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For those of you who have the unenviable task of debating liberals in your family or workplace, let me render some aid. Liberals are jumping all over the falsehood that Fast & Furious was conceived and put into play during the Bush Administration as Project Gunrunner or Operation Gunwalker. And while it is undeniably true that such a federal operation was put into play by the Bush Administration, there is a huge difference between the Bush initiative and Operation Fast & Furious: motive. To quote the ATF fact sheet at The U.S. Embassy in Mexico website, here was the goal...

The AH1N1 flu virus has left a total of 135 people dead in Mexico so far this year, with the number of fatalities up 67 percent in just one week, according to figures released by the authorities. The total number of deaths from AH1N1 flu reported by Mexico’s Health Secretariat up to Feb. 9 was 81, with another 54 the following week. The secretariat said Friday that deaths from the AH1N1 strain of flu from Jan. 1 to Feb. 16 represents 91 percent of the 149 fatalities from the different types of flu now active in the country. At the...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — President Felipe Calderon on Thursday unveiled a “No More Weapons!” billboard made with crushed firearms and placed near the U.S. border. He urged the United States to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico. The billboard, which is in English and weighs 3 tons, was placed near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the United States.

The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. was actually dropping at the end of the George W. Bush years — but that progress has stopped under President Obama, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies. With enforcement increasing and the economy souring, CIS said a net of 1 million illegal immigrants left the U.S. from January 2007 to January 2009, as the population went from 11.8 million down to 10.8 million. But progress has halted since Mr. Obama took office in January 2009 and, if anything, the illegal population in the United States rebounded slightly,...

‘Contempt of Congress” is a pretty strong term, and one with tangible legal consequences, but how else to describe Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing obstructionism in the burgeoning Fast and Furious scandal? It’s been 14 months since news broke that a federal agent had been killed with weapons that Holder’s Justice Department intentionally allowed to cross the border into Mexico, with no plan on how to track them and without alerting Mexican officials. In all, the Obama administration sent thousands of guns south to the drug gangs under the misbegotten operation. But since last May, Eric Holder has been stonewalling...

MCALLEN - The secretary of Homeland Security is heading to the Valley. Janet Napolitano will be in McAllen on Monday and Tuesday. She'll be meeting Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner David Aguilar. Napolitano will also spend time with state and local law enforcement officials. They're set to discuss border security, travel and trade. No other details on her trip have been released.

An article in the Washington Free Beacon discusses the 15 year time-to-crime (TTC) statistic that casts significant doubt on DOJ claims regarding firearms trafficking along the southwest border. Time-to-crime refers to the period of time between original purchase of a firearm and the recovery of that firearm by law enforcement. The document obtained by the Beacon comes from ATF and was produced as part of the court record in the 2011 case National Shooting Sports Foundation v. Jones – a lawsuit filed by the NSSF and two NRA-funded firearms retailers challenging ATF’s legal authority to impose a multiple sales reporting...

A Texas congressman wants to know why the former treasurer of a Mexican border state who's under indictment in that country — and has connections to San Antonio — was granted a visa and was released after his arrest this month in Texas. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, said he asked the State Department why Hector Javier Villarreal, the former head of the tax office for Coahuila who's facing fraud-related charges, was allowed to enter the United States. Villarreal was granted a visa in October, Gohmert said, shortly after Mexican officials released him on bail. Gohmert said he also wants to...

Four city police officers in Juarez are under investigation for a shooting that wounded a 9 year old boy. The boy's mother, Sonia Tapia Cisneros. 35, says the shooting happened moments after officers approached her vehicle and yelled at her. She says she thought they were warning her to leave a dangerous situation so she drove away quickly. That's when she says she said the bullets started flying. Tapia thought they were caught in crossfire in a gunfight between police and criminals. She realized they were targets when she heard her son say, "Mom they hit me." After he was...

by John HillStand With ArizonaDespite being persecuted by the Department of Justice, despite a Federal judge's Kafkaesque order prohibiting his office from arresting illegals "based solely on the suspicion that they’re in the country illegally", Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his staff continue to work hard every day to keep illegal aliens out of Arizona - and every other state in the union. The frontline war in Maricopa was particularly intense over the past several days, as 20 illegal aliens have been arrested by MSCO on smuggling charges. Most recently, MCSO Human Smuggling detectives arrested 12 illegal aliens while...

