Free Republic

The Obama administration had numerous opportunities to arrest Mexican drug and weapons traffickers before the murder of a federal U.S. agent and the seriously wounding of his partner but opted for the hands-off approach, a new federal audit reveals. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which operates under the Department of Justice (DOJ), should have stopped the traffickers—members of the Los Zetas organization—long before the Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents were ambushed in Mexico with firearms smuggled south of the border thanks to a once-secret Obama administration gun-running operation. Instead, on February 15, 2011, ICE agents Victor...

Full title: Confirmed: Obama DOJ Failure to Arrest Known Straw Purchasers Led to Murder of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico According to a new inspector general report an illegal gun trafficking program similar to Operation Fast and Furious, which took place under President Obama's Department of Justice, led to the murder of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in 2011. First, the background: On February 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata were returning to Mexico City from Matehuala, Mexico when their armored SUV came under attack near the town of Santa Maria del Rio,...

According to Nuevo León officials, the weapons had been seized from criminal organizations and from crime scenes. Rodriguez Calderon stated that the weapons had been smuggled into Mexico by criminal organizations from other countries. More than 500 of the seized weapons were traced back to the failed Fast and Furious Operation where the U.S. Department of Justice allowed Mexican cartels to illegally purchase weapons in the U.S. in order to move them into Mexico. The weapons were supposed to be traced to high ranking cartel figures, however the U.S. Department of Justice lost track of thousands and bolstered the arsenals...

Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn-in yet but the liberal media has obsessed almost over every Trump tweet and controversy. Conversely, Barack Obama’s administration has been full of scandals and gaffes but liberal reporters have insisted that his record is clean as a whistle.  Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, after Obama’s January 10 farewell speech gushed: “He’s been scandal free, frankly, in the White House. We haven’t had that what for a while.” Time magazine’s Joe Klein, back in December declared there has been “absolutely no hint of scandal” during his eight years. And in 2013 reporters...

All this talk of fake news has everyone in a tizzy. I'm personally glad that we've finally put media bias and unsubstantiated news into the spotlight. Organizations like CNN and CBC have been publishing lopsided and unsubstantiated news stories for decades, so I'm glad we've finally noticed. As an example, a CBC segment from last week made the erroneous claim that Barack Obama ran a scandal-free administration. CNN and MSNBC have made similar claims, so we can't just single out CBC, but we should definitely hold them to a higher standard. As Barack Obama puts his obnoxious and self righteous...

Over the New Year’s weekend, President Barack Obama’s chief policy adviser and closest strategist, Valerie Jarrett, told a talk show host that her boss would have a happy legacy because there was an absence of scandal in his administration. When first I heard this preposterous claim, I thought I had misheard it. Yet it is apparently true that President Obama and his team somehow can overlook recent history and behave as if events with which we are all familiar never happened. Here is the back story. When Obama became president in 2009 and enjoyed significant Democratic majorities in both houses...

A lawmaker’s proposal to loosen gun laws so Mexican citizens can arm themselves in their cars and at their businesses faces stiff opposition here despite record numbers of gun homicides and a surge in public transit robberies that has provoked a vengeful backlash by armed vigilantes. Residents of Naucalpan, a city located just northwest of Mexico City, are living in a state of “psychosis,” and “terror,” due to a wave of murders, kidnappings and robberies in recent months, according to the Mexico City daily El Universal. Armed assaults on public transit have provoked a deadly response by armed vigilantes riding...

Not only has former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton been accused of financing ISIS with taxpayer dollars in exchange for millions in contributions to the Clinton Foundation, her role in the deliberate murder of four Americans in Benghazi and as the originator of the Fast and Furious scheme have now been revealed by Diane Kepus in her article, What Really Happened In Mexico And Benghazi? That Hillary Clinton is not in prison makes clear the wanton corruption of the federal government; its bureaucracies and its elected officials of both political parties. That she should have an opportunity to become president...

resident Obama has managed to sit in the Oval Office for eight years without facing a major scandal, so he claimed at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton Sunday night in Florida. The statement came in response to criticism from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). "Here's a guy who called my administration perhaps the most corrupt in history — despite the fact that actually we have not had a major scandal in my administration," Obama said. On behalf of the American people, we would like to remind Obama about the decline of the Veterans Affairs agency, in which we learned thousands...

