Free Republic

America is suffering from an epic case of Armageddon fatigue. Budget showdown, government shutdown, debt ceiling debacle—the stakes are real but the establishment seems to feed off the chaos they create as a means to foment fear and outrage and translate it into campaign donations for themselves. Look closely and you’ll see that something seismic is going on under the surface of the manufactured chaos in D.C. Washington has morphed into an extortion racket, a place where members of the permanent political class threaten to inflict legislative and regulatory pain to extract campaign donations that they can then siphon into...

Federal agents will start targeting high-level drug traffickers in Puerto Rico with intelligence gathered during a three-month blitz on criminal activity in the U.S. territory, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. The campaign is part of a federal operation that began in July 2012 with help from local authorities that focuses on the smuggling of drugs, weapons, money and migrants. The agency says agents have seized a total of 53,000 pounds (24,000 kilograms) of drugs, confiscated hundreds of firearms and arrested more than 320 suspected criminals who will be prosecuted at federal and local levels. …

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Is the counterfeiting of designer goods different from knock-offs? Is organized crime involved in the fashionindustry? If so, what happens to the ill-gotten gains? As New York Fashion Week wraps up, it's high time to explore some of these issues. Professor...

Forty years ago, the battle of the sexes took a more literal turn in the world of sports, and captured the imagination of the country — and the world. By then a fading star in men’s tennis, Bobby Riggs challenged rising women’s tennis star Billie Jean King to a three-set match to settle whether women could compete against men on an even field. But how even was the field? ESPN and ABC report that Riggs may have thrown the match in cahoots with the Mafia: Breaking News |Celebrity News |More ABC News Videos The “Battle of the Sexes,” a 1973...

Jean King, Bobby Riggs an 'elaborate mob setup' Tennis star Bobby Riggs, top, and Billie Jean King are shown in action during the "Battle of the Sexes" match in the Astrodome in Houston, on Sept. 20, 1973. The ultimate “Battle of the Sexes” — a 1973 match between the No. 2 -ranked woman tennis player and a retired male Wimbledon champion — was rigged so Mafia bosses could cash in on the betting, a new report claims. The incredible claims have been lobbed at the reputation of the late hard-court hustler Bobby Riggs, by one of his former country club...

The women signed up over the past four days with the UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self-defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez said MEXICO CITY – More than 100 women in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis have taken up arms to protect their community from organized crime groups, a local self-defense force official said Monday. The women signed up over the past four days with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self-defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez told reporters. “We have an average of nine groups” of community police, with each one made up...

The toughest guy in Sicily is a gay man. Nine months ago Rosario Crocetta was elected as Sicily's governor on an anti-Mafia platform, and his fearless campaign against the degenerate mobsters has so impressed an otherwise conservative electorate that his sexuality has become an irrelevancy as reported by Anthony Faiola for The Washington Post: "'Having Crocetta in Sicily is like having an openly gay man elected governor in Alabama,' said Ivan Scalfarotto, a member of the national parliament and a Milan-based gay rights advocate. 'But the most telling point is that his sexuality became a small detail for voters. This...

Star witness Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi has spent hours in lurid description of how he and his old partner, James "Whitey" Bulger, tortured victims, yanked out teeth with dental tools and buried bodies in secret graves. But Flemmi stammered and hesitated Monday. Bulger's lawyers were asking the questions on cross-examination and they opened with the January 1985 murder of 26-year old Deborah Hussey – a stepdaughter Flemmi is accused of having sexually abused.

The body of a key witness in James 'Whitey’ Bulger's racketeering trial was found dead on the side of a road Wednesday by a jogger in Lincoln, Mass., which is just west of Boston. The body belonged to Stephen "Stippo" Rakes, 59, who was allegedly extorted by Bulger and considered one of the most determined alleged victims who waited a decade to testify, The Boston Globe reported. The Globe reported that Rakes has been a fixture for six weeks at Bulger's trial and was told recently that he would not get the chance to testify. The Middlesex County district attorney's...

According to the European Union’s law enforcement agency handling criminal intelligence, Italy’s mafia has infiltrated the nebulous “Green Energy” industry, not only for traditional money laundering purposes, but also to capitalize on lucrative EU subsidies. On Thursday, Europol published a report suggesting that the mafia is making investments into the renewable energy industry, with a special focus on wind farms due to generous grants paid for by European Union member states. For an industry that is no stranger to scandals...

