Free Republic

Craig Rosebraugh's anti-American and anti-government buddies are calling him a "sellout." The former mouthpiece for domestic terrorist groups spent years decrying Capitalism. Now, though, it looks like Capitalism is just fine since he's a small business owner. When the Earth Liberation Front fire-bombed SUV dealerships and logging trucks, Craig Rosebraugh delivered the news and the justification for the violence. He spoke out about the evils of business and how making money and protecting the planet weren't compatible. Capitalism seems to suit the 31-year-old just fine now. Rosebraugh has opened a swanky new organic foods restaurant called "Calendula" on Hawthorne. His...

A plainclothes officer accidentally wounded himself as law-enforcement officers surrounded a bank Monday morning. A bank official called police to report that a man about whom the bank had received an alert from federal authorities was inside. Walker police and Livingston Parish sheriff's deputies surrounded Hibernia Bank with plans to detain the man as he left, Police Chief Elton Burns said. "We didn't want to storm into the bank," said Burns, who said police believed the man wanted by federal authorities might be armed. Joseph Welda entered the bank to protect the employees "in case something went down bad inside...

The skies haven't been friendly lately for David Nelson. Any David Nelson. Throughout Southern California and across the country, men named David Nelson report they have been harassed, questioned by FBI agents, pulled off airplanes, searched and then searched again when attempting air travel. Apparently caught up in a nationwide dragnet for a terrorist by that name, David Nelsons everywhere are being told their names raise red flags on airline screening software. The government, however, maintains that the problem is essentially a computer glitch the airlines must solve. Some David Nelsons in Southern California say they don't care why it's...

Further details emerged Friday concerning inconsistencies in a Ripon police sergeant's courtroom testimony about what happened at during a search of a rural Ripon home last year, a search that has prompted an FBI civil rights investigation. Transcripts from the testimony of Sgt. Steven Merchant reveal numerous discrepancies between his version of events and those shown on a secretly recorded video of the search, which occurred in the 17000 block of Colony Road. Manteca police Officers Steve Harris and Sam Gallego, who worked on the Manteca Chronic Offenders Problems and Solutions task force, have been placed on leave after the...

A federal airport screener at Portland International Airport is on unpaid leave after being accused of taking $1,300 in cash from a woman's purse last month at a security checkpoint. Thirteen crumpled $100 bills were found in a garbage can near the checkpoint after the woman discovered the money was missing. The passenger, 39-year old Leonora Usi of Aloha, said she has a video her husband took as she passed through airport security. Usi said the video shows the screener holding something in his left hand while she is being searched.

A 42-year-old police officer was convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a man during an off-duty fight last fall. Ronald Robbins, a 15-year veteran of the police department in the Volusia County community of Edgewater, said he fired his personal .22-caliber pistol as a last resort to save his own life during a fight with the victim and another man on a Daytona Beach street Sept. 22. Robbins will face at least 25 years in prison when he is sentenced July 9. His attorney said he'll appeal the verdict, which the jury reached after deliberating about an...

Be warned: Law, once a shield of the innocent, is now a weapon in the hands of government. Conservatives generally ignore such warnings, feeling that criticism of the criminal justice system plays into the hands of criminals. Since the 1980s, I have endeavored to make Americans aware of how the legal protections against tyranny are being lost. This work reached its most general statement in my book The Tyranny of Good Intentions, coauthored with Larry Stratton and published in 2000. Accidents and civil offenses have been criminalized, and the prohibitions against crimes without intent, retroactive law and self-incrimination have been...

A Portland police officer shot and killed a woman in her 20s early today when she got behind the wheel of a car and tried to drive off after other officers took the original driver into custody during a traffic stop, police said. The shooting - the first officer-involved fatality this year - occurred about 2:40 a.m. in the eastbound lane of North Skidmore Street, on the Interstate 5 overpass. A North Precinct officer pulled over a four-door, dark-blue Chevrolet Cavalier on a traffic stop. Police said today they did not know the reason for the stop. But police said...

When Diane Dinkmeyer, a regional sales manager for a cosmetics company, flew from Seattle to Spokane on United Airlines on March 12, she left her four suitcases for curbside check-in at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Inside her bags were a video projector, cosmetics and expensive items she uses in her presentations to customers. But when she got to Spokane, three of her four suitcases — all sealed with plastic Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ties indicating they had been checked by the government inspectors — were empty but for her clothes and some paperwork.

The US government has a new website, http://www.ready.gov/. It's another attempt at scare mongering in the style of the old "duck and cover" advice after WWII. The fun thing is that these pictures are so ambiguous they could mean anything! Here are a few interpretations.

