Free Republic

"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." — Benjamin Franklin.Imagine your city council enacts controversial legislation with no public notice despite city employees telling concerned citizens that before any action was taken, they'd read about it in the paper. Imagine that your city continues to refuse to hold a public hearing despite the uproar and you sue. The judge not only finds against you, but orders you to pay $10,000 in legal fees. Your city tries to thwart your every effort to get your issue on the ballot, using a long and frivolous legal battle...

A little more than four years ago, Brandi Swindell, Bryan Fischer and a group called Generation Life hoped to stop the city council of Boise, Idaho, from removing a Ten Commandments monument that had stood in a city park since 1965. The city council accepted no public input into its decision, so Generation Life was compelled to file a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order on the city's action. Generation Life lost that case, and even though they later took another suit to the Idaho Supreme Court, winning the right to have the citizens of Boise vote on the monument's...

A 14-year-old Boise, Idaho, girl has disappeared and is believed to be in danger after meeting a 27-year-old man on the Internet. Police say the girl may be in the Seattle area with the man, who is wanted on a kidnapping warrant. The girl, Saddie "Elaine" Julian, was last seen Wednesday morning. Authorities are asking for the public's help in locating her. She is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 90 pounds, with pale skin, long red hair and a thin build. According to police, Saddie developed an online relationship with Morgan Douglas Jones, 27, of Birmingham, Ala., while playing...

Boise Mayor Dave Bieter has endorsed Barack Obama for president, according to Obama's local campaign organization.

Wildfires in several western states have stirred embers of the "Sagebrush Rebellion," as ranchers and politicians have criticized federal agencies, the courts and environmentalists over policies they say are contributing to the fires. Nevada's Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., claimed environmental groups and federal bureaucracy have contributed to fires, including one at Lake Tahoe that burned more than 250 homes. And this week, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a rancher, and the state's two senators, Larry Craig and Mike Crapo, joined ranchers in blaming federal safety rules for crippling early efforts to douse a 1,000-square-mile...

The female baby - a type of ape called a gibbon - was born April 9. BOISE, Idaho - The first ape ever born at Zoo Boise is being hand-raised by humans and is gaining weight, after being rejected by its mother. The unnamed female baby -- a type of ape called a gibbon -- was born April 9 and weighed half a pound, but is now up to three-quarters of a pound, zoo director Steve Burns said. Her mother rejected her five days after she was born, Burns said.The female baby - a type of ape called a gibbon...

To describe the lapses in ordinary playcalling in the Fiesta Bowl football game on Monday night as constituting an outrageous injustice is an understatement. Since defensive preparation is a conference responsibility as opposed to an individual institutional responsibility, we must look to you to launch a vigorous effort to correct the situation. On behalf of the University of Oklahoma, I ask that you as Big 12 Commissioner take the following actions: - First, seek an apology from Boise State's coaches for running grossly unusual offensive plays without telling us what they were doing beforehand. - Second, since institutions, players, and...

Would you like fired with that? Two employees of the city's ice skating rink have been fired for making a midnight fast-food run in a pair of Zambonis. An anonymous tipster reported seeing the two big ice-resurfacing machines chug through a Burger King drive-through and return to the rink around 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 10. The squat, rubber-tired vehicles, which have a top speed of about 5 mph, drove 1.5 miles in all. The Zamboni operators, both temporary city employees whose names and ages were not released by Parks and Recreation Department, had to negotiate at least one intersection with...

NEW YORK: No more Ku Klux Klan figurines on e-Bay. The online auction site says it's removing a listing for "K-K-K Snowmen and Snow-women." The ad said the crude clay figurines have removable white pointy hoods. The starting bid was listed at 13-77. As of last night, no bids had been placed for the items. An e-Bay spokeswoman told the New York Daily News that the listing violated the company's offensive materials policy and would be taken down. Past offerings removed from the site include a pocket knife with a Klan shield, an antique Klan hood and a T-shirt...

Boise, Idaho -- Police arrested 24-year old Michael Burkett of Boise early Sunday morning after officers with Capitol Mall Security reported spotting him vandalizing two flag polls on the grounds of the Idaho Statehouse. The flags are memorials to soldiers who lost their lives in the war on terror. "It's certainly upsetting, not just to officers but for any citizen of this county who knows somebody who lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan," Lt. Ron Winegar said of the ongoing investigation. Burkett was charged with resisting arrest and Malicious Injury to Property. He and his 22-year-old brother, Tom Burkett,...

