Free Republic

True American Hero Honored SSgt Vincent Rios, USMC (Ret.), was the Chair of Honor at the Memorial Program on Sunday, May 25, 2008, Lands End, Fort Miley, San Francisco. FReepers Scott and Saundra Hawkins file this first-hand account. Saundra met Vince Rios when they both worked for a federal agency in San Francisco in 1977 and they have remained close friends ever since. “Vince Rios is a true American hero if ever there was one,” says Saundra. Why is Vince Rios a true American Hero? After Sgt. Rios served his first tour of duty in Vietnam, he volunteered to go...

Colombia will pay a reward to a FARC guerrilla who shot dead his commander and cut off the man's hand to prove his identity in a case that sparked debate over a program to compensate informants, authorities said on Friday. Pablo Montoya, alias Rojas, killed Ivan Rios, one of the FARC's top seven secretariat commanders, and turned himself in to soldiers in what the government described as a serious blow to Latin America's oldest rebel insurgency. ... Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the government would pay up to $2.5 million in bounty to Montoya and three others because of...

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) --The fugitive founder of a violent Puerto Rican independence group was killed in a gunfight with federal agents at a mountain farmhouse in western Puerto Rico, the FBI said Sunday. Filiberto Ojeda Rios, 72, opened fire on agents who were trying to arrest him at a house in the Hormigueros area of Puerto Rico on Friday, the FBI said. Ojeda Rios was killed, and an FBI agent was shot in the stomach and severely wounded, the agency said. Ojeda Rios was the founder and leader of Puerto Rico's radical Boricua Popular Army, which sought independence for the...

An FBI sweep launched in Puerto Rico to prevent a "domestic terrorist attack" is eliciting widespread outrage on the island - and as far away as New York City - with critics accusing the agency of trying to use terrorism as a guise to turn public opinion against Puerto Rico's independence movement. The Friday morning raid on the U.S. commonwealth, which targeted five private homes and one business, was launched to prevent attacks from the Boricua Popular Army, the FBI said. The special agent in charge of the San Juan Division of the FBI, Luis Fraticelli, said the searches were...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rican police tightened security at federal buildings and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a visit to the island amid fears the killing of a Puerto Rican nationalist in an FBI shootout could lead to a resurgence of pro-independence violence. Police chief Pedro Toledo acknowledged the potential for unrest, saying the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios had generated "rancor and rage." Ojeda Rios, 72, was shot to death Friday by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in southwestern Puerto Rico for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A fugitive considered one of Mexico's most dangerous criminals was arrested Tuesday in Southern California, nearly 19 years after a sensational armed escape from a courthouse, immigration officials said. Alfredo Rios Galeana was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at his home in the city of South Gate, said agency spokeswoman Virginia Kice. The arrest on immigration violations was the result of a multi-agency investigation by authorities in the U.S. and Mexico, she said. Rios, who was accused of numerous bank robberies, kidnappings and murders, escaped from a Mexican federal courthouse during a hearing...

Even though people on both sides of the issue deny it, it is increasingly obvious that homosexuality is dominating a new place on the scale of American political life. Even in conservative circles, prominent voices – some of whom I call friends, all of whom I respect – continually find themselves divided on not only the issue, but also how people of conscience respond to it. In recent weeks, David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, and Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America, have been "duking it out" on the issue of whether or...