Free Republic

The convicted mastermind behind the world's largest online narcotics emporium has been sentenced by a federal judge to two terms of life in prison and three lesser sentences, USA Today reports. The judge also ordered Ross Ulbricht, 31, to forfeit $184 million dollars. The website made over $187 million before it was shut down in 2013. The government estimated that roughly $1.2 billion in illegal drug transactions took place on Silk Road. The judge said it was a "demand expanding operation" and that what Ulbricht did was thoughtful, as opposed to just being an economic experiment. She added that he...

Ross Ulbricht was a quiet nerd -- an Eagle Scout who never cursed. Then he became a libertarian, and he decided, "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion." By coercion, Ulbricht meant force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion -- government force that stops people from living the way they want. So he created a website called Silk Road. Silk Road let people buy and sell contraband -- mostly drugs -- using bitcoin. The site became successful quickly. It soon carried a billion dollars in transactions. Because Silk Road didn't use...

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was sentenced today to 78 months in prison for extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice, which crimes he committed while working as an undercover agent investigating Silk Road, an online marketplace used to facilitate the sale and purchase of illegal drugs and other contraband.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A traffic stop on Greenmount Avenue in east Baltimore is grabbing the public’s attention because the driver was mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah. The traffic stop happened in September of 2019. The officer told Vignarajah he was being pulled over for driving without his headlights on. When the officer went back to his cruiser, however, he told Vignarahjha there was another problem. “Did you get a repair order back last year and didn’t get it fixed?” the officer could be heard saying on body-worn footage. “It’s saying your tag is suspended.” During the hour-long stop, Vignarajah appeared to...

The city of Baltimore will formally name a courthouse after the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings in the first half of 2020. Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young on Friday unveiled the renderings of the bronze plaques that will be affixed to the building's exterior. One includes an image and biography of the congressman, and the other reads “Elijah E. Cummings Courthouse.” The powerful Democratic congressman and civil rights champion died Oct. 17 at age 68 of complications from longstanding health issues. He had represented Maryland's 7th Congressional District, which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore, since 1996. Cummings graduated from...

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, Tuesday and joined other black, female prosecutors to speak out against a political and law enforcement establishment that she says has attacked her, undermined her work for reform, and sought to push her from office. Mosby pledged solidarity with St. Louis’ top prosecutor Kim Gardner who filed a federal lawsuit alleging political attacks by her own city leaders and police union. “The vitriol, the personal and the professional attacks, particularly against black, female prosecutors is unprecedented,” Mosby told the crowd. “The individuals making decisions about who’s going to be charged,...

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the widow of the late Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, said she’s running for her late husband’s former seat representing the Baltimore area in Congress to build on his legacy. “He was fighting and he worked hard. And he was in the community and never did he ever say that he was tired and he couldn’t do it. He kept forging forward, literally until almost his last breath. So I’m now running to build on his legacy in Congress,” Rockeymoore Cummings told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” Tuesday. Rockeymoore Cummings said she’s focused on “defending and protecting...

A 17-year-old MS-13 gang member will serve 50 years in prison for his involvement in the murder of a 14-year-old girl in Maryland last April. Josue Fuentes-Ponce pleaded guilty on Oct. 30 to charges of first-degree murder, participating in the crime as part of a criminal gang, and conspiracy to commit murder, according to NBC Washington. Prosecutors said gang members lured Ariana Funes-Diaz into a tunnel in Riverdale, Md., where they beat her to death with a machete and baseball bat on April 18, the outlet reported. "These individuals had demonstrated violent criminal behavior before, and because they were released...

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan repeatedly steered state transportation development money to projects that would increase the value of his real estate holdings, according to a lengthy investigation by Washington Monthly’s Eric Cortellessa. Cortellessa reports that Hogan, who ostensibly left his brother in charge of his real estate brokerage firm when he was elected, has, in fact, maintained ownership and control while serving as governor; the trustees he handpicked to run his company have continued to keep him apprised of its business dealings. And as governor, he has advanced highway and road construction projects that directly boosted the value of land...

Former govt. agent admits spying on Attkisson, implicates his colleagues. Former U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein is accused of leading the group. Govt. hackers allegedly reported to FBI official who now heads CrowdStrike Former FBI Unit Chief confirms he initiated forensic report proving govt. intrusion and reported to Attkisson A former U.S. government agent has admitted participating in the illegal government surveillance on then-CBS New investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson. The insider has identified former U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein as the person responsible for the project. As a result of the new admission, Attkisson and her family are filing suit against Rosenstein...

