Free Republic

When Islamists made their roots south of the border... Venezuela's dictator: H. Chavez that "sees" only money, oil and Anti-Americanism-Power, does "serve" the Islamic Iranian Republic well, giving out passports to anyone. From that "port" it is quite easy for an Islamic Iranian AGENT to arrive into any other Latin American country as a... "Venezuelan". A "random" different case (of a Muslim trying to "blend" into Latin America), a year ago, a Jordanian Arab that "met" a Costa Rican (Tica) girl in Spain (she vouched for him in CR, asw this man came from the area in Jordan where a...

Head Up, no link yet!

Panama agrees to host two U.S. naval bases MEXICO, September 27 (RIA Novosti) - Panama will sign before October 2009 a treaty with the United States on the opening of two U.S. naval bases on its territory, a senior Panamanian government official said on Sunday. According to Panama's La Prensa newspaper, a preliminary agreement was reached between Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during recent talks in New York. "The U.S. and Panama will sign before October 30 an agreement on the deployment of two naval bases on the pacific coast of our country to...

A slimy, glob-like creature dubbed Gollum has terrified children after it slithered out of a lake and clambered over the rocks towards them. The young teenagers were playing by the waterfront in a Panama lake near Cerro Azul when the bald beast emerged from a cave behind a waterfall. They started screaming as it shuffled out "as if to attack them". Locals told Panama news the monster was like "Gollum from Lord of the Rings". One said: "I have only seen that creature once before - and it was in the Tolkien film." But in a "desperate bid to defend...

Doctors move to Panama from the states and abroad so they can truly practice medicine. Many of the doctors you find in Panama will have been top specialists who got tired of the bureaucracy and restrictions on their ability to truly offer the best care to their patients because they were always having to think about insurance and mal-practice law suits. As a result you can get the best medical care in the world in Panama. Every specialist you can imagine is here, and many new aspects of medicine are being offered here. for example the Stem Cell Institute of...

Richard Lehman sues Panama 03-11-2009 | BUSINESS WIRE The Lucom’s legacy would give the poor children of Panama $50 million Panama Star BOCA RATON, FLORIDA. Richard Lehman, a Florida attorney who was falsely charged with murder and over a dozen other crimes in Panama for his efforts to defend a $50 million food aid donation, has filed a human rights lawsuit against the country with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Organization of American States). “Panama continues to foster an atmosphere of corruption in the legal system which has caused it to be in violation of several human rights...

(English-language translation) MIAMI - Panamanian General Manuel Antonio Noriega appealed yesterday to the United States Supreme Court as a last legal recourse to avoid his extradition to France after an appeals court ruled that he may be sent to Paris, where he faces money-laundering charges. Seventy-three-year-old Noriega, who is serving a prison sentence in Miami for allowing cocaine shipments from the defunct Medellín Colombian drug cartel to Panama, went to the nation's highest court to argue that, being a prisoner of war, he must be sent back to Panama in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

Prospective retirees: Panama wants you. The pitch? A plane ride just 21/2 hours from Miami enables the newly poor to swap a wretched retirement in the U.S. for one befitting a royal in the balmy Central American nation. Cash out! Emigrate! Feel rich! Panama—the new Florida. Spin aside, Panama is increasingly popular among retirement-age types looking to hedge against—or skip out on—the recession. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that studies the movement of people around the world, says the chief factors prodding professional-class Americans to flock to Panama include its First World health care available at Third...

While President Obama partners with Hugo Chavez and the Castro Brothers to destroy Honduran democracy, all is not bad news in the region.Congratulations are in order to Panama and its new president, Ricardo Martinelli. BTW, despite what our state-run media says, Panama has not joined the Chavista countries in demanding Honduras restore it's dictator wannabe. On 1 July, The Republic of Panama will enjoy its fourth peaceful presidential transition since the overthrow of Noriega in 1989. I was there, but I didn't have anything to do with it. I did experience the pleasure of having a squad of Cubans...

Staff Half of Panama’s population of children under the age of five is in grave danger of death from malnutrition. The country’s staggering 40 percent poverty rate is one of the worst in Central America. The late Wilson Lucom reportedly left $50 million to a trust intended to aid these starving children according to a secret will revealed upon his death in 2006. Lucom’s Panamanian wife Hilda and her children from a previous marriage are contesting the will and over two years of legal haggling between the two parties has not resulted in the resolution of the case. So far...

