Free Republic

When Mexico's former drug tsar Noé Ramírez was arrested on suspicion of receiving monthly payments from the Beltrán-Leyva drug cartel he was confident the charges would quickly be dropped. No court, he thought, would believe testimony from a former cartel member who claimed to have seen Ramírez receive a briefcase full of cash at a Mexico City restaurant – on a day he was actually travelling to Las Vegas for a meeting with US law-enforcement officials, in the company of two US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents. Ramírez was wrong. It took four years, four months and a change of...

The Mexican president in the Dock? Well, not yet, but charges of “crimes against humanity” were filed last Friday in the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands against President Felipe Calderón, the Secretaries of Mexico’s Army, Navy, and Public Safety, and notorious drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The International Criminal Court (denhaag.nl)The charges were filed by human rights lawyer Netzaí Sandoval, supported by 23,000 citizen signatures, and allege, among other things, that the Mexican state bears direct responsibility for crimes committed by federal agents in the context of the war against organized crime. The charges detail 470 cases of...

The Presidents and the Arizona LawNeither President Obama nor the president of Mexico has a legitimate objection to Arizona’s attempt to control illegal immigration.  We’ve pretty much had it with the attacks on Arizona and the self-debasement of our country by the president. We are the United States and Arizona is our soil, part of our country. Lately, however, there’s been too much denigration of Arizona from the White House, and too much tearing down of Arizona for a law that is — if anything — more liberal than the federal law. Yesterday, we saw it again when Mexican president...

Members of the Obama administration, who soundly condemned Arizona's new immigration law, are now admitted that they have never even read it. Could President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón find themselves in the same boat based on comments they made today at their joint appearance on the White House lawn? Let’s review. The first person who had to admit he had never read the Arizona law Attorney General Eric Holder made his admission last week. On Monday, it was Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's turn. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley revealed that he, too, had not read...

Eight days ago, just after midnight on a Sunday morning, Mexican President Felipe Calderón instructed federal police to take over the operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), which serves Mexico City and parts of surrounding states. The company's assets will stay in the hands of the government but will now be run by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), a national state-owned utility and the major supplier of LyFC's energy. The net effect of the move is to dethrone 42,000 members of the Mexican Union of Electricians, which had won benefits over the decades to...

NOT since 1910, when another controversial election sparked a revolution, has Mexico been so fraught with political tension. The largest demonstrations in our history are daily proof that millions of Mexicans want a full accounting of last month’s presidential election. My opponent, Felipe Calderón, currently holds a razor-thin lead of 243,000 votes out of 41 million cast, but Mexicans are still waiting for a president to be declared. Unfortunately, the electoral tribunal responsible for ratifying the election results thwarted the wishes of many Mexicans and refused to approve a nationwide recount. Instead, their narrow ruling last Saturday allows for ballot...

Mexico's upcoming presidential elections could mark yet another step in the region's shift to the left, as old school populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador vies for the country's highest office. For Mexico's powerful neighbor to the north, the prospect of having a left-leaning, nationalist caudillo running the country poses a nightmare scenario.