Handgun Licensing and Registration Act of 2003 (Introduced in House) HR 124 IH 108th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 124 To provide for the mandatory licensing and registration of handguns. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 7, 2003 Mr. HOLT introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary A BILL To provide for the mandatory licensing and registration of handguns. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `Handgun Licensing and Registration Act...

Prosecutor charged with lewd acts by using Web camera By Pamela J. Johnson | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted January 22, 2003 A top prosecutor in Palm Beach County was arrested Tuesday after authorities said he stripped and performed lewd acts in front of a Web camera for someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl. Assistant State Attorney Ira Karmelin was arrested in West Palm Beach and charged with soliciting sex from a minor via the Internet and transmitting harmful images to a minor, both felonies, Orange County sheriff's Capt. Bernard Presha said. Karmelin was released on $5,000 bail. The arrest...

Unconstitutional at Any Speed: Municipalities Collect Millions in Illegal Fines, Abuse Constitution And Threaten National Security by William Grim It's happened to every one of us or someone we know. It's a clear night, there's no one on the highway and you get pulled over for doing five miles over the posted speed limit. You get a $75 or $100 ticket and figure it's easier just to pay it and be done with it. Besides, it's your word against the cop's, so what chance do you stand in court? Unfortunately, at the same time you were pulled over for "speeding",...

2 Officers Indicted In Parking Lot Raid Damage Claims Could Cost City Millions HOUSTON -- A Houston grand jury Friday indicted two Houston police officers, including Capt. Mark Aguirre, who headed the Kmart parking lot raid in which hundreds of people were arrested over the summer. Aguirre and Sgt. Ken Wenzel, who was the field leader for the operation, were each charged with five counts of official oppression. Attorneys on both sides of the case said that they are now watching to see what sort of effects these indictments will have on the police department. "It's going to give a...

DELRAY BEACH · A police officer is on paid administrative leave after being criminally charged with aiming his Taser weapon at a volunteer during last month's Garlic Festival. Delray Beach police filed charges of improper exhibition of a dangerous weapon against Officer Matthew E. Weiner, 25, who has been with the department more than two years. The charge is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail. Weiner has turned in his badge and gun and is the subject of an internal affairs investigation.

Like Don Quixote, Robert Mullally fought for what he believed and has been battered and bruised in the battle. Mullally, 59, now living in Cedar Rapids, was sentenced in March 2001 to 60 days in federal prison for criminal contempt after he released sealed court documents showing a coverup of crimes committed by Los Angeles police officers against their wives and girlfriends. "It's a dark underbelly that is so dark, it tends to shadow the whole organization," Mullally said of the Los Angeles Police Department. "I feel like I'm in a fight with the devil." Mullally remains free as his...

When FBI agents arrested Seattle police Officer Steve Slaughter last week and accused him of stealing heroin from drug dealers while on duty, he asked to remove his uniform shirt in order to "not dishonor the Police Department any further." So testified FBI Special Agent Maria Foster yesterday afternoon in U.S. District Court as Slaughter sat silently with downcast eyes and heard four federal felony charges lodged against him. U.S. Magistrate Judge Monica Benton found there is probable cause to charge Slaughter with possession of heroin, intent to distribute that heroin and extortion. As Benton announced her decision, she called...

<p>Maryland State Police charged an off-duty U.S. Secret Service officer with two felonies in a "road rage" incident over the weekend.</p> <p>He is accused of pointing a handgun at a driver on a Western Maryland interstate highway, authorities said.</p> <p>Justin Paul Leasure, 25, of Laurel was placed on administrative leave immediately after being charged Sunday night, said Agent John Gill, a Secret Service spokesman. Officer Leasure was charged with four criminal counts for handgun violations.</p>

NEWTON — District Attorney David Flaherty Jr. says he won’t take any action against Assistant District Attorney Jason Parker for accidentally firing his pistol in his office at the Catawba County Justice Center on Friday morning beyond making him pay for a broken window. Parker, a candidate for district court judge, and Sean McGinnis, another assistant district attorney, were at the county firing range Friday morning brushing up on shooting skills, according to Flaherty. When they returned to Parker’s office around 8 a.m., Parker’s .380 semi-automatic accidentally discharged, according to Maj. Coy Reid of the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office. The...

Your Friend, the State by Joseph Sobran Albert Jay Nock, an excellent but largely forgotten writer, once wrote a little book titled Our Enemy, the State. I still reread it when I’m groggy from absorption in the daily events of politics. It revives me like a slap in the face. If I were a pagan, I might fancy I heard the Olympian laughter of the gods when modern men think of their rulers as their friends. Common sense would suggest that those who have power over you, and can use it to kill or enslave you, are, more properly speaking,...