BOISE, Idaho - Most days, 6-year-old Aubrey Matthews spends her energy fighting a brain tumor growing behind her eyes. But the first-grader managed to foil crimes and chase an arch-nemesis through Boise on Friday, serving the city as the superhero "Star" with assistance from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho, The Idaho Statesman reported. When she donned her blue and metallic superhero costume, Star took on the super-powers of X-ray vision, superhuman strength, speed and blowing power _ and a mission: To capture the villain who had stolen a golden star from the Idaho Historical Museum. After Star was alerted by...

Operation Completion Announces Guest Cities Dover – On Tuesday morning, the Operation Completion Central Advisory Panel (CAP) released the list of guest cities that will host pro-military rallies during the summer of 2006. The list that included seventeen cities in fourteen states and the District of Columbia was accompanies with a partial schedule that included the previously announced event in Sacramento, CA. The complete list included Sacramento, San Antonio, Richmond, Boise, Saint Paul, Indianapolis, Lansing, Columbus, San Diego, Houston, Denver, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Dates were given for Sacramento (May 12), Saint Paul (June...

BOISE - Stickers saying "Heterosexuals Only" were placed on bus benches and public drinking fountains in downtown Boise and at the Statehouse Monday morning. A group of gay and lesbian activists, who spoke to KBCI-Local 2 News on condition of anonymity, put up the 150 stickers to protest the legislature's passage of a proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage in Idaho, which voters will face in November. "This was an issue we cared a great deal about," one activist told Local 2 News. "It affects us personally, it affects friends and family of ours." The group says it used...

The FBI wants to know who is responsible for threatening fliers found in several Ada County neighborhoods and business districts. The message is causing concern in Boise's Muslim community. The fliers found in west Boise and Meridian earlier this month claim to be written by a Muslim angry with Americans -- but members of Boise's Muslim community say the message is poorly written -- and not believable.

Officials in Canyon County, Idaho, say that illegal immigrants are costing their county millions of dollars in medical and welfare benefits — millions of dollars the county wants back from agricultural companies, officials say, that knowingly employed undocumented workers. In an unprecedented move, Canyon County is suing several local businesses under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. "It's an organized, orchestrated invasion, economic invasion of the United States," said Canyon County commissioner Robert Vasquez. “They're costing the county money in medical indigency welfare cases, and also in crime and other statistical data that we've compiled" The RICO Act...

BOISE -- All four of the Boise area's broadcast television stations will air an ad featuring Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan during President Bush's visit to Idaho today and tomorrow. AP Boise TV stations will air ads featuring Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan during the President's visit to Idaho. The 60-second ad that accuses Bush of lying to the American people about the war in Iraq will air through tomorrow after supporters contributed $10,000 to buy the air time. The ad aired earlier this week in Salt Lake City, but one station refused to run it, saying it was offensive to the...

Just saw Air Force one fly over here in Boise!

Boise, Idaho — It's 1,838 air miles from here to Atlanta, as the Delta non-stop 737 crow flies. Dan Miller's sojourn to Sanford Stadium will last a wee bit longer. He's flying in from Baghdad, a three-day, four-country odyssey, in order to see his son Tad and his Boise State teammates open the season Sept. 3 at Georgia. And you thought game-day traffic on 316 lasts an eternity. "I would not miss it for the world!" Miller, a retired police lieutenant with the Boise Police Department, who's helping to train Iraqi police officers, wrote in an exuberant e-mail. "It will...

SAN ANOTNIO -- Guardsmen and reservists are used to international situations that call for them to put out fires. Now, they are doing it here at home -- literally. More than 60 guardsmen and four specially equipped C-130 Hercules from North Carolina and Wyoming Air National Guard units are battling blazes in the western United States, saving private property and lives during a perilous wildfire season that is keeping firefighters working around the clock. Aircrews from the 145th Airlift Wing and the 153rd Airlift Wing have flown more than 70 sorties this past week over Idaho, Oregon and Utah spraying...

In both shouts and murmurs, the Ward Churchill controversy has echoed through universities across the country amid the escalating clash of politics and academic freedom. Even before the furor over the CU professor's writings - he compared some of the Sept. 11 victims to a top Nazi - some college faculty had sensed an erosion of liberty to broach provocative or unpopular views. Churchill put a face on those concerns. "It's like the old Dylan line - you don't need a weather vane to know which way the wind is blowing," said Robert Polhemus, English professor and chairman of the...