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The Lee County (Ala.) Sheriff’s Department came up with an elaborate way to catch more than a dozen deadbeat parents: tell them to show up at a location in Opelika and claim tickets to this year’s Auburn-Alabama game. Operation “Iron Snare” didn’t round up all the suspects deputies were looking for, but it got quite a few. They mailed out over 140 letters for people with at least $10,000 of unpaid child support

August 5th at a conference in New Orleans, two ThinkProgress reporters were attacked by security guards for no apparent reason. Reporters Scott Keyes and Lee Fang were at the Marriott Hotel for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting, an event that brings together state lawmakers with corporate lobbyists to draft “model” legislation.

While we stood by the second floor lobby of the conference hotel, security guards surrounded us, demanding that we leave. As we were leaving, they approached us, violently pushed us and twisted our arms. A guard approached Fang from behind, tackling him and later bending his arm to take his camera. Keyes, faced similar treatment: two security guards roughed him up on the escalator, taking his video camera, and cutting Keyes’ hand as he attempted to leave the premises. As Keyes asked why he was being forced to leave, he was shoved from the back.

Asked why they were being so belligerent, the security guards said they were acting on instructions from ALEC. At certain points during the incident, they were able to turn on their video cameras and record it:
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A black man in Mississippi was beaten by a group of white teens and crushed by a pickup truck – and it was caught on tape, police said. “This was a crime of hate,” Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith told CNN in a report aired Sunday. “The evidence will show that.”

Authorities say James Craig Anderson was set upon by several teenagers and savagely beaten the night of June 26 in a Jackson motel parking lot. Witnesses said the group used racial epithets during the assault, and barked out “White Power!” After clobbering him, several of the teens got into a Ford F250 pickup, and while Anderson tried to stumble for help, the driver ran him down, police said.

The video, captured by a surveillance camera, shows the attack in haunting detail. It ends with the truck backing up, then slamming into the 49-year-old. “It appears there is no doubt that this was a racially motivated killing,” Winston Thompson, the lawyer representing Anderson’s family, told CNN. “The family is still in shock still in disbelief.”

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