Mexico City - An angry mob of villagers in central Mexico attacked and killed three men they accused of trying to kidnap two local residents. So far, 23 people have been arrested for the mob attack, prosecutors said. A spokesperson for the Mexico State Security Secretariat said the mob numbered "more than 500 people". An initial investigation showed "a group of six women incited local residents to attack three men, who they set on fire", said a statement from the Mexico state attorney general's office. Police tried to rescue the three men but succeeded in pulling only one of them...

Travel Warning U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Bureau of Consular Affairs Millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year for study, tourism, and business, including more than 150,000 who cross the border every day. The Mexican government makes a considerable effort to protect U.S. citizens and other visitors to major tourist destinations, and there is no evidence that Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) have targeted U.S. visitors and residents based on their nationality. Resort areas and tourist destinations in Mexico generally do not see the levels of drug-related violence and crime reported in the border region and in areas along major...

“Our homeland is bleeding painfully,” is how Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez put it recently at a religious event whose audience included Honduran President Porfirio Lobo. Indeed, Honduras is spiraling into an ungovernable and unstable situation due to the increased operations of international drug syndicates and their local gang proxies within its territory. Last October, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Honduras, a nation of 7.6 million, now has the highest homicide rate in the world. Honduras is a victim of what counter-narcotics experts refer to as the “balloon effect,” where heavy pressures on traffickers in Colombia...

by John HillStand With ArizonaFox Phoenix TV (KSAZ FOX 10) on Thursday showed a ridiculous propaganda piece purporting to show "the Arizona border" and how "safe" it is, as they follow Americans from around the nation on a "tour" of the border. Here's how they describe the piece: Make your own decision about life on the border. What is life on the border really like? Hop on the Border Bus Tour, and do your own fact finding about what it means to have a secure border. And in the video, the tour leader, Bob Feinman, tells us on the bus...

EDINURG — A capital murder suspect made his involvement in the kidnapping and slaying of a coworker too obvious when he hid the body at his brother’s property, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. A passer-by found the body of German Duque Gonzalez, 65, on Feb. 1 under a pile of tires in the 4600 block of Marshall Street north of Palmview. Gonzalez, a baker, left his Alton home at 1 a.m. that same morning to begin his bread-making shift at Valeria’s Bakery in Mission — a routine he had followed for the past two years. He never made it to work....

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican troops have made an historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in the western state of Jalisco, the Mexican army said in a statement released late Wednesday. Soldiers discovered the huge cache in the town of Tlajomulco de Zuniga, a suburb of Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara. The statement had no other details but said it would publicly present the seizure on Thursday. Spokesmen answering the phone at the army's base in Guadalajara refused to comment further. No one could say late Wednesday what the largest seizure was previously in Mexico. The United Nations Office...

Something is really, really, really not right… The New York Times has a really bizarre story on the front page today. I will make some remarks about the story and then there is a link at the bottom for you to read the entire story. I don’t want to run wild with crazy conspiracy stories but there are some really peculiar parts of this New York Time story that warrants further investigation. First some bullet points: * Juan Jose Rojas Cardona (“Pepe” and hereinafter I will refer to him as that) lives in Mexico and is part of the casino...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is returning more than $200,000 in donations from the family of a fugitive casino magnate linked to violence and corruption in Mexico who has been seeking a pardon, Obama’s campaign confirmed on Tuesday. “More than 1.3 million Americans have donated to the campaign and we constantly review those contributions for any issues,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an email after a New York Times report on the decision appeared late on Monday. “On the basis of the questions that have been raised, we will return the contributions from these individuals and...

Mexico arrests figure in Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities have arrested a reputed enforcer for the country's most powerful drug cartel -- a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government's failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation (link, in Spanish, includes video). Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, 33, is also wanted by U.S. officials on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso. Mexican and U.S. authorities say he served as a top lieutenant to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and was in charge of operations in the border state of...

You know the border is a place where drugs and illegal immigrants transit every day. But you have no idea how bad things really are.

TIJUANA — Less than four months after he was released from a Nevada prison and deported to Mexico, Fermín Pérez Juárez is in trouble again. He is now behind bars in Tijuana, accused along with four others in the kidnapping and torture of a man who was hoping to be smuggled into the United States. It wasn’t just the brutality of the crime, committed last month in the city’s Zona Norte, that commanded attention in Tijuana newspaper headlines and on TV broadcasts. It was the people allegedly behind the crime: Pérez and the other suspects are deportees with U.S. criminal...

