Free Republic

BROOKINGS, Ore. - Law enforcement put nearly 12,000 mature marijuana plants through a wood chipper Monday while dismantling a grow operation found in a remote corner of Curry County near the California border, Sheriff John Ward said. A helicopter surveyed the area from the air, and an armed ground team entered the grow first to make sure the area was safe, Ward said. They found a camouflaged living structure and evidence of weapons and chemicals. No one was present as law enforcement moved in. "It was obvious that whoever was tending to the marijuana had left prior to the eradication...

Drug cartels continue to operate with almost complete impunity in this border city. Most recently the Gulf Cartel was able to use heavy machinery to take down a series of police video cameras; one of the cameras was right outside of the local Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office. The Mexican government set up a large number of surveillance cameras throughout the border city of Reynosa last year in what they called a new attempt to curb the activities of organized crime. By then, the Gulf Cartel had their surveillance network in place for years. Through the use of strategically placed cartel...

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a subpoena Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder as part of his investigation into the gun trafficking operation known as "Fast and Furious." "Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged," the California Republican said in a statement. "The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago. It's time we know the whole truth." The subpoena seeks, among other things,...

$1M offered for Arpaio, $1K to join cartel PHOENIX - He's been at the center of the discussions and controversies surrounding illegal immigration enforcement in Arizona for quite a while. On the day parts of Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, went into effect, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is in the news for another reason: there's a price on his head - allegedly offered by a Mexican drug cartel. The audio message in Spanish is a bit garbled, but the text is clear. "It's offering a million dollars for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's head and offering a thousand dollars for anyone...

It's a war the so-called mainstream media apparently have decided to ignore. Though its death toll is higher than Iraq's and Afghanistan's combined, it evidently isn't worth covering; and unless you're reading this in the Southwest, you probably haven't even heard about it. The conflict, a full-blown narco-insurgency, has claimed the lives of more than 17,000 combatants and innocents, threatens to undo several democratically elected governments and poses a real and present danger to the United States. It's not the one being fought in Afghanistan. It's the war being waged from the Andean basin all the way north to the...

A highly trusted former deputy attorney general, who later became Mexico’s drug czar and was embraced by Washington until his death, is accused in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report of taking bribes from one of Mexico’s oldest narcotics trafficking cartels. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, killed in November in a mysterious plane crash over Mexico City, is among three senior federal law-enforcement officials named in an April 21-page DEA briefing on organized crime and drug trafficking south of the border. Vasconcelos was never charged with a crime. The other two are being prosecuted by Mexico. The report, prepared as a...