Free Republic

INDIANAPOLIS -- The city’s largest bank is closing branches on the city’s north and west sides, but some groups are crying foul. The Chase bank at 29th and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. streets will close Aug. 20 and the branch at 38th Street and Washington Boulevard will close at the end of July. Both branches serve heavily concentrated minority communities. Some members of the city’s minority community have complained to members of the Indianapolis City-County Council and Congressman Andre Carson about the closures.

p> HOUMA -- The FBI temporarily shut down and raided a handful of local convenience stores Thursday, leading Arab store owners to decry the search-and-seizure operations as racial profiling. The government agents targeted clothing and smoking materials during their searches, store owners said, but authorities did not reveal the reasons for the searches or whether any arrests were made by late Thursday afternoon.

NEW YORK -- Bruce Springsteen, who once bemoaned the television wasteland in his song "57 Channels," offered some fresh criticism of the small screen and its political coverage: enough with partisan politics and "Fear Factor," let's focus on the facts. "Things are distorted by ratings and by money to where you're getting one hour of the political conventions," Springsteen says in an interview for the Oct. 14 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. "No matter how staged they are, I think they're a little more important than people eating bugs." The New Jersey rocker also offered harsh words for the Bush...

By Camille Wheeler AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, July 22, 2004 GEORGETOWN -- Eighty-three-year-old Alice Ainsworth keeps supporting her political party, even though Democratic names have almost disappeared from Williamson County ballots. "I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Yellow Dog Democrat from way back," the Georgetown resident said. "I just always vote for any Democrats on the ticket. "The last time, it seems it was hard to find any." With the Democratic National Convention set to unfold next week in Boston, the county's Democratic candidates aren't giving voters much to cheer about. Unlike decades past, when they dominated Williamson County's political stage, only four Democrats...