Free Republic

Despite growing public support for legalizing marijuana, a lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma shows that at least two segments of American society are prepared to fight the idea before the nation’s highest court—social conservatives and law enforcement. The lawsuit seeks to overturn Colorado’s experiment in legalized recreational pot, alleging that the two conservative states are being overrun with Colorado marijuana that is making it harder for them to enforce their own drug laws. …

Strict laws must be put in place to combat New York City’s massive tobacco smuggling problem, former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives Assistant Director Rich Marianos told The Daily Caller News Foundation.“Street gangs, narcotics crews, Russian and Asian organized crime networks, and terrorists are trading cigs for guns, narcotics — even humans,” Marianos, who was with the ATF for 27 years, said.NYC’s disproportionately high cigarette tax is allowing hardened criminals and even terrorists to fund illicit activity and make huge profits, with almost no risk, thanks to lax tobacco smuggling laws.Since 2006, the tax rate on NYC...

A Grade 12 student in Lethbridge, Alta., was suspended last week for dealing Pepsi to fellow students out of his locker. Keenan Shaw was suspended for two days by Winston Churchill high school for selling the soft drink to students, violating a school policy that only permits diet pop on the premises. Shaw says he was told the sales violated the nutrition and marketing policies, and that he was operating a business without a licence. But compared with what some other students sell at the southern Alberta school, Shaw says, his transgressions were minor. "I'm not going to name any...

She also alleges that some immigrants who have entered the country illegally pose a threat to national security and safety. In her court filings, Taitz referred to an order Hanen entered in December 2013 in an unrelated case, United States of America vs. Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador. Court records show that the girl’s mother Salmeron Santos, an immigrant illegally in the country, admitted that she had hired smugglers to transfer her child from El Salvador to Virginia and paid a $6,000 advance for the service. DHS delivered the...

MCALLEN, Texas — Border Patrol agents seized more than $650,000 in cash that had been left behind near the Rio Grande River that separates Texas from Mexico. The seizure was made Thursday night when U.S. Border Patrol Agents following a set of footprints near Sullivan City ended up coming across four backpacks filled with bulk cash and a little more than a kilo of cocaine, an agency news release shows. Inside the four backpacks the agents ended up finding a mixture of dollars and pesos that added up to $650,000 as well as the cocaine which had a value of...

The federal government says 173 unaccompanied immigrant children have been placed in Minnesota since the start of the year. The Office of Refugee Resettlement on Thursday issued a state-by-state breakdown of unaccompanied child placement. The figures show more than 30,000 children have been released to sponsors this year through July 7. The specific locations of the placements were not specified. Fifty have been placed in Wisconsin. Texas, New York, Florida and California are receiving the most unaccompanied children caught at the U.S. border, according to the information. Federal and state governments are scrambling to find shelter for the children fleeing...

A federal jury has convicted a Minnesota man of smuggling arms to Nigeria and lying on firearms purchase records. Fifty-one-year-old Sheriff Olaleran Mohammed was convicted of one count of smuggling goods from the U.S. and 17 counts of providing false statements while purchasing a firearm.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Cigarette smuggling costs states an estimated $5.5 billion annually. Much of that traffic takes place on the East Coast along Interstate 95, as cigarettes from lower-tax states are being smuggled to states with higher taxes in the Northeast. A new website, sponsored by RAI Services Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., calls the I-95 corridor "The New Tobacco Road."The website draws attention to the problem to encourage states to pass stiffer penalties for smuggling and devote more resources to enforcement.The website, www.thenewtobaccoroad.com, shows how I-95 has become a key transit route for cigarette smuggling from southern...

Government IT projects have a tendency to fall on their rear ends more often than not. After the miserable debacle that was Healthcare.gov last October, I made the case for why the larger than life public face of Obamacare had zero chance of succeeding in original form. Fast forward six months, and after some contractor firings and a public about face consisting of a "tech surge", the website is finally working at nominal levels. That's not to say no one didn't take the fall for the mess of this bungled IT project gone haywire. The former head honcho of the...

A majority of the cigarettes for sale in New York are illegally smuggled into the state, according to a report out Wednesday from the conservative research group the Tax Foundation. According to the report, 56.9% of the cigarettes sold in New York—the highest importer of smuggled cigarettes—originated from out of state. Since 2006, cigarette smuggling in the state has risen sharply, by 59%, in tandem with a massive hike in cigarette taxes of 190%. New York state now has the highest cigarette taxes in the country, at $4.35 a pack. Residents of NYC must also pay an extra $1.50 per...

