Free Republic

Abraham Lincoln has joined George Washington on the list of those targeted by Chicagoans in a national debate over Civil War-era monuments. Alderman Raymond Lopez took to Facebook Wednesday night to decry a defaced statue of the nation’s 16th president in the Englewood neighborhood. The giant bust appears to have been damaged after someone in the 15th Ward sprayed and ignited a flammable liquid. “What an absolute disgraceful act of vandalism. This bust of Abraham Lincoln, erected by Phil Bloomquist on August 31, 1926, was damaged & burned,” Mr. Lopez wrote, a local NBC affiliate reported. “If anyone has any...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz kept attacking his rival Donald Trump after they faced off onstage at CNN's Republican presidential debate on Thursday night. In an extended interview on Fox News, Cruz went after the Republican frontrunner. "I think that what became very clear is that Donald Trump is not the right candidate to go head-to-head with Hillary Clinton in November," Cruz said. "That on policy issue after policy issue, his position is identical to Hillary." Cruz cast Trump's policies as in line with those of "liberal Democrats." Trump has previously called himself a Democrat before running for the Republican presidential...

Palestinians have torched a Jewish holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus, amid soaring tensions with Israel. Rioters set fire to a tomb revered as that of the biblical figure Joseph. The site, where Jews go to pray, was badly damaged.

..."I am gratified that the president has thrown his personal support and the authority of the presidency behind the goal of justice, equality, and decency for all citizens," said Ted Olson, founder of the Federalist Society and former Bush administration solicitor general.. I called Olson on Wednesday to get the conservative legal leader's take on the North Carolina gay-marriage ban at the ballot and the way it sets up a Supreme Court showdown, possibly as early as 2013--no matter who is president. Olson has stern words for his fellow conservatives who flooded the polls on Tuesday, making North Carolina the...

Two house churches in Riau were burned down Tuesday, the latest of a series of attacks on minority religious groups in Indonesia.

(CBS/AP) PARIS - Al-Jazeera's offices in Cairo were stormed and torched and its Website hacked Friday, says the Pan-Arab broadcaster, while the top U.N. human rights official complained that media covering Egyptian pro-democracy protests are being arrested "in a blatant attempt to stifle news." Qatar-based Al-Jazeera - widely watched in the Middle East - portrayed the attack on its office as an attempt by Egypt's regime or its supporters to hinder its coverage of the uprising in Egypt. Al-Jazeera said the office was burned along with the equipment inside it.

Suspected Jewish settlers today attacked a mosque in the northern West Bank, burning holy books and spraying threatening graffiti in Hebrew on the building, Palestinian officials and Israeli police said. Extremists broke into the mosque in the village of Yasuf, near the city of Nablus, and burned Muslim holy books and prayers carpets, while sprayed slogans on the floor reading “Price tag – greetings from Effi.” The so-called price tag is the Jewish settlers’ policy of attacking Palestinians and their property in retribution for any Israeli government curb on settlement expansion. Effi is a Jewish name. The dawn attack appeared...

RANCHO PENASQUITOS — A blaze that destroyed a garage at a house in Rancho Peñasquitos on Thursday evening was sparked by a young man who was trying to light a bong with a torch, authorities said. The 23-year-old man and a firefighter suffered burns and were taken to UCSD Medical Center. The fire began when the torch caught a sofa on fire at the home on Adobe Bluffs Drive about 6:35 p.m., according to police. The resident ran inside to get water but returned to find the garage fully engulfed in flames and the fire beginning to burn his Jeep....

Luxury cars targets of meltdown rage 1 Mar 2009 When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the $45,000 car had been torched. “They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30% of the total for 2008. The latest to...

Update: The French press reported that the Interior Ministry released a final "verified" count of 1,147 vehicles burned in France over New Year's Eve. The number is up 30.64% from last year's total, 878. REUTERS - At least 445 cars were torched over the night of New Year's Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and police said on Thursday. Car burnings are regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year's Eve total has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status...

PARIS — Officials say that a John Travolta movie has suspended filming in one of the Paris area's toughest housing projects after 10 cars to be used in the movie were burned. Filming of the action movie "From Paris With Love" was supposed to start this week but local officials and the production company say it was put on hold because the cars were burned by unknown suspects early Monday. Cars are regularly burned in French housing projects, most famously during rioting that raged for three weeks in 2005 in poor neighborhoods across the country. The mayor's office of Montfermeil,...

AIX EN PROVENCE, France (AFP) - A French court on Friday jailed five teenagers for up to nine years, for seriously burning a young woman in a bus they had set alight in the port city of Marseille last year. The court in Aix, near Marseille, sentenced a young man who had thrown a flaming handkerchief into the bus on October 28, 2006 to nine years in prison. The woman's life had been in danger after she suffered burns to 62 percent of her body. Two defendants were jailed for seven years and two others got five years of which...

7/21/2006 - BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Soldiers and Airmen from the Bagram Provincial Reconstruction Team traveled to Nyazi Geranshakh in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan on July 19 to replace eight tents at its local school that were burned down earlier this week by arsonists. Team members were equipped with replacement tents as well as backpacks and other supplies to better the lives of the people of Afghanistan. "This is a really great mission," said 1st Lt. William Warner, the security forces detachment commander and a native of Glastonberry, Conn. Warner was one of many servicemembers who passed out supplies donated...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A graduate student was convicted Friday of setting fire to dozens of sport utility vehicles and causing more than $2 million in damage, but was cleared of the most serious charge against him. William Jensen Cottrell, 24, was found guilty in U.S. District Court of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson. But the jury acquitted him of attempting to use a destructive device in a crime of violence - Molotov cocktails - a charge that carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison. He will be sentenced March 12, and faces...

Today: September 16, 2003 at 3:48:35 PDT Sept. 11 Memorial Flag in Colo. Burned ASSOCIATED PRESS FRISCO, Colo. (AP) - An American flag placed atop a mountain peak in a national forest as a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks was torched, authorities said. Summit County deputies were investigating a report that a hiker found a note on the 13,589-foot snowcapped summit claiming responsibility for the fire, sheriff's spokeswoman Jill Berman said Monday. The burned flag was found Sunday. The FBI was notified because the flag was in the White River National Forest, Berman said. The flag...

For using hair spray and a lighter to torch and kill his pet parakeet, a Shoreham teen was sentenced to complete 280 hours of community service and five years probation this morning in Riverhead, despite a deluge of letters from animal rights activists seeking jail time. Timothy Guider, 18, pleaded guilty to aggravated cruelty to an animal in May, admitting that he set the bird ablaze, knowing it would die, during a New Year's Eve party at his home while his parents were out of town. Suffolk County Court Judge C. Randall Hinrichs could have sentenced Guider to 60 days...