Free Republic

Well I didn’t win the Powerball drawing last night. And apparently you didn’t either. With no winners in Saturday night's record $949.8 million Powerball jackpot, the next jackpot could reach an estimated $1.3 billion, lottery officials said early Sunday. What would you do if you won $1.3 billion? And since we’re playing make believe, let’s pretend that you don’t have to first give half your winnings to the IRS. I’d buy new appliances and spend the rest buying the 2016 American presidential election. At least I think $1.3 billion would be enough to Make America Great Again (MAGA).Alternatively, if it...

It sounds like Sean Penn has given up guns for good. It was at his annual pre-Golden Globes gala for J/P HRO that he revealed that girlfriend Charlize Theron convinced him to have his collection of nearly 65 firearms turned into a sculpture by artist Jeff Koons and then auctioned off for the Haiti relief organization. Penn told me at this year's benefit on Saturday night that he's not missing the weapons. "I think guns are not something to be missed," he said.

The recapture of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman took a surprise, Hollywood twist when a Mexican official said security forces located the whereabouts of the world's most-wanted trafficker thanks to a secret interview with U.S. actor Sean Penn. -snip- A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, told the Associated Press it was the Penn interview that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October. -snip- There was no immediate response from Penn's representatives to the Mexican official's comments.

Actor Sean Penn's interview with drug boss Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman was one factor that led to Mexican security forces capturing the kingpin, a government source told Reuters. Mexico's government was aware of the October interview with the legendary boss of the Sinaloa drugs cartel and was closely monitoring Penn's movements, a second government source told the news agency. -snip- Penn also wrote that he was aware the Mexican government and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration likely knew of his movements.

Sean Penn's secret interview with Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman helped law enforcement authorities to locate El Chapo's whereabouts. A Mexican official insisting on anonymity said Saturday it was the Penn interview as well as the drug lord's contacts with other celebrities that initially led law enforcement to authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October. At that time the official said they called off their raid because Guzman was was with two women and a child, according to the Associated Press. Officials in Mexico earlier in the day suggested it was the allure a potential...

Mexico Seeks to Extradite ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán to U.S. José de Córdoba and Dudley Althaus Updated Jan. 9, 2016 5:24 p.m. ET MEXICO CITY—Mexico will act on U.S. requests to extradite captured drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, the government said Saturday. Mr. Guzmán, known as “El Chapo” or “Shorty,” was recaptured Friday after escaping from a maximum-security prison in Mexico in July. Mr. Guzmán faces federal indictments in Chicago and in six other U.S. cities for drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes, such as homicide. The U.S. has filed two extradition requests with the Mexican government, which has ruled the...

Mexico's government aims to fulfill a request from the United States to extradite the newly-recaptured drug lord Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman to face drug trafficking charges, sources familiar with the situation said on Saturday. The Mexican Attorney General's office will be working as fast as possible to establish the path to extradition, and Chapo could be extradited by mid-year, one of the sources said. However the timing will likely depend on any injunctions filed by Guzman´s lawyers.

Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been recaptured and sent back to the maximum-security prison he escaped from six months ago. He was paraded before cameras before being bundled into a helicopter to Altiplano prison in central Mexico. He escaped from there in July through a tunnel dug in the showers. ...

Six months ago infamous Mexican drug kingpin and billionaire Joaquin El Chapo Guzman "escaped," for the second time, from a prison in Mexico. He escaped the first time by hiding in a laundry basket. The second time, he left the prison through a tunnel in his cell.  Pro-tip: El Chapo isn't "escaping," they're letting him out. That's how things work in Mexico.— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 13, 2015 Now, El Chapo has been recaptured and the United States, specifically the Drug Enforcement Agency, is demanding he be extradicted to the United States. The navy said in a statement that marines,...

“Mission accomplished : we have it. I want to inform Mexicans Joaquin Guzman Loera has been arrested,” President Pena Nieto said in a tweet from his verified Twitter account.

Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been captured, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced Friday via Twitter.

By 15, he said in an interview conducted in a jungle clearing by the actor and director Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine, he had begun to grow marijuana and poppies because there was no other way for his impoverished family to survive. Now, unapologetically, he said: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.” Though his fortune, estimated at $1 billion, has come with a trail of blood, he does not consider himself a violent man. “Look, all I do is defend myself,...

Sean Penn met and interviewed El Chapo while he was on the run in October last year and got him to admit to being the world's biggest drug lord - but did not turn the fugitive kingpin in. The extraordinary meeting took place in the Mexican jungle and was arranged by Penn, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and a fixer, with the permission of the Sinaloa cartel. In an article written by Penn for Rolling Stone, El Chapo says: 'I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes,...

Sean Penn interviewed fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo,” who was captured and returned to prison Friday, for Rolling Stone magazine. Loera was said to have been captured when he reached out to producers and actors about making a biopic of his life. The interview published Saturday evening was conducted in October while the drug lord was on the run from Mexican and U.S. authorities. Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, star of soap opera “La Reina del Sur,” conducted the interview with Penn. It was arranged through a producer he calls Espinoza in the article....

The United States is “partially” responsible for a jihadi massacre on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, carried out by Islamic State loyalists who killed 14 and wounding dozens more, Hussam Ayloush, the Los Angeles Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Friday. “Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism,” Ayloush said on CNN’s New Day.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told a gathering at Georgetown University that Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown were on “a collision course”, which ultimately resulted in Brown’s fatal shooting, because we have “not been invested in our nation’s infrastructure” and “because we have allowed collective bargaining to weaken.” “Darren Wilson and Mike Brown were on a collision course,” Ellison says in a video posted by the Georgetown University Campus Ministry last week. “What brought them into collision was the economic abandonment of their city. It was the fact they have been bleeding jobs, through I believe, unfair trade agreements. It...

Spouting off to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood looked as if he were slipping into doddering dementia, but he’s shrewder and more focused than ever in his Iraq War picture American Sniper. It’s a cracker­jack piece of filmmaking, a declaration that he’s not yet ready to be classified as an Old Master, that he can out-Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow. Morally, though, he has regressed from the heights of Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). In more ways than one, the Iraq occupation is seen through the sight of a high-powered rifle. The movie is scandalously blinkered....

The burning question of our day: If America is truly the hated place Barack Hussein Obama has worked to make it for five and a half interminably long years, then why are tens of thousands of Central Americans flooding its southern borders?

First Lady Michelle Obama talked about America as she visited a school today in China. She talked about the American dream: And my story isn’t unusual in America. Some of our most famous athletes, like LeBron James, and artists, like the singer Janelle Monae, came from struggling families like mine, as do many business leaders -- like Howard Schultz. He’s the head of a company called Starbucks, which many of you may have heard of. When Mr. Schultz was a boy his father lost his job, leaving their family destitute. But Mr. Schultz worked hard. He got a scholarship to...

UPDATE (9/12/13): Here is part of a statement written by Amanda Lickers, the woman Shireman-Grabowski claimed to assist in removing the flags. Lickers says she is a member of the Onondowa’ga Nation, which is a part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The statement was posted in an article on the website Climate Connections: yesterday i went to occupied abenaki territory. i was invited to middlebury college to facilitate a workshop on settler responsibility and decolonization. i walked across this campus whose stone wall structures weigh heavy on the landscape. the history of eugenics, genocide and colonial violence permeate that space so...