Free Republic

Five members of an Amite family were accused in federal court Thursday (July 26) of kidnapping and holding a 22-year-old autistic relative captive for roughly 10 months, padlocked in a shed and then in a makeshift backyard cage, and subjecting her to a range of humiliations and abuse that included shooting her with a BB gun, covering her with the contents of the family's septic tank and forcing her to eat her recently deceased mother's cremated remains from a cereal bowl. The family, often at the direction of 42-year-old matriarch Raylaine Knope, also withheld the victim's Social Security benefits and...

Yesterday the ACLU of Louisiana enrolled in a lawsuit filed by Johnny Duncan, aka "Johnny UnBlackWorthy," a veteran and resident of Amite who was detained by police because they objected to a sign on his car reading "You Might be a Nigger!." Mr. Duncan, himself an African-American, is the author of a book of political and social commentary entitled "You Might be a Nigger!," and the sign on his car was to advertise the book. Mr. Duncan was detained outside of an Amite restaurant, where the police told him that the sign on his car was "obscene." When he refused...