Free Republic

First Lady Michelle Obama may have ostensibly been on The Daily Show last night to talk about her new book on healthy eating and vegetables, but Jon Stewart only wanted to talk about the other green stuff—namely, the President’s former drug use, which has resurfaced in the news recently. In the two-segment interview, the First Lady was charming, but clearly was going to stay entirely on-message, touting the President’s record with regard to ending the war in Iraq, health care, and childhood education. Watch part one of the interview, where Obama discusses the famed White House Garden and “vegetable feasts”...

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.

Mexican government forces had bottled up a band of enemy fighters in this tiny village late last year, but feared they would escape into the dusty, rock-strewn hills. So more than 600 soldiers and federal police closed in from all directions with armored Humvees and helicopters. The outlaws responded with a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault-rifle fire, tearing apart one federal police vehicle. For three days the fighting raged. In the end, according to military accounts of the battle, 22 members of the Zetas drug cartel, two police officers and a soldier were dead, and 20 Zetas were...

<p>So just what was his punk-ass doing in that neighborhood that night at that hour? Is George Zimmerman actually a hero?</p> <p>Excerpted from MiamiHerald – SANFORD — Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin was suspended from school in October in an incident in which he was found in possession of women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that a schools security staffer described as a “burglary tool,” The Miami Herald has learned.</p>

Above is the iconic picture we’ve been become accustomed to seeing everywhere in the media, used to represent the recent Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida. From everything the public has been told, Trayvon Martin was a fresh-faced, innocent looking teenager and the visage of the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, is right out of a booking photo. The media narrative being sold is quite clear, Trayvon Martin is the innocent victim here and George Zimmerman is a horrible bigot who attacked the young man for doing nothing more than buying skittles while being black. Even Barack Obama seems...

The most recent shortage came this month after Quebec-based manufacturer Sandoz cut production of crucial injectable drugs such as morphine, hydromorphone and fentanyl while it upgraded its facility to satisfy the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Another+drug+shortage/6282508/story.html#ixzz1ok23KKnd

WASHINGTON - Two Air Force F-16 fighters intercepted a privately owned Cessna airplane that entered the same Los Angeles airspace as Marine One on Thursday as the helicopter was ferrying President Barack Obama. Police discovered about 40 pounds of marijuana inside the plane after it landed at Long Beach Airport, a law enforcement official said.

Since President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971 the United States has jailed tens of million of its' citizens. In 2008 alone 1.5 million American were arrested and 500,000 were imprisoned. At a cost of $45,000 per prisoner per year over 22 billion dollars were spent in prison costs alone for just those busted in 2008. I would imagine the costs to the courts, parole officers and police departments are equally large. And then there is the unmeasurable societal cost of a lost income to a community and the breakup of families effected should it be a mom or...

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...