Free Republic

Drug trafficking, gang wars, political instability, corruption, and poverty have combined to make Latin America by far the most homicidal region of the world. The region has 40% of the world's murders, despite having only 8 percent of the population, according to the U.N. The highest murder rate of all is in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with 169 homicides per 100,000 people, according to a study published earlier this year by Mexico's Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. The ranking is based on 2012 data, except for San Pedro Sula and Distrito Central in Honduras, where authorities would...

In the French Quarter, the government advisory warns travelers to not go beyond northwestern Dauphine Street and northeast Ursulines Ave. If travelers are in the Garden District, they say not to travel north of St. Charles Avenue or south of Magazine Street.

House Republicans are pouncing on President Obama’s apology for cancelled insurance plans to push him into backing legislation that would change ObamaCare. The president on Thursday said he was “sorry” that Americans were losing their healthcare plans despite his frequent assurances that individuals with insurance could keep them. Obama said he was seeking an administrative fix, but Republicans say they have a ready-made solution in the Keep Your Plan bill that they plan to bring up for a vote next week. A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the president can’t address the problems plaguing the healthcare law through...

When President Barack Obama appears at the Port of New Orleans tomorrow, he won't be joined by Louisiana's only statewide elected Democrat, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. Landrieu will travel with Obama to New Orleans on the president's plane, Air Force One, but she doesn't plan to attend his speech about boosting exports. The U.S. Senator has a long-standing engagement in Lake Charles that takes place at the same time and she can't be in both places at once, staff said. Her absence at Obama's public appearance in Louisiana this year could raise some questions. Landrieu is expected to face a...

Paramilitary tactics may be necessary in California to prepare for, or head off, an apocalyptic future with flooded coastal communities, scorched central valleys and rampant wildfires in the Sierras. That was the advice and prediction from one of the experts at a recent hearing on climate change adaptation by the state watchdog agency the Little Hoover Commission. Said Robert Verchick, an environmental law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans: “The way that you build resilience and robustness is to think about everything at once and then move forward in some kind of regimented, maybe paramilitary, way. Because it’s essential. It’s...

Former Mayor Ray Nagin's federal trial on 21 public corruption charges was postponed again last week — for the third time. The former mayor is now set to stand trial on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. If and when Nagin does go to trial — or if he pleads to a reduced charge — it will be the final chapter of Hurricane Katrina's political arc. Guilty or innocent, Nagin's fate will bring closure to a city that arguably suffered as much after the storm as during it, thanks in large measure to the former mayor's failure to implement a recovery program...

Bum Phillips, who helped turn the Houston Oilers into a playoff team in the mid-1970s and was a beloved figure in the state of Texas, died Friday at the age of 90, according to his son. Wrote Wade Phillips, the Texans defensive coordinator, late Friday night: After coaching high school for many years, Phillips spent a number of seasons coaching in college, including apprenticing under Bear Bryant at Texas A&M before moving on to SMU and Oklahoma State.

About a month ago, the Department of Justice made the bizarre and by almost all accounts counterproductive decision to sue the state of Louisiana for working to turn around the state’s low-performing public school system and allowing low-income students with opportunities to escape from these fail factories with a voucher program. The DOJ’s apparently depraved move to use outdated desegregation decrees to actively block poor and largely minority students from access to a better education went over well with pretty much nobody, and with Gov. Bobby Jindal least of all.After calling the Obama administration out last week for their disingenuous...

No city has embraced the school choice movement more than New Orleans. Yet over the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal has been taking a close look at how the idea is working out, and the results have been decidedly mixed. The biggest problem is that there simply aren’t enough high-quality schools to go around. The city grades each public or charter school on an A–F scale, and only 14 percent of seats were in schools with a B or higher. Given the the dearth of high-performers and the limited number of seats at these schools, parents are often left to choose...

A judge on Friday denied an effort by former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to postpone his corruption trial, which he said had been compromised by inflammatory comments posted online by prosecutors. Nagin’s argument for a delay stemmed from online postings that recently prompted a federal judge to order a new trial in a murder case involving five New Orleans policemen convicted in connection with the shooting deaths of two unarmed people at Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. … Nagin, who was mayor during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is accused of receiving kickbacks in exchange for city contracts, and wire...

