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A Houston police officer shot and killed a one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair Saturday inside a group home after police say the double amputee threatened the officer and aggressively waved a metal object that turned out to be a pen. Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said the man cornered the officer in his wheelchair and was making threats while trying to stab the officer with the pen. At the time, the officer did not know what the metal object was that the man was waving, Silva said. She said the man came "within inches to a foot" of the officer...

The chairman of insurance giant Progressive Corp. this year provided another $465,000 for a ballot question to legalize medical marijuana in Massachusetts. Peter B. Lewis, who supports medical marijuana, has now contributed $990,000, including $525,000 last year, to the Committee for Compassionate Medicine, the organization leading the effort to legalize medical marijuana in Massachusetts. Lewis is nonexecutive chairman of Progressive, which is based in Mayfield Village, Ohio. ccording to reports filed with the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance last last week, the Committee for Compassionate Medicine has raised $512,850 this year and spent $405,825. Including last year, the...

(CNN) -- A graphic video played at a hearing Monday to determine whether two California police officers should stand trial in the beating death of a homeless man showed them kicking and punching the mentally ill man as he lay on the ground -- screaming in pain and begging for help. The victim, Kelly Thomas, died five days after the beating on July 5. Manuel Ramos, a 10-year veteran of the Fullerton, California, police department, is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, while Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force in...

Full title: Weeping four-year-old girl accused of carrying a GUN by TSA officers after she hugged her grandmother while passing through security A four-year-old girl was apparently subjected to a humiliating ordeal after she hugged her grandmother while she was waiting in line. The girl was accused of having a gun and declared a 'high security threat', while agents threatened to shut down the whole airport if she could not be calmed down. Terror threat? Four-year-old Isabella was subjected to a full body pat-down and accused of carrying a gun in an airport In her terror, Isabella tried to run...

The Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets Eloise Lee|March 28, 2012| The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office is getting an "indefinite delivery" of an "indefinite quantity" of .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK. U.S. agents will receive a maximum of 450 million rounds over five years, according to a press release on the deal. The high performance HST bullets are designed for law enforcement and ATK says they offer "optimum penetration for terminal performance." This refers to the the bullet's hollow-point tip that passes through barriers and...

The DEA Web pages on "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization" are linked with some regularity on FR. They're full of errors in fact and logic; since I couldn't find a comprehensive rebuttal online, I've started creating one. Here's my rebuttal to their "Fact 1;" more to come as time permits. Claim 1: "We have made significant progress in fighting drug use and drug trafficking in America. Now is not the time to abandon our efforts." Claim: On the demand side, the U.S. has reduced casual use, chronic use and addiction, and prevented others from even starting using drugs. Overall drug...

In 2011, Gallup reported that 62% of 18-29 year olds and 50% of the general public supports the legalization of marijuana; 69% of liberals and even 34% of conservatives also support such measures. Obviously the pro-pot movement has taken root in the American populace and especially in the minds of Millennials (even managing to infiltrate the minds of the most conservative among us). Myth #1: Legalization Would bring in Enormous Tax Revenues The Heritage Foundation’s Charles Stimson published an extensive legal memorandum urging for the failure of the RCTC Act of 2010, which would have legalized pot in California. This...

“San Jose Police Detective Matthew Christian created a document, on letterhead that bore the seal of the Santa Clara County Crime Lab, which falsely stated that Michael Kerkeles’s semen was found at the alleged crime scene. The fake report purported to be authored by a technician named ‘Rebecca Roberts.’ Christian then testified under oath that the report was true.

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

BOSTON -- A Peabody woman says a cupcake she tried to take on a flight with her sparked a potential security threat this week. Rebecca Hains says she was going through security at the airport in Las Vegas when a TSA agent pulled her aside and said the cupcake frosting was “gel-like” enough to constitute a security risk. She said she was able to pass through Logan International Airport security with two cupcakes, but she was stopped on the way back when she tried to return with one of them.

GULFPORT -- Spook was chained in his front yard on 20th Street when police officers with a search warrant went to the house and one of them shot the 3-year-old pit bull, witnesses said. **** She said Spook was a gentle inside dog but was outside on a chain while relatives were outside. Clark was inside when she heard the commotion. “If the officer felt threatened by my dog, he had time to back off. I kept hearing my child saying over and over, ‘Please don’t shoot my dog,’” Clark said. “My dog was my best friend,” she said. Clark’s...

When I first read this morning that the police had paid a nocturnal visit to the blogger Tallbloke to confiscate his computers I thought at first it was a non-story. Jolly annoying and inconvenient for Tallbloke, obviously, but nothing too sinister. Tallbloke was one of the first people contacted when mystery whistleblower FOIA 2011 leaked the Climategate 2.0 files onto the internet; the ongoing investigation by Norfolk police into the identity of the Climategate leaker has been singularly unsuccessful; so it seemed sadly inevitable that in their flailing desperation to be seen to be doing something, anything, to get their...

An 84-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair abused by Transportation Security Administration screeners at John F. Kennedy airport plans to sue the TSA, complaining of injuries and extreme humiliation suffered during a strip search. Homeland Security spokesmen, however, said “proper procedures were followed” and later claimed that the victim’s clothes were not fully removed. In a phone interview with The New American, the traumatized 103-pound woman, Lenore Zimmerman, warned that America was in “deep trouble” if manhandling frail grandmothers was what “security” had come to. But she plans to seek justice and has already contacted an attorney. “They stopped me to...

An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport. Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. “I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the...

Garland wants to be your boss, your big brother, your nanny, your wet nurse and your house sitter all rolled into one. Heather Fazio, Texas Libertarian Party Membership Coordinator, issued the following Action Alert about Garland's city council meeting scheduled for November 14: Council is requested to consider the recommendation of the Building and Fire Code Board and the Plumbing and Mechanical Code Board to adopt the 2009 International Fire, Residential, Building, Energy Conservation, Plumbing, Mechanical, Property Maintenance and Fuel Gas Codes along with local amendments. What this means, Fazio explains, is that the city wants to make it mandatory...

Matthew Spaulding says he and his family were terrorized at their own home by police who slammed his grandmother to the ground and shot his dogs-- missing his head by less than an inch. "Told us to get on the ground. I got on the ground they put me in handcuffs," Spaulding recalls, "Then they threw my dad to the ground and my dog Sadie was right here sniffing my head. She was next to me. They shot her. The blood got on my face and then she took off running behind me and they shot her like three more...

(NaturalNews) It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special "farm to fork" picnic dinner put on for guests -- and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach. For about five years now, Quail Hollow Farm has been growing organic produce and...

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas. The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup. Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose...

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

Apple's team searched the home, car and computer files, while police waited outside, the reports say. The investigators reportedly told the man that they had traced the phone's GPS signal to his house. When asked, he said he had been at the same bar where the phone was reportedly lost but that he didn't have it, the report says. One of the investigators, who identified himself as Tony, gave the man living in the house a phone number and told him to call with any information about the lost phone, the report says. When the SF Weekly reporter called, a...