TV News LIES

A monthlong national effort to capture sex predators led to 275 arrests in Southern California that included a teaching assistant for special needs kids, a retired sheriff's deputy and a U.S. Army soldier, authorities said Thursday.

The effort dubbed "Operation Broken Heart" involved dozens of local, state and federal authorities throughout May who targeted sex offenders, child sex traffickers, pimps, child porn traders and sex tourists traveling abroad.

As Congress remains gridlocked by the partisan wrangling over the issue of illegal immigration, New York City this week approved two separate plans that advocates say could signal a sea change in the ways cities handle undocumented workers and their families.

On Wednesday, the New York City Council earmarked $4.9 million of the city budget to give legal assistance to foreign-born New York residents facing deportation. This makes New York the first city in the US to provide lawyers for low-income immigrants detained by federal authorities. The city will provide such aid both for undocumented immigrants and for those with legal residency.

The Supreme Court issued a unanimous rebuke to President Obama on Thursday, saying he had overreached in issuing recess appointments during brief breaks in the Senate’s work.

Mr. Obama violated the Constitution in 2012, the justices said, by appointing officials to the National Labor Relations Board during a break in the Senate’s work when the chamber was convening every three days in short pro forma sessions in which no business was conducted. Those breaks were too short, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a majority opinion joined by the court’s four other more liberal members.

A federal judge upheld Colorado gun restrictions that were enacted in response to 2012 mass shootings, saying Thursday that limiting the size of ammunition magazines and expanding background checks on firearm purchases are constitutional acts.

But gun-rights advocates who sued the state to overturn the laws called the ruling only the first round and said they planned to appeal.

In a 50-page decision, U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger said both laws don't infringe on individuals' right to bear arms. The judge further said that limiting magazine sizes doesn't obstruct individuals' ability to protect themselves, and that the expansion of background checks to include firearms sold online and between private parties "is no more severe" than the requirements already in place for commercial sales before the new law.

Nearly 30 years after Paul C. Hildwin was convicted of strangling a Hernando County woman, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday overturned both his conviction and death sentence, saying that new DNA evidence “completely discredits” the case used by the state.

A divided court ruled 5-2 that Hildwin should be given a new trial.

The new evidence instead points to the person that Hildwin said had done the crime all along — the victim’s boyfriend who was sentenced in 1998 to 20 years for attempted sexual battery of a child.

Miranda Duschack and Karen Davis were first married in a 2012 spiritual ceremony where they jumped over a broom, an African wedding tradition also used today by some same-sex couples to signify vows that aren’t legally sanctioned.

On Wednesday the couple, who together run an urban farm in south St. Louis, stepped into history on the burgundy carpet of Mayor Francis Slay’s ornate City Hall office by exchanging vows, and were given an official marriage certificate in a ceremony officiated by Municipal Judge Joseph Murphy.