Free Republic

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward making lots of money. That's Jamen Shively's thesis, anyway. The former Microsoft manager, 45, is embarking on a publicity tour for the marijuana enterprise he's happy to label the "Starbucks" of pot. "Yes, we can" is for Shively "yes, we are big marijuana" -- and he's getting ready for what he believes is The Next Big Thing: legal pot -- everywhere. With his trusty sidekick, former Mexican president Vicente Fox -- a partner of Shively's in Diego Pellicer, Inc., the nation's first "premium marijuana" retail brand -- in...

"Mexico cannot limit the freedom of its citizens to go anywhere they like. If we would do so, we would be like Cuba....that's not our job. Our job is to create the opportunities for them in Mexico."

MEXICO CITY — Once praised lavishly by the United States for waging a war on drugs, Mexico's last two presidents now say legalizing them may be the best way to end the rising violence the U.S.-backed campaign has unleashed. Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox led efforts to crush drug trafficking gangs in Mexico between 1994 and 2006 but the rapid escalation of violence over the past four years under President Felipe Calderon has convinced them a change of tack is needed. "As a country, we are going through problems due to the fact that the United States consumes too many...

MEXICO CITY — Sounds like former President Vicente Fox wishes he could vote in California. Twice on Wednesday, Fox took to the airwaves to encourage Californians Nov. 2 to approve Proposition 19, the ballot initiative to legalize the commercial cultivation and sale of marijuana. “How great it would be for California to set this example. May God let it pass,” Fox told the W radio network in Mexico. “The other U.S. states will have to follow step.” If California legalizes marijuana, it may help Mexican peasant farmers, and boost Mexico's exports, he added.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox arrived in Laredo earlier this evening after being invited by local groups to discuss trade between the US and Mexico. But that’s not all that Fox decided to discuss when he got off the plane. Fox was taking on questions about what seems to be escalating violence in Mexico, and not surprisingly, he says the United States shares the blame for what’s happening across the border. Invited by local groups to discuss US-Mexico trade, former president of Mexico Vicente Fox, instead taking time to discuss other matters: “We’re working for the United States. The truth...

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox was in San Antonio Friday, delivering a wide-ranging address about U.S.-Mexico relations that touched on trade, the drug war, comprehensive immigration reform and the United States' “mammoth” financial crisis that has spread worldwide. Fox also delivered a message of hope — hope that someday Canada, the United States and Mexico, indeed the rest of Latin America, would function like the European Union. “It's an extremely successful model,” said Fox, whose wife, Marta Sahagún, accompanied him. “My vision is to speed up the process of further integration.” Fox was in town to address the Congressional Hispanic...

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox called Tuesday for increased trade and drug enforcement cooperation rather than a wall that separates neighbors. “Building a wall is not the answer to our problems,” Fox told about 2,000 Nebraskans during a speech at the Orpheum Theater. “Instead of building walls, we should be building bridges of understanding and cooperation, and education exchange, and technology exchange, and friendship. “We are neighbors,” he said, “and we have been friends for a long, long time.” Trade represents “wealth creation and job creation,” Fox said. Not only in the United States, he said, but in Mexico, where...

Wed February 6, 2008 Mexico's ex-president advocates law reform By Don Mecoy Business Writer Oklahoma and other states have launched immigration legislation because Congress has failed to act, former Mexico President Vicente Fox said Tuesday in Oklahoma City. Fox, speaking at the Civic Center Music Hall, said the United States must develop a sensible national immigration policy. "At the very end, it's a federal issue so in the end it should be satisfied by the federal government, by the U.S. Congress,” Fox said. "Immigration is an asset to every nation. It's an asset to the United States, no doubt. What...

STORM LAKE, Iowa (AP) -- Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Friday his native country and the United States would benefit from electing a female president. The reason, Fox said, is that women in leadership have different characteristics than their male counterparts. These traits have long been embraced by businesses across the world, he said, but they have yet to take hold in government. ``Maybe it is because having kids is such a special thing. ... (Women) think about the future more, they think about their children,'' he said during a lecture at Buena Vista University in northwest Iowa. During...

