Free Republic

A 16 kilo (35.5 pounds) consignment of cocaine that Mexican drug traffickers recently lost has turned up in an unlikely place -- the United Nations in New York. Police and UN officials Thursday described how two fake UN bags containing the drugs -- which experts said had a street value of about $2 million -- set off a security alert when they were delivered, apparently by accident, to the the global body's headquarters. The bags, which had the UN symbol printed on them, were shipped from Mexico through the DHL delivery company's center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne...

CNN’s John King was correct to bring up Newt Gingrich’s divorce and his ex-wife’s comments about “open marriage.” Discussions of the candidates personal life are fair game to allow the public to fully understand the character of those that want to run in this next Presidential election. But Barack Obama’s prior Cocaine use MUST also be viewed as fair game for press inquiries, and the press should begin probing now. The public has not had this character flaw fully vetted due to the “Main Stream Media” fawning over Obama in the last election cycle. It is now time to have...

Really, how many times do we have to say this? If your drug dealer shorts you, steals your money, or provides a substance other than the illegal one sought, do not call 911. Suzanne Basham, 47, made that mistake yesterday morning when she dialed police in Springfield, Missouri to report that she had paid $40 for crack cocaine that turned out to be sugar. Basham, who was not seeking a sugar high, asked cops to arrest her dealer for theft (and, of course, secure a refund for her). While patrolmen went to the address where Basham said she purchased the...

SEATTLE – A Seattle police officer who was arrested for possession of cocaine Thursday morning committed suicide after he was released from jail. The body of Officer Richard F. Nelson, 50, was found on the John Wayne Trail near Rattlesnake Lake with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Seattle Police said. Just hours earlier, Nelson was arrested and booked into the King County Jail after police officers in the Rainier Valley area provided him with an unknown amount of cocaine. Nelson was pulled over in his personal vehicle and arrested following the end of his shift. Nelson was the subject of an...

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

Beacon Hill Republicans are calling for a massive overhaul of the state’s welfare system after a crew of alleged Lynn grifters was charged with scamming thousands from taxpayer-funded EBT cards — including some who allegedly took the public money as payment for crack. “I want to see major reform here in Massachusetts,” fumed state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, a Taunton Republican heading a legislative panel reviewing the EBT program. “You can spend that money on anything you want. There’s no oversight.” The latest example of alleged rampant abuse occurred in Lynn, where authorities said four convenience stores let customers withdraw hundreds...

ASPEN — Brooke Mueller, ex-wife of actor Charlie Sheen, was arrested shortly after midnight Saturday at an Aspen nightclub and charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault and felony possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. At approximately 11:32 p.m. Friday, Aspen Police Department officers were doing a routine walk-through at Belly Up Aspen when a woman reported that an assault had taken place. Police said the woman identified the culprit as Mueller, who was found shortly after midnight at the dance club Escobar. Mueller was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, a class-four felony, and third-degree...

The used Chrysler minivan came fully loaded, with power steering, foldaway seats, tinted windows -- and half a million dollars' worth of cocaine. San Jose psychologist Charles Preston had no clue there was a cellophane-wrapped stash of "snow" hidden inside the frame when he bought the pristine-condition, 2008 van last year from Thrifty Car Sales in Santa Clara. True, the windows wouldn't roll down all the way. But he had no reason to suspect it was because the door panels were crammed with kilos of coke. He found out 15 months later when he went to a mechanic to get...

This is an excerpt of the story of Larry Sinclair: September - October 2007: "This first called shocked me in that this “Mr. Young” asked me why I had not asked Senator Obama to disclose the sexual encounters I had with Mr. Obama in 1999. I was shocked as I had never mentioned to the campaign or anyone working for the campaign any sexual encounters as my call was prompted by drug allegations only. The call ended with “Mr. Young” stating I would hear from someone in a few days. [snip] In late October 2007, I received a text message...

An 87-year-old Indiana man was arraigned on drug charges in federal court in Detroit on Monday after police found 228 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $2.9 million in his pickup following a routine traffic stop. A state trooper patrolling Interstate 94 near Ann Arbor pulled over Leo Earl Sharp on Friday for following too closely and executing an improper lane change, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court...

Drug smugglers are endlessly creative when it comes to inventing ways to move marijuana, cocaine and other contraband from Mexico into the United States. In the latest innovation uncovered by law enforcement, smugglers in the border town of Nogales, Arizona were bringing drugs into the U.S. for the cost of a quarter. The parking meters on International Street, which hugs the border fence in Nogales, cost 25 cents. Smugglers in Mexico tunneled under the fence and under the metered parking spaces, and then carefully cut neat rectangles out of the pavement. Their confederates on the U.S. side would park false-bottomed...

