Free Republic

A trio lashed a 13-year-old boy with belts before ripping off his sneakers in a vicious Brooklyn mugging last week, cops said. The group – two men and a woman – approached the youngster around 3:15 p.m. Friday at 17th Street and Fourth Avenue in South Slope and struck him with belts multiple times before pulling his kicks straight off his feet, police said. The trio then fled into the nearby Prospect Avenue train station, where they hopped on a Manhattan-bound R train, authorities said.

Four people were killed and two others critically wounded on Thursday when a woman opened fire at a Native American tribal office near the Oregon border in Northern California, police said. The suspect, a 44-year-old woman identified as Sherie Lash, also known as Sherie Rhoades, was taken into custody at the Cedarville Rancheria Tribal Office in Alturas, California, a spokeswoman for the Alturas police department said.

Suggest adding the whipping post to America’s system of criminal justice and most people recoil in horror. But offer a choice between five years in prison or 10 lashes and almost everybody picks the lash. What does that say about prison? America has a prison problem. Never in the history of the world has a country locked up so many of its people. We have more prisons than China, and it has a billion more people than we do. Forty years ago America had 338,000 people behind bars. Today 2.3 million are incarcerated. We have more prisoners than soldiers. Something...

JIZAN, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- A Saudi Arabian court handed down a 120-lash sentence to a man who was simultaneously married to six women -- two more than the legal limit. The man, whose name was not released, told the Jizan province court he did not know he was violating Shariah, Islamic law, by having more than four wives at the same time, the BBC reported Friday. The defendant, a member of the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a religious police force, was also ordered to read two chapters of the Koran...

McLEAN, Va. (AP) - A former Commerce Department official killed his 12-year-old son and himself early Friday following an apparent domestic dispute, police said. Police found the bodies of William Lash III, 45, a law professor at George Mason University and a former assistant secretary of commerce, and his son William IV inside a bedroom of their home following a barricade that lasted more than six hours, said Mary Ann Jennings, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman. Lash's wife called police Thursday night and said her husband and son were barricaded inside the home, Jennings said. Shortly after officers arrived, they...

Gunfire at McLean Home Followed Fight With Wife A former Bush administration official, after arguing violently with his wife Thursday night, shot and killed his 12-year-old son inside their McLean home, then turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide, Fairfax County police said. William H. Lash III, 45, was an assistant secretary of commerce from 2001 until last year, then returned to teach at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, where he had begun as a professor in 1994. His wife, Sharon K. Zackula, fled the house before the shootings, and police said yesterday they were not sure...

Liberal Religious Leaders Lash Out at Fidelis Christmas Ad Campaign Fri Dec 9, 4:14 PM ET To: National Desk Contact: Brian Burch of Fidelis, 734-358-3433 or bburch@fidelis.org WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In response to the Fidelis Christmas ad campaign that celebrates America's Judeo-Christian faith traditions and defends Judge Samuel Alito, liberal religious leaders lashed out at the ad, calling it "offensive," "coerced religion," and "a manipulation" at a Friday morning press conference. Fidelis President Joseph Cella stated: "This season is a special time when many Americans commemorate our Judeo-Christian roots. It is unfortunate these liberal religious leaders dragged...

“Just one torpedo can ruin your whole day.”“There are two kinds of ships: submarines and targets.” – US Navy sayings From anti-submarine warfare to anti-terrorism, it’s both a new and an old world for the US armed forces. The US Navy’s plan to test its Littoral Airborne Sensor - Hyperspectral (LASH) this fall aboard a P-3C and an H-60 aircraft in the Sea of Japan has North Korea growling even as US scientists see ever greater promise for the system of locating and identifying hidden targets. LASH is being tested for its ability to locate both targets submerged in shallow...