Free Republic

A Milwaukee man was sentenced Tuesday to nine months in jail, with work-release privileges, for voting twice in the 2012 presidential election. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Leonard K. Brown, 56, to more than a year in prison, a harsher punishment than handed down in the few other cases of double voting. "I'm shocked, to be honest, that the state thinks this is a prison case," defense attorney Christopher Hartley told Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy Witkowiak. "It's outrageous." Hartley said Brown is caught in the political debate over making voters show photo ID to vote, with one...

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That adage has more application than usual in California, where Democrats hold all of the statewide offices and supermajorities in the legislature. They can enact any policies they want, with only the judicial branch offering belated checks on their power. And when I say belated, that’s literally the case with state Senator Rod Wright, whom a jury found guilty in January of committing eight felonies regarding his residency and eligibility for the office he held.Normally, politicians who get that kind of a verdict have the decency to resign. If not, the body in...

TORONTO — Media outlets are reporting Canadian pop star Justin Bieber could be deported from the U.S. if convicted of felony vandalism in connection with an alleged egg attack on a neighbour’s house — but are they getting the facts scrambled? “Bieber could be sent packing to Canada if convicted of felony after vicious egg attack on neighbour’s house,” declared the UK’s Daily Mail. “Justin Bieber’s Egg-Throwing Police Probe Dilemma: Possible Felony Conviction Could See Pop Star Deported Back to Canada!,” screamed RadarOnline. “Justin Bieber bust could mean jail time, deportation if convicted,” Fox News reported. Not so fast. First,...

An 89-year-old man was beaten and robbed early Monday morning in Glen Burnie. Anne Arundel County police said the man was walking home from McDonald’s a little past 6 a.m. when three men, believed to be teenagers, attacked him and knocked him to the ground in the area of Cloverleaf and Four Leaf Clover Drive. The teens stole the man’s wallet and unknown amount of money. The victim was taken to Baltimore Washington Medical Center for treatment. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 410-222-6145.

*snip* Coroner to Officer Schadle: "What was his state when he came back, because I understand that you were putting him in?" Schadle: "He had just attacked a deputy at the hospital, he was still sketchy." Coroner: "Sketchy, what does that mean?" Schadle: "He was kind of fidgety, resisting, angry." Coroner: "So, you just sat him in there?" Schadle: "Put him on a bed in there, got the cuffs off of him, left the cell closed the door." Coroner: "And so, he was probably in there about how long?" Schadle: "Probably, 2:30 to 2:40 a.m., somewhere around there is when...

The Obama administration has been accused of cronyism after it was revealed the First Lady's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company contracted to build the beleaguered Obamacare enrollment website. Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of a Canadian company, which won the no-bid contract for the problem-plagued website. Townes-Whitley, from the Princeton class of ’85, and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, according to The Daily Caller.

WASHINGTON — In March 2012, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading homosexual-rights group, posted the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) confidential 2008 tax returns, including the names of donors. The disclosure of tax returns without permission is a felony, and NOM quickly cited evidence that allegedly pointed to an Internal Revenue Service official as the likely source of the confidential data. But a year and a half later, after repeated inquiries elicited no satisfactory response from the IRS, NOM has filed a lawsuit demanding answers and damages. “Our confidential tax returns were disclosed to the Human Rights Campaign, which...

(CBS/AP) CRANBERRY, Pa. - A western Pennsylvania man has been charged with inciting Chaos. That's the name of a police dog officers say was taunted by 26-year-old James Andrews, of Cranberry Township, after the man was stopped at a drunken-driving checkpoint in the wee hours of Sept. 15. Andrews was allegedly "barking, hissing and growling" at the dog, according to the K-9's handler, Evan City police Sgt. Don Myers.

A bill making its way through the New York state legislature would make it a crime to annoy a police officer by subjecting them to physical contact. The New York State Senate on Wednesday passed the bill that would make it a felony to "harass, annoy, threaten or alarm" an on-duty police officer, WIVB.com reported.

