Free Republic

The Mercer County man accused of threatening to murder FBI agents on Gab last week emerged from his house with an assault weapon in his hands when the FBI arrived Friday night, an agent testified Thursday, but ultimately dropped the gun after commands to put it down. At a federal detention hearing for Adam Bies on Thursday, prosecutors presented that testimony and other evidence of potential violence, including the presence of 12 other guns in the house, to show that Mr. Bies is a danger to the community and should be locked up pending trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo...

A Mercer County family took home the big prize on “The Great Christmas Light Fight” for their oversized Christmas display.The Martel family’s Hamilton home, called “Martel’s Christmas Wonderland,” was recognized as the best Christmas lights in America with $50,000 and a trophy on the ABC show, which aired on Wednesday.The family has put together the display, which includes a walk-through exhibit of lights, figures, and a miniature Ferris wheel, annually for the past 35 years. Filmed in 2019, the episode featured last year’s elaborate set up.“We not only won the contest, we won so much more. Our display allows us...

More than 4,000 votes vanished without a trace into a computer's overloaded memory in one North Carolina county, and about a hundred paper ballots were thrown out by mistake in another. In Texas, a county needed help from a laboratory in Canada to unlock the memory of a touch-screen machine and unearth five dozen votes. In other places, machine undercounting or overcounting of votes was a problem. Several thousand votes were mistakenly double-counted in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, and Washington state. Some votes in other areas were at first credited to the wrong candidates, with one Indiana county, by some...

Trenton Councilwoman Robin Vaughn on Saturday let loose a stream of expletives and homophobic insults against the New Jersey city's mayor, who is gay, after a disagreement between the two about funding for nonprofit organizations during a conference call, according to a report. In audio obtained by The Trentonian, Vaughn, other members of the Trenton City Council and Mayor Reed Gusciora were discussing efforts to manage the city during the coronavirus pandemic when Vaughn and Gusciora got into a confrontation on "do-nothing" charity organizations getting city money and launched into an angry tirade over the phone. "The concern as to...

An officer shot a man in Trenton early Saturday morning after two people were stabbed, authorities said. One victim was in critical condition and entered emergency surgery, according to Trenton Capt. Stephen Varn and a spokeswoman for the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office. Both the suspect and the second victim were in stable condition. Police received a call before 2 a.m. that there was a street fight by the 1000 Block of South Clinton Ave. When officers arrived, they found two men holding a third. As a cop approached, the third man broke free and began stabbing the other two with...

CELINA — A Mercer County K-9 unit died Wednesday after his handler left him in a patrol car.

TRENTON – Mayor Tony Mack’s city-owned SUV was parked behind the fire department’s repair garage last night, with no sign of the mayor. Firefighters said the SUV appeared on the apron in front of fire headquarters on Perry Street Wednesday evening, and was parked in the lot later on. No one from the city had come to claim it. Late Thursday night, Mack sent a letter to City Clerk Leona Baylor designating Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson as acting mayor “during such time as I may be unavailable.” Civic watchdog Jim Carlucci says this is likely a pro forma move to...

WELCH — The ongoing debate in Washington over the use of federal earmarks could be a bad omen for the Coalfields Expressway and the King Coal Highway, according to project supporters. “As far as earmarks in general, I cannot for the life of me figure out why any congressman or senator would want to stop earmarks,” Sen. Richard Browning, D-Wyoming, a long-time supporter of the Coalfields Expressway project in southern West Virginia, said. “Less than 1 percent of the federal budget goes for earmarks. If they can’t bring money home for special projects, we have to rely upon bureaucrats in...

A man accidentally released from the Mercer County Jail, even though he's accused of killing two people and shooting another, remains on the lam. Authorities say a series of "clerical errors" caused the error involving 19-year-old Dontay Brannon, who was mistakenly released Monday despite the murder charges. Authorities say Brannon was taken that day to Hamilton police headquarters, where a relative paid 200 dollars in bail to get him released on burglary charges unrelated to the killings. Authorities, including the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force, have been searching for Brannon since it became known that he was on...

Not since Berlin, 1989, has a big wall taken such a big fall. This time, it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that blew the trumpet, effectively collapsing the false construct of the so-called “wall of separation between church and state” that for more than 50 years has been the cornerstone of the American Civil Liberties Union’s anti-religion agenda. This wasn’t one the ACLU saw coming. Their case—a suit to prevent Mercer County, Kentucky, officials from including a copy of the Ten Commandments in their display of historically significant documents—seemed tight enough, especially since the U.S....

Sometimes it’s hard to find a ray of light in the American judicial system but once in a while the sun comes shining through. In a shocking display of clarity and common sense, a federal appeals court judge ruled last month that the Ten Commandments may remain on a wall in a Mercer County, Kentucky courthouse. The case concerned a display entitled, “Foundations of American Law and Government,” which, in addition to the Commandments, also includes; the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, the Magna Carta, the Star-Spangled Banner, Lady...

Sometimes it's hard to find a ray of light in the American judicial system, but once in a while the sun comes shining through. In a shocking display of clarity and common sense, a federal appeals court judge ruled last month that the Ten Commandments may remain on a wall in a Mercer County, Kentucky courthouse. The case concerned a display entitled, "Foundations of American Law and Government," which, in addition to the Commandments, also includes; the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, the Magna Carta, the Star-Spangled Banner, Lady...

If anyone has his hand on the pulse of America, it's Judge Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Suhrheinrich, a Reagan appointee, said Mercer County, Ky., must be allowed to post at its courthouse copies of the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, and other historical documents. The county had no expressed religious purpose in its display, he wrote, and the Commandments are not more prominently displayed than the other documents. That view certainly is within...

A federal appeals court has upheld a Ten Commandments display identical to one ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, rebuking the American Civil Liberties Union in the process. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, affirmed Dec. 20 a federal judge’s decision that a courthouse display in Mercer County, Ky., of nine documents, including the Ten Commandments, is constitutional. In a unanimous opinion by a three-judge panel, the court agreed with the lower court that the inclusion of the Decalogue does not violate the Constitution’s establishment clause because the display has a secular purpose....

A U.S. appeals court today upheld the decision of a lower court in allowing the inclusion of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse display, hammering the American Civil Liberties Union and declaring, "The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state." Attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice successfully argued the case on behalf of Mercer County, Ky., and a display of historical documents placed in the county courthouse. The panel voted 3-0 to reject the ACLU's contention the display violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. The county display the ACLU sued...

Criminals can demand that their DNA samples be destroyed after they complete their prison sentences, a state judge ruled yesterday. The ruling by Superior Court Judge Jack Sabatino, who sits in Mercer County, severely limits a 2003 law that requires everyone convicted of a crime to submit a DNA sample. "Once a felon has paid his or her debt to society and has fully resumed civilian life, the state's right to maintain that person's DNA sample withers," Sabatino wrote. Attorney General Peter Harvey said he will "immediately" appeal the ruling, saying it undermines the whole purpose of maintaining a DNA...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — First lady Laura Bush will visit a Mercer County firehouse Thursday in the first Bush-Cheney campaign event in New Jersey that is not a fund-raiser. She is scheduled to deliver remarks at an 11:15 a.m. Bush-Cheney '04 rally at the Colonial Firehouse in Hamilton.