Free Republic

Port Angeles mayor wants to remove colonial solider images from fence The mayor of Port Angeles is reportedly taking aim at a fence in front of Veterans Memorial Park in Port Angeles depicting Revolutionary War-era soldiers with muskets. The city decided to put the fence in place after the park’s replica of the Liberty Bell was vandalized. Money for the fence was raised exclusively through donations. Now, however, Port Angeles Mayor Sissi Bruch wants the city to remove the silhouettes from the fence because they depict guns. At this Wednesday’s Port Angeles City Council meeting, the council will deliberate on...

Republicans are filled with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught.) Watergate, meet BVDgate. For the past thirty years, many observers have thought it the height of paranoia for Pres. Richard Nixon's men to burglarize the offices of...

PORT ANGELES, Wash. -- Witnesses say a man upset with his neighbors went on a rampage with a bulldozer-like piece of logging machinery in a Port Angeles neighborhood, damaging four homes and knocking out power to thousands of people. The Clallam County Sheriff's Office says it does not appear that anyone was injured during the incident that happened just after noon Friday along Pioneer Road. The suspect was arrested. "A person with a piece of heavy equipment that was very upset, struck (four) homes in the area and also a truck," said Jim Borte with the Clallam County Sheriff's...

Ahmed Ressam was resentenced this morning to 22 years in federal prison for conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport despite telling a judge that he recanted everything he has told the federal government about terrorist activities. Federal prosecutors had urged U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to send Ressam to prison for life — a sentence Ressam said he would accept now that he had cleared his conscience about his cooperation, which ended in 2003. Prosecutors pointed out that Ressam's defiance has cost two high-profile terrorism prosecutions so far, and that Ressam has actively tried to help the cases...

Prosecutors to appeal Ressam sentence August 26th, 2005 - 12:29pm (Seattle) -- Federal prosecutors say they will appeal the 22-year prison sentence of Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian national arrested in Port Angeles in 1999 and convicted of plotting to bomb LAX. The sentence handed down last month was significantly lower than the 35 years prosecutors had recommended, but could have been shorter still had Ressam agreed to testify against two of his alleged co-conspirators. In a statement today announcing his plans to appeal, U.S. Attorney John McKay says the standard sentencing range for the crimes Ressam committed is 65 years...

PORT ANGELES - A car carrying four men reportedly sped through the U.S. Customs port of entry off the ferry from Victoria on Wednesday night. The Port Angeles Police Department received a report through the PenCom dispatch center of the car failing to stop for inspection. The car disembarked off the MV Coho at about 9:20 p.m. after the day's last southbound sailing. It reportedly raced past the checkpoint so quickly that nobody could determine a license plate number or even the plates' jurisdiction. The car turned left - or eastbound - onto Railroad Avenue from the port of entry,...

Ressam at times defiant in 2 days of questioning By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter After more than a year of cooperating with federal prosecutors, Ahmed Ressam has become a sometimes difficult and defiant government witness. Ressam was at times surly and evasive during two days of closed-door questioning this week in Seattle by German lawyers who need his help prosecuting Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. Ressam, convicted of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, might be endangering his deal with federal prosecutors to serve as few as 27 years...