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Imagine you're home alone. It's 8 p.m. You work an early shift and need to be out the door before sunrise, so you're already in bed. Your nerves are a bit frazzled, because earlier in the week someone broke into your home. Oddly, they didn't take anything; they just rifled through your belongings. But the violation weighs on your mind. At about the time you drift off, you're awakened by fierce barking from your two large dogs. You hear someone crashing into your front door, as if he's trying to separate it from its hinges. You grab the gun you...

Dispatch for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office received a call June 12, 2006, by a man claiming to be Jim Proulx of Alvarado. The caller said he was high on hallucinogenic drugs and had killed several family members with an AK-47 submachine gun. He threatened to kill remaining family members unless he was given $50,000 and safe passage out of the country. Sheriff’s deputies and Cleburne police, including the police SWAT team, surrounded Proulx’s home about 1 a.m. Proulx hadn’t shot anyone and had no hostages, officials soon discovered. Instead, he was sound asleep when officers arrived. It was a...

It shouldn't surprise, given the state of the law, our courts and our politicians, and, in fact, it actually makes sense, but still, it's a bit… disconcerting. The Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled today in a 5-4 decision that candidates for political office have a constitutionally protected right to be free from prosecution for lying in their pursuit of office. It is sobering to consider the responsibilities that courts have taken from the shoulders of common men and women and to contrast them with those that remain, including the duty on the part of each individual to...

GARY -- The death of a Gary reserve police officer has been ruled accidental by the Hammond Police Department. Hammond Police Chief Brian Miller said an "accidental firearms discharge" killed Kevin Weaver, 49, at Deb's Gun Range in Hammond on Saturday. "There was no criminal intent," Miller said. Miller said his officers will be sending the results of their investigation to the Lake County prosecutor's office and the Gary Police Department. Weaver went to the shooting range this weekend with several reserve officers from Gary to practice for an upcoming qualification test. At about 3 p.m., police said, reserve officer...

No charges will be filed against a middle school administrator whose toddler daughter died last month when she was left in the back seat of her mother's SUV during a heat wave, a prosecutor said Tuesday. Leaving the child in the car for the work day was "a substantial lapse of due care" but did not meet the definition of reckless conduct necessary for prosecution, said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White. Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby, 40, is assistant principal at Glen Este Middle School, about 20 miles east of Cincinnati. Authorities said she left her 2-year-old daughter, Cecilia, strapped into a car...

DURHAM, N.C. — A judge has sentenced disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong to one day in jail for lying to a judge while pursuing the Duke lacrosse rape case. Nifong was held in criminal contempt of court Friday for lying to a judge when pursuing rape charges against three falsely accused Duke University lacrosse players. Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III immediately moved to consider a punishment for Nifong, who has already been stripped of his law license and has resigned from office. He faces as many as 30 days in jail and a fine as high as $500. Reading...

A devastating effect of the collectivist mindset is the emergence of massive societal turmoil and heinous crimes. Collectivists often unleash brutal force against people who are not of "their" kind and instead belong to some "inferior" group. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, an untouchable man once slapped a higher-caste thief for stealing beans from his field. The self-righteously offended community responded by stripping the man's mother and parading her through the village amid a hail of stones and mud hurled in her direction.

Only 354 of 90,000 police caught on camera speeding or jumping red lights last year were punished. Last night forces were accused of double standards after it emerged that only one in 200 officers was fined or given points, compared with 84 per cent of ordinary drivers. In a quarter of the cases the police cars had their blue lights flashing, suggesting officers were attending an emergency. However, nearly all of the rest had the slate wiped clean by senior police, saving them from three points on their licence and a £60 fine. Managers have the discretion to cancel tickets...

The conversion is expected to be the largest in modern times Thousands of tribal and Dalit Hindus in India are to embrace the Buddhist faith at a huge gathering in Mumbai. The ceremony, which may be presided over by Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is billed as the largest religious conversion in modern India. The converts hope to escape the rigid caste system in which their status is the lowest. Right-wing Hindus have often opposed conversion, pushing some Indian states to restrict legal changes of faith. The organisers say the number of people to convert in Sunday's ceremony...

BSP supporters see their party set for government Enlarge Image India's low-caste Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has swept to a historic victory in assembly elections in the key northern state of Uttar Pradesh.With all but a handful of results declared, the BSP had won 202 of the 403 seats to allow it to form its own government, Indian media reports said. It is the first time since 1991 that any party in the state has done so. Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state and has long been its most politically influential. I thank people of all castes and...

