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February 2, 2012 1:51pm 47 Comments Holder to Puerto Rican Rep: 'Wherever you're from' byDavid Freddoso Online Opinion Editor Follow on Twitter: If you need confirmation that Republicans on the House Oversight committee got under Attorney General Eric Holder's skin today at the hearing on Fast and Furious, just look at this response he gave to Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who grilled Holder about his own previous statements. Specifically, note Holder's comment that "maybe this is the way you do things in Idaho, or wherever you're from."

Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN) - Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno has endorsed Mitt Romney, in a boon to the GOP candidate's efforts to woo Florida's Latino voters ahead of Tuesday's primary. Puerto Rico's top official will campaign with Romney at an event Friday evening in Orlando. Earlier in the day, Romney said he would support a move by Puerto Rico towards statehood, and referenced Fortuno's "passionate" support for that process. "I expect the people of Puerto Rico will decide, like he feels, to become a state," Romney told a cheering audience at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference. "I can tell...

Now that the Republican race is tighter than lil Wayne’s pants at the VMAs, candidates seeking to grab electoral votes in the Sunshine State may want to pay attention to a historically ignored, but increasingly powerful constituency: nearly 900,000 Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans already account for the second largest group of Hispanics in the U.S. (they make up 10% of all Hispanics), but are growing at an increasingly rapid pace, especially in Florida. More importantly, so is their voting power. As natural-born citizens of the U.S., Puerto Ricans are the only group of Hispanics that can move between their place...

..."Romney cree en nosotros," U.S. Rep.Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., tells viewers of a TV ad in South Florida, amid scenes of swaying palm trees, the Miami skyline and smiling Cuban-Americans. "Romney believes in us." ...Despite his hard line on immigration, Romney has rounded up endorsements from Hispanic Republican leaders across Florida, while pollsters and political analysts predict he will draw solid support from Hispanic voters in the primary..... "...I've already gotten three fliers from Romney - in Spanish," said DarioMoreno, a Miamipollster and professor at Florida International University who focuses on Hispanic voters. "CentralFlorida and the TampaBay area are where Newt...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Fifty people have been accused of conspiring to sell the identities of hundreds of Puerto Ricans to illegal immigrants on the U.S. mainland in the largest single fraud case ever for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authorities said Wednesday. Hundreds of birth certificates, Social Security numbers and driver's licenses were sold for up to $2,500 a set as part of a black market ring based in Puerto Rico that operated from since at least April 2009, according to ICE Director John Morton. "The vast majority were legitimate documents obtained by fraudulent or false means,"...

Sun, sand and 80-degree temperatures distract most winter visitors to this U.S. island territory from the visible signs of aging at the 57-year-old Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, a critical hub to the Caribbean, but increasingly expensive to run and maintain. That’s not good enough for Kenneth McClintock, the secretary of state for Puerto Rico, who says the airport is about to undergo world-class upgrades made possible through a long-term lease with a private company that will finance, design, build and operate the facility. “It’s a showcase project that will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues,” says...

The coqui is a tiny, coin-sized frog whose distinctive nightly mating calls are a beloved sound in Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands. But people in Hawaii don’t share the same sentiment. The frogs have been growing in population in the state in recent years and are now starting to show up in larger numbers on Oahu – home to most of the state’s population. The frogs already have a strong foothold on the less-populated Big Island, and people there complain of being kept awake at night with a thunderous roar of chirps as thousands of male coqui simultaneously summon...

Right about now, you're probably starting to receive Christmas cards from friends and family. It's pretty safe to assume that most of them are adorned with candid shots of smiling faces, and some even have a picture of the newest addition to the family: a kid or man's best friend. Well a Christmas card from San Juan's mayor just earned him a spot on the famous blog "AwkwardFamilyPhoto.com."...

