Free Republic

A would-be gangster shot himself in the crutch when his gun went off half cocked in his pocket. Lukas Neuhardt, 27, had forgotten to put the safety catch on when he stuffed the gun into his trouser pocket to impress pals in Saarbruecken, Germany. He told paramedics that a masked mugger had blasted him in the crutch in a bungled robbery. -- Now - after surgeons stitched his manhood back together - he's facing up to three years in jail for breaching Germany's tough new anti gun laws.

Before Michael Mann and Johnny Depp wanted to make a movie about John Dillinger, John Dillinger wanted to make a movie about John Dillinger. This was June 1934, near the end for the notorious criminal. Dillinger was hiding out in Chicago. Two months earlier, he'd escaped an FBI raid at the Little Bohemia resort in northern Wisconsin. His gang's girlfriends had been brought to jail in Madison. Now in Chicago, Dillinger, his accomplice Homer Van Meter, who'd been with him at Little Bohemia, and Louis Piquett, Dillinger's attorney, were pondering alternative revenue streams.Piquett, born and raised in Benton, a small...

Kerry's Anti-War Past Is a Delicate Issue in Campaign By DAVID M. HALBFINGER, The New York Times When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action. It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years...

Honor Roll for tonight: Angelwood, tgslTakoma, Trueblackman, scholastic, 3D-Joy and kristinn. Big thanks to Rummyfan for the tip!Her Heinous, Hillary Rodham Clinton, held a booksigning for the paperback release of her book, Living History, at the Books-a-Million in Washington, D.C.'s ultra-liberal Dupont Circle tonight.The booksigning was nearly called off because Hillary Clinton's staff freaked out when Trueblackman went through the line twice to get copies of Hillary's books signed by her.To set the scene, we had thrown this freep together in one day thanks to the alert eye of Rummyfan who tipped us off on another thread about the booksigning.Angelwood...