Attorney General Eric Holder Announces Resignation

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, who folds the dubious distinction of being the only attorney general held in contempt of Congress, announced that he would be resigning on Thursday.

Holder, one of the few Obama remaining appointments from the first term, is one of the longest-serving AG's in US history and the country's first black attorney general. His five year tenure was marked primarily by cover-ups, politically motivated prosecutions and overreach on the part of the DOJ.

In the summer of 2012, Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when the DOJ refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operation Fast & Furious, in which the agency allowed straw purchasers to buy guns in US border states and take them into Mexico without intervening. In December 2010, one of these guns was recovered from the scene of a shootout south of Tuscon, AZ where Mexican drug traffickers killed US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Mexican officials have seized numerous guns traced to the gunwalking program from drug traffickers or recovered them from murder scenes south of the border.

Before Holder announced his resignation, a federal judge ordered Holder to hand over all the requested Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee by October 1st. This has led to some speculation that the withheld documents contain damaging or politically embarrassing details that would've generated bad publicity for the White House and Democrats a month before the midterm elections. Others believe Holder's departure could have been timed to allow President Obama's hand-picked replacement to be confirmed by the Senate in a lame duck session in the event the majority shifts back to the Republicans after the elections.

Early in his tenure, Holder also supported civilian trials for Al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay, although the administration later backed off of trying suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court in New York.

As attorney general, Holder seemingly took every opportunity to inject race into the DOJ enforcing federal laws- his DOJ's Civil Rights Commission declined to press charges against members of the New Black Panthers Party who were videotaped clad in paramilitary uniforms and wielding nightsticks in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Claiming minorities were incapable of obtaining photo ID, Holder's DOJ also unsuccessfully fought newly-passed voter ID laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas.

Speaking out on the recent unrest in Ferguson, MO, Holder told an audience at New York University this week:

“As an African American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor (toward police),"

Under Holder, the DOJ also aggressively went after e-mails reporters from the Associated Press and FOX News and seized the phone records of FOX News reporter James Rosen's parents in the name of national security.

Not surprisingly, holder said that the Department of Justice had no plans to investigate the Veterans Affairs clandestine wait-lists in which the agency deferred treatment to numerous veterans seeking care at VA facilities- with a number of them dying as a result of being denied care.

Quickie Borderline Psychosis Update- Mexican Army Helicopter Opens Fire on US Border Patrol Agents; Crisis in Rio Grande Valley Grows

ARIZONA- The FBI is investigating a June 27th incident in which a Mexican Army helicopter crossed the border and fired shots at uniformed US Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona. According to Tucson Border Patrol Sector union president Art del Cueto:

The incident occurred after midnight and before 6 a.m. Helicopter flew into the U.S. and fired on two U.S. Border Patrol agents. The incident occurred west of the San Miguel Gate on the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation. The agents were unharmed. The helicopter went back into Mexico. Mexico then contacted U.S. authorities and apologized for the incident.

Mexico claims that the helicopter was pursuing drug traffickers, but offered no explanation on why uniformed Border Patrol agents near a marked Border Patrol truck on the US side of the border came under fire from one of their military choppers. Although the Mexican government reportedly issued a brief apology for the armed incursion, the US Customs and Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security have questioned Mexico's version of events.

This is not the first incursion by Mexican troops into southern Arizona this year. In January, uniformed Mexican soldiers armed with H&K G3 rifles pointed their weapons at a US Border Patrol agent while they were 50 yards across the US border near Sasabe, AZ. The soldiers reportedly told the lone agent they had gotten lost while pursuing a suspected drug smuggler.

While it is possible the helicopter could've veered off course in the dark, some have speculated they were providing cover for a drug shipment making its way across the border. In a 2006 incident, Sheriff's deputies in rural Hudspeth County, Texas chased a drug laden-SUV to the Rio Grande. The drivers attempted to cross back into Mexico but the vehicle got stuck on the opposite bank. As the drugs were offloaded into another vehicle, men in desert fatigues and driving Humvees fanned out and took up defensive positions on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, pointing automatic weapons at the Hudspeth county deputies as the smugglers continued offloading the stuck vehicle.

