Free Republic

In early December, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration. The move has raised hopes in many quarters – not only in the United States but around the world – that the embargo itself is now destined to disappear. This does not detract from the fact that Cuba is still a dictatorship. The...

FLORENCE, Ky. – Briana and Kaitlyn Himes said they feel lucky they're not planning a funeral for their parents after five adults overdosed on heroin at their parents' mobile home Saturday. While the adults got high and passed out, three children they were supposed to be caring for – ages 1, 11 and 12 - were in the house with them, according to a Boone County deputy's report. The Himes sisters said the adults might have died if their uncle, Michael Young, hadn't arrived just in time to save them.

Obama quietly eliminated the NATIONAL DRUG INTELLIGENCE CENTER, that was monitoring terrorist activity on the border. Mexican cartel violence is at an all-time high along the increasingly porous southern border yet the Obama Administration has shut down a critical intelligence agency dedicated to identifying, tracking and severing the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. It’s a senseless move, which is why it was done very quietly. The only real way to discover that the Justice Department’s 19-year-old National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) has been closed is by trying to visit its website. It simply says that on June 15, 2012,...

Full Title: Heroin, guns, swords and a GRENADE LAUNCHER: Troubled ex-NBA star Robert Swift 'found with an arsenal of weapons and drugs in his bedroom' A former NBA player has been charged with a gun crime after a police raid on the house of an alleged drug-dealer where he was staying uncovered heroin, meth, guns, a grenade launcher and several prostitutes.

(Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog) ********************************************************* Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping...

The U.S. military learned the hard way not to interfere with Afghanistan’s thriving production of poppies, the colorful flowers that are the source of opium and, by extension, heroin. Now we know the cost of that lesson—a cool $7.6 billion. On Oct. 14, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction—a.k.a., SIGAR—alerted the Defense, State and Justice Departments to this latest dollar figure for poppy-elimination efforts. And here’s SIGAR’s kicker. Despite the nearly $8 billion America has spent on eradication efforts, today the Afghan opium trade is booming. At 400,000 acres, the poppy crop in 2013 was the biggest ever.

The U.S. is losing the “war on drugs” in Afghanistan, with more than $7 billion invested in counternarcotics efforts since the fall of the Taliban yet poppy-growing at an all-time high. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction issued a report today detailing how the opium suppliers are flourishing thanks to better farm technology and more arable land, defying wipeouts from agricultural disease and interdiction programs to produce bumper crops.

SELBYVILLE, Del. (AP) — A 4-year-old girl mistakenly took hundreds of packets of heroin to her day care center and began passing it out to classmates, thinking it was candy, Delaware State Police said Tuesday. Several children who received the packets Monday morning went to the hospital as a precaution, police said. But no packets were opened, and all of the kids were released after being examined. Police say the child unknowingly brought the heroin to the center when her mother gave her a different backpack because the girl's regular backpack had been ruined by the family pet. Police say...

A Delaware mother was arrested after her 4-year-old daughter brought over 200 bags of heroin to school and passed them out to other children at a local daycare, thinking they were candy, police say.

SELBYVILLE, Del. (WPVI) -- A mother of a 4-year-old was arrested after her daughter brought heroin into a daycare and began passing it out to other children, Delaware State Police say. Troopers were called to the Hickory Tree Child Care Center located at 2 Hickory Tree Lane in Selbyville around 11:45 a.m. Monday after daycare workers observed some children with small bags of an unknown substance.

Officials say two people fleeing police crashed into another vehicle in Wilmington, Delaware Thursday night. The incident happened at the intersection of East Lea Boulevard and North Market Street. It was 9:08 p.m. when a Delaware State Trooper was dispatched to the parking lot of the Miller Road Shopping Center on the 3600 block of Miller Road. A concerned citizen reported possible drug activity taking place inside a Ford Mustang parked in the parking lot. When the Trooper arrived on the scene he exited his vehicle and approached the Mustang on foot to investigate. As he approached he observed the...

