Free Republic

For the second time in as many election cycles, Democrats are launching an 11th-hour rescue mission to save the very House campaigns chief responsible for protecting vulnerable incumbents and preserving their fragile House majority. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s decision to spend more than $600,000 on TV ads to bolster its chairman, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, came as cash-rich Republicans dumped millions into the once-sleepy race and Democrats retreated in other battleground districts around the country. The move came Monday shortly after the election handicapper Cook Political Report moved Maloney’s race for New York’s 17th Congressional District from...

A Chinese medical researcher flew back to China after he was sentenced to the time he spent in U.S. custody.Zheng Zaosong, 31, came to the United States on a J-1 visa in August 2018 and conducted cancer cell research at Harvard University’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019 at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where he was found with 21 vials containing biological materials in his luggage. He lied and answered “no” when asked by federal officers whether he was traveling with any biological items.In December last year, he pleaded guilty to one...

HOUSTON- ...The DA’s office announced Tuesday night that it had dropped charges against 602 people arrested during the protests in Houston, totaling 796 criminal cases. ...The majority of the cases dismissed, according to the office, were mainly for trespassing or obstructing a highway. “While probable cause existed for the arrests of those people who refused to disperse after being ordered to do so by police, our young prosecutors worked hard to identify the few offenders who came to inflict harm on others and intentional damage property,” DA Kim Ogg said. Prosecutors have charged 51 adults and one person under 18....

Orozco was arrested last week for “DUI-drugs and driving the wrong way on the road,” according to a post on the Salinas Police Department’s Facebook page. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, California has effectively guaranteed the freedom of most who commit a misdemeanor and lower-level felonies, setting cash bail at $0 in order to keep the number of people behind bars low to stop the spread of the virus. . . . “Not more than 10 minutes later Orozco forced a female out of her car in the parking lot of Natividad Medical Center. The female refused to give up...

The Lafayette Police Department and the Boulder County District Attorney’s office are asking the public for help in locating Francisco Barraza-Porras . . . Barraza-Porras, who was last known to be living in Lafayette, Colorado, was arrested Jan. 2 and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault on a child. Instead of keeping him in custody or handing him over to ICE, local law enforcement released him back into the public with an order to appear to appear before court on March 2. However, Barraza-Porras never showed up to his court date, and law enforcement doesn’t know where he is.

An illegal immigrant whose genetic material was allegedly found on a dead New Jersey prostitute will walk free on murder charges — all because police wrongfully obtained his DNA and a judge wouldn’t let them take another sample, according to local reports. Still, Guatemalan national Rafael Camey is expected to be deported Tuesday following the decision in a Passaic court to drop charges against him, the Bergen Record reports.

An undocumented immigrant accused of more than 100 child-related sex offenses has been arrested, according to Louisiana officials. KLFY reported that Miguel Martinez, 44, was arrested on 100 counts of possession of pornography involving juveniles under the age of 13, one count of production under 13, and one count of sexual battery of a juvenile under 13. Martinez, deported once before, in 2005, is a registered sex offender in California.

Baltimore’s top prosecutor has filed a rarely used legal petition intended to vacate 3,778 convictions for possession of marijuana, arguing an extraordinary legal strategy is necessary to “right an extraordinary wrong.” In a highly unusual “Maryland v. Maryland” filing in state court, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby used a petition called “writ of error coram nobis” that allows a court to reopen cases when substantial error is found that wasn’t apparent in initial judgments. The petition, if granted, could wipe out thousands of pot possession convictions. Mosby’s arguments are based on what she paints as an opportunity to achieve retroactive justice...

An illegal alien has been released from a North Carolina jail due to a clerical error, according to prosecutors. Sergio Coello-Perez, a 17-year-old alien from Mexico, was released from the Mecklenburg County Jail on Dec. 27 after being held for seven months. He was released after submitting a written promise to appear in court and to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and did not have to post bail.

Multnomah County “sheriff” Mike Reese is now taking heat for failing to notify I.C.E. when he had an illegal alien in custody up on assault charges. Those charges were dropped, of course, and the illegal alien was set free, only for said illegal alien to go on to murder his wife by stabbing her to death and dumping her body in a ditch. Multnomah County is home to Portland, Oregon. ... A man accused of murdering his wife and leaving her body in a ditch is at the center of a firestorm between ICE and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office....