“Has that gotten any press?” was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s one-line response to an email notifying her that the gun used to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jamie Zapata in February 2011 was tied to the Fast and Furious scandal. Other guns were also connected to the murder of U.S Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. An email message that is part of the leaked WikiLeaks emails was sent from Jacob Sullivan to Secretary Clinton on March 1, 2011, just two weeks after Agent Zapata was murdered in Mexico. Sullivan, who then served as Director of...

U.S. Gun-Show Customers’ License Plates Come Under Scrutiny Federal agents enlisted local police to scan cars’ plates at shows’ parking lots By Devlin Barrett Oct. 2, 2016 7:35 p.m. ET Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity. Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers—devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars—at gun shows in Southern California, including one in...

It was not hyperbole when GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said that under resident Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. military had been "reduced to rubble" and left floundering without a coherent strategy or meaningful capability to win wars. It is a fait accompli, engineered by our commander-in-chief to reduce America's global footprint, an America he has profusely apologized for, and one he blames for all the world's ills. Almost as soon as he took office, resident Obama began a military purge not dissimilar to those routinely conducted by third-world despots, with the goal of eliminating voices...

Patriotic and resolute until the very end, Sipsey Street Irregulars' Mike Vanderboegh died on Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at the age of 64. He wrote this back in January: I beat the odds of my first cancer diagnosis for five years through the grace of God, who evidently wasn't done with me yet. In those five years, we broke the Fast and Furious scandal story ... and generally became a thorn in the side of the empire[.] In December 2010, the Obama-controlled media complex desperately wanted to ignore an illegal government-sponsored gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious. And it...

President Obama said in an interview with CBS airing Sunday that honesty was “absolutely necessary” for a president in order to build trust with the American people. Obama has endorsed his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to succeed him in the White House. In the wake of her private email scandal and the FBI’s revelation that she was “extremely careless” with classified material, Clinton’s honesty numbers with the public are dismal. The FBI also refuted Clinton’s constant claim that she never sent or received classified material on her server, which she has dismissed as a mere “mistake.” “FDR and...

(CNSNews.com) – Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that a gun is “an instrument of terrorism” and that “sensible gun control consistent with the 2nd Amendment” is “a matter of homeland security.” “I believe that sensible gun control consistent with the 2nd Amendment and consistent with a responsible gun owner’s right to own a gun is a matter of homeland security,” Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on whether it was “a significant security vulnerability” that terrorists can get “powerful firearms” and whether this is being exploited by those...

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.”A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession...

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.” A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in...

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.” A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in...

Ottawa, Ontario 28 June 2016 The Government of Canada has made it a top priority to re-establish and strengthen our relationship with one of our most important partners, Mexico. To this end, Prime Minister Trudeau today announced Canada’s intention to lift the visa requirement for Mexican visitors to Canada beginning December 1, 2016. Lifting the visa requirement will deepen ties between Canada and Mexico and will increase the flow of travellers, ideas, and businesses between both countries. Closer collaboration between Canada and Mexico on mobility issues will also help encourage travel between the two countries while preventing any increase in...

For many years, there has been a push toward a global community. This has had its benefits and its drawbacks. In the mind of the Intelligentsia, this would eventually work out world peace. As countries traded with one another and companies worked internationally, there would be greater interest for both politicians and businessmen to see the end of conflicts. At the same time, we have seen those traditionally the leaders in manufacturing, America and Britain, are suffering the loss of jobs. One of the main reason is the government: U.S. EPA and EU have made these traditional titans hamstrung in...