Free Republic

A maverick former mayor known as El Bronco is mounting a serious bid to become Mexico's first independent candidate to win a governorship, buoyed by voter mistrust of the country's traditional political parties. Waging a social media campaign on a shoestring -- paid for largely with the crumpled bills supporters press into his hands on the stump -- Jaime Rodríguez is shaking up politics in Nuevo León, the conservative northern border state that includes the industrial powerhouse of Monterrey, and jolting politicians nationwide. An opinion poll published Friday in El Norte, Monterrey's leading newspaper, puts Mr. Rodríguez ahead of his...

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has threatened the world claiming they are very close to acquiring a nuclear bomb from Pakistan to use in attacking the United States. They have threatened to smuggle it through the United State's porous southern border.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has threatened the world claiming they are very close to acquiring a nuclear bomb from Pakistan to use in attacking the United States. The claim was made in an article entitled "The Perfect Storm" which was published in the Islamic State's English language propaganda magazine Dabiq; it was penned...

President Barack Obama is negotiating a multilateral trade agreement with the governments of 11 nations. These include Malaysia and Vietnam -- as well as Japan, Brunei, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru. This so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would govern most of the commercial relations between the nations that sign it. "With over 20 chapters under negotiation," explains a Congressional Research Service report published in March, "the TPP partners envision the agreement to be 'comprehensive and high-standard,' in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand...

At least 43 people died Friday in what authorities described as a fierce, three-hour gunbattle between federal forces and suspected drug gang gunmen on a ranch in western Mexico, the deadliest such confrontation in recent memory. All the dead were suspected criminals except for one federal police officer, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. He said the officer died trying to help a colleague wounded in the shootout.

About 40 people were killed in large-scale firefight Friday between law enforcement and criminal suspects in western Mexico, a Mexican official said. Almost all the dead were suspected criminals, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The gunbattle happened in an area between Michoacan and Jalisco states that is known as a stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, which has mounted several large-scale attacks on federal and state forces in recent weeks. A federal police official said the country’s top security officials were en route to...

The setting aside of critical habitat for the endangered jaguar in New Mexico was an “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious” action by federal authorities and needs to be overturned, a new lawsuit says. ... In March 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service set aside nearly 1,200 square miles along the U.S.-Mexico border as habitat essential for the conservation of the jaguar. Federal officials acknowledged last year when they made the designation that no female jaguars or breeding had been documented in the U.S. in more than 50 years. ... Reed Hopper, another attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, said the federal...

U.S. net imports of natural gas decreased 9% in 2014, continuing an eight-year decline. As U.S. dry natural gas production has reached record highs, lower domestic prices have helped to displace natural gas imports. Net natural gas imports (imports minus exports) totaled 1,171 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 2014, the lowest level since 1987. Imports by pipeline from Canada account for nearly 98% of all U.S. natural gas imports, and were the main driver of the decrease in total imports. Net imports from Canada represented 7% of total U.S. natural gas consumption in 2014, down from 11% in 2009. U.S....

One of the Twin Cities men charged with supporting terrorism planned to kill FBI agents who were investigating their activities over the last 10-months, according to federal authorities who’ve reviewed a confidential informant’s secret recordings of conversations in early April that detailed the threats. “If there’s no way out, I’m saying. If our backs are against the wall, I’m gonna go kill the one who punks me,” said Mohamed Farah, one of seven men from the Twin Cities who is charged with supporting terrorists in the Middle East. “You know the one. Everybody has that one Fed that you know....

A U.S. Spanish-language news network that lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department on U.S. policies toward Mexico reported on those policies without disclosing its lobbying expenditures and is covering the U.S. presidential election without informing views of its company’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. The network, Azteca America, has employed two Clinton confidantes since late 2008 to lobby the State Department on various initiatives affecting U.S. relations with Mexico, where its parent company is based, during and after Clinton’s tenure at the head of the agency. Mexican parent TV Azteca, a foundation associated with the company, and that foundation’s U.S. counterpart...

For the thousands of mix-status families in San Diego, the fear of a loved one being deported is always present. For one National City family, that nightmare has come true, and they’re pleading for a kind of legal leniency the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is able to provide depending on the case’s circumstances. On April 25, 46-year-old Enrique Cervantes made a wrong turn and accidently drove through a Border Patrol checkpoint near Jamul. He is an undocumented citizen. His wife and five children are U.S. citizens. After being apprehended, his attorney says Cervantes was interviewed by Border Patrol and...

