Free Republic

In the final row of graves in an obscure cemetery in southern Spain, is a tomb dedicated to William Martin - a British officer killed during the Second World War. Except that Martin wasn't real. He was invented by British spies as part of a daring and successful plot to fool Hitler about the invasion of Sicily, using the corpse of an unknown man dressed up like an officer and carrying a case full of fake documents. Now, ahead of the release of new film Operation Mincemeat which documents the mission, calls are growing to exhume the grave so the...

Police across the country have often been caught using excessive force during arrests and other confrontations. Even when such incidents are captured on video, officers are often able to escape punishment or other consequences. Such appears to be the case yet again. In a controversial ruling, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that an officer who admitted to twisting a teenage girl’s arms to cause her pain did not violate the law in his actions. The officer admitted to purposely hurting the teenage girl. _______________________ Martin ended up violently arresting the mother...

Acquaintances from the early years remember that the Graham youngsters were less than models of decorum in their behavior at church and other public gatherings, but Ruth did her best to exercise a rather stern and consistent discipline at home. She claimed to have obtained some of her most effective child-rearing techniques from a dog-training manual whose directives included keeping commands simple and at a minimum, seeing to it that they were obeyed, rewarding obedience with praise and being consistent. Three of the five Graham children have divorced. Ruth was the first. When she discovered that her husband had been...

The white Fort Worth police officer who was suspended for 10 days for using excessive force when arresting a black woman and her daughters will appeal the suspension in a hearing Tuesday.  {snip} Martin's attorney, Terry Daffron, said she wants access to text messages on city cellphones between the two commanders who were in charge of the internal affairs investigation in the Dec. 21 arrest, which was captured in a video, according to WFAA-TV (Channel 8). She says the texts will show bias against Martin, according to the station.

With the start of his tax evasion trial three weeks away, actor Wesley Snipes just fired his high-powered legal team, a move that a federal judge yesterday blasted as a transparent ploy to secure a court continuance. Claiming that his five-lawyer team was incompetent, Snipes yesterday filed a motion to continue his trial, which is set to open October 22 in U.S. District Court in Ocala, Florida. Until Snipes fired him, William Martin--who represents Michael Vick and Senator Larry Craig--headed a five-lawyer team defending Snipes on felony tax and conspiracy charges. But Snipes's request for a trial delay was almost...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....