Adding to the list of complaints involving the IRS, this week, John Eastman, chairman of the board for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), testified before the House Committee on Ways and Means regarding last year’s illegal disclosure of the organization’s donors. The testimony comes at a time when the IRS is facing accusations of unfairly targeting and intimidating conservative groups. In March 2012, NOM’s 2008 federal tax return (form 990-Schedule B)—which listed the names and addresses of NOM donors—was uploaded to the websites of the Human Rights Campaign and the Huffington Post. Computer analysts determined that the document’s leak...

The House Ways and Means Committee Hearing today shocked America. But it destroyed Democrats. No matter what the Democrats tried to do to deflect attention away from the scandal targeting conservatives, nothing worked. They don’t have an answer. The Democrats on the panel looked sad and despondent by the end of the hearing today.

H/t to YoungCons for the original idea.

“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that...

It’s clear from a reading of the interim report on Benghazi- and consultation with sources in the Intelligence Community (IC)- that policy and politics-- not intelligence failures-- led to the deaths of four Americans when Al Qaeda attacked the consulate in that Libyan city on September 11, 2012. But we knew that already, didn’t we? What we don’t know, still, is who in the administration is responsible for the alteration of key talking points generated by the IC in wake of the attack and who else knew about the alterations.   The report authors, who work for congress, have detailed...

Sam Grant nearly celebrated his eighth birthday party in jail. The North Carolina boy had been charged with two felony counts of discharging his BB gun. The parents of a then-seven-year-old North Carolina boy are beyond angry after their son was charged with two felony counts of possessing a BB gun. Just moments before the child was expected to answer to the allegations before a Catawba County judge — the charges were dropped. -- But their world got rocked when the received a letter from the Department of Juvenile Justice summoning the family to court. “They told us that they...

CATAWBA COUNTY, N.C. — He looks like a typical 7-year-old boy, but on Tuesday night, Sam Grant is facing charges that many adults never will. He is charged with two felonies for something that happened when his mother turned her back for just a second. His parents told Eyewitness News that they're outraged. "We are both just shocked. We have been in a state of shock over this," said Ray Robbins. Sam's parents said this scenario began in February when Sam was playing outside with his BB gun. They said he began shooting at an abandoned house right across the...

A lively discussion about justice, self-defense, property rights and the use of lethal force has erupted in Spokane this week in the wake of a fatal Monday morning shooting in which a recidivist car thief was fatally shot by his latest victim as he drove away in the shooter’s Chevy Suburban. The debate is on-going on this morning's Spokane Spokesman-Review's web page below a story that says police may turn over the results of their investigation to prosecutors today. Should car thieves risk getting shot dead? When Washington achieved statehood in November 1889, there were still places in the West...

Oakland Residents Upset Over Lockpicking Workshop OAKLAND, Calif. -- City leaders in Oakland have been getting some angry e-mails lately from some of the people they serve. Mayor Jean Quan is the major target after her newsletter appears to promote a class designed to teach people how to pick a lock. In a city with a crime problem, it's easy to see why they're not happy. The name of the class appears among 40 others in the catalog for the upcoming "Workshop Weekend" in Oakland, right alongside things like "robot building." It's a 3-hour class called "Introduction to Lockpicking" and...

CHICAGO—A veteran Illinois state senator was arrested Wednesday after allegedly trying to board a flight from Chicago to Washington with a gun and ammunition in a carry-on bag, authorities said. Sen. Donne Trotter, a Chicago Democrat who recently announced he would run to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in the U.S. House, was carrying an unloaded .25-caliber Beretta handgun and a magazine clip with six bullets when he tried to board a flight at O'Hare International Airport, according to Chicago police.

The son of a prominent Virginia congressman agreed to help an undercover reporter forge documents in what he thought was an illegal voting effort aimed at re-electing the president, a just-published video reveals. After raising legal and practical concerns, Patrick Moran, son of Virginia Democrat James Moran, encouraged the reporter to create phony utility bills that would allow others to cast multiple votes in the November 6 election. Supporters of stronger voter ID laws seized on the video as evidence of widespread corruption among liberal get-out-the-vote organizations. “What he’s doing is soliciting fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent ballots, and that’s...