America’s penchant for accepting new hate crimes bills is becoming a strain on the idea that “the government can’t legislate the morality of the governed.” It is a reverse way of saying we can’t tell you to do what’s good; so we’ll lower the bar. Now doing what is evil is no longer all that bad.

The former Mexican president is touting his new memoirs in a cross-country trip Former Mexican President Vicente Fox doesn't get many breaks these days. He was slapped around on The O'Reilly Factor, had a new statue of his likeness yanked down by an angry mob in Veracruz, and along the way promoted his memoirs, which were published in English. Fox, whose U.S. tour is taking him from New York to California and points in between, stopped off in Houston on Monday, where he signed autographs, posed for photographs and spoke of his plans to follow the leads of former Presidents...

A Cowboys team inspired by its best start in 24 years, a franchise desperate to return to the NFL's elite, now has a better idea of what lies ahead. The outlook was as problematic as the snarled traffic around Texas Stadium after the game. But New England is the team of this decade. The Patriots' 48-27 victory was an affirmation of the present. "Well," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said sheepishly, "they are that good."

Opposition protesters egged and then tore down a bronze statue of former Mexican President Vicente Fox down on Saturday, just hours after it was erected.

Opposition protesters in Mexico have torn down a bronze statue of the former president, Vicente Fox, just hours after it was erected. They threw eggs at the monument in Boca del Rio in the state of Veracruz, before putting a rope around its neck and pulling it to the ground. Many of the crowd were reported to be supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. It lost power after more than 70 years when Mr Fox was elected in July 2000. More than 100 angry protesters are reported to have attacked the statue on Saturday morning, just after it...

<p>Could the US dollar be destined to join the D-Mark and the franc in the graveyard of defunct national currencies? Vicente Fox, former Mexican president, told CNN this week that he had talked to US president George W. Bush about the possibility of a regional currency for the Americas.</p>

WASHINGTON – Mexico's former President Vicente Fox is making no secret of his desire to promote a "North American Union" to compete economically with Europe and the Far East. In a promotional tour for his new book, "Revolution of Hope," Fox told NPR's "Talk of the Nation" audience: "That's part of my Americas dream, that we can build our future together. We are partners with United States and Canada through NAFTA. There are other blocs in Latin America, but at the very end a continental trade agreement and union on the long term would be a way to develop ourselves...

In an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live," the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, confirmed the existence of a government plan to create the amero as a new regional currency to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican Peso. It possibly was the first time a leader of Mexico, Canada or the U.S. openly confirmed a plan to create a regional currency. Fox explained the current regional trade agreement is intended to evolve into other previously hidden aspects of integration.

MEXICO CITY — Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose election seven years ago ended decades of corrupt, one-party rule, is learning that this democracy thing has a downside. Opposition legislators called Thursday for a congressional investigation into the sources of Fox's apparent wealth. The legislators joined a growing media and political uproar about the finances of Fox's and Marta Sahagun, the former spokeswoman who became his second wife. Compared with the lucre of other past presidents, Fox's purse may seem downright plebeian. But in today's Mexico, where political opponents publicly pummel and the press feels free to allege with abandon,...

The two leaders shared a border for six years, but former Mexico President Vicente Fox gives a tough assessment on President Bush in a new book out next month, according to U.S. News and World Report. In "Revolution of Hope," set to hit book stores October 4, Fox calls Bush "the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life," and is sharply critical of the president's Iraq policy and his immigration stance, according to the magazine. Though he describes warm relations with Bush, Fox in the book also calls the president's Spanish skills "grade-school" level and says, "I can't...

OTTAWA — It's a threat that has left-wing Canadian nationalists and right-wing U.S. congressmen in rare and dismayed agreement: a freeway, four football fields wide, stretching from Mexico to northern Manitoba. Groups on both sides of the political spectrum say the corridor - dubbed the NAFTA superhighway - is a primary goal of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America established two years ago by the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico. At separate press conferences in Ottawa yesterday, the road was held out as an example of the potentially repugnant effects of the trilateral partnership....