This isn't the first incursion into US airspace by a Mexican military helicopter in recent years. Throughout 2010 and 2011, Federal and state lawmen as well as homeowners, sportsmen and journalists reported seeing helicopters with the Mexican Navy insignia fly across the border unimpeded throughout the Rio Grande Valley in southeastern Texas. In March 2010, a Mexican Navy helicopter with the ramp down and armed men visible inside was photographed on the US side of the border in Falcon Heights, TX where the border is clearly marked by the Falcon Reservoir and dam.

TEXAS- In response to an unprecedented influx of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing into the Texas via northern Mexico, Lone Star State governor Rick Perry has ordered additional officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety- including the Texas Rangers, Texas Highway Patrol and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife- to patrol the border area in the Rio Grande Valley in what lawmakers are referring to as 'saturated patrols'. The influx of minors- primarily from Central America- is said to have been sparked by fliers distributed in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that promised asylum in the United States to anyone who showed up. In addition to the flyers, the rumors were further bolstered by a White House executive order from late last year in which Barack Obama de-prioritized the deportation of children in the USA illegally.

According to Border Patrol officers, the illegal immigrants were apparently coached on questions they were likely to face once they turned themselves in. More disturbingly, a number of the minors who have turned themselves in are gang members. However, unless they have a criminal record in the USA, they will reportedly be processed by INS like any other unaccompanied minor.

Meanwhile, the smugglers are becoming bolder and more aggressive, either physically attacking officers or firing shots at them from the Mexican side of the border.

Borderline Psychosis, Psychose de Frontière Edition- Canadian, US Officials Raid Cross Border Tobacco Smuggling Ring

Officers from the Sûreté du Québec, RCMP and US Customs and Border Patrol arrested 28 people and seized more than $450,000 in cash and 40,000 Kilograms of tobacco in a raid on a tobacco smuggling ring in southwestern Quebec- said to be the largest of its kind. Investigators say that mobsters from Montreal's Rizutto crime family teamed up with Mohawk smugglers on the Akwesasne Reservation which straddles the US/Canada border south of Montreal to manufacture contraband cigarettes.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Joyce Kemp said Montreal's Italian Mafia teamed up with aboriginal organized crime to illegally import the bulk tobacco.

The tobacco made its way into Canada in big trucks after being purchased by the Mafia in North Carolina, she told reporters.

"It was hidden with other merchandise (and) often what was used was cedar mulch to hide the (odour) of the tobacco."

Police said the tobacco was imported into Canada through the Lacolle border crossing or through the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve.

Kemp said that after crossing the border, the truckloads were hidden for two or three days in a warehouse to ensure they hadn't been spotted. The tobacco was then transferred to factories where the contraband cigarettes were made.

The cigarettes were then allegedly sold on the Kahnawake reserve south of Montreal.

The strategically located Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation has been a hotbed of smuggling since the Great Depression. Drug trafficking organizations have employed savvy native smugglers to move all manner of contraband across the border- in recent years cocaine and untaxed cigarettes into Canada and ecstasy or hydroponically grown pot into the USA.

On the USA side of the border, the Akwesasne Reservation is in the northernmost reaches of New York State where the cigarette tax is $4.35 per pack- plus an additional $1.50 per pack in local taxes in New York City. However, a New York State Department of Taxation and Finance directive allows cigarettes made on one reservation to be transported to other reservations without the state excise tax. Unsurprisingly, this has led to cigarette smuggling in New York City and other high-tax jurisdictions in the northeast and state and local officials in St Lawrence County have seized truckloads of cigarettes produced on the reservation despite the clause allowing the transport of untaxed cigarettes from reservation to reservation.

Trafficking cigarettes from low or no tax jurisdictions like southern tobacco producing states of Indian reservations to high tax locales like New York or Boston is a very simple and lucrative way for organized crime and even terrorist organizations to make money. A combined federal and provincial sales tax in Quebec and Ontario means cigarettes can cost as much as $13 per pack, making much of eastern Canada a lucrative destination for cigarette smuggling as well.

One possible disincentive for smugglers would be for states and provinces to cut tobacco taxes, but not only have places like New York City shown an unwillingness to do so, but they have proposed restricting and taxing sales of e-cigarettes in the same way as tobacco products.

