Free Republic

Americans in gun sites of Mexican army Posted: March 13, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: John Dougherty's recent book, "Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border," is available at WorldNetDaily's online store. © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com You'd think frequent gun battles along the U.S.-Mexico border between federal agents and citizen border-monitoring groups on this side, and drug and people smugglers on the other side, would make the national headlines. If you thought that, you'd be mistaken. Just ask Chris Simcox, owner of the Tombstone (Ariz.) Tumbleweed newspaper, and head of one such border group. He's trying to...

NYT Magazine January 25, 2004 The Girls Next Door By PETER LANDESMAN The house at 1212 1/2 West Front Street in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy, middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The ghosts of the world's most infamous, powerful and ruthless drug lords have risen violently in this turbulent city along the South Texas border. For years in cities such as Medellin, Colombia, and Tijuana, Mexico, men such as Pablo Escobar and the Arellano-Felix brothers used murder, kidnapping and extortion to terrorize law officers and enemies alike. Those men are now gone, killed or in custody. But a new generation has emerged, and this one has set its sights on Nuevo Laredo, a city of 500,000 people across the Rio Grande from the fastest-growing U.S. border city,...

Jury sees video of ex-police chief allegedly accepting bribe 02/19/2003 By LYNN BREZOSKY / The Associated PressMcALLEN, Texas — The grainy surveillance tape shows two friends, one a boisterous drug dealer boasting about his girlfriends, the other a mild-mannered policeman counting out $500 he made using his patrol car to protect the other's apparent narcotics haul."Easiest five hundred bucks you ever made," Rigoberto Quintanilla says in the video."Too easy," then-Donna police officer Marco Abel Partida responds. "I'm in the wrong business, dude."The video is part of the prosecution's case in a federal jury trial that goes into its second day...