Free Republic

Friday on “CNN Newsroom,” the Hispanic woman named Myriam Witcher who went up on stage at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Las Vegas rally Thursday, talked about her love for Trump in an interview with Brooke Baldwin. When Baldwin asked if Trump’s comments about mass deportations and Mexican rapists bothered her Witcher said, “It doesn’t bother me at all. Mr Trump is 100 percent right,” she added, “He is my perfect man, everything he says is absolutely right.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Monday accused Colombia’s government of giving its consent to a plan to assassinate him as both countries try to rally regional support in a border dispute exacerbating tensions between the two neighbors. Maduro said during a visit to Vietnam that the conspiracy has the consent of Colombia’s government. Maduro, who frequently accuses Colombia of trying to topple his government, didn’t present any details or evidence to back the claim but said he would soon. Officials in Bogotá didn’t immediately respond. The president’s remarks come as diplomats from 34 Western Hemisphere nations gather at the Organization...

What Obama is pursing in Iran and Cuba isn’t peace.....The list of countries designated by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism is a pretty exclusive club, a veritable Legion of Doom populated by the likes of North Korea and Syria. The Obama administration has, for reasons that seem to be mainly political, shown extraordinary solicitude toward two countries that were on the State Department’s list when he became president: Cuba and Iran. Cuba has been removed from the list — “Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission” was the State Department’s bloodless explanation — and John Kerry has...

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women working overseas on various contracts and making good money, probably two to three times what they can make in the United States. On top of that, they may even be eligible for the foreign earned income exclusion, which in 2014 meant that the first $99,200 of their total income earned overseas was excluded from being taxed at the Federal level (it’s higher for 2015). However – and I can’t emphasize this enough – they are earning it! Naturally, the best-paying jobs are in high-threat environments such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,...

Real-estate magnate and presidential candidate Donald Trump blasted another one of his critics early Sunday morning. Trump said the reigning Miss Universe pageant winner, Colombia's Paulina Vega, was a "hypocrite" for criticizing him without giving up her award. "Miss Universe, Paulina Vega, criticized me for telling the truth about illegal immigration, but then said she would keep the crown-Hypocrite," Trump, who helps run the pageant, tweeted at roughly 5 a.m. According to the Associated Press, Vega said last Thursday that Trump's controversial comments about Mexico were "hurtful and unfair" but she had no intention of giving up her crown "because...

Bishop Juan Vicente Córdoba says 'no one chooses to be gay or straight'ROME — A Colombian bishop, insisting that being homosexual is not a sin, said Thursday it’s possible that one of the twelve apostles of Jesus was gay or that Mary Magdalene, another key New Testament figure, was a lesbian. Bishop Juan Vicente Córdoba of Fontibón, Colombia, also said the Catholic Church does not oppose same-sex couples making a life together, but does not consider such arrangements to be a marriage or a family. “No one chooses to be gay or straight,” Córdoba said. “One simply feels, loves, experiments,...

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country’s vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to make cocaine, citing concerns that the spray causes cancer. The decision ends a program that has continued for more than two decades, raising questions about the viability of long-accepted strategies in the war on drugs in the region. Colombia is one of the closest allies of the United States in Latin America and its most stalwart partner on antidrug policy, but...

Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would be removing Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terror list as part of his push to normalize relations with the communist dictatorship. But just hours later, a terror group long fostered by Cuba — even today, the Castro brothers are harboring several wanted members of the group — murdered 10 Colombian soldiers and wounded 17 others in a terror attack on a military base.Reported Agence France Presse: Ten Colombia soldiers killed in apparent FARC attack Ten soldiers were killed and 17 injured in western Colombia Wednesday, in a...

With the Secret Service still smarting from its 2012 prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, another federal law agency is in hot water over an even more salacious sex scandal—in the same country. The Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michelle Leonhart, Tuesday faced a grueling three-hour inquisition from the House Oversight Committee over an Inspector General’s report that found DEA agents in Bogota, Colombia engaged in “sex parties” with prostitutes and that the parties were paid for by the very drug cartels the DEA was sent to fight. “This behavior is not acceptable,” Leonhart said in her opening statement. “It...

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake has hit the Colombian capital of Bogota, prompting mass evacuations from the city’s buildings. Strong and prolonged tremors sparked panic and a social media storm.

