Free Republic

Former New York City Mayor—and potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate—Michael Bloomberg called efforts to legalize marijuana "perhaps the stupidest thing anybody has ever done." Speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday, Bloomberg said on the subject, according to WBNG-TV: "We have a different kind of problem in America, for example. Last year, in 2017, 72,000 Americans [overdosed] on drugs. In 2018, more people than that are OD-ing on drugs, have OD'd on drugs. And today, incidentally, we are trying to legalize another addictive narcotic, which is perhaps the stupidest thing anybody has ever done. We've got...

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

Iceland Police Said Guilty Verdicts Likely for Leftists Who Poisoned Robert Spencer, But Prosecution Was Quashed DEC 2, 2019 5:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER An Icelandic police report, which they recently sent me on a freedom of information request, details what happened when I was poisoned at the Bar Ananas in Reykjavik on May 11, 2017. I spent the night in the Emergency Department at Landspítali, the National University Hospital of Iceland, suffering from serious symptoms of poisoning that were not adequately treated. The police treated four people as suspects in the investigation: 1) Sindri Geirsson, the proprietor of the...

Today, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recognized members of Colombia’s military and law enforcement who have been severely wounded in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism.The 15 members of Colombia’s military and law enforcement who were recognized also participated in Sunday’s Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. on Sunday.“The United States and Colombia have a shared commitment to bringing drug traffickers to justice, stopping the production and flow of deadly drugs, and keeping our communities safe. I commend the courage and bravery of each of the individuals who have sacrificed themselves in the...

Maude Lamont, a Philadelphia native who has been acting principal of Wilson High School since 2018, resigned this week after WW asked Portland Public Schools if it was investigating her for taking narcotics from the high school's evidence room. The announcement of her resignation came May 13, three days after WW asked the school district questions about the alleged February incident. The district is not speaking about the reason for Lamont's resignation. "We are aware of the allegations and are taking all appropriate steps to address them," says district spokesman Harry Esteve. "It is a confidential personnel matter, so we...

EU seeks Mexican narcos 15:35 DEA This Friday, the drug enforcement agency of United States (DEA), has published a poster where points to major traffickers, that according to indicate they have been identified as Max operated in San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. DEA updated information, since the latter was of four years ago, when already criminal groups maintained an intense fight for drug trafficking. Alert poster includes Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, Ismael El Mayo Zambada and engineer the Fernando Sanchez Arellano. The poster also includes photographs of Alfonzo Arzate García, René Arzate García and José Antonio Soto Gastelum. The...

Two people were killed and two others were injured when multiple gunshots were fired at a shopping center in Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday night, authorities said. "It does not appear to be a random act of violence," Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said late Tuesday. He gave no further information... NBC affiliate WBBH quoted a woman at the scene who said she was celebrating her birthday inside the restaurant Society at Bell Tower Shops when someone shot her husband in the chest as she was paying her bill. She told the station that the shooter then shot and killed...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Some 129 countries at the United Nations signed on to a U.S.-drafted pledge to fight the global drug problem on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump warned presented a public health and national security threat. In order to attend the brief U.N. event with Trump, countries had to sign the one-page “call to action on the world drug problem.” Trump held a similar event at the annual gathering of world leaders in New York last year, focused on U.N. reform....

Reliably red on the political map, Huntington is a West Virginia town with a 191-year-old university, a storied football team and more than 100 churches. It’s where Will Lockwood graduated from high school. It’s where he enrolled at Marshall University. It’s where he first tried OxyContin. By the time Lockwood entered Marshall as a freshman, Detroit dealers were trickling into Huntington selling OxyContin and pills with OxyContin’s active ingredient, oxycodone. Even though Lockwood could step out his front door and get the drug, Detroit street dealers weren’t the preferred supplier. Florida was. It may be 1,000 miles away, but to...

PERU, Ind. >> Some drug traffickers appear to be using President Donald Trump’s image to brand their illegal wares. An Indiana State Police news release about 129 arrests in a series of drug busts in northern Indiana includes a photo of what police describe as “Trump-shaped ecstasy pills.” They are orange and stamped with a face. On the back are the words “great again,” an apparent reference to Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”(continued)

This report examines the U.S. counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, detailing how DOD and State, USAID, and the DEA tried to deter farmers and traffickers from growing and trading of opium.

   Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM) - A Rochester man was acquitted Thursday on charges that he tried to kill a Rochester Police officer in April 2016. Silvon Simmons, 35, was convicted of one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. He was acquitted on a second count, as well as one count of attempted aggravated murder of a police officer. A grand jury voted to indict Simmons in April 2016 on all three of those charges.

A secret business deal between the government of Guinea and a multinational firm with a U.S. partner aided by the Obama administration’s wrongheaded foreign policy could cost American businesses billions. Congress ought to investigate to protect American investors, expose any political shenanigans and prosecute the guilty. The London Sunday Times first cracked the story June 3 of the secret $25 million loan between an offshore company, Palladino Capital 2, and the cash-strapped West African country. The funds, according to the loan agreement, were to finance the start-up of Guinea’s state mining company, Heritage, but the cash allegedly disappeared and the...

Albanian-American roofer Florin Krasniqi has been living in Brooklyn and smuggling American guns into Kosovo to arm the Kosovo Liberation Army--this time for war against its erstwhile saviors, NATO and the UN. The KLA are the bin Laden-trained, Iran-backed narco-terrorists whose 1999 jihad against the Christian Serbs we helped fight, abetting secession and creating a mono-ethnic terror haven and future Islamic republic in Europe. Krasniqi, who raised $30 million from fellow Albanian-Americans to help finance the KLA's war, is the subject of a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns, titled "The Brooklyn Connection," which will air Tuesday night at 10...

U.S. Office of Bi-National Intelligence in Mexico City. The OBI is a U.S. Gov. cluster: DEA, DIA, CIA, FBI, ATF, and others, authorized by the Obama administration in a document called “A National Anti-Narcotics Strategy for the Southern Border”

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., once falsely accused President Ronald Reagan's CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the '80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters' claim. At a town hall meeting about these allegations, Waters shouted, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to...

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S.-NATO coalition in Afghanistan has pulverized 25 Taliban labs used to process opium and its deadly heroin derivative, depriving the narco-jihadists of $80 million in illegal drug proceeds in the first three weeks of an unprecedented counternarcotics air campaign. Since November 20, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies have been targeting the Taliban jihadists’ opium business in their Helmand stronghold, the top-poppy producing province in Afghanistan. Watch a M142 HIMARS conduct an artillery strike on a Taliban narcotics production facility in Helmand province Dec. 8, destroying nearly $1 million in direct Taliban revenues. "In the face...

A K-9 unit intercepted $237,576 in cash during a traffic stop on U.S. 59 on Thursday, the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office reports. A mother from Mission, Texas, and four children were in the SUV at the time of the stop. All five people were released at the scene, but an investigation is pending. The mother could be charged with money laundering, the sheriff's office said in a statement. The vehicle, heading south through Rosenberg, was stopped for a traffic violation by a member of the Fort Bend County Narcotics Task Force's interdiction team. The money was discovered during a...

“Build the wall” The chant that resonated in arenas and airplane hangers throughout the country over the course of the presidential campaign is on the brink of becoming reality, despite the fact that there’s a growing argument over who will pay, when they will pay, and how it will be paid for. Many of those now troubled about a congressional appropriation for its construction are losing site of the fact that the heroin trade through our southern border is arguably costing more in lives, money and potential than any amount the 115th Congress could approve....

Robert Charles, a political appointee of George W. Bush, sounds the alarm that "we are nearing the falls."[1] Supposedly all we need to do is "care." Apparently this will miraculously cure "the problem." Others have declared that "Fentanyl is the reason why deadly overdoses from painkillers continue to climb in the US."[2] Like Charles, they commit the logical error of declaring that the last step in a multi-step process is the source of a problem. Such an assessment is simply wrong. Pundits use factual but context-free language to paint certain drugs as somehow evil. Fentanyl is "illegally made" and "synthetic."...