Steve Neavling

This wasn’t your typical bank robber. 

The young man with a busted lip, facial bruises and a swollen eye walked into a Houston Bank wearing no disguises. He pulled out a pistol and demanded money, the Houston Chronicle reports.

The robber escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash. 

Investigators have dubbed him the “Badly Beaten Bank Robber,” the Chronicle wrote.

The Daily Astoria 

Can political protests be restricted so that political leaders don’t have to listen?

This is one way of framing the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court when it considers this term whether Secret Service agents were right in ordering protesters to be removed from President George W. Bush’s sight and hearing during a 2004 visit to Jacksonville in southern Oregon.

The other main way to view the matter is whether the Secret Service has unquestionable discretion to ensure the president’s safety by keeping obvious opponents much farther away than they keep obvious supporters.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit – the second-highest level of federal court – was seriously split on this question in a decision released in February. A majority of the 28 judges ruled that a lawsuit can proceed against the agents who required protesters to be moved more than twice as far away from the president than supporters. The Obama administration, supporting the agents, asked Supreme Court justices to consider quashing the lawsuit.

To read more click here.

Steve Neavling

Justice Department officials are combating wrongful convictions by demanding that law enforcement agencies to a better job scrutinizing eyewitness accounts and police interviews, Medill News Service reports.

It’s impossible to know for sure how many people are wrongfully convicted, but more than 1,100 have been exonerated from 1989 to 2012, according to the National Registry of Exoneration.

The report, issued Tuesday, also calls for investigative reforms to prevent wrongful arrests, the news service wrote.

“At minimum, law enforcement agencies should record audio of all interviews involving major crimes,” the report reads.

Steve Neavling

A fugitive drug lord accused in the 1985 kidnapping and murder of DEA agent  Enrique Camarenais complaining that the U.S. is causing an “infernal nightmare” for his loved ones, McClatchy reports.

Rafael Caro Quintero, who was released from on Aug. 8 prison early on procedural grounds, is appealing to Mexico’s president for help.

Thing is, Quintero is a wanted man in Mexico. Mexico’s Supreme Court reinstated his conviction on Nov. 6.

Now the U.S. is offering a $5 million bounty for his arrest and conviction, McClatchy reported.

Quintero argues in a letter to President Enrique Pena Niet and other government officials that he has been punished enough.

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• Border Patrol Union Trumpets Overtime Changes

An ORDbot Quantum 3D printer

The increasing use of 3-D printers has made it easier for people to make plastic weapons that can evade metal detectors and X-ray machines, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. House responded by passing a bill that would renew the 25-year-old prohibition against plastic firearms by a decade.

After returning from a two-week Thanksgiving recess Monday, the Senate may vote on the bill that day.

But many gun groups are opposed.

“They’ve just spent all year trying to effectively destroy the gun lobby,” Mike Hammond, legislative counsel of the the conservative Gun Owners of America, said of Democrats. “So why in heaven’s name, given this intransigence, should we give them this Christmas present?”