Borderline Psychosis, Invasion of the Body Snatchers Edition- Gunmen Steal Corpse of Slain Zetas Leader; Friendly Fire Likely Behind Border Patrol Agent's Death

COAHUILA- Mexican Marines reportedly shot and killed the leader of the infamous paramilitary Zetas cartel during a firefight in the town of Progreso on Sunday. However, in a bizarre development the body of Zetas boss Heriberto Lazcano was stolen from a nearby mortuary at gunpoint in the early morning hours of Monday morning.

According to Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense, the Marines were responding to reports of armed men gathered outside of a baseball stadium in Progreso. When they arrived, gunmen moving in a small convoy threw grenades at them before the Marines returned fire, killing two of the gunmen.

Rear Admiral Jose Luis Vergara stated that the Marines had assumed that they had killed two low-level sicarios in the skirmish. Authorties took pictures of the two dead gunmen as well as fingerprints.

What reportedly happened next is a truly bizarre development. According to Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos, armed men broke into the funeral home in the early morning hours of Monday morning and stole the corpse of Lazcano and one of his accomplices.

The theft of the two bodies quickly turned what should have been a moment of triumph for outgoing Mexican president Felipe Calderon into an embarassment that casts doubt on the official version of events in a nation that has grown increasingly skeptical of both the police and media.

While the cult-like and largely dismantled La Familia Michoacana was sometimes known to take their dead with them while retreating from a firefight, there were no reports of them actively breaking into funeral homes or mortuaries to retrieve their associate's bodies.

The Zetas had been rocked by prolonged infighting in recent months- after splitting with the enforcers-turned-cartel earlier this year, former high ranking Zeta Ivan 'El Taliban' Velazquez Caballero was tracked down and arrested by Mexican federal police last month.

Miguel Angel Trevino- who also goes by the monicker Z-40- is said to be the heir apparent to the Zetas. In June, his brother was arrested by the DEA in a multi-state raid where he and others were accused of laundering millions in drug money through the purchase and training of racehorses.

Francisco Kjolseth / Salt Lake Tribune photo

ARIZONA- A preliminary investigation into the shooting death of a US Border Patrol agent has found that friendly fire was likely responsible. Agent Nicholas Ivie was killed on October 2nd as he and another agent were responding to a sensor along the border in rural Cochise County, AZ that was tripped in the predawn hours.

“There are strong preliminary indications that the death of United States Border Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents,” FBI Special Agent in Charge James L. Turgal Jr. said in a statement.

Turgal didn’t elaborate on the agency’s conclusions but said the FBI is using “all necessary investigative, forensic and analytical resources” as it investigates the Tuesday shooting about five miles north of the border near Bisbee.

One of the other agents was shot in the ankle and buttocks, but was released from the hospital after surgery. The third agent was uninjured.

The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, which is assisting the FBI in the probe, said federal investigators used ballistic testing to determine the shootings likely were the result of so-called friendly fire among the agents.

While federal authorities declined to offer details of the shooting, George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the three agents split up as they investigated the sensor alarm, noting they all fired their weapons.

“Coming in from different angles, that is more than likely how it ended up happening,” McCubbin told The Arizona Republic of the shootings.

Agent Ivie is scheduled to be laid to rest in his Utah hometown on Thursday. Nicholas Ivie is survived by his wife, Christy and daughters, Raigan DeAnn and Presley Delna; his mother, Cheryl Ivie, father Douglas Ivie and step mother, Donetta Ivie; his siblings, Chris Ivie (Michelle), Andrea Davis (Todd), Rick Ivie (Corinne), and Joel Ivie (Anne).

Border Patrol Agent Fatally Shot in Southern Arizona Identified; Unconfirmed Reports Claim Mexican Police Detained 2 Suspects in Killing

A US Border Patrol agent was killed and another wounded in what investigators are describing as an ambush in rugged terrain along the Mexican border west of Naco, AZ. The shooting reportedly took place in the early morning hours of Tuesday as the agents were responding on horseback to a tripped sensor along the border fence.

The agents reported over the radio that they had come under fire as they were following a trail into the area, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman with the Cochise County Sheriff's Office. Earlier reports said they were on horseback.