In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green. The 60-year-old Compton, Calif., woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African-American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles. >>SNIP<< charged the immigrants up to $4,000 a person for the ride north >>SNIP<< is estimated to have smuggled several dozen immigrants a month into Los Angeles, immigration authorities said.

One man is dead and another is wounded after the Mexican military allegedly shot them while they were fleeing into the United States. It all happened just east of Sullivan City late Thursday afternoon. Law enforcement officials told Action 4 News that the men are believed to have been involved in a gun battle south of the border in Diaz Ordaz, Tamaulipas. Mexican military officials did not cross into the United States during the incident but opened fire on the two men as they fled across the Rio Grande River. Law enforcement said a body was found on the American...

Democrats have lost their solid political party affiliation advantage in 18 states since 2008, while Republicans have gained a solid advantage in 6 states. A total of 17 states were either solidly Republican or leaning Republican in their residents' party affiliation in 2011, up from 10 in 2010 and 5 in 2008. Meanwhile, 19 states including the District of Columbia showed a solid or leaning Democratic orientation, down from 23 in 2010 and 36 in 2008. The remaining 15 states were relatively balanced politically, with neither party having a clear advantage. Gallup classifies each state as solid Democratic, leaning Democratic,...

Five people are charged in a plot to employ African Americans from Compton to avert suspicion when bringing illegal immigrants across the border. In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green. The 60-year-old Compton woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles. In the end, the venture failed. Authorities announced charges Thursday against Lopez-Diaz and four others, including...

Today’s Capitol Hill hearing on the “Fast and Furious” mess promises drama that may well rival the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings or gangland chieftain Frank Costello’s memorable 1951 testimony in front of Sen. Estes Kefauver’s hearings on organized crime. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee insist there’s nothing left to learn about the murderous federal “gunwalking” operation: We already know who’s to blame, they report: low-level agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix, and staffers at the US Attorney’s Office there, headed by Dennis Burke, who has since resigned. Oh, yes, and George W. Bush. That’s...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee today was, in the main, a re-run of past appearances before Congress. He kept the stone wall firm and tight, while angrily denying he was running a cover-up, and accusing investigators of running “political gotcha games.” Here’s Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) cutting to the chase, and asking Holder how many more U.S. Border Patrol agents would have had to die as part of Operation Fast and Furious before the Attorney General would finally take responsibility: Holder continued his “incompetence defense” of insisting that he really doesn’t know anything that...

The family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has filed a $25-million lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, claiming "negligence" and "a violation of ATF's own policies and procedures" resulting in the death of their son. A separate lawsuit against The Lone Wolf Trading Company stated that "but for defendants' negligent and illegal sales ... Brian Terry would not have been murdered." Terry was killed when his unit was ambushed near the Arizona-Mexico border on the night of December 14, 2010.  Two AK-47s found at the scene were part of an ATF gun-walking operation allowing...

MEXICO CITY -- The U.S. Embassy in Mexico says two Americans have been slain outside the northern industrial city of Monterrey, an area plagued by drug violence. It identifies them as John and Wanda Casias. The embassy says the former Amarillo, Texas, couple's family has been notified and it is providing relatives consular services. The embassy hasn't confirmed reports that the killing happened Tuesday. Its statement provides no other details. Valerie Alirez in Greeley, Colo., is John Casias' eldest child. She says he and his wife were found dead Tuesday in Santiago, Nuevo Leon, by one of her brothers.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico --Police in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez are spending their time between shifts in heavily guarded hotels after a wave of killings targeting police. Eight officers were gunned down in January. Most were off duty. The murders are the latest challenge for police chief Julian Leyzaola as he works to restore law and order in Mexico’s murder capital. The U.S. government has provided $1.5 billion worth of aid to Mexico under the Merida initiative, including including training and equipment to help police fight violent drug cartels. Police officers in Juarez say they’re in a fight...

Where was the public outcry for justice when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry bled to death at the hands of a drug cartel in cahoots with the U.S. government? It happened in the Peck Canyon corridor northwest of Nogales, Arizona -- nowhere. The general public didn't hear about it... --snip-- Last November, Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic wrote a chronological exposé of the Fast and Furious scandal. But he put a fancy spin on his article which illustrates perfectly how a Big Lie can emerge from a kernel of truth told with bad intent. *The once-obscure case in Phoenix...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) threatened to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress if the nation’s top cop doesn’t hand over Justice Department documents within nine days. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, blasted Holder in a letter on Tuesday for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoena for documents relating to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun-trafficking operation. “If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress,”...