Saturday, January 17, 2009 MINDBOGGLING CONSPIRACY BY McCAIN, OBAMA, McCASKILL, LEAHY, CLINTON AND COBURN TO CIRCUMVENT ARTICLE TWO, SECTION ONE OF THE US CONSTITUTION ********** In this article, originally posted in the blog of the same name, "Zapem" breaks a report of the history of sidestepping, skirting, and attempted Constitutional tinkering on behalf of unnatural born Citizen, John McCain -- thereby, an attempt to pave the way for Barack Obama.If one were to look at the activity on Capital Hill during the campaign, there would be no question in their minds that both McCain and Obama were sweating the “natural...

PANAMA CITY – Conservative supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won Panama's presidential election in a landslide Sunday, promising to guide the country through the world economic crisis and an ambitious expansion of the Panama Canal. The win by Martinelli, of the opposition Alliance for Change, marked a rare center-right election triumph in a region that has seen a wave of leftist leaders. Electoral Tribunal President Erasmo Pinilla called Martinelli the "indisputable winner" after preliminary results showed him with 61 percent support and governing party candidate Balbina Herrera with 37 percent. Former President Guillermo Endara was a distant third. The winner was...

The excavation and dredging works to enlarge the Panama Canal are being carried out in different levels of execution, as part of a process that should conclude in 2014. The first dry excavation stage, has been fulfilled by almost 90 per cent. The second part of the contract, work has been executed by 60 per cent. The third is still in its initial stage. According to available reports the value of the already agreed contracts reached about 339.4 million dollars in December. The programme consists of the construction of two lock complexes, with three levels each, together with the widening...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2009/nyc031909.html U.S. Announces Indictment of Heads of Colombia's D.M.G. Group for Money Laundering MAR 19 -- JOHN P. GILBRIDE, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Field Division (“DEA”), LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, RAYMOND W. KELLY, Police Commissioner of the City of New York (“NYPD”) and HARRY J. CORBITT, Superintendent New York State Police (“NYPD”) announced today the unsealing of an Indictment against DAVID EDUARDO HELMUT MURCIA GUZM�N, 28, MARGARITA LEONOR PABON CASTRO, a/k/a "Margarita Castro Pabon," 35, WILLIAM SU�REZ‑SU�REZ,...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg19.htm February 10, 2009 tg-19 Treasury Targets Financial Network of Fernando Zevallos Gonzales Washington, DC -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated 26 companies and 14 individuals tied to Peruvian drug kingpin Fernando Zevallos Gonzales. This financial network, based in Peru, Panama and the British Virgin Islands, is now subject to financial sanctions pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act ("Kingpin Act"). "Our action demonstrates the importance of following the changing networks of major drug kingpins, like Fernando Zevallos," said OFAC Director Adam J....

A Russian warship was set Friday to sail through the Panama Canal for the first time since World War II in a symbolic challenge to US influence in the region. The large anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko is scheduled to traverse the waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, the Russian embassy in Panama said. "The only time such an event took place was in 1944 during the Second World War, when four Russian submarines passed through" the canal, said the embassy in a statement. At that time, when the waterway was under...

The enigmatic phrase “natural born citizen” poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New Originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. The notion of a “natural born citizen” was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a “natural born subject” in English law—a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the Constitution speaks of “citizens” and not “subjects,” introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.

The 2008 election cycle has been a busy one for legal disputes over the qualifications of presidential candidates, with federal cases having been filed to challenge both major candidates’ eligibility under the “natural born Citizen” clause. These cases unquestionably present vital questions of constitutional law, touching on matters of self-evident national importance. It is doubtful, however, that they are justiciable in lower federal courts. Standing requirements and the political question doctrine make it unlikely that a federal court will reach the merits in cases of the type filed to date.