What does it take for an employee to get fired in Eric Holder’s Justice Department Civil Rights Division? Certainly perjury doesn’t do it. Neither does using a government credit card to book airfare for romantic liaisons with a Miami girlfriend — that just gets you a nice buyout. Want to use civil rights laws to protect only black victims of discrimination? Ho hum. The culture of lawlessness is so pervasive at the Civil Rights Division that a former Voting Section chief felt comfortable telephoning current DOJ employees and suggesting they turn over confidential memos … because they were worth cash...

(This was originally shared here on AnsweringProtestants.com, as part of a longer post.) There is nothing wrong with asking the heavenly saints to pray for us. Many Protestants argue that asking the saints to pray for us is “unbiblical,” while throwing around verses like 1 Timothy 2:5. But they are incorrect. 1 Timothy 2:5 — the infamous “one mediator between God and men” verse — refers to salvation, not prayer. The verse reminds us that it is only because of the graces found through Christ (God Himself) that we are able to have any real relationship with God and reach...

"What is to be done?" James Varney asked in his recent opinion piece, referencing the unfathomable increase in New Orleans violence. The answer, Varney suggested, may lie in more aggressive policing, more specifically, the stop-and-frisk tactic. Not striking New York's stop-and-frisk policy completely, a federal judge ruled that the nation's largest police department employed the tactic illegally, systematically singling out large numbers of blacks and Hispanics. So the judge appointed an independent monitor to oversee major changes, including body cameras on some officers, according to the Associated Press.

Neighbors are reporting that one of the two 11-year-old girls wounded in a triple shooting early Monday inside a home on the 1300 block of General Ogden Street, has died. New Orleans police later confirmed the girl's death and said she had been shot in the head and brought to a nearby hospital early Monday in critical condition.The Orleans Parish Corner's Office on late Monday morning identified the girl as Arabian Gayles. Several neighbors earlier in the day simply had said the girl was named "Raven." The other girl, who neighbors said was Arabian Gayles' cousin, was struck in the...

On Saturday, a couple walking through the French Quarter was severely beaten in what appears to be yet another act of violence, motivated by racism. Around 6 a.m., the couple was approached by three young black men near the intersection of Iberville and Dauphine Streets. The suspects quickly surrounded the couple and without warning, physically assaulted both of them, according to police. The Times-Picayune reported: The woman was punched in the mouth, police said, and her male companion was struck several times by the group. The man was beaten so badly that his jaw broke, requiring him to be hospitalized...

In 1994, a 9-year-old boy living in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton, saying that he did not feel safe: "I want you to stop the killing in the city. People is dead and I think that somebody might kill me." Two days later, on Mother's Day, that boy, James Darby, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Darby's words rang out as loudly as ever on Friday evening in the neighborhood where he lived and died, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu told Darby's story to a large crowd in front of the home where another...

In between bowls of chicken poodle soup and deciding to provide air cover for al-Qaeda in Syria, our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama, found time to meet with mayors from our crumbling major cities. From Justin Sink of The Hill: *** "President Obama told a collection of big-city mayors Tuesday at the White House that he would continue to use executive actions to combat gun violence plaguing major cities. In the meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder and the mayors of 18 cities from across the nation, Obama discussed commonly applicable strategies to reduce youth violence. 'He also vowed to...

A 1-year-old girl is dead and the child's 18-year-old babysitter is in critical condition after a shooting Thursday night in Central City, the New Orleans Police Department said. Police say two men are being sought in connection with the shooting. The toddler and babysitter were walking in the 2800 block of South Saratoga Street when shots rang out just before 8:20 p.m., according to the NOPD. The woman, who was shot in the back, rushed inside a relative's nearby home with the child, and someone inside called 911, NOPD spokesman Frank Robertson said. Robertson said the woman was in surgery...

The last time U.S. Special Operations troops trained in New Orleans, helicopters swooped in unannounced in the darkness over the downtown area, frightening residents whose nerves were already frayed by the Boston Marathon bombings earlier that day. This time, the training hasn’t had the same effect.The U.S. Special Operations Command confirmed Tuesday that Marines and sailors assigned to the Marine Corps Special Operations Command have been undergoing urban warfare training in the area since Aug. 19. The exercises, which were not publicly announced beforehand, are scheduled to end Friday. The military is not saying where the exercises are taking place,...

8 min 24 sec video at link shows after-the-fact interviews with common, law-abiding people of New Orleans who had their firearms confiscated during hurricane Katrina by thugs and bullies dressed in fancy-looking costumes.