Free Republic

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...

Ideally, the process of the judicial system would be free or cheap and painless. Unfortunately, it is expensive and painful, with long delays, expensive lawyer fees, and much uncertainty. The process of the judicial system has become a punishment in itself. A bill which would help alleviate punishment by process in self defense cases in North Dakota, has passed the North Dakota House by 50 to 40 on January 20, 2023. The bill, HB 1213, would allow a judge to provide reinbursement of costs to people who are prosecuted by the State for self defense, and are then found not...

MIAMI – Did she see this coming? A federal judge sentenced a so-called psychic and fortune teller from Miami who prosecutors say swindled more than $3 million out of a woman by claiming she needed the money to break a family curse. Fifty-one-year-old Samantha Stevens was sentenced to spend 30 months in prison on fraud and money laundering charges, officials said Thursday. According to prosecutors, Stevens met the victim in 2012, gained her trust and convinced her that a curse had been placed on her family. Stevens claimed she needed to “perform rituals on large sums of money in order...

(CNN) — Njeri Camara, 61, can’t visit the Shreveport, Louisiana home where she was born. Like many Black homes and neighborhoods across the country in the 1960s, it was bulldozed to clear space for highways. Camara says her parents moved when she was a baby to another Shreveport neighborhood, Allendale, where she still lives. But now her current home is at risk of being bulldozed so that a second highway, Interstate 49, can connect directly through the city. The Shreveport leaders who want to trade Camara’s home for a highway are embracing a Dwight Eisenhower-era belief in the almighty good...

A venture capitalist and political fundraiser was sentenced today to 144 months in federal prison for falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials, evading the payment of millions of dollars in taxes, making illegal campaign contributions, and obstructing a federal investigation into the source of donations to a presidential inauguration committee.Imaad Shah Zuberi, 50, of Arcadia, California, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips, who also ordered him to pay $15,705,080 in restitution and a criminal fine of $1.75 million.In November 2019, Zuberi pleaded guilty to a three-count information...

...As election day neared, the identity politics that has roiled Poland over the last decade came to the fore, with the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) Party and its populist cohorts spying all sorts of nefarious schemes to undermine the nation. Among them: the insistence that Poland bow down to an alien ideology otherwise known as respecting the rights of the LGBT community; the demand that Poland should pass and implement Holocaust-era restitution laws; the constant stream of supposedly anti-Polish propaganda broadcast by privately owned media companies. Five days before voters went to the polls, Duda told a Bloomberg News...

Former Vice President Joe Biden's niece, Caroline, avoided jail time Thursday in Manhattan Criminal Court in a sweetheart deal on a felony conviction for a $100,000 credit card scam. Caroline, 31, offered an apology while promising her wild ways are behind her, as she accepted her sentence of two-years probation. 'I not only acknowledge my conduct and take responsibility but deeply regret the harm caused,' she told Justice Curtis Farber. 'I can assure you that I have made amends, full restitution, completed community service and that nothing like this will ever happen again,' Biden said, according to the New York...

The Obama administration has intervened in a landmark legal case brought by the American victims of Palestinian terrorists, urging the court to limit restitution for the victims out of fear that a sizable payout could collapse the Palestinian government, according to a copy of the court filing. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken argued in a filing to a New York City court that a hefty payout to the victims of Palestinian terror crimes could burden the Palestinian Authority (PA) and interfere in Obama administration efforts to foster peace in the region. The victims are entitled to as much as...

In a word, race promises to play at least as large a role in the next election as it played in the last presidential race. Rest assured, it is on this that Barack Obama and his cronies are counting. For decades now, whites and non-whites have been engaged in a kind of racial game with one another. Like any other game, when played long enough, it becomes a ritual of a sort. But when it becomes ritualistic, there is an imminent danger that it will be forgotten as play and be treated with a deadly seriousness. This is what has...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

The US Congress has passed resolutions urging Eastern European nations including Poland to make progress on legislation regarding the restitution of private property. Though the US resolutions are nonbinding, observers argue that this is a clear signal that such legislation in Poland is long overdue.

