Free Republic

GUNMEN have kidnapped the sole police officer in a northern Mexican town, a 28-year-old woman working alone after her colleagues resigned or were killed in the region's brutal drug war. A dozen unidentified gunmen set Erika Gandara's home ablaze last week and torched two cars parked outside before abducting her, the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office. Guadalupe, the town of 9000 inhabitants she helped keep safe, is located just off the US-Mexico border in the heart of one of the country's most violent regions where 3100 people were killed this year alone. In late November, unidentified gunmen killed another female crime...

A major New York art school is displaying sexually explicit paintings that depict a crucifix in a man's rectum and rosaries with male sex organs, among other offensive imagery, according to the Catholic League. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City is hosting the art show, which began May 27 and runs through June 10. In the show is a series of paintings by Felipe Baeza. One painting shows a man with his pants pulled down and a crucifix extending from his rectum. Under the painting it says, "el dia que me converti...

A Saratoga County judge on Sept. 17 dismissed all charges against two former New York Racing Association clerks of scales, Braulio Baeza and Mario Sclafani, who were indicted by a grand jury on charges of allowing several jockeys to ride above their published weight in 2004. Judge Jerry Scarano tossed the 291-count indictment, initiated by former State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (now Governor Spitzer), because he wasn't satisfied with the evidence produced by the prosecution, according to Paul DerOhannesian II, the attorney for Baeza. "The scales were not properly calibrated; they were only calibrated to 115 pounds and never tested...