When deputies arrived, one of the agents had died and another suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries, she said. Cochise County Sheriff's Office sent every available deputy to the scene.

The wounded agent was flown to a hospital, according to Crystal Amarillas, a spokeswoman for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol.

On Tuesday, investigators patrolled a rugged area south of U.S. 80 on ATVs and trucks, and James Turgal Jr., FBI special agent in charge for Arizona, said at a Tuesday press conference that they would likely continue gathering evidence for two days.

The murdered Border Patrol agent has been identified as 30 year old Nicholas Ivie of Provo, UT. Ivie joined the Border Patrol in 2008 and family described him as a loving father and husband who grew up around horses and loved his job which involved patrolling remote and rugged terrain in south eastern Arizona on horseback. Ivie was also a Mormon and he learned Spanish during his two year mission to Mexico at the age of 19.

The second agent, whose name hasn't been released, was treated and released by Wednesday after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds including to the ankle and buttocks.

The area in which the shootings took place has been described by local, state and federal law enforcement officials as a high-intensity drug trafficking and smuggling area owing to the rugged terrain and the distance from the Border Patrol stations in Naco and Douglas, AZ- creating a gap in effective coverage.

Lt. Floyd Gregory, who oversee the Cochise County Sheriff's Department Narcotics Unit, has pointed out that smugglers have gotten increasingly brazen and resourceful in recent years.

In the past, the area was a major route for illegal immigrants who left behind piles of discarded clothing, water jugs and other debris. But most of the illegal-immigrant traffic has dried up. What remains is the drug smuggling.

They use the canyon to smuggle loads of marijuana from the border north to Arizona 80, where it is quickly loaded into vehicles and transported to stash houses in Douglas, Tucson or other communities, Gregory said.

Sometimes, the smugglers use pickup trucks or SUVs loaded with cellophane-wrapped bricks of marijuana to get to the highway. But more commonly, the marijuana bricks are stuffed inside homemade burlap backpacks and trekked north through the desert. The backpacks weigh anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds, he said. Sometimes one smuggler is designated to carry only food and water for the rest of the group, he said.

In the past, Gregory said these human smuggling "mules" traveled in groups with as many as 15 people. But more recently, law-enforcement officials are encountering smaller groups of two to four mules. That way, the groups are harder to detect and smuggling organizations can reduce their losses if the mules are caught

"We've had intel that the higher-ups have told their people to do whatever it takes: 'We are not going to lose a load at any cost,' " Gregory said.

In March 2010, Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz was gunned down on his property while checking fences and water lines.

In December 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed when his BORTAC [Border Patrol Tactical- the Border Patrol equivalent to a SWAT Team- NANESB!] unit was engaged in a firefight with what law enforcement describes as a "rip crew"- armed bandits who ambush and rob smugglers of their contraband. At least two guns from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms' ill-advised 'Fast And Furious' gunwalking program were recovered from the scene, where field agents were ordered to allow guns purchased on the US side of the border to cross unimpeded into Mexico, where they would surface at any number of crime scenes in Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious was carried out without any notification of Mexican authorities about the trafficked weapons. The death toll on the Mexican side of the border from Fast And Furious guns is thought to be in the hundreds and a recent Univision report has uncovered additional Fast and Furious weapons that were recovered by Mexican troops from the scene of a 2010 massacre of 16 teenagers at a birthday party in a residential area of Ciudad Juarez. This eventually led to a Congressional inquiry and impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Last month, Mexico Federal police announced the arrest of one of the suspects in the shooting of Brian Terry- although any eventual extradition to face charges in the USA may be a thorny issue as Mexico will not extradite prisoners facing the death penalty in the United States. Ironically, the Border Patrol station in nearby Bisbee, AZ was renamed in honor of Agent Terry a few weeks before the murder of Agent Ivie.

On Thursday, reports were circulating that Mexican police had detained two suspects in the shooting of Agent Ivie.

Federal police have arrested two men who may be connected with the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent just north of the Mexico-Arizona border, a Mexican law enforcement official said Thursday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said it was unclear if there was strong evidence linking the men to the shooting of Agent Nicholas Ivie.

