familia gang is extremely violent, and known to torture their victims. Law enforcement agents hit 38 locations in the Dallas area, including DeSoto, Duncanville and Grand...

EL PASO, Texas — An alleged Mexican gang leader named to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list may have surgically altered his face and changed his finger prints to hide his identity, federal investigators said Wednesday. Eduardo "Tablas" Ravelo was added earlier this week to the wanted list that includes the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Boston crime lord James "Whitey" Bulger. "From what I've heard, it's my understanding he may have had ... plastic surgery and manipulated his finger prints," said Samantha Mikeska, the FBI's lead investigator in a 5-year-old probe of Ravelo's Barrio Azteca gang. If Ravelo...

University Park Nixes Kids' Tree House Front-yard structure that violates city code to be torn down By SUSY SOLIS and ELLEN GOLDBERG Updated 8:42 AM CDT, Wed, Oct 21, 2009 Print Email Share Buzz up! TWITTER FACEBOOK NBCDFW.com A labor of love between a father and his two sons will have to be torn down after the University Park City Council declined to amend a city ordinance that prohibits the structure. Brenk Johnson built a tree house in a large oak tree in his front yard because there wasn't a tree big enough to support one in his backyard. But...

GRAND PRAIRIE — State authorities are looking for a Grand Prairie convenience store clerk who allegedly stole a $1 million lottery ticket from a customer. Pankaj Joshi is accused of lying to the 67-year-old customer who presented the ticket, telling him that he only won $2. Then, Joshi allegedly kept the million dollar ticket for himself and cashed it in at lottery headquarters in Austin. Investigators believe Joshi — who had worked at the Lucky Food Store at 902 South Great Southwest Parkway for about five years — may have fled the U.S. to return to his home country of...

AUSTIN — The Texas treasury lost $19.5 million through an investment in the Ponzi scheme run by convicted financial swindler Bernard Madoff. The money was part of a $224.5 million investment the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Co. had with a Texas-based hedge fund called Austin Capital Safe Harbor. Austin Capital closed in May due to losses it suffered in one of Madoff's scam investment funds. Comptroller Susan Combs chairs the Treasury Safekeeping Trust, which manages $50 billion in tobacco lawsuit settlement funds, TexPool investments for 2,000 local governments and Treasury Pool for managing state funds. Combs spokesman R.J. DeSilva said...

Charles Darwin admitted that the sudden appearance of fully formed creatures in fossil deposits was one of the biggest problems with his hypothesis that nature generated living creatures through natural selection. His vision of organisms gradually morphing from one kind to another over vast time spans predicted that most fossils should reflect that steady grading from one basic body plan to another. Some scientists believe they have found a creature that bridges one of the many gaps in the fossil record, although it requires a significant reworking of evolutionary theory. The crow-sized pterosaur fossil from China has been named Darwinopterus...

DALLAS — Canada’s trade minister said Monday that some progress is being made on a nagging trade issue with the United States, while U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said a tangled dispute with Mexico over cross-border trucking and California Christmas trees might resolve itself next year. Welcoming Cabinet-level Mexican and Canadian trade officials to the city where he served as mayor, Kirk said language that removed funding for the Mexican truck program has been restored in next year’s budget bill. "We won’t be handcuffed by prohibitory language," he said. When the border was closed to 500 U.S.-certified trucks in a...

Calm has returned to a Reynosa neighborhood following an hour-long battle between soldiers and criminals using high-powered weapons and explosives. Mexican media outlets reported that the hour-long battle happened in the Colonia El Maestro on the city’s eastside around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday. The El Milenio newspaper reported that at least 20 explosions rocked the normally peaceful neighborhood along the highway to Rio Bravo. Mexican officials told El Milenio that the shootout started during a chase that began on the opposite side of the city on the highway to Monterrey. The newspaper reported that hundreds of spent bullet casings were left...

NEAR EDINBURG — A wounded man managed to fend off an intruder with his .40-caliber pistol early Monday morning. Both men remained in the hospital Monday afternoon after they exchanged gunfire earlier that day during a botched home invasion. Hector Bueno Cantu tried to storm into Juan Hernandez Valencia’s mobile home at 7724 Jasman Road shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, said Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño. Cantu tried to pull open the back door to Valencia’s mobile home, but Valencia managed to keep the door shut as his common law wife stood nearby, deputies said. Cantu fired several gunshots through...

Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6heXIdSpDdE

This case involves Ms. Amber Lovill who became pregnant while she was on probation for a non-violent crime. After successfully serving more than two years of her three-year probation sentence, which included the requirement that she address her drug problem and abstain from drug (meth) use, Ms. Lovill experienced a single relapse (meth). Because Ms. Lovill was pregnant, her probation officers departed from normal practice and filed immediately for probation revocation. They contacted the local warrant officer to have Ms. Lovill arrested immediately and incarcerated in the Nueces County Jail. Probation officers acknowledged that her pregnancy and their alleged concern...

AUSTIN (KXAN) - An anti-earmark group Tuesday named Texas Senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison as October's “ Porker of the Month .” The group gives out the title to lawmakers, government officials and political candidates it thinks “have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers,” according to its website. The group said Hutchison has requested 149 earmarks worth $1.6 billion for fiscal year 2010. The Dallas Morning News reports that, by Hutcison’s own accounting, she has steered $8.7 billion to Texas in the past five years. Hutchison has argued if she hadn't secured those funds,...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may be waffling about when to give up her powerful job, but a sign came this month that she's serious about leaving the nation's capital to focus on her run for Texas governor: a "sold" sign outside her suburban Washington home. Tax records show that her 4,300-square-foot house in McLean, Va., sold for $1.4 million on Oct. 2. That's about $170,000 less than she and her husband, Ray Hutchison, paid for it in 2006 and nearly $400,000 less than the original asking price in August 2008. The Hutchisons own a home valued at $2.7 million in...

