News Roundup for June 29, 2011
A retired naval commander who headed the antigovernment "Patriot" group American Grand Jury reportedly was convicted of resisting arrest last week in connection with his attempt to arrest a country grand jury foreman in Madisonville, Tenn. Walter Fitzpatrick allegedly tried to carry out the citizen’s arrest because the grand jury declined his demand that it indict President Obama for not being a U.S. citizen.
Police are investigating the claims of a black Santa Monica, Calif., high school student who reported that members of his wrestling team bullied him over his race. The teen described being harassed with racist comments, chained to a locker, and finding a wrestling dummy with a noose tied around its neck.
The first overseas summit of Islamophobic groups, set for early July in Strasbourg, France, has been canceled over security issues, according to the sponsoring group, Pamela Geller’s Stop the Islamization of America. The group has also announced a “Freedom from Jihad Flotilla” which it claims will aid “persecuted non-Muslims” and which mocks the 2010 Freedom Flotilla that attempted to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
A former Mafia hitman on the lam was found to have sought refuge as a white supremacist in a small Idaho town. Boston mobster Enrico Ponzo assumed a false identity while under investigation for murder, fled West, and was revealed to have had a bust of Adolf Hitler in his house as well as literature from the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations and several guns.
