Free Republic

The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose case shocked New York City and changed the way parents watched over their kids. The justices, by a 6-3 vote, granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who had urged them to undo a federal appeals court decision that overturned the verdict. The three liberal justices dissented. Prosecutors had been preparing to try the man, Pedro Hernandez, for a third time. His first trial ended in a mistrial. The unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed...

Finally, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle -- if President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16th when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al Qaida suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that (President) Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was...