Free Republic

<p>EXCLUSIVE Food-stamp fraud has turned into foreign aid — to black-market profiteers in the Dominican Republic.... welfare recipients buy food with EBT cards and ship it to relatives. But not to starving children. The NY Post found people hawking barrels of American products on Dominican streets. “It’s a really easy way to make money, and it doesn’t cost me anything,” a seller said. She also vends EBT goods out of her Dominican home “I know a lot of people are doing it,” she said.</p>

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

<p>EXCLUSIVE Food stamps are paying to buy and ship food to Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. A spokeswoman for the US Dept of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said the $86 BILLION welfare program is reserved for poor US households that buy and prepare food.</p>

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama’s openly gay ambassadorial nominee to the Dominican Republic, James “Wally” Brewster,” faces strong opposition from the conservative and largely Catholic island nation, where Bishop Pablo Cedano says if Brewster becomes the U.S. ambassador, “he is going to suffer and will have to leave.” On Monday, Catholic, evangelical, and other opponents in the Dominican Republic organized and took part in what were billed as “Black Monday” protests, whereby participants donned black clothing and set black decorations on cars and buildings to protest the nomination of Brewster, who is a long-time homosexual activist and fundraiser for the...

The New Jersey Attorney General has indicted fifteen defendants for their alleged roles in a multi-million dollar heroin trafficking ring which supplied wholesalers throughout the northeast as reported by Christopher Baxter for The Star-Ledger. The accused ringleader is Dominican national Segundo Garcia who illegally re-entered the United States following his deportation on a drug conviction according to authorities. Dominican drug trafficking organizations -- both in the Dominican Republic and in North America -- increasingly have been appearing on law enforcement's radar screen for their involvement as distributors for the Mexican drug cartels. Last summer the feds busted 11 suspects in...

Opposition to President Obama's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic reached a fever pitch this week as religious organizers stage a "Lunes Negro" or Black Monday protest against James "Wally" Brewster. If confirmed, Brewster will be the first openly gay ambassador to the country, a prospect that is not going over well with some segments of this conservative Christian country of 9 million people. Local reports indicate that church leaders are pressuring the government to reject Brewster's nomination and calling on the faithful to dress in black on Monday in solidarity against him. Praise Christian Church Pastor Sauford...

Opposition to President Obama's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic reached a fever pitch this week as religious organizers stage a "Lunes Negros" or Black Monday protest against James "Wally" Brewster. If confirmed, Brewster will be the first openly gay ambassador to the country, a prospect that is not going over well with some segments of this conservative Christian country of 9 million people. Local reports indicate that church leaders are pressuring the government to reject Brewster's nomination and calling on the faithful to dress in black on Monday in solidarity against him. Praise Christian Church Pastor Sauford...

Turkey and Honduras, in different ways, highlight the lack of effective leadership the United States currently is able to exercise in the world. Turkey: Turkish government support for the IHH ship in the Gaza flotilla is now well understood and the anti-Semitic ravings of both official Turks and the Turkish media have made Turkey's intention to split from Israel clear. But it is a mistake to think this is only about Israel. Support for the flotilla was only the latest in a series of Turkish decisions designed to distance itself from the United States and move toward closer political relations...

RIO DE JANEIRO.- Dominican Republic president Leonel Fernandez said Friday that only some judicial hurdles prevent the return of ex president Manuel Zelaya to Honduras and that country’s reintegration to the (OAS). "The only thing that’s halting that process, when the possibility is proposed for ex president Zelaya’s and other members of his cabinet’s return to Honduras, is that the Justice Ministry of that country warns of issuing arrest warrants," Fernandez said to Efe in Rio de Janeiro, where he participates in World Economic Forum for Latin America. “That doesn’t contribute anything to the adequate climate of coexistence between Hondurans."...

July 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Obama administration’s ongoing use of the State Department to promote the homosexual agenda in foreign countries has provoked outrage in the Dominican Republic, where the administration plans to send an open homosexual as ambassador. Religious leaders in the strongly Christian island nation denounced the appointment and warned that James “Wally” Brewster, a gay activist businessman and member of the homosexualist “Human Rights Campaign” board of directors, would not be welcome in the country. (James “Wally” Brewster) “In reality, it’s a lack of respect, of consideration, that they should send us a person of that...

<p>During LGBT Pride Month, President Barack Obama has now nominated five gay men to ambassador posts around the world.</p> <p>Late Friday, Obama nominated John Berry to be ambassador to Australia, and James “Wally” Brewster Jr. to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic.</p>

WASHINGTON — Senator Robert Menendez sought to discourage any plan by the United States government to donate port security equipment to the Dominican Republic, citing concern that the advanced screening gear might undermine efforts by a private company — run by a major campaign contributor and friend of his — to do the work. The intervention with the Department of Homeland Security last month came even though Mr. Menendez has publicly chastised the Obama administration for not doing more to combat the surging drug traffic moving through Dominican ports. And it came shortly after the senator’s friend, Dr. Salomon E....

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains. The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector. Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters. Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior...

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

Democrat used trickery for gaining power, court papers show. Now resigned, state Assemblyman Nelson Castro---a Dominican Republic native---schemed to illegally register dozens of latino voters, and forged signatures on petitions to seek office earlier as a Democrat district leader. The revelations were spelled out in a deal in which feds agreed not to prosecute in return for Castro's wearing a wire to nail his shady Democrat colleagues. Castro admitted to lying about dozens of (illegals) registered to vote using his address.

A team of FBI agents has been conducting interviews in recent weeks in the Dominican Republic and the United States, looking into allegations that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) patronized prostitutes in the Caribbean nation, but has found no evidence to support the claim, according to two people familiar with the investigation. One person said agents have asked about whether a Florida eye doctor — a close friend and major campaign donor to Menendez — provided the senator with prostitutes on vacations there. Another person said investigators are looking into allegations involving underage prostitutes and sex parties. The two, who spoke...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should keep his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee despite an investigation into his dealings with a top donor. "Sen. Menendez has given us an assurance that there is no substance to these charges," the Democratic senator from Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's being looked at by the Ethics Committee. Of course, I can't comment beyond that." The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into Menendez's interaction with Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye surgeon who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Menendez and...

The New York Times has called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to remove New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez from his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Under the editorial headline “Mr. Menendez’s Ethics Problem,” the newspaper said Menendez “was never a distinguished choice for chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the position he ascended to this month by virtue of seniority.” “Concerns about that quality gap have sharply escalated amid new disclosures about Mr. Menendez’s use of his position to advance the financial interests of a friend and big donor,” the Times wrote. “Instead of trying...

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) defended his relationship with Florida doctor and political donor Salomon Melgen in an interview with Univision on Friday, saying he didn’t do anything on his friend’s behalf that he doesn’t regularly do for others. Melgen, a close friend of Menendez’s, reportedly overbilled the U.S. government by almost $9 million in Medicare payments, inviting a federal audit. Menendez acknowledged contacting officials to complain that the Medicare billing rules were unclear, but the senator denied that his close ties to Melgen had anything to do with him raising the issue. “The fact that someone is a donor does...

Prostitution is both legal and widespread in the Dominican Republic, where as many as 100,000 women are part of the industry in a nation that has become a major sex-tourism hotspot of the Caribbean. So it would not be a crime for Sen. Robert Menendez to have availed himself of such services during his trips to the Dominican Republic, as has been alleged.Menendez has strenuously denied patronizing prostitutes, however, denouncing the accusations Monday in a CNN interview as “smears that right-wing blogs have been pushing since the election.” Any claim that Menendez consorted with hookers during his D>. ominican holidays...