Free Republic

MEXICO CITY — As a U.S. Marine, Jon Hammar endured nightmarish tension patrolling the war-ravaged streets of Iraq’s Fallujah. When he came home, the brutality of war still pinging around his brain, mental peace proved elusive. Surfing provided the only respite. “The only time Hammar is not losing his mind is when he’s on the water,” said a fellow Marine veteran, Ian McDonough. snip--- But Mexican prosecutors who looked at the disassembled relic in the 1972 Winnebago motor home dismissed the U.S. registration papers Hammar had filled out. They charged him with a serious crime: possession of a weapon restricted...

A former Carnegie Mellon University trustee pleaded not guilty on Thursday to conspiring to launder $600 million for a Mexican drug cartel during a federal court hearing in El Paso. ... The university named a graduate fellowship for Hispanic students in public policy for Delgado and pledged $250,000 in matching funds to it after Delgado gave CMU $250,000 in 2003.

Stopping price hikes during disasters may sound like a way to help people, but all it does is exacerbate shortages and complicate preparedness. Price controls in an emergency have the same results as they do any other time: They lead to shortages and overconsumption. Letting merchants raise prices if they think customers will be willing to pay more isn’t a concession to greed. Rather, it creates much-needed incentives for people to think harder about what they really need and appropriately rewards vendors who manage their inventories well. For customers to suffer from a gasoline shortage even while gasoline sat idle...

Look at these photos of miles-long lines for gasoline in New Jersey and you'll see that there's a real issue here. The Christie administration fined a gas station for breaking price gouging rules back in September, and issued a press release before Sandy hit noting that case and explicitly warning retailers not to respond to the hurricane by raising prices. The failure to allow prices to adjust doesn't magically eliminate the supply side problems, it just means that the gasoline is misollacated and lots of people need to waste time in line. You can also see that the combination of...

But for the first time Agent Zapata’s partner Victor Avila spoke out about the attack that left Agent Zapata dead and him wounded. His twin sister Magdalena Avila-Villalobos spoke for him in the Univision special on Fast and Furious. Avila is so scared and hurt by the attack he did not speak out until he knew he was in a secure location. No one knows for sure why Agent Zapata and Agent Avila, assigned to the US Embassy, were asked to travel on road 57, a road controlled by the Zeta Cartel and extremely dangerous. They didn’t even know why...

How high up did the weapons of Operation Fast and Furious go in the cartels? This high: When Mexican authorities took Juarez drug cartel carnage king Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez — better known as “El Diego” — into custody, he had weapons from Operation Fast and Furious on his person, the English-language transcript of the Spanish-language television network Univision’s special investigation into the scandal shows.“According to investigations, ‘El Diego’ forms the link between this massacre and Fast and Furious,” an anchor read on air in Spanish Sunday evening, referring to two different mass killings drug cartel operatives used Fast and...

The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive...

In September 2011, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a warning to local law enforcement agencies throughout Arizona, informing them that they were being targeted by the powerful and violent Mexican drug cartels. The DOJ’s 2011 Drug Market Analysis for Arizona stated the cartels "have begun to threaten local police officers to deter their enforcement activities. Violent criminal groups often referred to as border bandits, rip crews, or bajadores, operate along trafficking corridors in remote locations, preying upon law enforcement officers and smugglers who transit their territories." The report also detailed the expanded use by the cartels of street gangs...

High-ranking cartel member speaks on Operation Fast and FuriousVincent Zambada-Niebla of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel was arrested for drug trafficking, but claims he should not have been because of an arrangement with the US government. Michael Kelley, Business Insider August 10, 2012 16:55 A high-ranking member of the Sinaloa drug cartel currently in US custody alleges that Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels, according to court documents. **SNIP** From the court document: "[T]he United States government at its highest levels entered...