A house overflowing with more than 100 people presumed to be in the U.S. illegally was uncovered just outside Houston on Wednesday, a police spokesman said. The suspected stash house was found during a search for a 24-year-old woman and her two children, a 7-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, that were reported missing by relatives late Tuesday after a man failed to meet them as planned at an undisclosed location on the city's north side, said John Cannon, a spokesman for the Houston Police Department. Many of the people in home that authorities said appeared to be part of...

More than 100 suspected illegal immigrants were found in an apparent stash house in south Houston on Wednesday, police say. Officers say the immigrants were held against their will in deplorable conditions. snip...one toilet, no ho hot water and human waste everywhere.

Smugglers stuffed 13 ‘incredibly rare’ iguanas into socks and tried to take them through Heathrow Airport. The endangered lizards were found by customs officers in a suitcase at Terminal Five when they stopped two Romanian women who arrived from the Bahamas. They were trying to take the San Salvador rock iguanas, which are native to the Bahamas and under threat of extinction, on to Dusseldorf in Germany. Each was wrapped in a sock and 12 survived the journey, while one died. Rare iguanas stuffed in socks seized at Heathrow Airport The iguanas were smuggled inside one suitcase (Picture: PA) Grant...

Presented in a Federal Judge’s court ruling is an insight we have never seen in Federal Courts. It seems very prominent that Obama’s partnership with drug cartels go way beyond the weapons we knew about! A federal court in Texas has issued a formal opinion on the court case United States of America v. Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez. The judge, Andrew Hanen, presented his opinion from the case that threw open the doors to watch the travesty of justice that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the shear lawlessness of the Obama Administration. This goes way beyond the Fast and...

Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst announced a Texas-led three-week effort that he says reduced illegal immigration, smuggling, and human trafficking to a standstill in the Rio Grande River section of the U.S./Mexico border. The Lt. Governor spoke with me in an interview for Breitbart News; he stated: “In the Rio Grande Valley sector, nearly nothing moved in those three weeks. We shut it down. We had teams of Texas law enforcement in the brush, high altitude aircraft, gun boats, and more," he explained. “Our intel revealed that the Gulf cartel was growing frustrated with our three-week effort.” “The border issue...

<p>KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Police in Jamaica say authorities have seized 3,300 missile warheads and a machine to make missiles and bullets.</p> <p>Deputy Police Superintendent Steve Brown said Friday that custom officials discovered the weapons late Thursday aboard a ship at Kingston Wharf.</p>

<p>SYDNEY, Australia — Former Playboy model Brandi Brandt was extradited from Los Angeles to Sydney on Friday to face cocaine conspiracy charges.</p> <p>The 45-year-old actress and Playmate of the Month for October 1987 appeared in a Sydney court after her arrival Friday morning on a flight from the United States.</p>

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent was arrested Friday for conspiring to smuggle illegal aliens into the country.Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers arrested David Alexander Díaz-Torres in Orlando, Fla., according to the Justice Department.Díaz-Torres and five others were charged in a 13-count indictment for bringing, transporting, harboring, and shielding illegal aliens within the United States.According to a Justice Department press release, a group of Brazilian nationals were smuggled through the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.Díaz-Torres allegedly allowed the Brazilians through a TSA security checkpoint without questioning them.The group then flew to New York, Boston, and...

Doing the Work Americans Won’t Do– Authorities now believe teens who smuggle illegal immigrants across the border is on the rise.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Valley Central reported: Authorities in Hidalgo County are battling a rise in teens who smuggle humans. A repeat offender was back in juvenile court facing several charges. Authorities believe a 15-year-old human smuggler has smuggled immigrants into the country more than once and has been deported twice. Hidalgo County authorities said coyotes use their age to get them in and out of the system, making them a threat to the community. Human smugglers are now turning to teens to do...

Authorities in Hidalgo County are battling a rise in teens who smuggle humans. A repeat offender was back in juvenile court facing several charges. Authorities believe a 15-year-old human smuggler has smuggled immigrants into the country more than once and has been deported twice. Hidalgo County authorities said coyotes use their age to get them in and out of the system, making them a threat to the community. Human smugglers are now turning to teens to do their dirty work. "If the federal government can’t touch them, then what do they have to lose?" Because of their age, teen smugglers...