Free Republic

ST. LOUIS – Gerald Hunter, 56, of Los Angeles, appeared Friday before U.S. District Judge John A. Ross and was sentenced to life in federal prison. Hunter was convicted of conspiracy to distribute more than 400 grams of fentanyl, possession with intent to distribute more than 400 grams of fentanyl, conspiracy to distribute over five kilograms of cocaine, and two counts of money laundering. A federal jury returned the verdicts after a week-long trial in October 2021

The Washington State Supreme Court effectively legalized drugs in a stunning and dangerous decision. Thousands of violent felons, like child rapists, could be released as a result.The misguided court’s split ruling declares the state’s felony drug possession law is unconstitutional. Consequently, police departments across the state, including in Seattle and Tacoma, will no longer arrest individuals for simple drug possession.The court’s claim makes little sense. It’s driven by ideology. And the only way to correct this egregious ruling is through the Legislature. But state Democrats were already actively pursuing drug legalization, making a fix unlikely.The state Supreme Court argued that...

Seven million dollars might not seem like a lot when you consider that the illegal drug business generates hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue for organized crime all over the world. But, at least there’s $7 million worth of hard drugs off the streets. A major drug bust occurred earlier this week at the U.S./Mexico border in Texas. Border officials said that an estimated $6,998,000 worth of methamphetamine, cocaine and what is believed to be heroin were discovered. Border agents at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge cargo facility were alerted to a commercial shipment of stone blocks on Monday. Officers...

President Obama commuted the prison sentences Friday of 42 more inmates, nearly half of whom were serving life terms. The commutations bring Mr. Obama’s total to 348, more than the previous seven presidents combined, as he pushes to grant clemency for people mostly convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. White House counsel Neil Eggleston said those receiving clemency were serving prison terms “under outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws.”

Shane Leon Rhea is a 39-year-old ex-con with a long criminal record who’d been released from his latest prison stint in June. Samantha Rae Monden was a 30-year-old married mother of two young children and a former nurse ... On Wednesday afternoon, the seemingly disparate group had gathered in a southeast Oklahoma City motel room. Just what brought them together in Room 167 of the Plaza Inn motel at 3200 S Prospect Ave. remains a mystery. But the result was a shoot-out that left Monden dead, two officers wounded, Rhea and Williams hospitalized in critical condition, Boen and Patterson in...

America is doped up—and drunk. According to a shocking new report from the Health and Human Services Department, there were 24.6 million people aged 12 or older who used illicit drugs during just one month last year. “That’s enough people to fill every major league baseball stadium in the U.S. 19 times,” said the report. There are 30 MLB stadiums. Even worse: Of the 24.6 million dopers, 2.2 million were adolescents aged 12 to 17. …

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An Agoura Hills family is raising awareness about the dangers of heroin addiction among teens. The Isaac family is opening up about the drug that brought their 19-year-old son’s life to an end on Aug. 21, when he was found dead from a drug overdose. “The face of heroin has changed,” Rick Isaac told CBS2′s Serene Branson when recalling his late son, Josh. The Agoura Hills High School graduate grew up in a loving home, involved in baseball, basketball, soccer and skateboarding. Rick and Joyce Isaac now say they’ve learned a painful truth — heroin doesn’t...

Listening to the latest media chatter, one could get the impression that murder in the US is historically bad and getting worse. As the Reverend Al Sharpton put it, "The time for their talk is over. Now's the time for action, and real change on gun control."Actually, now would seem to be a very bad time for such action. The reason is simple: the murder rate is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961: 4.7 murders per 100,000 people. In only 5 years since 1910 has it...

At 5:30 a.m. on May 10, armed men broke into the bedroom of Kirk Kyle Farrar’s 12 year-old daughter and shook her awake. The men led her downstairs at gunpoint and forced her to lie on the floor next to her mother and father, with her hands behind her head. Another armed man took Farrar’s two-year-old son from his crib, and would not let his parents hold him. “My son screamed for his mother for what seemed like an eternity,” Farrar wrote in an email to friends, obtained by Reason. “I will never forget the hopeless feeling of not being...