Too many families in two of America’s most dangerous cities — Baltimore and Chicago — will spend this holiday season in hospitals and funeral homes. Last weekend, the two cities saw more than 50 people shot and eight killed. The violence included two “mass shootings,” defined as a single incident in which more than four people are shot. In Chicago, 13 people were wounded early Sunday morning at a party in the South Side neighborhood of Englewood. Soon after, seven were shot outside a downtown hookah lounge in Baltimore. Blame the cities’ softness on crime. Baltimore is the more violent...

Baltimore broke its annual per capita homicide record after reaching 342 killings Friday. With just over 600,000 residents, the city hit a historically high homicide rate of about 57 per 100,000 people after recent relentless gunfire saw eight people shot — three fatally — in one day and nine others — one fatally — another day. The new rate eclipses that of 1993, when the city had a record 353 killings but was much more populous before years of population exodus. By contrast, New York City, with more than 8 million residents, had 306 homicides through Dec. 15. The total...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was charged with perjury for failing to disclose her business interest in Healthy Holly, LLC, while she served as a Maryland state senator, the state prosecutor’s office said Wednesday. “She is charged with omitting to declare on her financial disclosure statements when she was a Maryland state senator in 2016, her relationship with Healthy Holly, LLC,” Maryland State Prosecutor Charlton Howard said. Charging documents filed in circuit court in Anne Arundel County said Pugh did not disclose her business interest in the company between 2012 and 2016 or her partial ownership of...

BALTIMORE (AP) — The city of Baltimore will be monitored by surveillance airplanes for up to six months next year under a pilot program announced Friday that is aimed at helping law enforcement investigate violent crime and that will effectively restart a tactic secretively used three years ago. The flights, which civil liberties groups oppose, will start in May and gather footage during the hours when the city experiences high rates of crime. The announcement marks a reversal for Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who previously expressed skepticism over the use of the planes and described the idea as an...

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is smart on crime as he unveiled a real crime reduction plan to help violence-plagued Baltimore City, an area whose political class contains nothing but elected Democrats at all levels. Hogan gets it. There is not much that the government can do to fix the dysfunctional black underclass culture that causes most of the violence in Baltimore. Pouring money into midnight basketball, after school programs, second chance crime reduction programs will do absolutely nothing to fix the urban pathologies of ineffective parenting, absent fathers, and flawed lifestyle choices like dropping out of school, joining gangs, illegal...

Leaked documents purport to show detailed plan to trigger nationwide unrest allowing Obama to declare martial law in 2015  Documents posted to 4chan appear to detail a Soros-backed plan to incite civil unrest in the Baltimore area and reveals coordination with Baltimore law enforcement.Internal documents appearing to belong to Friends of Democracy – George Soros’ son’s activist group – describe an acceleration of civil unrest to justify the rollout of martial law nationwide.According to the docs, the group sought to use the protests over the death of Freddie Gray as a detonator for larger violent demonstrations in the Baltimore area.“Do...

Liberal polices are "reversing" gains made in fighting crime in New York City, former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik .. blamed Mayor Bill DeBlasio and the City Council for a recent spike in violent crime. Murder investigations in 2019 spiked to 9.4 percent this year. "I don't blame the NYPD. I blame the mayor. I blame the City Council. I blame the people that promote this anti-cop rhetoric," Kerik said. "They took stop-question-and-frisk away from the cops. They took enforcement out of law enforcement." ... at the end of the day, the men and women in the NYPD have to have...

Nancy Pelosi's brother was acquitted in the kidnapping/rape case while their father was mayor of Baltimore. 11 and 13 year old girls were repeatedly raped over a week in an apartment in Baltimore in 1953.

BALTIMORE (AP) — More than two dozen correctional officers in Baltimore were charged Tuesday with using excessive force on prisoners at state-operated jails in a city plagued by decades of institutional corruption, inside and outside jailhouse walls.

Kamala Harris was one of more than 20 Democrats hoping to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. She has a 100-percent pro-abortion voting record and voted against a bill to protect newborns from infanticide. And she told voters she would force Americans to fund abortions up to birth. But the California senator decided to drop after today after lackluster results, a low polling and fundraising standing, and the inability to make it to prime time debates. Here’s more: Hours before Harris announced she was exiting the Democratic primary, her campaign canceled a New York City fundraiser that was expected to...