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Texas lawmakers moved forward with a bill Tuesday that would require welfare applicants to be screened for drug use.The bill authored by State Senator Jane Nelson, the Republican chairwoman of the committee, was approved by the state senate’s Health and Human Services Committee.It would require applicants to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program to undergo screening by the Texa...
Search warrant documents in the Sandy Hook massacre are expected to be released early Thursday and could shed more light on gunman Adam Lanza’s state of mind and motive in carrying out the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.The records were sealed in the immediate aftermath of Lanza’s Dec. 14 shooting rampage through the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, and Connecticut Superior Cou...
Talk about quality, union-made work. When Cedar Point, an amusement park nestled on the banks of Ohio's Lake Erie, wanted to add to its stable of roller coasters a 4,164-foot monster called the GateKeeper, it turned to quality union labor to get the job done. The Sandusky Register reports that Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), standing before the coaster's blue tracks, not only said he was proud that so much of its construction used labor from his home state of Ohio, but that it was union labor.
Residents reportedly heard what sounded like thunder before a massive landslide on an island in Washington state, which damaged one home and threatened or isolated dozens more.The slide occurred about 4:15 a.m. on the west side of Whidbey Island near the town of Coupeville, NBC station KING 5 reported. No one was injured.Dramatic pictures showed one home off its foundation on a bluff. It had moved...
The clock is ticking to decide the fate of a massive purple octopus mural in Walla Walla, Wash.The giant sea creature blankets the storefront of Inland Octopus, a toy shop on the town's Main Street. And at 22 feet wide by 29 feet tall, it's nearly 500 square feet too large for a wall sign under a city ordinance.Now, store owner Bob Catsiff is under legal and financial pressure to paint over the oc...
ORLANDO, Fla. — The former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida was sentenced Wednesday to one-and-a-half years for stealing $125,000 in party funds, completing the fall of a man who once was one of the most powerful political figures in the state.Jim Greer was sentenced in Orlando, more than a month after he pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and a single county of money laundering. Th...
The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared highly skeptical of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that blocks federal recognition of gay marriages, according to courtroom observers.Here are 11 key moments from the arguments, which followed Tuesday's session on California's ban on same-sex marriage. The two cases could reshape the legal status of hundreds of thousands of gay couples.----1. Earl...
Jared Loughner hadn't been the same since he got fired from a job at a mall in Tucson, his parents said. He had been expelled from college. After a visit from campus police, his parents decided to hide a shotgun that Loughner owned in the trunk of their car in the garage so he didn't have access to it in the house.A slew of details about Loughner, 24 -- who has pleaded guilty to killing six people...
Two teenage girls accused of threatening the 16-year-old victim in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case were released on house arrest Wednesday and ordered not to use social media.The girls were arrested in the aftermath of the guilty verdicts of two high school football player, Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, who a judge found raped the West Virginia girl during a night of heavy drinking.Th...
A federal trial is pulling back the veil on the New York City Police Department's use of the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic.The nonjury trial, which begins its second week Wednesday, involves a lawsuit from four men who argue the NYPD stops a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic men without cause. The suit seeks to reform stop-and-frisk, which is legal under a 1968 Supreme Court deci...
