Free Republic

is only a matter a time. You have to be right 100% of the time — and with Obama importing whole Muslim communities from jihad nations, it is impossible. Which is why we have seen this spike in jihad terror attacks (Chattanooga, Boston, Garland …..). The idea that you cannot profile for jihad is suicidal. It is submission to Islamic supremacism. A Florida man charged earlier this week in an alleged Islamic State-inspired plot to detonate a bomb on a crowded beach was once cleared to work at the Key West International Airport, where his job provided him direct access...

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas – When then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry deployed a battalion of the state’s National Guard troops here last August, he called them the “tip of the spear” against Mexican cartels that trafficked dope and illegal immigrants. Critics, especially here in the Rio Grande Valley, derided Perry’s decision as expensive political theater that “militarized” the border and antagonized Mexico. Perry’s supporters defended the move as a long overdue “surge” of police and soldiers against an influx of tens of thousands of undocumented and unescorted juveniles, mostly from Central America, that would fill gaps in federal border security. What’s...

EDINBURG, Texas – When it comes to corrupt public officials aiding the smugglers of drugs and illegal immigrants, this is the dirtiest town, in the most crooked county, in the most bribable state along the U.S.-Mexico border, court records show. Federal prosecutors convicted 206 defendants on public corruption charges in the border counties of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California in 2013 and 2014 — 52 people who offered bribes, and 154 local, county, state and federal employees who pocketed those or smuggled people or narcotics. Texas had 166 convictions, 34 in Hidalgo County alone, with a dozen cases linked...

Traveling by Jeep, boat and foot, Tribune-Review investigative reporter Carl Prine and photojournalist Justin Merriman covered more than 1,900 miles over two months along the border with Mexico to report on coyotes — the human traffickers who bring illegal immigrants in the United States. Most are Americans working for money and/or drugs. This series reports how their operations have a major impact on life for residents and the environment along the border — and beyond.

A Honduran woman carrying 3.3 lbs of liquid cocaine in her breast implants was arrested at the airport in Colombia's capital Bogota on Friday, police said. Paola Deyanira Sabillon, 22, was attempting to travel to Spain when her apparent nervousness aroused suspicion in the security line, airport police colonel Diego Rosero said. X-rays revealed a recent surgery on Sabillon's breasts and she confessed that an unknown substance had been implanted which she was meant to take to Barcelona, police added. Authorities said a preliminary investigation showed that the surgery took place at a clandestine clinic in the city of Pereira,...

Hearing 'news' lately of the Castro regime's drug-running into the US shouldn't come as a revelation to anyone- Havana was long an ally of Columbia's coke-producing communist rebels, and other cash-strapped socialist paradises like North Korea operate mafia-like smuggling and counterfeiting operations in order to generate hard currency... I'm sure the CIA always knew or at least suspected/expected that to be the case with the Cubans. But I was thumbing through an unofficial bio of George Herbert Walker Bush (albeit one authored by a couple 9/11-truthers -and published by the LaRouche organization) over the weekend and was amused to find implications that...

CAIRO (AP) — Libya's chaos has turned it into a lucrative magnet attracting migrants desperate to make the dangerous sea voyage to Europe. With no central authority to stop it, business is booming, with smugglers charging ever more as demand goes up, then using the profits to buy larger boats and heavier weapons to ensure no one dare touch them. It's a vicious cycle that only translates into more tragedies at sea. With each rickety boat that sets off from Libya's coast, traffickers rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars. So assured are they of their impunity that they operate...

As six armed officers pour out of two unmarked Ford Explorers on a Long Island City street corner, you can see the confusion on the faces of gawkers and passersby. One woman looks up from her phone and does a sitcom-worthy double-take when she notices their windbreakers, embossed with the word "SHERIFF" in big gold letters, front and back. That might be because few have ever heard of the New York City Sheriff's Office. But those who have know what happens next. And, not surprisingly, when they burst into a corner store near 40th Avenue and 21st Street, the clerk...

A man was arrested in New York City's international airport with uranium destined for Iran hidden in the soles of his shoes, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Campbell, 33, who was arrested Wednesday as he arrived at the John F Kennedy airport from Paris, is accused of trying to act as an intermediary to sell Iran 1,000 tons of purified uranium, in violation of US law. The Sierra Leone-based Campbell had been under surveillance since May 2012, when he responded to an ad on the site Alibaba.com by someone looking to buy uranium 308, or yellow cake. The buyer...

RICHMOND — A state report linking Virginia cigarette smuggling to terrorist organizations has prompted a Republican state senator to push a bill that would require retailers and wholesalers to obtain a state license to sell cigarettes. The bill, from Sen. Bryce E. Reeves (R-Spottsylvania), has cleared the Senate, but odds are against it in the GOP-dominated House because of conservative objections to increased government regulations and taxes. Even in the more moderate Senate, eight conservative Republicans voted against it. They are a group that Reeves, a fiscal and social conservative, often votes with. “I think they are concerned about regulatory...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

The Italian government on Wednesday said police had seized more than 5,000 ancient artefacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was the country's "largest discovery yet" of looted works and consisted of 5,361 pieces, including vases, jewellery, frescoes and bronze statues, all dating from the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The archaeological treasures came from illegal digs across Italy and "will be returned to where they were found", the minister told reporters. Police said the items were worth around 45 million euros ($52 million) and were...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Accused Chinatown gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow has refused to sign on to a protective order that will allow defense attorneys to receive evidence from federal prosecutors, including audio recordings and video surveillance, from a five-year undercover investigation that led to his arrest, and the arrest of 26 others in March. Attorneys for the federal government on Thursday filed a motion to compel Chow to cooperate, noting that nearly all the other defendants have signed on, and only one other defendant has not signed because of a likely substitution of counsel in the near future. According...

Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism. Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper. His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally...

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed at a federal court hearing Thursday that the unwieldy criminal case against suspended state Sen. Leland Yee, Chinatown association leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and 27 others should be split up before trial. **SNIP** The hearing before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer came two weeks after the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California filed a new indictment in the case, adding violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against Yee and his former fundraiser, Keith Jackson. Yee is accused of conducting a criminal enterprise with Jackson, who allegedly solicited bribes and...

**SNIP** Yee, D-San Francisco, and Jackson, his former consultant and a former San Francisco school board president, are among 29 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes after an undercover FBI investigation. Prosecutors have accused Yee, now suspended from his Senate seat, of soliciting tens of thousands of dollars from agents posing as campaign contributors in exchange for political favors. In a filing Aug. 14, Jackson's lawyer asserted that an FBI agent had been removed from the investigation and reprimanded because of financial misconduct. The agent, identified in court records only as UCE 4773, posed as a Georgia businessman and...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

**SNIP** The San Francisco Democrat was a fairly high-profile member of the California Legislature, but not a flamboyant one or one who was the subject of gossip and rumor. And that’s probably why the news in March landed with such a bombshell, when the 66-year old former psychologist was arrested and charged with not only corruption, but also with allegedly participating in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons into the United States. The irony was impossible to miss: gun trafficking charges against a Democrat who made a name for himself as a fierce advocate of gun control, a politician who...

'This was an egregious breach of our nation's air traffic security': Brooklyn district attorney slams gun smuggling ring that allowed 18 pistols and ammunition to get past TSA in Atlanta **SNIP** Thompson commented as he described a case brought against five people, including an airline baggage handler who was charged a day earlier by federal authorities in Atlanta. Thompson said he was not trying to scare anyone. But he said it's 'truly frightening' what investigators learned after a probe that started as a way to reduce gun violence in Brooklyn. He said former Delta Air Lines employee Mark Quentin Henry...

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. …