Puerto Rico has been picked by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s top Christmas destination, winning recognition for a marathon and spirited holiday season marked by good food and drink and warm weather. “Who says you need scarves and snow to have a truly authentic Christmas?” Forbes reports. “Multi-colored lights look fantastic strung through palm trees, the coquito tastes a little like eggnog that’s mostly coconut, and a roasted, seasoned pork shoulder often muscles out turkey for center stage at a Puerto Rican Christmas table. The well-known New York-based business publication worked with travel experts at Lonely Planet and...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is holding a terrorism-related press conference tonight at 7:30 pm. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and District Attorney Cy Vance will also be in attendance. This is a late breaking addition to Bloomberg's schedule — and the presence of Vance indicates there may have been some sort of arrest. Neither the Mayor's Office nor the NYPD are releasing any information prior to the press conference. UPDATE 6:24: NBC's Jesse Rodriguez tweets: WNBC: Terror suspect taken into custody yesterday; lone-wolf suspect was preparing a pipe bomb. UPDATE 6:28: The New York Times is reporting that the...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico--The gridlocked members of the congressional Supercommittee should grab President Obama and decamp to a tropical island. Specifically, they should visit Puerto Rico, where a courageous leader is using free-market reforms to reinvigorate this recently moribund U.S. territory. We are clearly pro-growth, says Republican Governor Luis G. Fortuño. And we do not apologize for that. Fortuño last Tuesday hosted a delegation of conservative luminaries who floated into San Juan aboard the Holland America Lines MS Eurodam, site of National Review magazines latest Caribbean cruise. Fortuño was inaugurated on January 2, 2009, just 18 days before Obama. Since...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Since the congressional supercommittee appears unable, or unwilling, to take a lesson from Indiana or Virginia -- where Republican governors have made spending cuts and delivered budget surpluses without damaging the social safety net -- members might wish to consider Puerto Rico and what its governor, Luis Fortuno, is doing. Fortuno is Puerto Rico's first Republican governor in 42 years. In 2009 when he took office, the U.S. territory had a $3.3 billion budget deficit. Three years earlier, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the commonwealth's bond rating to junk status while in deep recession. Like Virginia...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Since the congressional super committee appears unable, or unwilling, to take a lesson from Indiana or Virginia -- where Republican governors have made spending cuts and delivered budget surpluses without damaging the social safety net -- members might wish to consider Puerto Rico and what its governor, Luis Fortuno is doing. Fortuno is Puerto Rico's first Republican governor in 42 years. In 2009 when he took office, the U.S. territory had a $3.3 billion budget deficit. Three years earlier, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the commonwealth's bond rating to junk status while in deep recession. Like...

It’s Puerto Rico in 1960, and Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp, actually playing the young Hunter S. Thompson) makes his reeling, booze-soaked arrival to work at the local newspaper. Various gringo residents, from his beyond-cynical editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) to the paper’s photographer Bob (Michael Rispoli), who becomes his roommate, and ruthless big-shot land developer Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart) try to school him in the island ways to his advantage. But Kemp has always unsteadily made his own choices, while scrabbling to find his true voice as a real writer, as well as love in the form of Sanderson’s tempting girlfriend, Chenault...

Well, it looks like we have a new Anthony Weiner in town. A Puerto Rican TV show called Dando Candela presented Republican Senator Roberto Arango with naked pictures found on the Internet that they claimed were of him. He wouldn’t deny the allegations, saying he had taken photos like that but only to document his weight loss. Of course, that doesn’t explain the fact that the pictures were found on Grindr, a hook up site for gay and bisexual men.

Gov. Luis Fortuño announced Wednesday the appointment of former Puerto Rico National Guard Adjutant Gen. Emilio Díaz Colón to head the island’s 19,000-member Police Department. The announcement was made during a graduation ceremony for hundreds of new state and municipal police officers at the Puerto Rico Coliseum in Hato Rey. The governor thanked Díaz Colón, who took part in the graduation ceremony, for accepting the “challenge” of heading the department. Díaz Colón headed the Puerto Rico National Guard during the Rosselló administration, when troops were posted at public housing projects as part of the so-called “mano dura,” or firm hand,...

(English-language translation) Prestigious professor Ricardo Alegría, an indispensable figure in the development of [Puerto Rico's] national cultural identity, died today at 6:05 AM at the age of 90 years, sources to El Nuevo Día confirmed. Alegría died of multiple complications from heart problems at the Coronary Intensive Unit of the Puerto Rico & Caribbean Cardiovascular Center. "We found him weak, but his mind is very clear," a source close to the family assured regarding the condition Alegría was in before his health crisis. The prestigious anthropologist, archeologist, historian, promoter, educator, and defender of Puerto Rican culture turned 90 years old...

(English-language translation) A septuagenarian missionary became the first person to import the dangerous cholera bacterium to Puerto Rico in over a century. Confirmation was done by the Department of Health, following protocol which requires that confirmed cholera cases be reported within 24 hours. The man, whom the Department of Health only identified as a missionary who lives in the northern part of the island, traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks ago to do work in an area where hygienic conditions were not the best. "He is a person who travels to the Dominican Republic frequently," State Epidemiologist Carmen Deseda...

