Free Republic

Excerpts:SACRAMENTO -- By opening America's highways to thousands of trucks from Mexico, the U.S. Supreme Court has ratcheted up the competitive pressure on thousands of truckers in California and other border states.The court's ruling this week that environmental concerns don't apply to Mexican trucks... could cost some American truckers their jobs as they struggle to compete with trucking firms operating at maybe one-third of the cost."I will probably end up replacing a number of my U.S. drivers with Mexican operators," said Armando Freire, owner of a 30-vehicle trucking firm in San Diego...

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs. Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel." (URL provided)

Alejandro Garcia, a trucker for the past four years, has no illusions about his native country. “In Mexico everything is fixed with ‘la mordida,’ ” he said referring to the Spanish word for bribe. On a recent weekday Garcia was cleaning the windshield of his red 18-wheeler at the Motel Boulevard truck stop in Las Cruces. If a contentious provision of NAFTA to allow Mexican trucks into the interior of the United States and vice versa surpasses all the legal hurdles it now faces, Garcia said he would consider long hauls into his homeland. “One learns to live in the...

A top Al Qaeda operative plotted to smuggle weapons into New York Harbor in the shipping containers of a Garment District firm, the Daily News has learned. Days before he was captured in Pakistan in March, suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed met in Karachi with the owner of a W. 35th St. clothing importing company and his son, law enforcement sources said. Al Qaeda's No. 3 man offered to invest $200,000 in International Management Group in exchange, federal authorities now believe, for access to IMG's Port Newark-bound shipping containers, sources say. Mohammed "is obsessed with attacking the United States,...

<p>New Jersey Go. Jim McGee Tuesday signed into law a tough new public safety measure that would impose jail time and stiff fines on drivers who cause fatal accidents by falling asleep behind the wheel.</p> <p>Known as "Maggie's Law" and described as the first legislation of its kind in the United States, the measure allows prosecutors to charge sleep-deprived drivers with vehicular homicide. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $150,000 fine.</p>

<p>May 26, 2003 -- Federal agents have nabbed an Ohio truck driver after unmasking him as an al Qaeda operative in plots to collapse a suspension bridge and blow up an airliner in the United States, according to a new report.</p>

Last night Steve Somers of the Truckin' Bozo Radio Network promoted the Free Republic. He read the mission statement of FR to the thousands of truckers nationwide who listen to the show for news about the industry, conditions, and discussion of current events. The Truckin' Bozo is carried on AM and the XM satellite radio system.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Paul Barnes spends eight to 10 hours on the road each day. He drives across bridges and through cities. He already makes a point of looking for drunken drivers and disabled vehicles. Now he's enlisting in the war on terrorism. Barnes, 46, of South Portland, Maine, is one of the 3 million truck drivers the industry hopes will sign up for training in how to spot suspicious activities that could indicate a potential terrorist attack. "Sept. 11 really made me aware of what could happen," said Barnes, who hauls paper products for Pottle's Transportation of Bangor, Maine....