Lawmaker Proposes Holiday Rather Than Apology for Slavery By Payton Hoegh CNSNews.com Correspondent January 29, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - A Virginia delegate introduced legislation this week proposing a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery as an alternative to an official apology that he refuses to support. Seventy-nine-year-old Republican Frank Hargrove drew criticism nationwide when he said that "black citizens should just get over it," when speaking out against a bill that proposed an official apology from the Commonwealth of Virginia for its part in slavery. "Slavery's over with. It was a horrible institution," Hargrove said. "There's nobody living today that...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Manhattan federal judge overseeing the main class-action lawsuit over WorldCom Inc.'s collapse on Wednesday authorized the payment of up to $4.52 billion to aggrieved investors. U.S. Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York said the distribution should be made "as soon as practicable." More than one dozen investment banks, including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., agreed to pay about $6.15 billion to resolve allegations that they helped WorldCom sell bonds when they should have known the phone company was concealing its true financial condition. The remaining...

Duds intended to complement inmate motorcycle program CARSON CITY -- A Nevada prison industries program that builds customized motorcycles will soon expand with its own clothing line as well. The clothing line, to be called "Most Wanted," will be designed by Jan Rousseaux of Las Vegas and will be manufactured by inmates within the Nevada Department of Corrections at the Lovelock Correctional Center. The clothing is intended to complement the motorcycle program, called "Big House Choppers," which is run out of the Southern Desert Correctional Center, northwest of Las Vegas. The new clothing line will be launched at the motorcycle...

Holocaust survivors in L.A. rush to get restitution from Hungary The Associated Press (Updated Wednesday, July 5, 2006, 2:15 AM) LOS ANGELES (AP) - Hundreds of Holocaust survivors flocked to the city's Jewish social service agencies to get help as they rush to apply for a restitution program offered by the Hungarian government. The paperwork must be postmarked and on its way to Budapest by July 31. The large turnout overwhelmed the legal service group Bet Tzedek, whose officials hastily scheduled extra sessions to help with the complicated paperwork. Officials there said they expected about 50 or so of the...

The White House on Wednesday suggested one way for Newsweek to repair any damage from a story that ourtraged the muslim world and triggered deadly anti American protests in Afghanistan.Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan urged the magazine's editors to take their case straight to the Muslim community by appearing on Arab television.He made the comment after noting that Newsweek editors had already been appearing on US television outlets to talk about the incident.Newsweek has retracted the story which alleged US interrogators defiled the Quran, Islam's holy book.The White House quickly called on the magazines editors to find a way to set...

Woman sentenced for bilking 89-year-old By Juliette Rule rep9@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - She was a trusted accountant controlling the assets of an elderly Laramie woman who considered her family. But over six years, more than money was stolen by 56-year-old Donna Christine Curran, who goes by Chris. Curran was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Friday to serve two years in a federal prison and pay $232,000 in restitution. Dixie Ward, 89, might now be able to afford the travel Curran told her she couldn't afford, but a broken ankle and hip injury make travel difficult,...

St. Ann's Cub Scout Pack 50 has its money back, more than two years after the father of a scout took hundreds of dollars in proceeds from their Christmas 2001 fund-raiser. Tina Muncie, a pack mother, said she got a Turkey Hill Minit Market money order in the mail Friday for $145. She forwarded it to the pack treasurer before noon, she said. The amount won't be enough to get the scouts to the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York City -- their original goal -- but it's a start, Mrs. Muncie said. William Ferrell, 43, of Taylor, pleaded guilty to...

<p>PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- More than two decades after rebellious former slaves vanquished troops from Napoleon's army here in 1803, France's King Charles X made the fledgling republic of Haiti an offer it couldn't refuse.</p> <p>In 1825, as the king's warships cruised just over the horizon from the Haitian capital, a French emissary demanded 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognizing the new republic. The implicit alternative was invasion and re-enslavement.</p>

<p>Most people realize that the court and penal systems in North America are seriously broken and must be fixed. With the possible exception of China, the United States currently imprisons more of its population than any other nation: the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports 2,033,331 imprisoned as of December 31, 2002.</p>