We need to make cuts now. Some governors have shown the way. You know about Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, John Kasich, etc. But you probably don't know about Luis Fortuno. Fortuno is governor of Puerto Rico. Two years ago, he fired 17,000 government workers. No state governor did anything like that. He cut spending much more than Walker did in Wisconsin. In return, thousands of union members demonstrated against Fortuno for days. They clashed with police. They called him a fascist Fortuno said he had to make the cuts because Puerto Rico's economy was a mess. "Not just...

Matt Cherette - On Tuesday, President Obama visited Puerto Rico, the first trip of its kind by a sitting US president since John F. Kennedy traveled there in 1961. As it turns out, though, Obama's visit only lasted a few hours. So why even bother going? On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart provided a theory.

"Next time I'm down here, I'm going to have to -- next time I'm here, I'm going to have to play some hoops," President Obama said during a short visit to the Puerto Rico.

From Air Force One landing, to his departure. Local Puerto Rico television media coverage.

The media spent so much time covering union protests in Wisconsin, that I mostly missed a much bigger protest over much bigger (17,000 government workers fired!) cuts in Puerto Rico. When Luis Fortuno became governor in 2009, Puerto Rico's economy was a mess. Or, as he told me: "Not just a mess. We didn't have enough money to meet our first payroll." But he avoided bankruptcy by getting an emergency loan, and immediately cutting Puerto Rico's government. For once, government shrank. Fortuno and the conservative legislature: •Laid off 17,000 government workers •Froze all salaries in government •Cut government spending by...

List – Killed in Action, Global War on Terror, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, Puerto Rico born or Puerto Rico HOR SGT Louie Ramos-Velázquez, USA, KIA May 26, 2011, Kandahar, Afghanistan SGT José M. Caraballo-Pietri, USA, KIA April 10, 2011, Badghis, Afghanistan SGT José M. Cintrón-Rosado, USA, KIA January 2, 2011, Taji, Iraq SPC José A. Delgado-Arroyo, USA, KIA January 2, 2011, Taji, Iraq PVT Francheska Velez, USA, KIA, November 5, 2009, Fort Hood, Texas SPC Israel Candelaria Mejías, USA, KIA April 5, 2009, Near Baghdad, Iraq SrA Jonathan Vega Yelner, USAF, KIA...

Fifty years. That's how long it's been since a sitting American President visited Puerto Rico. The last was John Kennedy in December 1961. So when word leaked out that President Obama will commemorate that Kennedy visit with a one-day stop in Puerto Rico on June 14, many in Washington were caught by surprise. The news electrified residents of the Caribbean island, which has been a U.S. territory for 112 years. It also provided yet another sign that Obama is determined to offer Latino voters many reasons to support his reelection effort. Still, Obama's visit is aimed more at the U.S....

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation to visit Puerto Rico next month, a trip that would make him the first sitting president to come to the U.S. territory in decades, the island's governor said Tuesday. The president, who campaigned in Puerto Rico for the Democratic primary, will visit the island June 14, Gov. Luis Fortuno said, without disclosing details of his itinerary.

Local and federal authorities seized a load of cocaine with an estimated street value of $12 million as smugglers tried to bring it in to Fajardo on a passenger-cargo ferry from Vieques. Three suspected smugglers, all adult male residents of Vieques, were arrested. The 560-kilogram (12,320 pound) load was split between a Dodge Durango truck and Ford Econoline van that had been driven on to the El Isleño ferry in Vieques for a Monday night crossing to Fajardo. Agents from the Police Department’s United Forces for Rapid Action (FURA by its Spanish acronym) and federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE)...

The case is Ex parte Roque Cesar Nido Lanausse, 2011 PR App. LEXIS 497, 2011 WL 1563927, and here’s what Prof. Bob Cottrol (George Washington University School of Law) reports about it (paragraph breaks added): This was a three judge panel at the intermediate appellate court. One judge dissented, but Westlaw did not publish the dissent. Appellate Court is essentially ruling on statutory grounds and on Constitutional grounds. Court says that the Commonwealth government’s position is that having arms is a privilege and not a right. Court rejects this [first] on grounds that licensing statute states that fear for safety...

The contentious debate surrounding the economy was temporarily put on hold this week after we were all surprised by a much-needed patriotic glimmer of hope – the demise of Osama Bin Laden. But despite our toughness on the battlefield, it seems that elected officials across the country are still lacking what it takes to tackle our stagnant economic circumstances. ~ snip ~ There is, however, another glimmer of hope – and it comes in the unexpected form of the unincorporated American territory of Puerto Rico. Despite the advantages of an American citizenry, much lower federal income taxes, college education levels...