Taking shots of tequila has taken on new meaning. Elaborate glass tequila bottles in red, blue and white — shaped like pistols, AK-47s, rifles, machetes and bullets — have been surfacing in the Rio Grande Valley in the past year or so. The bottles — in sharp contrast to the clean lines and curves and the rich colors of more traditional tequila bottles — have been around for years in Mexico, where they are made. David Hernandez, founder of the Holiday Wine & Liquor stores in the Rio Grande Valley, said the weapon-shaped bottles appeal primarily to collectors. "There are...

Newly-released documents show that last February, on an official visit to Mexico, Justice Department official Lanny Breuer suggested fighting arms trafficking by using the tactic of intentionally letting guns flow into Mexico via criminals. According to the documents, Assistant Attorney General Breuer suggested the U.S. and Mexico consider working together to allow arms traffickers for Mexican drug cartels "to cross into Mexico," so that Mexican authorities could later prosecute and convict them. The documents indicate Mexico's then-attache spoke against Breuer's idea. He "raised the issue that there is an inherent risk in allowing weapons to pass from the US to...

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday are expected to publish a report on the disputed gun trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious, concluding that agents in Arizona — not Obama administration officials — were responsible for the tactics used in the inquiry and for providing misleading information relayed to Congress. In an 89-page report, titled “Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona,” the Democratic staff portrays Fast and Furious as the fourth investigation, dating back to 2006, in which Arizona-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed...

Several Mexican soldiers were killed when gunmen ambushed them Thursday afternoon in Reynosa, said sources outside law enforcement familiar with organized crime. The ambush came in response to heavy casualties the military inflicted on gunmen Thursday morning, the sources said. The clashes continued a violent week along the northern Tamaulipas border, which had experienced weeks of relative calm until a reported push by the Zetas drug cartel to take over Gulf Cartel territory in Reynosa and Matamoros. In Thursday’s clashes in Reynosa, roads were blockaded and gunbattles pitted the Mexican military against gunmen, and rival groups of gunmen against each...

Fortunately for Democrats, Univision, Telemundo and other Spanish-Language media cover the immigration issue, for free, with an understandably obsessive focus; Incremental legislative developments on the Dream Act were headline news. So, it’s likely Team Obama will spend a lot of their Spanish advertising budget on a more generic Social Security message to older Latinos, a group that has been A.) less friendly to the president than younger Spanish speakers and B.) disproportionately dependent on Social Security for retirement income. Some stats: Three-quarters of Hispanic Social Security recipients derive half their income from their monthly check, ten points higher than the...

Issa Demands Access to Second US Attorney who Supervised Operation Fast and Furious WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa demanded in letter to Attorney General Holder that the Justice Department make Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office Assistant United States Attorney Michael Morrissey available to speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious. His supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability...

Student protesters disrupted a speech Friday by US Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and rising Republican star, accusing him of "anti-immigrant" positions. Rubio was addressing a Hispanic leadership conference at a golf resort near Miami about the American dream when students in the audience rose up and shouted, "Then why don't you support the immigrants?" The protesters, including some undocumented immigrants, also brandished signs that said: "Marco Rubio - Latino or Tea Partino?" and "Your party or your people?"

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder owes an apology to the Mexican government and to the families of Operation Fast and Furious victims south of the border. “Justice has blood on their hands,” Issa said Wednesday during an exclusive interview with TheDC, referring to the U.S. Department of Justice. “The attorney general, as the head of Justice, has to explain that to the families of survivors,” Issa said. “Yes, he should find a way to make it very clear to our neighbors to the south — at least to the...

Another bit of Hispanic community outreach from the White House: "In support of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, Goya Foods, the largest, Hispanic-owned U.S. food company, is committing resources to promote the USDA's MyPlate, or MiPlato

Two men pleaded guilty to buying guns that were destined to be smuggled into Mexico, the first convictions in the federal government's botched Operation Fast and Furious. The men were so-called "straw buyers" who acknowledged purchasing guns that they knew were headed to Mexican drug gangs. The goal of the federal government's investigation was to catch weapons-trafficking kingpins, but firearms agents lost track of many weapons they were trying to trace to smuggling ringleaders, and some guns ended up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. Jacob Wayne Chambers and Jacob Anthony Montelongo each pleaded guilty in federal court...