Watching a story of a mobster from NY who became one of the first informants. Story turned somewhat when this informant kidnapped a person with knowledge of the three deaths in Mississippi. The show had the mobster torturing the man with knowledge of the three murders to get info as to where the bodies were located, Is this common knowledge? Can info from torture be used in court? Bobby Kennedy involved, Bio.com, Season 4, episode 31 For over thirty years, Gregory Scarpa lived a charmed triple life: mafia hit man, loving father and husband, and secret FBI informant--until a fatal...

Apparently mob life is inconsistent with family values. Adele Sorella, the wife of reputed Rizzuto associate Giuseppe De Vito, has been convicted for the 2009 murders of their eight- and nine-year-old daughters in Montreal, QB Canada, and she was sentenced to life in prison as reported by Paul Cherry for The Gazette. At the time of the murders Sorella's dirtbag husband was on the lam from drug charges. De Vito finally was apprehended in October 2010, and last June was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in a cocaine smuggling operation through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International...

OAKLAND TWP. (WWJ) - Federal agents searching for the body of former Teamsters chief Jimmy Hoffa believe they are about to crack one of America’s biggest unsolved mysteries. CBS News has confirmed a suspicious concrete slab was retrieved by investigators from the Oakland Township field where they have been digging for any sign of Hoffa. It’s too soon, however, to know whether the slab is anything more than part of an old foundation for a barn. The dig — the latest in what’s been nearly a 40-year search — is reportedly the result of extensive FBI interviews with former mobster...

The FBI saw enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain’s tip to once again break out the digging equipment in search of the elusive remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, last seen alive when he left for lunch with two mobsters 38 years ago. Federal agents brought excavation equipment Monday to a field in suburban Detroit where Tony Zerilli said Hoffa’s remains were buried. Zerilli, 85, told Detroit television station WDIV in February that he knew the location of the remains. …

<p>Investigators plan to dig up an Oakland County field Monday in hopes of discovering the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, an FBI spokesperson confirms to FOX 2.</p> <p>Monday's dig comes after aging mobster Tony Zerilli said earlier this year that Hoffa's body was buried in the northern Oakland Township field, about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen in July 1975.</p>

Matteo Messina Denaro, the so-called "boss of bosses" from Cosa Nostra or the Sicilian Mafia, has been a wanted man since 1993, and his days on the run may be drawing to a close as authorities seize the wealth -- $3.8 billion since 2009 -- that props him up as reported by Tom Kington for the Los Angeles Times: "investigators will not say whether they believe an arrest is imminent, but police have ramped up seizures of businesses they believe are fronting for Messina Denaro," and are hoping that he "could yet be betrayed by otherwise loyal entrepreneurs exasperated by...

...The pontiff exhorted Mafiosi to change their ways, issuing the call Sunday, a day after the beatification of an Italian priest in Palermo who was slain in 1993 by mobsters after he defiantly preached against the Mafia...

Two senior members of the Canadian mafia have been murdered in Sicily and their bodies incinerated, victims of what police suspect is a vicious turf war in Canada which has spilled over into the Cosa Nostra's Italian heartland. After an anonymous tip-off, the bodies of Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez and Fernando Pimentel were discovered near a rubbish dump in the countryside outside Palermo on Thursday. Police described the double killing as an "old-fashioned" gangland hit. Spanish-born Fernandez, 57, a notoriously tough enforcer for Montreal's Rizzuto clan, was expelled from Canada last year for the third time after serving a 10-year...

Nearly two dozen defendants were arraigned last Friday in a Manhattan federal court for their alleged roles in a gambling ring for the fabulous people but missing from the crowd was reputed Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov who remains a fugitive as reported by Richard Behar for Forbes: "The feds call him a 'major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime' who has been involved in 'drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles.' In the current gambling case, he's accused of using his status as a thief-in-law (or vory v zakone) -- a select group of the highest-level criminals...

International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) general president Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is suspected by his members of trying to squash a union comprised of some of his own Teamsters organizers.Hoffa’s battle with his own organizers’ union overlaps with a host of other problems for the prominent labor leader, including a pension crisis that is undercutting his support and a potential UPS strike that he might not be able to afford, according to insiders.Hoffa still has not granted a contract to the Federation of Agents and International Representatives (FAIR), a union that represents Teamsters organizers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allowed...