Free Republic

<p>Update: The two police officers accused of holding up two young men at a gas station were released on Tuesday.</p> <p>The Wayne County Prosecutor's office will continue to review the warrent request.</p> <p>Original Story: A Good Samaritan snapped photos of what appeared to be two men impersonating police officers involved in a pistol-whipping and robbery outside a Citgo gas station on Detroit's east side on July 21.</p>

Berkeley’s deteriorating finances were the subject of the council’s work session last Tuesday. The proceedings should make citizens sad and mad. Sad, because the people who will be hit the hardest by the $12.5 million deficit forecast for Fiscal Year 2012 are among those in our community who are most in need of support—the aged, the mentally ill and the poor. Mad, because City officials blamed the looming debacle wholly on “outside forces,” when in fact the budget crisis results in good part from their own fiscal imprudence. First, a few more numbers. According to the staff report, the $12.5...

SEATTLE -- A man in his 60s was critically injured in a fight in the city's south side on Wednesday night, according to police. Spokesman Jeff Kappel said trouble began when the man began watering plants at an intersection roundabout at South Cooper Street and 61st Avenue South just before 8 p.m. The man, who was using a garden hose, had set up cones to divert traffic during the watering, and his cones were causing traffic to backup. Three young women in a car near the intersection confronted the man and demanded that he move the cones. When he refused,...

(AP) ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Trying to show solidarity with New Jersey, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday unwittingly stumbled into an issue that Garden State Democrats would rather forget: sky-high property taxes. Speaking to the state Democratic Party convention, the New York senator thanked New Jersey for moving its presidential primary up to Feb. 5. "I feel like I'm pretty much an honorary resident of New Jersey," Clinton said. "I just don't want you to charge me any more property taxes on top of what I pay in New York." While most of the room laughed at the joke,...

Washington -- Searing images of destitute African Americans huddled on rooftops, freeway overpasses, and the floors of the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center will remain vivid, for many Americans, long after the Gulf Coast is rebuilt. Hurricane Katrina's winds ripped away barriers that kept one city's poor out of sight and, for most people, out of mind. As the world watched, the deadly storm thrust the nation's enormous economic disparities into plain view. President Bush touched on the issue in his address to the nation last week and again at a prayer service at the National Cathedral. First lady...

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is willing to put up $10,000 in room tax revenue to help promote Madison bars, but only if the anti-smoking and pro-smoking forces also kick in some cash. The mayor issued a challenge Friday to both sides in the smoldering fight, urging the combatants to put down their rattling sabers and come together to see what can be done about the financial loss some Madison bars have reported since the smoking ban took effect on July 1. "I'm concerned about the relatively small number of tavern owners, especially on Madison's periphery, who say our smoke-free ordinance...

Detroit has surpassed Cleveland as the nation's most impoverished big city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Survey figures released Tuesday show 33.6 percent - more than one-third - of Detroit's residents lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2004, the largest percentage of any U.S. city of 250,000 or more people. The top five were Detroit; El Paso, Texas (28.8 percent); Miami (28.3 percent); Newark, N.J. (28.1 percent); and Atlanta (27.8 percent). Detroit has lost about half its population since a half-century ago. It is now the country's 11th largest city with just over...