A York County-based fishing boat – the Captain Billy Haver – was 55 miles off the coast of Massachusetts a few weeks ago, dredging scallops from the sea. Then, seemingly out of the blue, a crew member started attacking his shipmates with a hammer. The vessel’s captain radioed the Coast Guard for help at 2 p.m. on an international emergency distress channel. “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” he said in a thick accent. “Can anybody hear me?” “We have a man gone crazy here on the boat, man,” the captain continued after hearing a reply. “One man, I don’t know if he’s...

The slap on the wrist came over the objection of prosecutors, who asked for one to three years in prison. Tekashi took a no-jail plea deal in 2015 but Assistant DA Sara Weiss said he had repeatedly violated the agreement by getting into trouble during the probationary period and it should be yanked. Tekashi, 22, was busted in Texas last January for choking a teen fan and nabbed a few months later in Brooklyn for driving on a suspended license and assaulting a cop. A soft Manhattan judge went easy on rainbow-haired rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine and sentenced him to four...

A shocking video that shows a white woman calling 911 to report that a black nine-year-old boy allegedly touched her buttocks at a Brooklyn bodega has gone viral on social media. Cellphone video recorded by a witness shows the irate woman shouting into her phone as a mother tries to comfort her two children, a young girl and the boy who had been accused of assaulting the woman. 'That's right, the son grabbed my ass and she decided to yell at me,' the woman dubbed 'Cornerstore Caroline', says of the mother. 'I was just sexually assaulted by a child.'

Oregon’s legislature reduced penalties for drug possession in a new bill with the stated goal of hoping to reduce radical profiling by law enforcement agencies. The bill, H. B. 2355, was able to pass the House and Senate and reduces drug possession charges of illegal drugs to misdemeanors, as opposed to felonies so long as the individual in question does not have any prior drug convictions. A press release from Oregon’s AG Ellen Rosenblum states the following regarding the bill: Profiling (HB 2355): Implements 2015 law enforcement anti-profiling laws, and provides new levels of transparency in policing in Oregon by...

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) argues that despite the fact that President Obama’s executive amnesty will not have the force of law, it would be very difficult for another president to rescind. “This is something that is fair and the right thing to do,” Reid said on Thursday. “They have the opportunity at some later time, some president to say, ‘I want this all changed.’ I wish that person luck to try to tell these millions of people and their families -- who many at that time will have many, many more United States citizens -- are going...

Outgoing Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe's office says he plans to pardon his son over a felony marijuana conviction. Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said the two-term Democratic governor planned to pardon his son, Kyle, who was convicted in 2003 of felony possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. DeCample said the pardon recommendation would be included in the final pardons issued by the governor early next month.

The Obama administration broke the law when it released thousands of illegal immigrants, more than 600 of whom had criminal records, last February as a result of poor planning and micromanagement from Washington, according to an internal audit released Tuesday that says things have not improved in the 18 months since. Compounding matters, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gave bad information to Congress, initially blaming the looming budget sequester, rather than the agency's own budget pressures, the Homeland Security inspector general concluded. In the new report the IG does clear top Homeland Security officials of accusations they pressured ICE...

As city and county jails across the country increasingly refuse federal requests to hold foreigners who have overstayed their visas or slipped across the border, the Obama administration is moving toward a new policy that would limit deportations chiefly to immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes.Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is expected to recommend small but significant changes to Secure Communities, a controversial program that now ranks repeat immigration violators alongside violent criminals on the priority list for deportation.The change would slow the pace of deportations and potentially ease concerns of immigrants who now fear any contact with...

Kerry Kennedy may agree to a plea deal over driving while drugged charges stemming from a 2012 accident so she can continue her extensive human rights work. Kennedy, 54, is afraid a conviction would bring with it restrictions that would curtail her international travels – she has visited several dozen countries on humanitarian missions. The plea deal was previously discussed between her legal team and prosecutors before being shelved, but her attorneys have brought it back to the table with her trial slated to start Monday, according to the New York Daily News. Lawyers originally tabled the deal while preparing...

A former BBC driver was found dead yesterday as he was due to stand trial for sex crimes uncovered as part of the Jimmy Savile inquiry. David Smith, 67, chauffeur to Savile and other celebrities during the 1980s is believed to have committed suicide on the eve of his court appearance. Police were called to Smith’s address after receiving a court summons at 1pm when he failed to appear for trial. A team of detectives discovered his body in his third-floor council flat in Lewisham, south-east London, shortly after breaking in at 2.20pm.