A team of former Navy Seals and CIA operatives splash beer on their faces as they prepare to play the part of American sex tourists. They’ll have to maintain laser-sharp focus as they engage in negotiations with some of the world’s dirtiest criminals. One suspicious move or remark could put their whole team at risk and prevent the rescue of dozens of innocent children. This team, known as Operation Underground Railroad, works to prosecute child sex traffickers and to rescue the victims. Heading the team is Tim Ballard — a husband, a father of six children and a BYU alumnus....

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA – An unusual marriage took place on Sunday in Bogotá. Dressed in a white suit and a red tie, Richard Torres, a young environmentalist from Peru, sealed his love for a tree in a symbolic act meant to emphasize the importance of preserving nature. "I declare you life partners and forever in pure love, on behalf of the elements of nature and of God " said Colombian actress Kristina Lilley, who performed the ceremony on Bogota's National Park. The participants, some with musical instruments in hand, threw rice at the newlyweds and demanded in chorus: " Kiss, kiss,...

Rising Turkish Menace: U.S. and NATO Ally Wants Islamic Advance in Latin America By Julio Severo The president of Turkey has re-written history by claiming Muslim explorers, not Christopher Columbus, discovered America. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chief of America’s NATO ally, said November 15 that Islamic sailors found the New World in 1178. He said, “Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus.” Turkey is the only Islamic nation in the NATO. His theory — which is supported only by Islamic historians — came to light in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of...

President Nicolas Maduro's government said on Thursday it had taken over warehouses around Venezuela crammed with medical goods and food that "bourgeois criminals" were hoarding for speculation and contraband. The socialist government says businessmen and wealthy opponents are trying to sabotage the economy to bring Maduro down, while also seeking to make profits from hoarding, price-gouging and smuggling across the border to Colombia. Critics say 15 years of failed policies of state intervention are to blame for the OPEC nation's widespread shortages, high inflation and apparently recessionary economy. They accuse nouveau riche officials and military officers of illegal business practices....

Colombia, Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago have all announced travel bans as Ebola concerns grow. Colombian authorities announced that anyone entering their country from Ebola-stricken countries will face heavy scrutiny. Colombia’s National Health Institutes have said they developed a questionnaire to determine who should be under suspicion of potentially having contact with Ebola. Colombian newspapers have reported that some have already been detained due to the newly instituted executive actions. Fernando Ruiz, Colombia’s vice minister of health, said of the reports, “The cases are not suspicious. They are simply people who have traveled to places where Ebola is present....

Senior Obama administration officials knew about a White House aide's link to the Secret Service prostitution scandal and covered it up, according to a bombshell report that surfaced Wednesday night. Friends of Barack: Jonathan Dach (right) posed with then-Senator Barack Obama during a campaign staff 'family night' event in Springfield, Missouri on November 1, 2008. Also seen are Dach's father Leslie (2nd left), then a Wal-Mart lobbying executive, and his mother Mary Dickie (left) Jonathan Dach, the staffer implicated by the Washington Post, was never disciplined after an investigation found he had a prostitute in his hotel room during a...

Late last night the Washington Post broke a story about a connection between White House aides and the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal. When the scandal broke two years ago, the White House denied involvement or knowing about the details of what happened. The Post story proves otherwise and provides evidence a White House volunteer officially checked a prostitute into his hotel room in Cartagena, Colombia. The report also details threats made against the Inspector General, who was asked to delay the release of embarrassing and damaging information about the connection between the White House and the scandal until after...

Colombia's national cycling team has become a laughing stock with its new skin-toned uniforms. Designers of the female squad's new garb bizarrely decided to use nude-colored cloth around the groin area.

Was Hebrew DNA recently found in American Indian populations in South America? According to Scott R. Woodward, executive director of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a DNA marker, called the "Cohen modal haplotype," sometimes associated with Hebrew people, has been found in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. But it probably has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon -- at least not directly. For years several critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Book of Mormon have claimed that the lack of Hebrew DNA markers in living Native American populations is evidence the book can't...

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them. It was in 2007, 14 years after Escobar's death, that people in rural Antioquia, 200 miles north-west of Bogota, began phoning the Ministry of Environment to report sightings of a peculiar animal. "They found a creature in a river that they had never seen before, with small ears and a really big mouth," recalls Carlos Valderrama, from the charity Webconserva. He went to look, and found...