Free Republic

FITCHBURG -- It was a horror movie come to life. Judy Sanchez woke Thursday to the sound of heavy footsteps in her stairwell, followed by a loud motor. She got to her kitchen in time to see the blade of a chain saw rip through her front door. "It was so crazy," Judy Sanchez said. "I was terrified." Jan. 26 was the day of Operation Red Wolf, a multiagency sweep during which 16 people in Fitchburg were arrested on charges related to gang activity, drug trafficking and illegal gun sales after a two-year investigation by federal, state and local law-enforcement...

The Federal Criminal Appeals blog reports on a decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding when the government can use drug possession as an excuse to deny weapons-possession rights. In short, it can't just assert that there is a good reason to bar drug users from guns: it has to try to prove it. But the Court also seems to think such proof won't be too hard. Let's take a walk through the decision to see what happened and why the Fourth Circuit decided as it did: Following a police search that uncovered marijuana and firearms in Benjamin...

Mexico allowed US agents to launder drug money Mexico's government allowed a group of undercover U.S. anti-drug agents and their Colombian informant to launder millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday. The Mexican magazine Emeequis published portions of documents that describe how Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a Colombian trafficker-turned-informant and Mexican federal police officers in 2007 infiltrated the Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia's Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico. The group of officials conducted at least 15 wire transfers to...

Man 'visited N. Korea to buy bogus U.S. bills' The Yomiuri Shimbun An 80-year-old Sapporo man released by North Korea after his arrest last year said he went there with two other Japanese men to obtain counterfeit U.S. currency, according to Hokkaido police. The two other men remain in custody in north Korea. The three were arrested last March for allegedly dealing in drugs. According to the man, the three received extremely realistic-looking counterfeit U.S. bills in North korea. Police believe the bills were "supernotes" in 100 dollars denominations. The police are trying to corroborate the man's story. The man...

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...

A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly handling a teenager he had handcuffed the boy, a smuggling suspect. Prosecutors claimed agent Jesus “Chito” Diaz was responsible for the bruises sustained by a 15-year-old boy during an October 2008 arrest near the Ro Grande in Texas. Diaz, 31, was charged with depriving the teenager of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force when he lifted the boy improperly by his arms, and put his knee in his back. Diaz’s attorneys said that no injuries were sustained from a...

At the end of World War II, the U.S. defense and national security apparatus faced a variety of challenges left over by the conflict. One of the most important was the formulation of a process to collect, collate, evaluate, analyze, produce and disseminate strategic intelligence to guide decision-makers in the formulation of national policy. Implicit in this search was the need for a professional cadre of analysts able to carry on this process with impartiality and with full awareness of their own psychological limits, able to forge strategic intelligence products with minimal institutional bias – thus the Central Intelligence Agency...

Five severed HEADS found in sack outside Mexican primary school in latest sickening threat from drugs cartelsBy Laurie Whitwell Last updated at 12:17 PM on 29th September 2011 Mexican police have found five severed heads stuffed in a sack outside a primary school in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. The gruesome discovery comes after drugs gangs threatened to attack elementary school teachers if they did not pay half their wages to the drugs cartels. The extortion demands forced around 130 schools in the city to close earlier this month, after administrators and parents decided it was not safe enough...

Safer Than It’s Ever Been! Really!By Mark Krikorian September 29, 2011 9:46 AM Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal agree that, since illegal crossings are down at the Mexican border, it’s time to proceed to amnesty and huge increases in immigration (9 percent unemployment? Who cares!). The border is safer than it’s ever been, in the words of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. The only thing left to do is dig a moat and fill it with alligators, joked President Obama.Well, someone didn’t tell the two retired generals who’ve just released “Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment”: During the...

(CNN) -- Two bodies dangling from a pedestrian bridge in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, created an image as gruesome as any in the four years of the country's offensive against the drug cartels. A man and a woman, both in their early 20s, were left hanging like cuts of meat. The woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. She was then hung from the bridge by her feet and hands, topless. The bloodied man was suspended next to her by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply you...