175 Alleged Gulf Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Massive International Law Enforcement Operation "Project Reckoning" Leads to the Seizure of $60 Million and More Than 40 Tons of Illegal Drugs From One of Mexico's Largest Drug Trafficking Cartels NEW YORK - Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced that 175 individuals were arrested on Sept. 16, 2008, on charges related to an international drug trafficking cartel in a coordinated enforcement action by hundreds of international, federal, state and local law enforcement officials throughout the United States and Italy. Including the operations announced today, a long-term investigation of one of Mexico's...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to remove John McCain from the California ballot because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled late Tuesday that the law at the time of McCain's birth automatically granted citizenship to offspring of U.S. citizens.</p>

<p>A San Francisco federal judge ruled Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's claim of U.S. citizenship is strong enough that a lawsuit challenging his placement on the California ballot should be dismissed.</p> <p>Northern District of California Judge William Alsup ruled in the case of Robinson v. Bowen, filed by an elector pledged to third-party candidate Alan Keyes seeking an injunction to keep McCain off the November ballot. Two other challenges claiming that McCain's birthplace in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 disqualifies him under the Constitution have been dismissed on standing grounds. But Alsup evaluated the merits of the claim in a hearing last week and in an order issued Tuesday.</p>

This morning President Bush met with General David Petraeus in the Oval Office of the White House. After serving as the Commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq for 19 months, General Petraeus was promoted to Commander of Central Command (CENTCOM). The President congratulated the General for his successful mission in Iraq. (Transcript) General David Petraeus was asked to do a very difficult job and he did it with distinction and honor. He was a part of the planning for the surge; he implemented the surge, along with a lot of other brave people; and the United States and the world...

CONCORD – A federal judge dismissed Thursday a Nashua man's legal challenge that Republican presidential nominee-to-be Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was ineligible because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Natural Born Citizen Clause The clause of the U.S. Constitution barring persons not born in the United States from the Presidency. [Black’s Law Dictionary, Eighth Edition] [cf. Natural Born Citizen Clause] Greetings, The analysis below is indeed helpful, but it is erroneous and/or misleading on several important points which do deserve further clarification, as follows: (1) there are two (2) classes of citizens under American laws never repealed, not one (1) class: http://www.supremelaw.org/rsrc/twoclass.htm (see all links at the very end) Federal citizens aka "citizens of the United States" were not even contemplated with Article III -- and hence Article II...

Trade deals with Colombia, Korea, and Panama, all rife with political import, are stalled in Congress. In the meantime, some U.S. exports lag In its Decatur (Ill.) factory, Caterpillar (CAT) assembles a line of the heaviest-duty off-highway trucks, behemoths specialized for use in mining, quarry, and construction operations. One model, the $1.2 million, 163,089-lb. 777F truck, can hit a top speed of 40 mph even while carrying 100 tons of dirt, enough to fill 350 wheelbarrows. Caterpillar has seen a robust market in recent years for these monster trucks, but is worried that companies in other countries will start to...

Here they go again: Today the New York Times ran yet another flaky story questioning the presidential eligibility of John McCain, born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, where his Navy father was stationed. Back on February 28, Congressional reporter Carl Hulse wrote a big story on the "controversy," even though Hulse himself admitted little was likely to come of it. The Senate later approved a resolution declaring McCain eligible for the presidency. Law reporter Adam Liptak's story today, which led the paper's National Section, ran under the hopeful headline, "A Hint of New Life to a McCain Birth...

Disqualifying Obama from Presidency. Many here (and in Kook World) think we can disqualify Obama for the presidency with a claim that he not a natural born citizen of the U.S. Here’s how we can do it! First, Obama has no responsibility to “prove” he is a citizen. If we want to disqualify him, we would have to bring civil suit asking for a declaratory judgment that he does not meet the constitutional requirements and therefore must be disqualified. We have a few problems here. USC Title 8 provides many other ways than being born within the bounds of the...

Presumptive Republican nominee's birth location revives debate over the constitutional requirement that limits the presidency to 'natural born' citizens. By Eunice MoscosoWASHINGTON BUREAU Saturday, July 05, 2008 WASHINGTON — Is Sen. John McCain a natural born citizen? Or is he ineligible to be president? The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was born Aug. 29, 1936 — not within the 50 United States, but in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father, a Navy officer, was stationed. His birth location has revived a long-standing debate over the constitutional requirement that limits the presidency to "natural born" citizens. The problem is that the...

