Free Republic

A year out from the Iowa caucuses, potential presidential candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has taken the lead among Republicans, an Iowa Poll published Saturday indicates. With 15 percent support, Walker leads a number of other potential candidates for the Republican ticket, including Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush, the Des Moines Register reported. Walker is the No. 2 candidate among potential caucus attendees who support an establishment candidate as well as those who prefer one who is anti-establishment, the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll indicated. Following close behind, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky...

The $US90 trillion cities proposal came from former vice president Al Gore and former president of Mexico Felipe Calderon, and their colleagues on the The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. That group hopes to persuade the world’s leaders to do something about humanity’s suicidal effort to heat the Earth’s climate. Part of fighting climate change will mean redesigning, or building anew, towns and cities without cars, Calderon says.

Mexico’s drug war was completely rocked in February 2014 after news broke of the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the notorious long-time head of the Sinaloa cartel and arguably the most wanted man in the Western Hemisphere. But despite the U.S. government’s deep desire to prosecute and incarcerate Guzmán in the United States, Mexico’s attorney general announced the kingpin would not be extradited. Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the Associated Press, “I could accept extradition, but at the time that I choose. ‘El Chapo’ must stay here to complete his sentence, and then I will extradite him.”...

The U.S.-Mexico border may someday see a high-profile crosser – Pope Francis. The intrepid pontiff raised the possibility that among his future trips could be entering the U.S. border from Mexico. The pope, who made the comment while flying back recently from the Philippines, said he would do it to show solidarity with immigrants, according to the Latin Post. "To enter the U.S. from the Mexico border would be a beautiful sign of brotherhood and help for immigrants," the pope said, according to the Post and other outlets. There are some logistical factors, however, that the pope indicated he would have...

LINK ONLY:  Two undocumented citizens arrested at Freedom Summit

DAVOS -- The crackdown on illegal immigration combined with intensified border security has prompted large numbers of undocumented Mexican laborers to remain in the U.S. permanently -- even as many prefer to go home -- out of fear they will never be able to return, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told International Business Times. “Many of them are currently trapped,” Calderon told IBTimes. “There are a lot of these people [who] want to be in Mexico eight months every year, but they are unable to go there, because if they cross the border, they will never be able to cross...

No political summit involving people who at least claim that they want to run for President would be complete without an appearance by Donald Trump. I’ll give the man one thing… he knows how to put on a show, and I’m not just talking about Celebrity Apprentice. After initially coming out and saying that he would have demolished Barack Obama if he’s stayed with the race the last time he ran, The Donald knew just what sort of red meat to throw to the crowd. Trump told that crowd that if he runs in 2016, his first order of business...

EXCLUSIVE: An illegal immigrant, warring parents and a bitter rift with the father she did not see for 40 years – extraordinary story of Columba Bush as her husband bids to make her the first Hispanic first lady Columba Bush was born and raised in Leon, 250 miles outside Mexico City, where she met Jeb Bush and married him when she was 20 Her father was born to a peasant family and entered America illegally to work He had a stormy marriage to her mother and the couple divorced – but Columba's account differs from his and his relatives' in...

A drone carrying methamphetamine crashed in Mexico near the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Tuesday night. The unmanned aircraft hauling more than 6 pounds of crystal meth in six packages fell from the sky into the parking lot of a supermarket in Tijuana just before 10 p.m., according to Vicente Calderon, a Tijuana-based freelance journalist for NBC 7.

The couple thought that they finally had everything lined up: Their paperwork for a marriage license, their attendance to mandatory counseling, and — just to be safe — an order from Mexico's Supreme Court to honor their request to complete the first same-sex union in the state of Baja California. But on January 11, in their fourth attempt at marriage since June 2013 in Mexicali, Baja's desert capital, Victor Manuel Aguirre and Victor Fernando Urias were met with closed doors and once more couldn't get married. Instead, religious conservatives picketed the municipal registrar offices (along with alleged non-interested parties meant...

  ¡Dios bendito! Mexico’s government is not known for its efficiency.  But they’ve got their act together if you’re a Mexican citizen in the United States, and need your permiso, or your driver’s license in California.  Yesterday (Jan 15), the Mexican government is issuing birth certificates from any consulate in the United States. Not 24 hours after the House of Representatives approved a bill that would end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the rush has begun to get your paperwork in to DHS, before it’s (potentially) too late. From now on, Mexico's 50 consulates in the U.S. will be able to get access to data maintained...

BROWNSVILLE — Saying South Texas is where the “rubber meets the road” on immigration issues, a federal judge used a folksy reference Thursday to note his court is the right place to decide whether to block President Barack Obama’s recent order protecting millions of immigrants from deportation. “Talking to anyone in Brownsville about immigration is like talking to Noah about the flood,” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen quipped in the first of what could be many hearings before a lawsuit is settled over Obama’s action. Hanan, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, questioned both sides but gave no...

Mexico is now issuing birth certificates at its United States consulates so illegal immigrants can avoid deportation. Until now, Mexico has required its citizens to get birth certificates at government offices in Mexico. Many of those living in the U.S. ask friends and relatives back home to retrieve the paperwork, but the delay can hold up their applications for various benefits.

The body of an aspiring actress has been found in the water tank in the Mexico City apartment block where she lived, one year after she disappeared. Psychology graduate Carmen Yarira Noriega Esparza, 27, vanished in February last year, and friends and family feared she had been kidnapped by human traffickers and sold as a sex slave. Ms Esparza's severely decayed body was discovered in the tank after residents in the building complained that the drinking water tasted funny.

'splains quite a bit, imho. Reference one year ago.This story is reprised today in Bloomberg, but cannot be posted.No matter, the headline says it all.

A key senator said Sunday she believes there are terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. that could carry out attacks similar to the ones in France that left 17 people dead last week. Sen Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, did not comment on specific threats against America but said other attacks are possible.

During a speech on the middle class and housing at a Phoenix, Arizona high school, President Obama was heckled by a member of the audience. (VIDEO: Christie Shouts Down Heckler: ‘Sit Down and Shut Up!’) Halfway through Obama’s speech at Central High School, considered part of a pre-State of the Union tour to sell his policies, the heckler began yelling. “Is this about housing?” Obama asked, before the shouting stops. WATCH: (starting at 58:21) It’s difficult to make out what the heckler was yelling about in the official White House video, but local media indicate that she was shouting something...

In a stunningly dishonest, conspiracy-laden, and anti-Semitic article, the International Business Times accused Israel and the “Jewish people” for the horrific terrorist attack carried out in Paris yesterday. Anyone with a basic grasp of the most simple of facts is aware that the attack was carried out by Islamic extremists who were upset over Charlie Hebdo’s drawings of Muhammad. The IBT threw logic and common sense to the wind and blamed Israel in an article titled, “Charlie Hebdo Attack and Mossad Link: Is Israel Venting Its Fury For France’s Recognition of Palestine State?” The first sentence in the article says...

Hypocrisy: Mexico's president tells ours that his country will supply any documents needed for illegal aliens to qualify under Barack Obama's executive amnesty. At the same time, Mexico deports more illegals than we do. In an Oval Office meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that his administration "is ready to give (support) to the Mexican population living in the United States so that they can show the documentation that is necessary to prove that they have been in the United States prior to 2010" to meet the five-year requirement of Obama's amnesty plan and...

Mexico’s president told President Obama Tuesday that his government will supply the documents necessary for millions of illegal Mexican immigrants to prove they’ve been living in the U.S. prior to 2010, a move that will help them qualify for Mr. Obama’s recently announced deportation amnesty.