No big deal....despite the fact that a stash of AK-47s was found along a hiking trail in not Colombia, not Mexico but in....Arizona. A hiker in the Madera Canyon area found three assault rifles in a black trash bag one mile north of Old Baldy Trail. After receiving a report of the discovery on Wednesday, June 20, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office determined that the rifles were found in Santa Cruz County, and notified the local sheriff’s office. Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies then went to the site and recovered what turned out to be a stash of AK-47 assault...

by John HillStand With Arizona The border is “safer than ever”. So says DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. Again and again. Barack Obama has mocked those who say the border is unsafe: “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied.” But for Texans, the Rio Grande is wide open - thanks to Federal failure to secure it  - and is a growing threat to the safety of citizens and law enforcement, on land and water. In January we chronicled how ranchers in the Rio Grande Valley were stocking up on AK-47s to defend their property and lives...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Fourteen mutilated corpses and a threatening message aimed at a drug cartel were found inside a truck in the parking lot of a supermarket in a northern Mexico city, local media reported on Saturday. Mexico's attorney general's office could not immediately confirm the reports of the grisly discovery in Mante and police officials in the crime-ridden city were not immediately available for comment. Mexican media said the body parts belonged to 10 men and four women and the message was directed at the Gulf cartel.

RUIDOSO, N.M. – In the stables at a prominent quarter horse track in New Mexico, workers quietly nicknamed Jose Trevino Morales's stables as the "Zetas' stables" and say they often saw people show up with bags of cash to buy the horses. On Tuesday, authorities raided those stables and a horse ranch in Oklahoma accusing Trevino and others of running a sophisticated money-laundering operation connected to one of Mexico's most powerful and ruthless drug cartels. Federal authorities accuse Trevino's older brother, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, a key figure in the Zetas drug operation, of setting up the horse operation that...

A drug cartel lieutenant has been arrested over a series of firebomb attacks on Mexican potato-chip company Sabritas, a subsidiary of U.S. food giant PepsiCo. The gang-related bombings are believed to be the first time a multinational company has been targeted in Mexico's 5½-year-long drug war. Experts suggested that the attack may be linked to the company's apparent refusal to hand over protection money to the gangs which have terrorised local residents and businesses.

There was a time when higher education wasn’t a national political issue. Then as now, the United States had a flourishing network of private and public colleges and universities, which were supported primarily by fee-paying students and subsidies from state governments, many of which took great pride in building academic powerhouses. But in the decades since Sputnik and the Great Society, the federal role in higher education has increasingly taken center stage. Though Obamacare, taxes, and Iran are soaking up most of the attention, funding for higher education might emerge as a key dividing line in this year’s presidential election....

MONTERREY, Mexico – Imprisoned members of the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death and then staged a mass escape, apparently with the help of prison authorities, officials in northern Mexico said Monday. Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said the prison's director and three other officials have been fired and are under investigation for purportedly helping in the escape. The same was done with 18 prison guards. "Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police," Medina told a...

In March Janet Napolitano assured us that the US-Mexican border was safer than ever. This in spite of Barack Obama and Eric Holder willingly sending 2000 automatic weapons into the hands of the drug cartels south of the border. Well, it turns out that the border is not so safe. The Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico, is in anarchy. The US-Mexican border is less safe than Afghanistan. Organized crime-related deaths in one Mexican border state during the first nine months of 2011 exceed the number of Afghan civilians killed in roughly the same period in...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two decapitated bodies were found inside a burning SUV early Wednesday at the entrance to one of Mexico's most luxurious malls, feeding fears drug violence is infiltrating privileged realms previously thought safe. Police recovered the mutilated bodies before dawn off a toll highway at a shopping mall entrance in the heart of the Santa Fe district that's a haven for international corporations, diplomats and the wealthy. The heads and a threatening message were dumped a few yards (meters) away, Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement. Hours later, the government released a drug war body count...

Arizona authorities have arrested some 200 people, and seized $7.8 million in cash and more than 1,200 pounds of drugs following an investigation they say has dismantled an "extensive" drug trafficking cell tied to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, federal and state authorities announced Tuesday. Authorities announcing the 15-month-long investigation said that although the Sinaloa cartel almost immediately regenerates after one of its cells have been taken down, their investigation certainly struck a blow. "Arresting a drug dealer is one thing but if we can actually follow that backwards and take out the head of the snake of this organization, we...

What does it take to be a crime reporter in the murder capital of the world? Everything, says Irma Londono. For 17 years, Irma Londono did her part to uncover the truth about drug trafficking in Colombia. As a journalist, Londono disregarded comments that women did not belong in her field, endured challenges to her credibility from corrupt officials and even survived a kidnapping from guerilla rebels. But when threats against her life escalated, the award-winning journalist heeded her mother’s advice and fled to the United States as a political refugee, leaving her family, friends and career behind. “I am...