Out of sight is out of mind. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano can give the impression she’s doing her job and keeping Americans safe when Americans are unaware of the dangers lurking next door. Napolitano can’t stop natural oppressors like tropical storms, hurricanes or earthquakes but she can impede the drug cartel violence on the U.S.-Mexico border. Nevertheless, Napolitano refuses to publicly acknowledge the extent of border violence from drug cartels. She also refrains from pressuring the media to cover the preventable destruction and bloodshed on the border as much as it covers natural disasters. Between 35,000 and 40,000...

Brazilian indigenous protection officers to make emergency visit to isolated community facing threat from heavily armed gangsThe head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru. On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim...

Long Island Lawmaker Saladino Wants Parents To Drug Test Teens AnnuallyAssemblyman's Proposal States If You Don't Comply You Can't Go To School August 2, 2011 10:30 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – With drug abuse on the rise, should parents be required by law to test their children? One Long Island lawmaker says yes. Assemblyman Joseph Saladino (R-Massapequa) has introduced a bill that would require parents of high school students to give their children annual drug tests. “If they dont do it, the student would not be allowed into school,” Saladino told CBS 2′s Jennifer McLogan. The proposal would mandate that...

Washington - Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar told CNSNews.com that Mexican drug cartels control “several areas along our border with Mexico.” In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Aguilar, “Do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the U.S.?” Aguilar said, “There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur.”

On Sunday a Kern County, California, sheriff's deputy shot and killed David Lee "Deacon" Turner, a 56-year-old former running back for the Cincinnati Bengals, outside a convenience store in Bakersfield. Police questioned Turner, who was coming out of the store with his 19-year-old son, while investigating reports of teenagers asking adults to buy them alcohol and cigarettes. The Kern County Sheriff's Office says Deputy Wesley Kraft fired twice at Turner after the former football player hit Deputy Aaron Nadal over the head with a bag containing two 24-ounce cans of beer. Turner's son offered a strikingly different account: Turner's son was too shaken...

Another Mexico Drug Cartel Lead Has Been Arrested And He Says The Cartel’s Guns Have Been Supplied Directly By The U.S Government, And The CIA Has Infiltrated (AKA RuA leader of another Mexico Drug Cartel has been arrested and says U.S government supplied gunsnning) The Columbia Drug Cartels. As previously reported, a hacker data release revealed the arrested leader of the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico was in fact the feds point man for the U.S government drug smuggling operation to Mexico drug cartels. As Obama supplies the cartels with guns he uses the cartel’s violence as a justification...

GALLIPOLIS FERRY, W. Va. (WSAZ) -- A beloved father and a man friends call a known drug dealer is dead--shot to death at his own home. Now, police are on the hunt for a killer. Police say Rene Gonzalez was shot twice in the doorway of his home. While he's been convicted on drug charges--pleading guilty to a drug possession a couple of years ago, everyone we spoke to told us you couldn't find a nicer man or a better father to his little girl. Click here to find out more! “It wasn't true, I said no, no, it's not...

The Danish pharmaceutical firm H. Lundbeck A/S has announced it will no longer provide U.S. prisons with a drug used in lethal injection executions. “Lundbeck adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment,” said Lundbeck CEO Ulf Wiinberg according to a company statement. The drug in question is the barbiturate pentobarbital, know by its brand-name Nembutol, which was developed as a treatment for controlling epilepsy and is sold for that purpose. But this past spring, European exporters stopped the sale of sodium thiopental, which had been the drug of choice at U.S. prisons in 14 states where...

Wachovia apparently funneled enormous amounts of drug money form Mexico. Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

Ten years ago this month, Portugal rejected the conventional approach to drug policy–more laws, stiffer prison sentences, more police–and went the other way by decriminalizing all drugs, even cocaine and heroin. The drug warriors predicted a disaster. They said drug use would spike and there would be a public health crisis. That did not happen. As Glenn Greenwald showed in a 2009 Cato report, Portugal is doing better than before and in many respects is doing better than other countries in the European Union