A group of illegal immigrants from China is expected to face a judge after being caught near Brownsville. U.S. Border Patrol agents caught three Chinese immigrants near Brownsville on Monday. Criminal complaints filed in federal court records show that the immigrants illegally crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico on Sunday. The immigrants were identified as Jian Qiao Zhen, Chen Yan Hui and Li Xing. The three are expected to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Felix Recio in Brownsville at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The U.S. has moved past none of the core issues that brought the economy to its knees last fall, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) suggested Tuesday. Paul asserted that while some big financial institutions may be starting to reap large profits again, the bailouts put in place to help those firms last year have only worsened the long-term economic standing in the country. "None of this is behind us," the libertarian Republican said during an appearance on CNN. "All we have done is prolong the agony and very soon people are going to realize, in spite of all these huge profits,...

GEORGE WEST — Residents of a subdivision near Swinney Switch overwhelmingly spoke against banning shooting in their subdivision at a public hearing Thursday. Live Oak County commissioners are gathering input about a possible recreational shooting ban in the Lake Meadows Subdivision after some residents complained about two men practicing target shooting in their yards. A dozen residents spoke against the ban, saying they didn’t want to lose the liberty to shoot a gun and the shooters in their subdivision are safe. “I’ve grown up shooting all my life,” said subdivision resident Charles Elliott Jr. “I raised my kids, my grandkids...

The mural of President Barack Obama has been on the side of a Midtown building since the Democratic primary, when the president was a U.S. Senator, and the building served as his Houston Campaign headquarters. Over the weekend someone painted "puppet" on his mural, and the statement "yes we can" now has the statement "loose our freedom" painted next to it. "This was done in broad daylight, and it just and kind of defaced a pretty good memorial," said Gerry McGee who works in the building where the mural is located. The building is now the campaign headquarters for a...

A 58-year-old Luling man will be keeping his nose clean for the next few years. Thursday Alfred Dwight Watkins was sentenced to ten months in federal prison for dealing firearms without a license. After his prison sentence he will be under supervised release for three additional years. The judge also ordered him to pay a $11,232 fine. Last August Watkins admitted to selling firearms at Austin and San Antonio gun shows even though his license had expired in 2003. According to authorities, Watkins admitted that in order to 'flip' more firearms he mislead customers by telling them they didn't need...

Newsweek magazine recently published a commentary by atheist Richard Dawkins containing some of his arguments against “creationists.” Therein he admitted, “What would be evidence against evolution, and very strong evidence at that, would be the discovery of even a single fossil in the wrong geological stratum.”[1] Out of place fossils are actually common, despite Dawkins’ claims regarding the “massive numbers” of fossils documenting evolutionary history. ICR News has reported on several over the last 12 months [2,3,4,5,6] and another one has surfaced recently...

Here's one place where a Sarah Palin campaign appearance is welcome: Texas. Republican gubernatorial campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey are giving Palin the cold shoulder out of fear that she might alienate independent voters. But it's a very different story in the Texas Republican gubernatorial primary, a conservative slugfest between Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Palin will campaign for Perry sometime next year, according to his campaign, but the dates are still being finalized. Palin endorsed the Texas governor's re-election bid earlier this year. "She will be coming here to campaign sometime after the first of...

El Paso unemployment rate rises to 9.8 percent in September Link to story above

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, expanded his fundraising edge over six Republican primary challengers, reporting late Friday that he raked in more than $450,000 during the past three months. Republican small-businessman Rob Curnock raised nearly $56,000 during the same three-month period ending Sept. 30. That left Curnock with $42,557 on hand to spend. Chuck Wilson, a former CIA case officer from Waco, trailed Curnock, having taken in more than $39,000 in the period. A third GOP challenger, Dave McIntyre, a retired Army colonel and national security expert from College Station, raised more than $23,000. Timothy Delasandro and J.W. Autem’s fundraising...

COLLEGE STATION — Our president, navigating through a difficult rookie year, on Friday made his first trip to our state since he got the gig in January. Barack Obama came to College Station to honor George H.W. Bush on the 20th anniversary of the ex-president's "Points of Light" speech that sparked a volunteer effort that has helped countless folks. So nice. A Democratic president and an ex-GOP president ignoring party differences for a day. The event crossed generations. It bridged racial divide. And it reminded us that the folks who really play politics for keeps know there's a time to...

In one case, an innocent man died in gang’s 3 tries to kill target It was not the first time a rival tried to kill Mexican drug cartel-connected gangster Santiago “Chago” Salinas, but it would be the last. When 28-year-old Salinas was shot in the head at point-blank range three years ago at the Baymont Inn & Suites hotel on the Gulf Freeway, it was the latest round in a deadly feud that has played out here and in Mexico. Just a few weeks before, Salinas' brother-in-law who also had lived in Houston, was found dead, charred in a barrel...

Organizers of a vigil against the mistreatment of federal detainees called for the closure of the nation's largest immigration detention center known as “Tent City” in Raymondville. The vigil was held by some one hundred people from across Texas Friday evening. The privately-operated prison in Willacy County houses some 3,000 immigrants. Some of them have turned to Action 4 News to sound off on allegations of horrendous conditions, sexual assaults, rotten food and poor medical care inside the facility. Vigil organizers, some from as far away as Austin and Laredo, said the inhumane treatment of detainees must be stopped. “We...