Brenda Nath, an FBI spokeswoman in Arizona, and Border Patrol officials in Arizona declined to comment on the detention of the two men in Mexico. The Cochise County sheriff's office, which is also investigating the shooting, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lydia Antonio, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, confirmed the two detentions, but declined to say what prompted them and what made authorities suspect the two might be involved in the shooting.

Authorities have declined to provide key details about Tuesday's shooting, including what they believe prompted the shooting, whether the agents were ambushed and whether any guns from the shooting were recovered. Still, they suspect that more than one person fired on the agents.

The head of the Border Patrol agents union has said he believes those who carried out the shooting probably had time to escape in the early morning darkness before authorities could seal off the area and that he doubted that whoever shot the agents would still be hiding in the area.

While its still early in the investigation, there exists the distinct possibility that Agent Ivie was also slain with a gun from Operation Fast & Furious.

This was not the first death involving a law enforcement officer from Southeastern Arizona in Recent weeks. On September 19, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Deever was killed when his pickup truck rolled over on this way to meet up with his son for a hunting trip outside of Williams, AZ.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Mass Jailbreak in Coahuila; Brian Terry Murder Suspect in Custody? Spanish-Language Univision Airs New Information in Fast And Furious Investigative Report

COAHUILLA- More than 130 inmates charged with Federal crimes escaped from a prison in Piedras Negras earlier this month after constructing a tunnel and cutting through a chain link fence. The prison that the inmates escaped from is reportedly less than two miles from the border with Texas.

Authorities in Coahuila state discovered a seven-yard long tunnel, ropes and electric cables they believe were used in the break from the prison in Piedras Negras, according to state Attorney General Homero Ramos Gloria.

The prison's director and two other employees were detained for an investigation into the escape of 132 prisoners, Mr Ramos said. The prison houses roughly 730 inmates.

"The fugitives used the tunnel which had an entry and exit hole with a 4-foot diameter," he said. "They cut the chain-link material outside and one by one they got out to a piece of land."

Federal police units and Mexican army convoys were deployed to search for the inmates and authorities in Coahuila state offered rewards of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrests of each prisoner. Visitors were kicked out of the prison but stayed outside waiting for news of relatives.

Mr Ramos said in a press conference that 86 of the inmates were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, such as drug trafficking, and the rest faced state charges. He said police are investigating a deadly shoot-out 160 miles south of Piedras Negras after the prison break to determine if any of the four people killed were one of the fugitives.

The majority of the escapees were identified as members of the Zetas and reportedly coerced other inmates to aid them in the jailbreak to help replenish their ranks. Three women thought to be escapees were discovered in the visitor's area of the prison after the mass escape, claiming they were threatened by some of the escaping inmates.

Mass jailbreaks and collusion between incarcerated cartel members and their jailers has been problematic since President Calderon began a crackdown against Mexico's drug cartels in 2006. Some states that are supposed to incarcerate inmates convicted on Federal charges have complained there's a shortage of space in their prison systems as well as qualified corrections officers.

In July 2010, guards at a Durango prison were placed under arrest by Federal police officers after it was learned certian inmates were released from their cells and carried out contract killings using prison vehicles and rifles from the armoury.

In February of this year, the Zetas killed at least 40 members of the rival Gulf Cartel during a prison riot that was cover for the escape of some 30 high ranking members of Los Zetas. In December 2010, at least 141 inmates escaped from a Nuevo Leon prison. In 2009, a number of men dressed as police officers showed up at a prison in the state of Zacatecas and simply escorted 53 inmates- many of them high ranking cartel members- out the front door. Mass prison breaks have also taken place in the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz in recent years.

UPDATE- 10/1: Mexico's Ministry of National Defense is reporting that seven more escapees were arrested in Nuevo Laredo on Sunday evening.

WASHINGTON DC- Not quite 10 days after the Department of Justice Inspector General's released its report on Operation Fast And Furious- which was basically the White House and Eric Holder stonewalling his own Justice Department- Spanish language TV network Univision has launched an investigative report on the ATF's gunwalking program. The Univison piece also has reportedly uncovered a number of murder victims and seized weapons overlooked by the House Oversight Committee investigation earlier this year.