PUERTO RICO, May 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - There’s a troubling reason for the low number of domestic applications to major universities in the United States, says professor Krzystztof Silwa, a candidate for the presidency of the of University of Puerto Rico: the applicants have been killed. “Do you know what is happening in the United States? In 1973, they established legal abortion. More or less 50 million abortions have been committed or done in the United States, which means that they have killed an entire generation in the United States,� Silwa told the university’s Search Committee, which is interviewing three...

SAN JUAN, PR – Washington National’s pitcher Liván Hernández is the target of a federal probe for allegedly laundering money on behalf of convicted drug trafficker Angel Ayala Vázquez, aka “El Buster”. EL VOCERO sources indicated that the investigation started some time ago and mentioned that other high profile figureheads are also targets in addition to those already named in the trial against “El Buster” and his brother Luis Xadiel Cruz Vázquez. These people face money laundering and bank fraud charges. According to the sources, the Cuban pitcher testified in relation to this case before a Grand Jury in the...

I'm having a discussion with a friend who is a liberal and he keeps stating over and over that Puerto Rico is an official state of the United States. I on the other hand keep telling him its a territory NOT a State. He keeps saying he can prove it, except he never produces any evidence. I've showed him some older documents on the subject that Puerto Rico is a territory and not a state, but that will not convince him. Does any Freeper out there in freeland have any recent documents and can prove Puerto Rico is in fact...

Rock art specialists from around North America have finally solved this century old archaeological riddle. The stone slab is evidence that native peoples from Puerto Rico or Cuba once lived within the interior of Eastern North America. One day, long before Christopher Columbus claimed to have landed on the eastern edge of Asia, a forgotten people cut steps in the rocks leading up a steep bluff near the Chattahoochee River in the northwest section of the State of Georgia. They carved a supernatural figure on a four feet by one foot granite slab and erected it on the top of...

CAGUAS, Puerto Rico—This mountainside town is home to a picturesque cathedral, a tobacco museum and a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Another defining feature: Caguas's 00725 zip code has more people who receive a disability check than any other in the U.S. Puerto Rico has emerged in recent years as one of the easiest places in the U.S. to get payments from the Social Security Disability Insurance program, created during the Eisenhower administration to help people who can't work because of a health problem. In 2010, 63% of applicants there won approval, four percentage points higher than New Jersey and Wyoming, the most-generous...

The arrival of a tsunami on the West Coast revives a long-standing debate within the National Weather Service: What happens if the country's only two tsunami centers are wiped out? Both centers are located in the Pacific region -- one in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and one in Palmer, Alaska. They calculate everything from the possible size of a tsunami to the areas it might hit, providing local authorities with the information necessary for evacuations and warnings. But with both located in the same general region of the world, they could conceivably be damaged or destroyed by the same event. For...

Congressman told FBI he asked for -- and got -- free home upgrades ### Convicted political fixer Tony Rezko gave U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez free upgrades on a riverfront town house after the congressman asked for them, Gutierrez told the FBI, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned. Gutierrez's comments to federal agents in a previously undisclosed 2008 interview contradict what the congressman told the Sun-Times in 2006 about the purchase. "I walked in with my wife -- as any other consumer could have -- and purchased the unit at the listed price, with no considerations," the Northwest Side congressman said then,...

<p>Puerto Rico's governor has signed a broad package of tax cuts aimed at spurring economic growth.</p> <p>Gov. Luis Fortuno says the $1.2 billion in annual tax cuts translate into an average savings of 50 percent for individuals and 30 percent for businesses.</p>

Scientist found with suspicious item at airport did prison time for plague sample flap -- A world-renowned Texas scientist specializing in infectious diseases who was once charged with smuggling dangerous samples of plague bacteria into the U.S. was questioned by authorities after a suspicious item found in his luggage caused a massive evacuation at Miami International Airport Thursday night. Dr. Thomas C. Butler, 70, was questioned by agents with the FBI and Miami-Dade police Friday after a suspicious item was found in his checked luggage by a MIA baggage screener Thursday night, sources told NBC Miami.... Friday, it was learned...

Like the finances of governments around the world, the finances of the government of Puerto Rico are a disaster. They are in the hole for about roughly $6 billion. So what do they do? They tax foreign firms to the tune of $6 billion. Foreign firms really mean U.S. firms, and a lot of those foreign firms are actually Big Pharma firms. Big Pharma is in Puerto Rico for tax breaks, not tax hikes, but Big Pharma isn't sweating this one too much. The Daily Caller reports: Gov. Luis Fortuño signed the new tax into law Oct. 25. That day,...