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama has ruled out hosting a U.S. military base to replace one in Ecuador which is being reclaimed by the Quito government, a senior Panamanian official said on Friday. Panama -- along with Peru and Colombia -- had been tipped as a possible site to replace the Manta air base in western Ecuador, a key strategic asset in Washington's campaign to stop Latin American cocaine from reaching the United States.

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel. The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. But something larger is...

Jim Geraghty takes a look at longstanding blog buzz over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which the campaign refused to release to the St. Petersburg Times in April: We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public. Has anyone seen it? Why shouldn’t the record be in the public domain for presidential candidates? Geraghty walks through various rumors now circulating in the wake of the Obama campaign’s birth certificate blackout, including this one: Rumor Three: His mother did not want to name...

Today President Bush signed H.R. 4286, This is a bill passed by the leaders of the Senate and House to honor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi with the Congressional Gold Medal. She is Myanmar's detained opposition leader who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years in prison or under house arrest. He also expressed his heartfelt sympathy to the people of Burma in the wake of their natural disaster. LINKPresident Bush took part in an event commemorating Military Spouse Day on the South Lawn at the White House. LINK President Bush met with Panama's President Martin Torrijos in...

The Senate has unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen, eligible to be president of the United States. That is the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, then under U.S. jurisdiction. The bad news is that the nonbinding Senate resolution passed Wednesday night is simply an opinion that has little bearing on an arcane constitutional debate that has preoccupied legal scholars for many weeks.

Via S&L, a typically shrewd move by the Messiah on three counts — blunting any criticism of his own citizenship status; showing himself to be as magnanimous towards his opponent as Maverick was after l’affaire Cunningham; and avoiding any potential confrontation foisted on him by his dimmer supporters who’d dare challenge McCain’s right to American citizenship based on his military pedigree. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign announced he would co-sponsor legislation introduced yesterday by his political ally Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) to ensure that John McCain can become president, even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. “Senator McCain...

FT. WORTH, Texas -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign announced he would co-sponsor legislation introduced yesterday by his political ally Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill to ensure that John McCain can become president, even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The issue of McCain's eligibility was raised in a New York Times article noting the constitutional requirement that a U.S. president be a "natural-born citizen" had never been fully defined.

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain said Thursday that he had no concerns about his meeting the constitutional qualifications for the presidency because of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone. A Democratic colleague said she wanted to remove even a trace of doubt. The Democrat, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, introduced legislation that would declare that any child born abroad to citizens serving in the United States military would meet the constitutional requirement that anyone serving as president be a “natural born� citizen. “In America, so many parents say to their young children, ‘If you work hard and you...

RICHARDSON, Texas (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said Thursday the question of whether he can run for president, despite being born in the Panama Canal Zone, was put to rest 44 years ago in Barry Goldwater's run for the White House.McCain added that he doesn't know why his campaign sought legal analysis of whether his birth outside the continental United States might disqualify him from the presidency.The Constitution says only a "natural-born citizen" may serve as president.McCain's campaign asked former Solicitor General Ted Olson for a legal interpretation of the issue.McCain himself insists the issue was put to...

The first statute on the citizenship of children born abroad, enacted in 1790, stated: "The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States." Act of Mar. 26, 1790, ch. 3, 1 Stat. 104. Statutes passed in 1795 and 1802 similarly conditioned the citizenship of the child born abroad on the father's at least one-time residence in the United...

WASHINGTON: The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming. McCain's likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a "natural-born citizen" can hold the nation's highest office.

There have been some posts on this topic already, but they are incomplete and the Mccain campaign, Wikipedia, and other sources have weaseled around it with a reference to a 1790 act of Congress defining foreign-born children of US citizens as natural-born, thus meeting to requirements to run for President. I started digging into the Act of Congress that Mccain's campaign said got him around this (5th Congress, March 26th 1790), but found that this act was repealed by the same Congress, January 29th, 1795, RE-defining such children as just American citizens (not natural-born, as required for Pres. by the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush on Monday urged a conclusion to long-running talks on a Doha global trade deal and appealed for new free trade agreements to ensure America can compete in the world economy. "Today, our economic growth increasingly depends on our ability to sell American goods, crops, and services all over the world. So we are working to break down barriers to trade and investment wherever we can," Bush said in his State of the Union speech. "We are working for a successful Doha round of trade talks, and we must complete a good agreement...