BSP supporters see their party set for government Enlarge Image The low-caste Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is heading for victory in assembly elections in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, early trends suggest.Outgoing chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has admitted defeat to his rival, BSP leader Mayawati, and has said he will resign when results are confirmed. Trends show his party trailing with a possible clear majority for the BSP. Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state and has long been its most politically influential. But with caste and religion becoming the dominant factors in state politics in...

A police officer will avoid criminal charges despite admitting he took marijuana from criminal suspects and, with his wife, baked it into brownies. The police department's decision not to pursue a case against former Cpl. Edward Sanchez left a bad taste in the mouth of at least one city official, who vowed to investigate. "If you're a cop and you're arresting people and you're confiscating the marijuana and keeping it yourself, that's bad. That's real bad," said City Councilman Doug Thomas.

WASHINGTON - Authorities dropped charges Friday against an aide to Virginia Sen. Jim Webb who carried a loaded gun into the U.S. Capitol complex. "After reviewing and analyzing all of the evidence in the case, we do not believe the essential elements of the crime of carrying a pistol without a license can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt," U.S. Attorney Jeff Taylor, top prosecutor in the District of Columbia, said in a short statement. Webb senior aide Phillip Thompson, 45, was arrested on March 26 after Capitol Police spotted the loaded pistol and two other loaded magazines in a...

[D]espite guidelines reserving flashing lights and high speed for emergencies, former governors and others who frequently rode in their motorcades said it was hardly unusual in this state of 2,835 highway miles for them to race as fast as 91 miles per hour, as Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s sport utility vehicle was doing en route to a meeting Thursday night when it had a devastating crash. ...State police records show that Trooper Rasinski has never been ticketed, despite his four previous car accidents. In 2004, he was parked and operating a radar gun in Newark when a tractor-trailer hit his...

The unusual first-degree-felony case against Joseph Ramos, a fifth-grader charged with burglarizing the home of a senior Bucks County prosecutor, is set for juvenile court today. The boy will appear before county Judge Rea B. Boylan. The hearing is closed to the public because of his age. Joseph admits that on Sept. 1, he and a 7-year-old friend trespassed by unlawfully entering the unlocked Plumstead Township home of T. Gary Gambardella, chief of special investigations for Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons. The boys were friends, neighbors and playmates of Gambardella's 11-year-old son. Joseph maintains he stole nothing, but is...

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is already facing complaints from the North Carolina State Bar that he made misleading, deceitful and fraudulent statements to the media about the Duke lacrosse case. Additional complaints that the DA intentionally hid DNA evidence favorable to the defendants could be added to that State Bar complaint. Nifong will defend himself before the State Bar in May. But Nifong could also be forced to defend himself before a jury in a civil trial down the road. In a recent interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," the parents of the three indicted players vowed to hold Nifong...

PORTSMOUTH -— The head of the Portsmouth police department’s Special Operations team was arrested this morning on a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Lt. Brian Keith Mohammad Abdul Ali, a 21-year veteran of the police department, and Gregory Mondell Elliott Sr. were both arrested on the charges this morning at about 8:30 a.m., according to a statement released by Ann Hope, a spokeswoman for the department. Ali was suspended without pay pending the outcome of the investigation. The case is being investigated by the Portsmouth police department and Virginia State Police.

Thousands of people have been attending mass ceremonies in India at which hundreds of low-caste Hindus (Dalits) converted to Buddhism and Christianity. The events in the central city of Nagpur are part of a protest against the injustices of India's caste system. By converting, Dalits - once known as Untouchables - can escape the prejudice and discrimination they normally face. The ceremonies mark the 50th anniversary of the adoption of Buddhism by the scholar Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. He was the first prominent Dalit to urge low-caste Indians to embrace Buddhism. As the chief architect of India's constitution, he wrote...

A YOUNG Pakistani woman has been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a gang of high-caste villagers because her uncle eloped with one of their relatives. She was chosen for punishment because she had recently gained a degree and was the pride of her low-caste family.Ghazala Shaheen, 24, and her mother Mumtaz were abducted last month by men dressed in police uniforms from their home near Multan in southern Punjab. Her shocking ordeal mirrors that of Mukhtaran Mai, 29, who became a symbol in the campaign for women’s rights in Pakistan after she was gang-raped because her 12-year-old brother had been...

Dobbs's DisciplesBy Donald Boudreaux | 17 Apr 2006 Economist Paul Craig Roberts has joined recently with the likes of Lou Dobbs and Sen. Charles Schumer to denounce so-called "outsourcing" -- that is, the importation of services. Roberts is aware that, throughout history, free trade has raised the living standards of ordinary people. But, he says, this historical record is irrelevant to today's world. He explained the reasons in a January 6, 2004, New York Times op-ed written with Sen. Schumer and entitled "Second Thoughts on Free Trade": "First, new political stability is allowing capital and technology to flow far more...