One of the first acts of the new Republican-controlled House is to take away the floor voting rights of six delegates representing areas such as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. Five of those delegates are Democrats, while one, from the Northern Marianas Islands, is an independent. The GOP decision to rescind the ability of delegates to vote on amendments on the House floor was the predictable outcome of a longtime party divide. Democrats extended the voting rights in 1993 when they controlled the House, Republicans disenfranchised the delegates when they became the majority in 1995...

An unrepentant terror mastermind has a parole hearing scheduled for early January 2011 in civilian court...During the 1970s and 80s, this socialist revolutionary presided over a clandestine terror network that, among other things, attacked American civilians with over 130 bombs, proudly claimed responsibility for cold blooded murders, prostituted the Episcopal Church in Chicago and New York to cover and promote their terror activities and were trained by a surrogate of Castro’s Cuban Intelligence agency. This terrorist is none other than FALN patriarch and co-founder Oscar Lopez Rivera, who along with his Islamic contemporary Yasser Arafat, is one of the fathers...

Possible damage reported at San Juan, Puerto Rico, airport after 5.1 magnitude earthquake - NBC

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- At least 17 people have been detained as students at the largest public university in the Caribbean clashed with police during an indefinite strike over a new fee, officials said Tuesday. Hundreds of students launched the strike a week ago to demand that university officials eliminate an $800 yearly fee that will be imposed next year to help reduce the system's budget deficit. ... A similar strike in April over the fee and other issues paralyzed the university for nearly two months. The violent clash Monday afternoon began when several people threw smoke bombs inside...

<p>SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Authorities in Puerto Rico say a U.S. National Guard helicopter with six people aboard crashed en route to the neighboring island of Vieques.</p>

On a midweek afternoon in February 2009, a month into the Obama presidency, Republican Rep. Mike Pence arrived at Columbus in his east-central Indiana district for a town hall meeting, the sort of event that usually attracted a few dozen constituents. Surprised to see the hallway outside the room crowded with people, "their arms folded and brows furrowed," Pence shouted down the hall to an aide, asking him to get a janitor to open the room. The aide shouted back that the room was open - and overflowing. Congress had just passed the stimulus bill (Pence voted no), and Hoosiers...

George Will today aptly details why Mike Pence, a stalwart on fiscal issues and an articulate proponent of conservative social values, would be an attractive 2012 presidential candidate. I'll go a step further than George and predict that Pence will announce early next year. A close friend and confidante of Pence's has been telling me for several weeks that Pence is "serious." This friend makes the case that Pence is a solid conservative on the range of issues conservatives care about and is the only candidate who can "seamlessly meld" the sometimes adversarial Tea Party and establishment wings of the...

Nov. 4, 2010 8:44 a.m. • 11 comments Idaho elected its first Hispanic to represent the state in Congress on Tuesday, as Raul Labrador upset freshman Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick with a decisive 51 percent to 41.3 percent victory. Labrador, a conservative Republican state lawmaker and immigration attorney, said he thought the “first” was significant because it sent a message to the nation about Idahoans. “People have such a bad connotation of what Idaho represents,” Labrador said, “a bad place, a racist place. I can’t think of a better message for Idaho to send than to send a young man...

<p>A Puerto Rican veteran of the Vietnam War has been awarded the Silver Star for helping to rescue a company pinned down by enemy fire in 1965.</p> <p>Angel L. Cumba served as a gunner with the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division. He received the military's third-highest decoration Thursday during a Veteran's Day ceremony in the U.S. territory.</p>

BOISE, Idaho -- In an upset win in one of the most unusual House races in the country, underdog Republican Raul Labrador has won Idaho's 1st congressional district over the favored incumbent, Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Walt Minnick. At 12:55 a.m., Minnick conceded on Twitter. The Associated Press in Boise called the race for Labrador minutes later. In a statement Wednesday, Minnick said he phoned Labrador and "wished him every success... I, in particular hope he can be successful in working with the administration and his colleagues of both parties in the exceedingly important task ahead of putting our country...

(English-language translation) New York - Salsa artist Willie Colón's political prediction for tomorrow's congressional elections in the United States is that the Democratic Party will lose most of its seats. He says this will be so as a consequence of the disappointment Americans, and the Hispanic community in particular, feel because Barack Obama's administration has not been capable of delivering what was promised. "The Democrats will suffer many losses. They promised a lot and have done nothing. The economic situation is difficult, and unemployment keeps wreaking havoc," the artist stated during an interview with the Inter News (INS) agency. To...