Free Republic

Ana Montes, who is regarded as "one of the most damaging spies," has been released from a prison in Texas. Montes, now 65, worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, as the top analyst on Cuba during the Cold War. Washington knew her as the "Queen of Cuba" for her insights into Fidel Castro's communist regime.

We all knew Obama winning the election would be bad. But did any of you really believe it could be this bad? Every day is just another astounding move of stupidity, treason, or both. Witness: If you were president of the United States, would you hire an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro to be ambassador to El Salvador, a country teetering on the brink of hard-core socialism? President Obama just did. On Dec. 9, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador, despite the fact that in the late 1990s, the FBI discovered that she...

President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval. President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval. The White House announced the nomination of Mari Del Carmen...

After years of bulldozing, President Obama finally got Senate confirmation for a scandal-plagued diplomat forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government. That means a leftist open borders activist (Mari Carmen Aponte) with a controversial past officially represents the administration abroad. In a 62-37 vote last week, the U.S. Senate approved the confirmation of Aponte, a former board member of the National Council of la Raza (NCLR) and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), as the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. Obama originally nominated Aponte in December 2009 and made her...

Politics: President Obama hit a new low in using a recess appointment to name Maria del Carmen Aponte as U.S. envoy to El Salvador. The radical has consorted with Cuban spies but will be taking no questions. Dismissing three congressional holds on Aponte's ambassadorial confirmation as "playing politics," Obama used his vacation to slip Aponte through to represent the U.S. to the strategic Central American country, without a vote in Congress. That gives Aponte, a campaign contributor aligned to the immigration lobby, access to top-secret information as a political reward. But Aponte's past is one big red flag. From 1982...

Senate Republicans are determined to block a Democratic Party activist's nomination as ambassador to El Salvador because of questions about a long-ago boyfriend who had contacts with Cuban diplomats, congressional staffers say. The FBI cleared Mari Carmen Aponte when the issue of the boyfriend, Cuban-born businessman Roberto Tamayo, first became public after President Bill Clinton nominated her as ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1998. Aponte withdrew from that nomination after Senate Republicans vowed to ask tough questions about Tamayo. They had dated from 1982 to 1994 and attended social functions with Cuban diplomats in Washington, D.C. Her Obama administration...

President Barack Obama has nominated Mari Carmen Aponte to become the next ambassador of El Salvador, a decade after she was forced to withdrawal her name from consideration for a similar post following concerns about alleged ties to Cuba, Newsmax.com reports. A former FBI official told Fox News that Aponte’s 1998 nomination by president Clinton began receiving attention after the foreign relations panel questioned her about a past relationship with Roberto Tamayo, who was alleged to have "possible ties to the Cuban government" and made "repeated trips there." Current White House spokesman Tommy Vietor responded, "as has been previously reported,...

A leftist La Raza activist previously forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government has been nominated by President Obama to a key administration post. Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former director at the extremist Mexican group National Council of La Raza (see the press release applauding her nomination) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been handpicked by Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That means Aponte, an attorney and independent consultant, will represent the State Department in the civil war-ravaged Central American country. In 1998...

The worsening situation in Mexico, despite its barbarity, breadth of murder, kidnappings, and corruption, is not resonating in the American psyche (albiet, perhaps the border states). We agonize and scrutinize the security situation in Iraq, headlines about dozens of wounded and dead, and we have this raging debate on the way ahead there. We have more deaths in our inner-cities from drug related crime nationwide, let alone the horrific numbers climbing in our southern neighbor..yet it doesn’t appear to be a front burner concern...and the Mexican senior military leadership knows this. Expect to see “martial law” and Calderon will be...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, MARCH 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- By declaring Mary the Spiritual Mother of All Humanity, Benedict XVI wouldn't be saying anything new about her, only clarifying her role in salvation, says Cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez. The retired archbishop of San Juan is one of the five cardinal co-sponsors of the 2005 International Symposium on Marian Co-redemption, held in Fatima, that are asking Benedict XVI to declare a fifth Marian dogma. The petition urges the Pope to proclaim Mary "the Spiritual Mother of All Humanity, the co-redemptrix with Jesus the redeemer, mediatrix of all graces with Jesus the one...

AUSTIN, Tex. - "Aponte?" the Fort Hood soldier asked. "I'm here to pick you up." And with that, Bronx G.I. Jonathan Aponte was back in the hands of the U.S. military - his fate uncertain. On the flight back to his base yesterday, Aponte came clean, admitting he indeed hired someone to shoot him in the knee, hoping to get out of returning to Iraq. The alleged gunman, Felix Padilla, charged $500. The cost to Aponte is now much, much more. He faces charges in the Bronx and a possible court-martial at Fort Hood. He also is dealing with the...

CBS) NEW YORK The death and destruction of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq seems to have become so rampant to one local soldier that he actually staged an attack on himself -- allegedly hiring a hitman to non-fatally shoot him -- so he wouldn't be sent back for another tour of duty. Now, 20-year-old Jonathan Aponte is under fire at home in the Bronx for his decision that may send him to prison. "There are some people mentally that can handle it. There are some people who just can't. You need to know when to say enough is enough," Aponte...

Law enforcement agents in Central Florida arrested a 26-year-old man Thursday in possession of more than 1,000 stolen blank birth certificates, according to the Marion County Sheriff's Department. Authorities said Jose Aponte was arrested on West Silver Springs Boulevard in Ocala after he allegedly attempted to sell a blank birth certificate to federal agents. Aponte reportedly was found to be in possession of 1,021 blank certificates of birth stolen from the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Dorado, Puerto Rico, and brought into Florida. The FBI is charging Aponte with violations of Title 18 U.S.C. Section 1028, Fraud and Related Activity...