BOSTON (CBS) – State police arrested a man at Logan Airport Monday night for allegedly trying to smuggle cocaine in his shoes. Twenty-four-year-old Carlos Lanns of Hamilton, New Jersey, arrived in Boston on a JetBlue flight from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. “Following a joint investigation involving US Customs and Border Protection, troopers and customs officers recovered just over two kilograms of cocaine secreted inside the insoles of various pairs of shoes in the passenger’s checked luggage,” police said in a statement Tuesday. State police spokesman David Procopio said the insoles were made of cocaine and were hidden inside...

ATHENS -- A Bulgarian baker was arrested after serving cocaine-sprinkled cookies to guests at a Greek funeral, news website Novinite reported Wednesday. Mourners phoned for help after the traditional Greek cookies caused them to act strangely, and police discovered the cookies were sprinkled with cocaine instead of powdered sugar. The baker, who is a Bulgarian national, was involved in drug trafficking and sent the cookies to the funeral service by mistake, police said.

Thomas Sowell on the War on DrugsMilton Friedman on the War on Drugs

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto's money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm's parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted...

Enjoy Fellas and Gals of Free Republic... Ann Coulter doing what she does best!

Detroit Police say they’ve conducted dozens of raids in the last six weeks netting them millions of dollars in drugs. Since July 1st, Detroit police have raided more than 90 homes, in one of the city’s biggest busts ever. “Since July first, we have raided a total of 90 homes, arrested 616 individuals and confiscated 69 firearms,” Police Chief Ralph Godbee said. “We’ve taken in about $3.5 million worth of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, various pills, Oxycontin and things of that nature, and over $360,000 in cash and narcotic proceeds.”

The son of a heavy hitter in a powerful Mexican drug trafficking organization has filed explosive legal pleadings in federal court in Chicago accusing the US government of cutting a deal with the the “Sinaloa Cartel” that gave its leadership “carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States. The indictment pending against Zambada Niebla claims he served as the “logistical coordinator” for the “cartel,” helping to oversee an operation that imported into the US “multi-ton quantities of cocaine. Zambada Niebla also claims to be an asset of the US...

A Merrit Island fisherman died in a South Miami hospital on Thursday after sampling what may have been a brick of cocaine he found floating offshore in the Keys, according to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Thomas Swindal, 53, was fishing with his brother near Marathon on Wednesday when they came across what appeared to be a kilo of cocaine floating in the water. The pair discussed what to do with it, Kenneth Swindal told authorities, and shortly stored it in the bait well of their boat and resumed fishing. Minutes later, Kenneth Swindal said, he saw his brother open...

The woman flying into Fort Lauderdale International Airport from Colombia on Saturday afternoon had three bags of kidney beans and two bags of pistachios in her carry-on suitcase. It must have struck the customs inspector as odd. So he cut open one of the kidney beans, to reveal "a white powdery substance" – cocaine, six kilos' (13.2 pounds') worth in all.

A man bound for Nigeria with a stomach full of cocaine was intercepted by authorities at an Orlando airport this month, federal authorities say. According to a criminal complaint, 54-year-old Barratt Kalu Eni tried to pass through Orlando International Airport with almost a kilogram of cocaine in his body on July 9. He'd flown from Houston to Orlando and was en-route to London when agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation confronted him.

<p>JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Police in Mississippi say a woman opened fire on a puppy that had threatened children, but wound up shooting and killing her husband.</p> <p>Witnesses tell police that the pit bull named "Cocaine" had lunged at some children and tried to attack them on Friday. The dead man's son says the children were taken inside and his father picked the dog up.</p>

JACKSON, Miss., July 16 (UPI) -- A Mississippi woman accidentally shot and killed her husband while aiming at a pit bull witnesses said was going after some children, officials say. Betty Walker of Jackson was firing a .38-caliber revolver at an 8-month-old pit bull that was trying to attack the children and misfired, hitting her husband Robert in the chest Friday afternoon, The (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger reported. Robert Walker was pronounced dead less than 2 hours later at a hospital.

Entire interview: http://www.archive.org/details/LarrySinclairInterviewOnThelongLiveAmericaProgram

On the heels of a law signed last year by President Barack Obama limiting sentences for crack cocaine offenses, thousands of prisoners for crimes related to the drug will be eligible for early release, the U.S. Sentencing Commission ruled Thursday. More than 12,000 prisoners nationwide who have been convicted of felony crimes related to the possession, sale and trafficking of crack could have their sentences reduced in light of the decision, which piggybacks off the Fair Sentencing Act. The law, which more closely aligns recommended sentences for crack to those for powder cocaine and which was signed last August, didn’t...

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the...