Panama City, Panama (AP) -- The bodies of a California businessman, his teenage daughter and the Panamanian pilot of a plane that crashed over the weekend were found Tuesday in Panama's mountains, officials said. A 12-year-old American girl survived. Michael Klein, 37, Talia Klein, 13, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, were found dead in a mountainous region of Panama known as Las Ovejas, about 270 miles west of the capital, the civil protection agency said. Francesca Lewis, a friend of Talia's who was traveling with the Kleins, survived and was hospitalized with hypothermia and multiple traumas, the agency said in...

Panama will take bids from four international consortiums seeking to build new, larger ship locks for the Panama Canal... The locks are a key part of the 5.25 billion-dollar canal expansion project begun in September, aimed at doubling the capacity of the 50-mile (80-kilometer) canal connecting two oceans. Panamanian officials hope the project will be finished by 2014. The four consortiums now have until August 2008 to present final proposals and price tags to compete for the contract... The largest ships that now use the canal carry up to 5,000 containers, but after the expansion supertankers and ships carrying as...

China's influence in North America has reached the point that Canada, the United States and Mexico all are proposing new super-ports to accept mega-ships loaded with thousands of containers of goods from the exporting nation. Now it's reaching into Central and South America as well. The BBC is reporting that the Panamanian National Assembly has approved a plan to make teaching Mandarin obligatory, "in recognition of China's growing importance in the world economy." The report said the bill's supporters believe boosting the number of people who speak Chinese will help boost the economic competitiveness Panama offers the global economy. At...

WASHINGTON -- As global trade talks teeter toward another collapse, the White House is mounting a major push for what remains of the Bush trade agenda: a handful of bilateral deals with Latin American countries. This weekend, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez is scheduled to lead a delegation of U.S. lawmakers to Colombia, in an effort to dispel congressional concerns about the Andean nation's history of drug-related and political violence, which are among the stumbling blocks to approval of a U.S. trade deal with that country. In a rare foray into trade policy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is arguing the...

The Bush administration, having been rebuffed on plans to advance a Free Trade of the Americas Act that would open a free trade market to the tip of South America, now is working on the expansion one nation at a time, according to critics. The Bush administration is pushing Congress to pass a new "free trade" NAFTA-like agreement with Peru, amid growing opposition among Republican voters. Leading the opposition in the House is presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. "While proponents of free trade will argue the importance of the Peru agreement, Congressman Hunter does not buy that this trade deal,...

PANAMA — Eduardo Arias hardly fits the profile of someone capable of humbling one of the world’s most formidable economic powers. A 51-year-old Kuna Indian, Mr. Arias grew up on a reservation paddling dugout canoes near his home on one of the San Blas islands off Panama’s Caribbean coast. He now lives in a small apartment above a food stand in Panama, the nation’s capital, also known as Panama City. But one Saturday morning in May, Eduardo Arias did something that would reverberate across six continents. He read the label on a 59-cent tube of toothpaste. On it were two...

PANAMA CITY, Panama - Panama blasted away part of a hillside next to the canal on Monday, marking the start of the waterway's biggest expansion since it opened 93 years ago. In the presence of former President Carter, who signed the 1977 treaty that gave Panama control of the waterway, Panamanian President Martin Torrijos celebrated the start of construction on two wider sets of locks being added to both sides of the canal. "We are witnesses to an exceptional and unique act," Torrijos said moments after the explosion sent up a curtain of smoke and water. The $5.25 billion expansion...

MIAMI (AP) - Warships from Canada and more than a dozen other countries joined the U.S. navy for ongoing manoeuvres Sunday near the Panama Canal in an exercise being billed as one of the largest multinational military training events of the year. More than 30 ships began the exercises Wednesday in the waters near the canal, to practise defending the economically and strategically crucial waterway. The exercise is scheduled to continue through Friday in the Caribbean and Pacific approaches to the canal. Thousands of ships pass through the Panama Canal every year, shuttling more than 200 million tons of exports...