Free Republic

A family says on a quiet May evening members of the Utah County SWAT team erroneously invaded their Springville home and roughed them up without cause. The next day, the Chidester family, including Lawrence, his wife Emily and their adult son Larry, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Utah County and six SWAT team members. According to court documents, the Chidesters say the SWAT team arrived on the street outside their home May 25 at approximately 10:30 p.m. They say the officers then proceeded to man-handle them in the execution of a search warrant -- albeit for the wrong...

Parents who were charged with child abuse last August have been exonerated and reunited with their children. Charbel Hamaty (search) was charged with sexually assaulting his newborn son, and Teresa Hamaty (search) was arrested for taking sexually explicit pictures. The couple describe the ordeal as a "nightmare" that started over a roll of film that Charbel Hamaty dropped off at a north Raleigh Eckerd drugstore. The photo that raised alarms shows a naked Kristoff, now 16 months old, getting a kiss from his father on the belly button, Teresa Hamaty said. When the photos were shown to the police, the...

Executives Who Inhale New York -- Some New York executives unwind in the evening with a glass of wine. Others go out for a beer. And some take the edge off in a way they rarely discuss with their colleagues. Particularly in the summer, when children are at camp, these Gothamites are kicking back in a fashion reminiscent of their college days. "When my son's away, I keep my bong and my bag out on the dining room table," says Jim, co-owner of a furniture manufacturing company, who, like every other pot smoker interviewed in this article, asked not to...

As the nation's "drug czar," John Walters is supposed to be saving us from the ravages of hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. At least that was the original sales pitch for the "war on drugs" in the 1980s. But the war has evolved into largely a fight against marijuana, which no one has ever claimed is a hard drug. Walters is nonetheless committed, Ahab-like, to arresting every marijuana smoker in the country whom law enforcement can lay its hands on. It used to be that drug warriors denied that marijuana was much of a focus for them, because they...

Calaveras County Safe Again By Jeff Knox (Manassas, VA, April 27) The people of Calaveras County – the remote central California mining region made famous by the gold rush of 1849 and the jumping frogs of Mark Twain – can breath easier now that Richard Wilmshurst has been brought to justice. Wilmshurst was convicted last month of illegal possession of a machinegun and illegal possession of "Assault Weapons" in California. The judge sentenced Wilmshurst to three years probation and ordered that he dispose of his "arsenal". Wilmshurst, by the way, is a car dealer and land speculator with a law...

"He's just a normal little boy" - is what almost everyone in this small, dusty Cuban town will tell you when you ask them about Elian Gonzalez. A normal little boy who is doing well at school, has plenty of friends, and thinks that maybe he will be a gymnast when he grows up. It is a far cry from the high drama of five years ago, when Elian was the world famous symbol of a bitter dispute between two nations, two political systems, and one family. Court battle Discovered floating alone in the Florida Straits, tied to an inner...

NEWS RELEASE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms12500 N.E. Tenth PlaceBellevue, WA  98005CCRKBA CALLS REMARKS BY FORMER ATF OFFICIAL 'OUTRAGEOUS, SLANDEROUS'For Immediate Release: April 19, 2005 An outrageous remark by a former official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is "nothing short of slanderous," said leaders of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). Gerald Nunziato, former head of ATF's National Tracing Center and now a partner in Crime Gun Solutions, an anti-gun consulting firm, told the Houston Chronicle Sunday, "If it wasn't for criminals, there...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US diplomatic security special agents have been given greater powers, including making arrests without a warrant, under new provisions in efforts to combat terrorism, the government said. "These new authorities enhance the ability of our special agents to conduct effective criminal investigations, secure US borders, and protect the American people from the threat of terrorism," said Joe Morton, Acting Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security. Diplomatic Security is the worldwide law enforcement and security arm of the US State Department with special agents assigned to American diplomatic missions overseas and field offices throughout the country. The new powers,...

VFW in Marcellus wants ATF to give back machine gun 4/7/2005, 2:27 p.m. ET The Associated Press MARCELLUS, Mich. (AP) — Area residents want federal authorities to return a 1918 German .50 caliber machine gun to the local VFW Post's war museum after it was taken during a search earlier this year. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms took the Maxim machine gun as part of a broader investigation into the person who donated the weapon to the post, the Three Rivers Commercial-News reported. Museum curator and Vietnam veteran Wilber Breseman was outraged by the Feb. 23 search. "How...

   YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills Best Buy customer on being jailed: 'At this point, I'm a mass murderer' Posted: April 7, 2005 5:12 p.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police. According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while...

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police. According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case. Bolesta told the Sun: "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed,...

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police. According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case. Bolesta told the Sun: "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed,...

Boston police raided and shut down an Uphams Corner convenience store Friday that had been selling students knives and replica pellet pistols, officials said. They said the replicas looked so much like real guns that police feared they could fuel neighborhood violence. Captain James Hasson said that police learned about the store's activities from the principal of the New Boston Pilot Middle School in Grove Hall. Three students were expelled for bringing the pellet guns to school, Hasson said. It is legal to sell the guns, Hasson said...

Associated Press ALBANY, N.Y. — Major credit card companies will refuse to participate in Internet sales of cigarettes nationwide under a government agreement made today. ADVERTISEMENT The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the companies and state attorneys general agreed to work together to prevent the long unchecked use of credit cards to buy cigarettes over the Internet across state lines. The agreement is effective immediately. The result is that virtually all credit cards will no longer participate with Web sites based in the United States and abroad that sell cigarettes and tobacco products in every state, said...

Man Ticketed For Selling Girl Scout Cookies With Daughter POSTED: 8:58 am EST March 8, 2005 UPDATED: 2:22 pm EST March 8, 2005 NEW YORK -- A Long Island man was ticketed in Brooklyn for selling Girl Scout cookies with his 13-year-old daughter. Hoi Louis was in Williamsburg delivering the cookies with his daughter over the weekend. Louis said it was his old neighborhood, before he moved to Bethpage, and he and his daughter have been selling Girl Scout cookies there since his daughter was in first grade. At 4:50 p.m. Saturday a police captain and a uniformed officer pulled...

Some home schoolers say they were having a meeting in Simpsonville Park when an officer started bullying them. The group of home schoolers included 6 mothers and about 15 to 20 kids, every Wednesday for the past 5 years the group has come to Simpsonville Park to socialize and meet with each other, but they say this past Wednesday was like no other. One of the mothers in the group, Jan Blanchard says, "We were just sitting there talking..." "I heard a man yelling take your hands out of your pocket and I turned around and he was yelling at...

Babalu blog's Val Prieto, who was profiled recently on the front page of the Miami Herald as a brilliant new voice of the often-dismissed Cuban-American community, has a striking update about the Elian Gonzalez case. Back in 2000, the rescue of the 6-year-old Cuban refugee by fishermen off the coast of Florida triggered a three-way tug-of-war between Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the cowardly Clinton Administration, and the Cuban-American community over custody of the child. The Clinton administration resolved the question with a savage pre-dawn raid, grabbing the terrified child at gunpoint from his Miami relatives and delivering him straight to...

House Approves Stiffer Indecency Fines 2 minutes ago Politics - U. S. Congress By GENARO C. ARMAS, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Chafing over racy broadcasts like Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday authorizing unprecedented fines for indecency. Rejecting criticism the penalties will stifle free speech and homogenize radio and TV broadcasts, bill supporters said stiff fines were needed to give deep-pocketed broadcasters more incentive to clean up their programs and to help assure parents that their children won't be exposed to inappropriate material. The measure, which passed 389-38,...

MORE UNAMERICANISM (AND EVEN A TOUCH OF INSANITY) FROM THE BATFE As alert gun owners probably suspected, the incompetence displayed in JPFO's recently obtained footage of the BATFE's attempt to railroad competition shooter John Glover (http://www.jpfo.org/alert20050103.htm)was barely the tip of the iceberg. Since announcing the footage earlier this month, we've begun hearing from attorneys, gun owners, and firearms makers from around the world. Two new and mindbending examples of BATFE tactics have just been posted on our Web site: 1. Ulrich Weigand, president of Inter Ordnance of America, came to the U.S. seeking greater freedom. Instead, he ended up having...

MIAMI (AP) _ A federal judge has set a Monday trial date for the claims of a dozen people who said they were wrongly assaulted by federal officers during the raid that removed Elian Gonzalez from his family's home. The plaintiffs say they were innocent bystanders who were gassed and beaten outside the home during the early morning raid on April 22, 2000. U.S. District Judge Michael Moore set the trial date Friday. "I think the public's going to be surprised that elderly people were gassed while praying the rosary," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which represents 11...