Postcards

In what he called an attempt to protect some of his friends, former Frederick, Md., Mayor Jim Grimes attempted to prevent the Frederick News-Post from disclosing an arrested prostitute’s files. When a judge agreed to let the paper print the files, Grimes reacted by saying, “I absolutely feel that the same thing that happened at the World Trade Center has hit me. I was terrorized.”

In March, Justin Yongue, a former volunteer firefighter for York County, Pa., was charged with seven arsons. The largest fire he was accused of setting caused more than $400,000 damage. According to WGAL, the local television station, Yongue confessed to police that he set the fires but blamed them on Samantha, one of his multiple personalities.

In February, Flathead County, Mont., sheriff’s deputies uncovered a militia leader’s plot to assassinate several county officials and their families in an attempt to seize control of the local government. David Burgert, 38, had been leading a group called “Project 7” that had amassed an arsenal of machine guns and heavy weapons to carry out the assassinations, which were planned for Earth Day. According to the Daily Inter Lake Newspaper, targeted officials included the sheriff, the police chief, two district judges and the county attorney. The discovery was made when an informant alerted law enforcement officials. Burgert was arrested on an unrelated charge; bail was set at $1 million, the highest ever set by the county.