SALT LAKE CITY — A Salt Lake City woman has been charged with a third degree felony for allegedly asking an undercover police officer to give her drugs in exchange for an Olive Garden salad in a to-go box. The 33-year-old woman approached the undercover officer who was working on the corner of 200 South and 300 West in Salt Lake, according to charging documents. The woman was carrying a white food container and asked the undercover officer for $10 worth of cocaine, according to the charges. She "stated that she wanted some cocaine, but she only had $2 and...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The nephew of Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for heading a major cocaine ring out of the western Pennsylvania town both called home. But federal prosecutors say 33-year-old Anthony A. Dorsett, of Aliquippa, has been cooperating with authorities — testifying against several of the 12 others indicted with him three years ago — which may result in an eventual sentence reduction. The indictment said the ring was based in that city's crime-ridden Linmar Terrace public housing complex, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Taking cocaine just once can trigger dramatic changes in the brain, causing memory loss and leaving the user addicted, researchers have found. The drug can 'hijack' normal memory function, making it difficult for those who have taken it to think about anything else. The findings - the first to show cocaine's impact on the brain - will add to growing alarm about its long-term effects. [Snip] The processes which under-lie memory are also accelerated over this period. Dr Antonello Bonci, assistant professor of neurology at the University of California in San Francisco, who led the research, said: 'The study shows...

The investigation of an MBTA driver who faces drug dealing charges began in May 2010 when an informant tipped police that "a black female ... is selling crack cocaine from an MBTA bus," according to a police report filed in court. The report also said that Cynthia King, 46, of Brockton told police after her arrest, "I needed the extra money, I don't make enough money."

Cocaine Makes World Go Round

A 22-year-old East Boston woman is to be arraigned today in East Boston District Court on cocaine trafficking charges after she allegedly flew into Logan International Airport with more than a kilogram of the drug concealed in what authorities said was a "diaper-like" garment. Karen Morla Ramos disembarked from a JetBlue flight from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, at about 7:25 a.m. Sunday, State Police said in a statement.

Drug Travels From Africa To Indianapolis In 48 Hours. Most residents of Indianapolis, including many in the law enforcement community, have never heard of the drug called khat...over the past three years, hundreds of pounds of the drug have been sold on the streets of Indianapolis, mostly to people of African descent... Khat is a plant that grows plentifully in east Africa, specifically in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Users chew the leaves of the plant to release a compound called cathinone, which is considered a "schedule 1" amphetamine and hallucinogen under U.S. law... traffickers used cell phones and sophisticated code...

By Mark Gray Monday March 21, 2011 08:25 AM EDT Paris Hilton Prosecutor Arrested on Drug Charges The Las Vegas district attorney who helped prosecute Paris Hilton and Bruno Mars on separate drug charges in 2010 was arrested and booked into jail on drug charges of his own over the weekend. David Charles Schubert, 47, was booked into jail Saturday on a charge of possession of cocaine, according to jail records. The charge was the same on which Hilton and Mars were initially booked following their arrests last summer. The socialite and the musician both later struck plea deals. RELATED:...

Washington's local NBC affiliate reports: D.C. police confirmed that a substance ingested by students at a northwest D.C. elementary school was cocaine, according to D.C. Public Schools.[SNIP]Here's The Post's Jay Matthews in November 2008, urging the first couple to consider sending the kids to public school: Why not see what their tax dollars are paying for? One educational gem happens to be the closest public school to their new home.[SNIP] Sixty-nine percent of Thomson's 355 students are from low-income families. Forty percent are Hispanic, 34 percent black, 22 percent Asian American and 5 percent white. That demographic mix often means...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

MORE THAN 335 MILES OFF THE COAST OF COSTA RICA - A boarding team from the Coast Guard Cutter Midgett pulled up alongside the 35-foot-long submarine and tried to hail the crew in both English and Spanish. ... The Midgett took the four sub crewmembers onboard the cutter. The men told the Coast Guard the vessel was from Colombia - and the purpose of their voyage was to transport cocaine. The next morning, the Coast Guard boarded the vessel and found 300 bales of what was later determined to be cocaine - 6,000 kilograms in all. All in a day's...

Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization has become increasingly reliant on organized crime, including cocaine smuggling, human trafficking and kidnapping, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in Manhattan's federal court. The charges filed against three alleged al-Qaeda associates by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan is the latest chilling evidence of a convergence between terrorism and organized crime. Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman were snatched in Ghana on Wednesday by a Drug Enforcement Administration sting and shipped to New York, where they arrived on Friday to face charges of conspiracy to commit acts of narco-terrorism and providing material support...

LA PAZ, Bolivia – President Evo Morales has been re-elected as head of Bolivia's largest coca-growers union, a post he has held for more than two decades. Morales was sworn in late Monday as head of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, which represents more than 40,000 growers. .. Morales called his leadership of the union largely "symbolic" but promised regular meetings. His re-election was criticized by opposition members, who said it was inappropriate given an apparent rise in drug trafficking violence.

