Free Republic

An official at the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine group who openly advocates for violence against the Jewish state contributed $2,500 to Democratic Party leader Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.) last year, according to campaign disclosure documents.

An Orange County jury has reached a verdict in the Irvine 11 case of Muslim students accused of conspiring and disrupting a February 2010 speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The case garnered national attention over free-speech rights and centered on conflicting views of who was being censored. Prosecutors argued that Ambassador Michael Oren was "shut down" when his speech was interrupted by students who took turns shouting preplanned phrases in a crowded UC Irvine ballroom.

Irvine - Closing arguments will resume today in the trial of 11 students accused of disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The students who interrupted the speech last year "meticulously" planned the disruption and one of the activists afterward boasted, "We pretty much shut them down," a prosecutor said Monday in arguing they should be found guilty of violating laws governing conduct at public meetings. But defense attorneys countered in their closing arguments that just because the students planned to protest the meeting doesn't mean they are guilty of the misdemeanor charges...

Orange County prosecutors next week are scheduled to argue against a defense motion to keep them from speaking in public about their criminal case against 11 student activists accused of disrupting an Israeli ambassador's speech at UC Irvine last year. The motion, filed in Orange County Superior Court's Central Justice Center in Santa Ana on Tuesday, accuses Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Wagner, police and representatives from the district attorney's office of tainting the jury pool with public statements against the 11 defendants. Defense attorneys are seeking a court order that would keep prosecutors from talking publicly to the media or...