The Task Force offers a detailed and ambitious set of proposals that build on the recommendations adopted by the three governments at the Texas summit of March 2005.The Task Force’s central recommendation is the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity.Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America. Shared challenge of uneven economic development. A fast lane...

Jeb Bush told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that he would not attempt to immediately reverse President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration should he succeed him in the Oval Office. The former Florida governor said he would instead wait for Congress to pass a law to make changes in immigration policy. That sets Bush apart from many of his Republican counterparts who have said they would take immediate action. Obama in November issued an executive action to prevent millions of illegal immigrants from being deported. Bush suggested that GOP voters “can be persuaded” to his way of thinking on...

Likely Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted Thursday that the GOP will lose the 2016 presidential election unless they win over Hispanic voters by supporting a “long, hard path to citizenship.” “If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship,” the South Carolina Republican told USA Today. “You would have a long, hard path to citizenship … but I want to create that path because I don’t like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help....

Trapped in Mexico for weeks, a San Jose family said the government won’t let them bring their new baby home. Haseeb and Christy Amireh have been stuck living in hotel after hotel in the state of Tabasco in Mexico with their newborn son Grayson. “We just want to get home,” Christy told KPIX 5 via Skype. But Grayson has no birth certificate, so he can’t get a passport to fly home. “There are still agencies taking intended parents, like us, so we would like to get the word out,” Haseeb said. Unable to have children, the San Jose couple turned...

In the mid-1990s, Marc Goodman, then an investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department, tried to convince his boss of the need for a computer crime unit. The reaction? Utter bafflement. “This captain said to me, ‘Computer crime, what is that? Like if you take the monitor and hit somebody in the head and kill them?’” It is a telling anecdote. While law enforcement agencies have become in­creasingly sophisticated technologically, criminals have the edge, according to Mr Goodman. That was something he observed when investigating drugs and vice in LA. “In those days the only people that had pagers in...

The wife and son of GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush will hit Chicago Thursday for a fundraising event. Columba Bush and Jeb Bush, Jr. are scheduled to make appearances at a luncheon at the Union League Club, located at 65 West Jackson Blvd., according to Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Times. Seats at the luncheon cost between $2,500 and $250,000 and will fund the Bush super pac "Right to Rise," Sweet reported. Columba isn't known to be a political heavy hitter for her husband, but she has lately taken the reins on several fundraising events, particularly in Florida, to support...

Judicial Watch: DHS Records Detail Mexican Government Helicopter Crossing Border and Firing on Border Patrol (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained documents from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) that confirm a June 26, 2014, attack by a Mexican government helicopter on U.S. Border Patrol agents. The Mexican helicopter crossed into U.S. airspace before firing on U.S. Border Patrol personnel. The Mexican government initially denied that the attack near Arizona’s San Miguel Gate occurred, but later admitted to the armed incursion. The CBP documents were released in response to a July 9, 2014, Judicial Watch...

<p>The cartel violence that has gripped Mexico in recent weeks is alarming to many in the country who are accustomed to shootouts in more remote outposts like Guerrero or the states that border the United States. But the Western state where federal forces have been waging an all-out war against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is home to the country's second-largest city, Guadalajara, and home to key industrial and economic sectors.</p>

A number of reports have surfaced in the last few weeks that corroborate a story Judicial Watch broke in mid-April verifying that ISIS is operating in a Mexican border town just eight miles from El Paso, Texas. This includes the startling development over the weekend that the Islamic terrorist group claimed responsibility for a shooting at a “Muhammad Art Exhibit” near Dallas because it was considered to be anti-Islam. JW’s report was based on intelligence from a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police inspector and was met with denials from both the U.S. and Mexican government...

An accident on an oil well-maintenance platform killed two workers and injured 10 off Mexico’s coast on Tuesday, company officials reported, blaming the incident on the collapse of one of the rig’s legs. State oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said the Troll Solution rig was maneuvering to perform offshore maintenance at the time of the accident in the Bay of Campeche, in the Gulf of Mexico. Pemex blamed a structural failure in the leg. The rig was “listing” but had not sunk, the company said via Twitter.