Free Republic

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — This week marks the 25th anniversary of one of Arizona's most notorious unsolved crimes. On the morning of April 10, 2001, Scottsdale police responded to reports of an explosion at a home near 74th and Oak streets. Upon arrival, the bodies of Mary Fisher and her two children, Bobby and Brittney, were discovered in the burning residence. The three victims appeared to have sustained fatal injuries before the house fire. And the family's patriarch, Robert Fisher, was nowhere to be seen. Police later named Fisher as a suspect as investigators believed he rigged the family's home to...

SALEM (MA)— Moments after learning he’ll spend the next three years in prison, Daniel Eremian unloaded on his brother-in-law, Congressman John Tierney, calling the Salem Democrat “the biggest liar in the world.” “He knew everything that was going on,” said Eremian, 62, the former owner of Brodie’s Pub in Peabody who now lives in Boca Raton, Fla. “He sat in the boxes with bookies at Fenway Park.” He called Tierney’s claims to the contrary “hogwash.” Tierney, through his spokeswoman, Kathryn Prael, denied Eremian’s claims in a statement earlier tonight. “Today, clearly bitter at having lost his case and harboring old...

Backers of a measure that would hit energy companies drilling in California with $4 billion in new taxes planned to start running a hard-hitting TV ad across the state today urging voters to "make oil companies pay.'' There's nothing subtle about the new ad, said Paul Begala, a consultant for Proposition 87. "We're not shy; our most important goal is to get California off its dependence on oil,'' said Begala, a former Clinton White House aide and CNN television commentator. "If you want support, you have to build support.'' Prop. 87 would tax companies for oil pumped in California, based...

** The "Clean Energy" initiative, Proposition 87, on California's November ballot is looking good. The support level for it in a private poll is over 60 percent. The measure would enact an oil extraction tax at the wellhead to generate some $400 million a year for research and development on alternative fuels. Among the nation's big oil producing states, California is the only one without an oil tax. Voter disdain for oil companies is high.