Two Mexican medics ridiculed for dropping a human heart while it was being transported to a hospital for a transplant can breathe a little more easily after the recipient, Erika Hernandez, was discharged from hospital. The men were widely lampooned after they spilled the contents of a cooler box containing the organ while rushing to the La Raza hospital in Mexico City two weeks ago. But the operation went ahead as planned and proved successful. "I cannot believe that I'm still here and well," Hernandez said. "It is thanks to the person who donated the heart I can be here."...

LAREDO — A former hit man for the Zetas cartel calmly related to jurors his role in killings on both sides of the border, testifying Monday in the drug conspiracy trial of a man prosecutors say was also a hired killer. From the witness stand in U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez's courtroom here, Rosalio Reta pointed to Gerardo Castillo Chavez, 25, and identified him as a fellow Zeta. Pressing his fingertips together and speaking in a slow, soft voice, Reta, 22, told jurors that he had been in a team of hit men headed by Gabriel Cardona, an admitted Zeta...

For those who doubt that a strict enforcement regime will induce self-repatriation, consider what happened in the wake of the Special Registration program set up after 9/11. Under that program, foreigners from some countries were told they must register with the nearest immigration office or risk certain deportation if caught. Among Pakistanis, for instance, about 1,500 who were here illegally (on expired visas etc.) were caught and deported. Word spread. Before long, some 15,000 illegal Pakistanis hightailed out of the country on their own. They knew that formal deportation would decapitate their ability to obtain a visa in the future....

NEAR ALTON — Two men stepped down from a white truck at a house near Alton. A pair of Jeeps pulled up close behind. It was Memorial Day weekend 2011. The truck’s driver said he was a policeman, complete with handcuffs, a pistol and an embroidered shirt. He wasn’t a cop. But he handcuffed Ovidio Olivares Guerrero and loaded him into the truck and drove off, court records state. Guerrero hasn’t been seen since the pseudocops took him from his cousin’s house that day. And court records suggest he wasn’t even the target of a Gulf Cartel-ordered kidnapping. Olivares’ wife,...

WESLACO - Three people from Afghanistan are in Border Patrol custody in the Valley. Border Patrol acknowledges they apprehended the three Afghanis in the Valley. They were found in two different groups. One was found south of Mission by the river. The other two were found in a stash house north of Moorefield Road. Samuel Freeman, a political science professor at the University of Texas Pan American and expert on U.S. foreign policy, says it's unusual for Afghanis to show up in the Rio Grande Valley. Freeman says the three could be drug runners. He says there's a huge pipeline...

HONOLULU: Canada, Mexico and at least two other countries have expressed interest in joining US-led talks for a pan-Pacific trade pact, a US Republican lawmaker said on Friday after Japan asked to take part. “There’s a good deal of momentum for the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership),” Representative Kevin Brady said after meetings with members of President Barack Obama’s administration at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. That momentum was evidenced by Japan’s announcement earlier on Friday that it was interested in joining the talks “and what seem to be very solid inquiries from Canada, Mexico and a few others,” Brady...

STARR COUNTY - Valley ranchers say they are arming themselves with high-powered rifles to protect their property. Ranchers say handguns aren't enough anymore. They need more firepower. An AK-47 semiautomatic assault rifle holds 30 rounds. It protects this ranch in Starr County, hundreds of acres. "It does have fire power and it's reliable," says the rancher. Barbed wire fencing doesn't keep illegal immigrants off the property anymore. This rancher doesn't care about the illegals. He worries about the smugglers protecting their loads. "I don't think they would have any conscience of taking someone's life," the rancher says. He saw that...

Religious and community leaders gathered outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Baltimore to protest the looming deportation of a Mexican woman who has four grandchildren in the United States. Josefina Rodriguez Vega, a 58-year-old undocumented immigrant living in Hagerstown, Maryland, was arrested last June for driving without a license and turned over to ICE. After several months under house arrest, Rodriguez Vega was taken last Thursday to an ICE detention center on Maryland's Eastern Shore, far from her home. With the legal options all but exhausted, she now faces imminent deportation to Mexico.