A 9 year boy who found his mom high on heroine on the street, slapped the heck out of her in a shocking video that was posted on instagram. The distraught little boy can be heard screaming "Mommy, wake up. Can you talk to me? Wake up" while the woman stares blankly at him, making him slap her again and again.

A New Jersey grand jury indicted 42 alleged drug dealers Friday in connection with a series of arrests last November that prosecutors are calling the largest drug bust in Camden in more than a decade. Prosecutors said the 56-page indictment, which stemmed from a takedown dubbed “Operation North Pole,” takes aim at a violent narcotics network with ties to Mexican cartels whose participants dealt millions of dollars in cocaine and heroin each year.

A commission composed mostly of former world leaders will recommend Tuesday that governments move beyond legalizing marijuana and decriminalize and regulate the use of most other illegal drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The international drug-control system is broken, says a report to be released Tuesday in New York by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Governments should be allowed wide latitude to experiment with the regulation of drugs, except for the most lethal, says the commission, whose 21 members include former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and former presidents such as Brazil´s...

Photo: Mombasa County Government Drug ship destroyed at Mombasa. By Kazungu Chai Mombasa — President Uhuru Kenyatta today sent a clear signal to drug traffickers that they will not be allowed to continue the illegal trade at the expense of the dreams of the Kenyan youth. He personally led an operation to blow up a ship and destroy heroin worth over Kshs 1 billion. The President - aboard a Kenya Air Force chopper and the Kenya Navy in their modern warship KNS Jasiri - led journalists, security personnel and anti-narcotic officials as the ship and the drugs were blown off...

Why is Vernon Charles Allen Merriweather suing talk show maven Oprah Winfrey and Starbucks for discrimination and harassment to the tune of $15 million? Well, the man claims that the tea bearing Oprah’s name and sold at the famed coffee chain was not only laced with heroin but Ambien and hallucinogens as well, according to TMZ. The Buffalo, New York, resident allegedly filed a federal lawsuit stating that when he applied for a job at Starbucks, he was told in no uncertain terms, “We don’t hire ni****s!” The suit then claims the baristas referred to themselves as members of the...

<p>TOLEDO, Ohio — An Ohio sheriff says his office will begin investigating heroin overdose deaths as homicides and pursue murder charges against dealers who provided the drugs.</p> <p>Lucas County Sheriff John Sharp has dedicated three full-time and one part-time detective to investigate overdoses in his county, where heroin deaths have jumped from eight four years ago to 80 last year.</p>

Mexican Cartels Buying Afghan Heroin PVNN More Sharing ServicesShareShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on googleShare on myspace Mexican cartels have established business alliances with gangs operating in places like Afganistán and Turkey, in order to obtain and smuggle drugs to supply Europe and North America, according to investigator Edgardo Buscaglia, a fellow at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM). In an interview with EL UNIVERSAL, Buscaglia confirmed that Mexican narcotraffickers operate like multinational emissaries "to establish contacts and place operatives that can deal with the Turkish and Indian criminal organizations in order to facilitate the production and sale of...

Americans are misfocused on the surge of children crossing the US-Mexican border. The bigger border issue is the rapid rise of heroin trafficking, driven by young Americans switching from prescription painkillers.The big debate in Washington this summer is the surge of children from Central America crossing illegally into the United States. President Obama and Congress still seem far apart on a solution for this immigration crisis. But they may find it easier to agree on another surge across the US-Mexican border, one that is far more costly.Since 2008, the quantity of heroin seized along the border has jumped nearly fourfold....

A high-priced prostitute injected a married Google executive with a fatal dose of heroin before callously stepping over his dying body to finish her glass of wine, police have revealed. Alix Tichelman, 26, was arrested on Friday in the death of Forrest Hayes, a 51-year-old father-of-five and former Apple exec, aboard his yacht in Santa Cruz, California last November. Tichelman, who met her clients through a website called Seeking Arrangement, had exchanged texts and emails with Hayes and met with him a few times before the deadly November 26 encounter. That day, they met on Hayes' 50-foot yacht, Escape, at...