Free Republic

A reader asked me to check into information that President Bush was pushing a massive foreign-aid package to Mexico to help them secure their southern border against the flow of illegal aliens from Central America. “We can’t even get our own border straight, and we are going to provide Mexico with funding so they can solve their problem,” the reader fumed. “I doubt the Central Americans are staying very long in Mexico anyway. We know where they are going!” Too outrageously outrageous to be true? Well, I checked it out and it’s even worse than the reader described. Far...

The national debt stands at $9,250,315,514,442.17 and will be more by the time you read this. We don’t have a secure border in our own country, and we’re going to write a (hot) check to our good friends in Mexico for one and a half billion dollars to help them get a secure border. This is your government at work, folks.

NEWPORT, Ky. (AP) -- A woman who won a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband five years ago was found dead at her home overlooking the Ohio River, where she had apparently been for days before anyone found her, police said. Virginia Metcalf Merida's son discovered her body Wednesday. Police were awaiting autopsy and toxicology results before announcing a cause of death. When the woman and her husband, Mack Wayne Metcalf, won the jackpot, they told lottery officials they were going their separate ways to fulfill their dreams. Merida planned to quit her job making corrugated boxes and buy...

MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurricane Isidore plowed across Mexico's Yucatan peninsula on Monday, forcing thousands from their homes as it flooded streets, toppled trees and power lines and shut down offshore oil rigs. About 70,000 people in low-lying fishing villages on the peninsula were evacuated to shelters after torrential rains flooded homes and roads, and winds of more than 120 mph (195 kph) ripped off roofs and uprooted trees. Local radio stations reported four road accident deaths during the storm, and Mexico's state oil monopoly, Pemex, evacuated more than 8,000 workers from its drilling platforms in the Gulf of...