Free Republic

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Authorities have exhumed the body of the wife of a famed former Tennessee sheriff more than a half-century after she was fatally shot in a still-unsolved killing. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it oversaw the exhumation of the body of Pauline Pusser on Thursday at Adamsville Cemetery. She was killed by incoming gunfire while in a car driven by her husband, McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser, a figure whose legend was captured in the 1973 film “Walking Tall” starring Joe Don Baker and a 2004 remake starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Various sites in Adamsville...

WASHINGTON - While probing organized crime in New England since the 1960s, the FBI used killers as informants, shielded them from prosecution and knowingly sent innocent people to jail, House investigators said Thursday in concluding a two-year inquiry. The bureau's conduct "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement," according to the final report from the House Government Reform Committee. "Federal law enforcement personnel tolerated and probably encouraged false testimony in a state death penalty case just to protect their criminal informants," said Rep. Dan Burton, who started the investigation when he was...

Bush, Ashcroft imitate Clinton, Reno in blocking probe of Boston FBI REP. DAN BURTON’S House Government Reform Committee hearing, scheduled for Wednesday but postponed until early February, will continue months of rancor between old Republican comrades. George W. Bush and John Ashcroft have given an excellent imitation of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno by withholding information from Congress. Indeed, they have surpassed their Democratic predecessors in defying the legislative branch. While President Clinton was trying to undermine investigations of his own campaign finance abuses, President Bush has ruled against the Burton committee’s access to old scandals unconnected to him. The ...