The U.S. government announced on Saturday afternoon that for the first time ever a fully operational submarine used by drug traffickers has been seized in the waters of South America. The craft, which could move multi-ton loads of cocaine, was seized in a jungle tributary of Ecuador leading to the Pacific Ocean by Ecuadoran authorities using Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence.

Obama amputates our nuclear arms By: Charles Krauthammer ...snippet...Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.” Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker...

Soon after Former President Zelaya was deposed for trying to go around his country's constitution, Our Potus "Nobel Peace Prize winner" took a position against democracy, contra to the Honduras Constitution and on the wrong side of history. “America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies,” the president told graduate students at the commencement ceremony of Moscow’s New Economic School. “We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders...

A housekeeper ...discovered some "goody bags" when cleaning up a motel room. Not long after the discovery of various illegal drugs and paraphernalia in room 126 of the hotel, the Cortez Police Department was called in to investigate the incident. Items seized as evidence by police officers include up to 30 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, 1.2 grams of methamphetamine, 10 glass pipes, four of which contained meth residue and Xanax, Carisoprodol 350 mg and two Fentaynyl Transdermal patches, all controlled substances... The manager ...said two men called his office later Tuesday "asking if they could have their friends' bags,"

GREENBELT, MD—U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced Scott K. Gibson, age 28, of Mechanicsville, Maryland, today to 42 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for conspiracy, making a false statement and aggravated identity theft in connection with a scheme to fraudulently obtain oxycontin and oxycodone from pharmacies using stolen patient identity information, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. Judge Messitte also ordered Gibson to pay $25,301.40 in restitution. According to his guilty plea, from October 2005 to April 2007, Gibson led a conspiracy to obtain Oxycontin and oxycodone by...

MEXICO CITY — The street peddler's face darkened when asked how the Mexican government should deal with the rash of kidnappings and drug slayings terrorizing the nation. "They should catch the perpetrators and kill them," said Luis Bote, 21, as he served steaming tacos from a basket on his bicycle. "Only if the criminals are afraid will these crimes ever stop." Bote isn't alone. Such calls to reinstate the death penalty are gaining ground in Mexico amid an unprecedented surge in violent crime. Most of the violence is tied to the warring narcotics gangs, who killed a record 5,500 people...

Mexico has pretty much always been a rough-and-tumble place. In recent years, however, the security environment has deteriorated rapidly, and parts of the country have become incredibly violent. It is now common to see military weaponry such as fragmentation grenades and assault rifles used almost daily in attacks. In fact, just last week we noted two separate strings of grenade attacks directed against police in Durango and Michoacan states. In the Michoacan incident, police in Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas were targeted by three grenade attacks during a 12-hour period. Then on Feb. 17, a major firefight occurred just across the...

Another example of union morality is on full display in the breaking news of New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez's failed 2003 steroid test. After witnessing the near-strangling of the U.S. auto industry at the hands of decades of union thuggery, and with the disastrous Card Check waiting in the wings, it is instructive to see the morality of those who aim to lead the labor revolution in America. And here we see it, buried deep within SI's story: Rodriguez finished the 2003 season by winning his third straight league home run title (with 47) and the first of his...

he cause of criminal violence is not drugs or alcohol but rather criminals. To believe otherwise is to expect every drug dealer in America to give up and apply for a job at McDonald’s or WalMart the day legalization occurs. Every society contains a sizable element whose members refuse to make an honest living under any circumstances. The legalization of drugs will not change this large-scale reality of human behavior. For now, many societal malefactors have the option of selling or trafficking drugs. But their real trade is to profit from the unwillingness of others to take the risks involved...

On Tuesday afternoon El Paso Mayor John Cook vetoed a resolution unanimously passed by city council that would have asked the U.S. government to begin a serious debate on legalizing narcotics. Earlier in the day city council passed a resolution, rationing that the best way to stop the drug wars in Juarez may be to legalize the drugs here in the United States. It was part of a larger resolution outlining several steps for the United States and Mexico to take in order to cut down on the number of murders between rival drug cartels. Last year more than 1,600...

Massachusetts officially decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana yesterday, but many police departments across the state were essentially ignoring the voter-passed law, saying they would not even bother to ticket people they see smoking marijuana. "We're just basically not enforcing it right now," said Mark R. Laverdure, chief of police in Clinton...