Natalie Holloway murder suspect, Joran van der Sloot, has been ominously quiet for quite a while. That's not surprising since he's been languishing in Peru's Miguel Castro Castro prison since June awaiting the completion of the investigation of Stephany Flores's murder. On January 15th however, Van der Sloot suddenly decided to lunge back into the headlines by stabbing a guard and then attempting to hold him hostage in a crazy, and therefore unsuccessful attempt to break out of prison. According to the National Enquirer, Van der Sloot suddenly "freaked out" when guard, Luis Gavancho, brought a tray of food into...

PHILIPPINES congressman Ronald Singson has admitted he tried to smuggle cocaine into HK in his underpants. The colourful 42-year-old, who is from one of the Philippines' most high-profile political families, admitted to bringing 6.67 grams of cocaine and two tablets of the narcotic Nitrazepam into the city on July 11, 2010. He was arrested at Hong Kong's international airport by customs officers who found a small amount of cocaine and pills in his luggage, with six grams of cocaine hidden in his underpants. The total value of the cocaine was about $2000. The politician, also a music promoter whose business...

Charlie Sheen wrote a $30,000 check to a porn star in the middle of his 36-hour party binge -- because he felt like it -- and TMZ has the unbelievable proof. Sources involved in the bender tell us ... Sheen broke out his checkbook during a conversation with a porn star Wednesday in which he asked her to join the "porn family" he wants to create. We're told Sheen -- in a showing of good faith -- wrote a $30,000 check made out to "cash" and told the porn star to take it to the bank ... and the money...

The chemicals were stored in vats in the basement of an Egyptian restaurant in downtown Brussels. The suicide bomber, a former soccer player who had fallen into drug use and petty crime, had been selected. The target, the American Embassy in Paris, had been scouted. All that remained was the signal from Osama bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan to strike. The nod was to come from a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was on his way back from training in Afghanistan. But he was arrested in transit, and he talked, spilling to French interrogators details of what could have been ...

OGDEN -- A new product being marketed as bath salts but can be used similar to cocaine is slowly making its way through the Top of Utah, law enforcement officials say. The product goes by many names, but is most commonly known as Ivory Wave. It is packaged as bath salts, but a quick web search shows many are snorting or injecting the product to get a high similar to, or even more intense than, cocaine. Weber-Morgan Drug Strike Force Lt. Darin Parke said his officers have seen the drug recently while executing search warrants. "We've seen it during our...

PULASKI COUNTY, Mo. (Dec. 16, 2010) — It took more than a year after her arrest to file charges, but a civilian employee of the Army’s chemical school at Fort Leonard Wood now faces Class B felony drug possession charges accusing her of accepting delivery of 51.7 grams of cocaine on Nov. 21 of last year, with intent to distribute the controlled substance. The charges against Deneen A. Lee, 46, carry a sentence of five to 15 years in state prison. She’s retained local attorney Mark Prugh; on Dec. 7 her attorney waived formal arraignment, entered a plea of innocent,...

Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be...

MESA - Mesa Police seized $300,000 worth of drugs and arrested more than a dozen suspects in a bust last week. The suspects are accused of running a drug trafficking ring with the help of employees from the Motor Vehicle Department. The 4-month investigation culminated in 13 arrests. Jose Marisca is a suspected illegal immigrant accused of running a major drug trafficking ring in the valley. Court records show that agents seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana, cocaine, and meth from Marisca's home -- worth about $300,000 on the street. Jesus Rubio was also arrested. He is accused of conspiring...

Two men from Mexico and the Domincan Republic are set to be arraigned today in Chelsea District Court after authorities last night seized nearly 200 pounds of cocaine from a trailer in Revere, prosecutors said. Gilberto Cruz Padilla, 24, and Rafael Jesus Montero, 22, are each charged with one count of trafficking 200 grams or more of cocaine, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.

The Transportation Security Administration worker who earlier this year was canned for falsely claiming to have discovered cocaine in the luggage of travelers was a bomb appraisal officer who was supposed to be evaluating new screening equipment at the time he was pranking his unsuspecting targets, records show. TSA documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request provide further details about the January incidents at the Philadelphia International Airport. The name of the bomb appraisal officer has been redacted from the material, though one memo indicates that when the worker was confronted, “He did say humbly that...

Raymond Stanley Roberts was pulled over Wednesday in a routine traffic stop for speeding. Approaching the Hyundai, deputies said they could smell a strong odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle, according to the report. After writing a speeding ticket, a Manatee County Sheriff's deputy asked Roberts, 25, if he smoked marijuana and when had he done it last. Roberts replied that he smoked the night before and there was nothing in the car. He even told the two deputies to search the car, reports The Bradenton Herald.