In the report, Univision identifies a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation "Fast and Furious," and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings and other actions by Mexican hit men and drug cartels.

The report also reveals that the Obama administration may have indirectly played a role in the 2009 massacre, where 18 young men were killed at a rehabilitation center in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. The massacre was reportedly ordered and carried out by Mexican hit men.

According to a Mexican army document obtained by Univision, three of the high caliber weapons used in the attack were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the ATF. The partial transcript obtained by Fox News did not specify whether this was Operation "Fast and Furious," or another similar ATF operation.

A number of websites have made a 9 and a half minute portion of the Univision report available online with English subtitles [see above]. In addition to Fast and Furious guns turning up at scores of crime scenes in Mexico, two weapons traced back to Operation Fast And Furious were found at the scene of the December 2010 murder of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in southern Arizona.

Aside from some investigative journalism from CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson [the first reporter to get an ATF whistleblower to come forward on the record- NANESB!] and local coverage in Arizona, the only time Fast and Furious received any mention in the American press was to either question the credibility of ATF whistleblowers and deflect culpability away from high-ranking Justice Department officials or call for stricter gun control in the United States while citing the ongoing violence in Mexico.

SONORA- Mexican Federal Police announced that they had arrested a suspect in the December 2010 slaying of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. On September 7th, Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza was taken into custody in the state of Sonora.

Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza is one of the five men charged with killing Terry in December 2010 during a shootout in Arizona near the Mexico border. One is on trial in Arizona and the other three remain fugitives. Sanchez was arrested Thursday in Sonora state.

In July, U.S. authorities made a rare disclosure linked to the botched gun-smuggling probe, revealing identities and requesting the public's help in capturing the four fugitives accused in the shooting death of Terry.

The release of the suspects' identities in an unsealed indictment came with the offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to their capture.

The FBI said it was seeking information related to Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, 31, Ivan Soto-Barraza, 34, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, 34, and a man identified as Lionel Portillo-Meza, which Mexican police said was an alias of the man arrested Thursday in Puerto Penasco, Sonora.

Portillo-Meza's age and birthplace were unavailable. The other three fugitives were born in Mexico, but their hometowns were not available.

All five men have been charged with murder. They also face charges of assaulting four federal agents.

FBI agents declined to discuss which fugitive is suspected of firing the shot that killed Terry. They also would not comment on whether the weapon was linked to an Operation Fast and Furious purchase.

The five men, plus another who faces lesser charges in the case, went to the U.S. from Mexico in order to rob marijuana smugglers, the indictment said.

Under the current extradition treaty with Mexico, despite being accused of a capital offense, Meza and the remaining fugitives cannot be extradited to the United States if any of them face the death penalty.

TEXAS- A Texas State University professor is accused of owning at least two houses that were purchased with laundered drug money, according to a lawsuit filed by the IRS in San Antionio this month.

Sindy Chapa, an assistant journalism professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX is also an ex-girlfriend of embattled former Tamaulipas governor Conrad Yarrington, who is accused by law enforcement on both sides of the border of laundering payoff money from the Gulf Cartel through real estate holdings in Texas.

Chapa reportedly owns a home in Kyle, TX worth an estimated $273,000 and another porterty in McAllen, TX worth $357,400. According to a public database, Chapa reportedly makes $58,000 a year as a professor. Although the IRS is seeking forefeiture of her two properties, she hasn't been formally accused of any crime.

The professor and former Yarrington beau did not show up for her Thurday night classes at the beginning of the semester, leaving a substitute to fill in.

SAN LUIS POTOSI- Mexico's Navy has taken advantage of  some infighting among the Zetas and captured a former high-ranking member nicknamed 'El Taliban' who had broken with the cartel in recent months.

Ivan Velázquez Caballero, 42, was dragged Wednesday evening from a safe house in a middle class neighborhood in the city of San Luis Potosi. Though accompanied by two bodyguards, Velázquez apparently was seized without a shot being fired. He and his two alleged accomplices were presented to the media early Thursday.

Mexico's government put a $2.5 million price on Velázquez's head last spring. He also faces a U.S. criminal indictment on drug-trafficking charges in the Houston-based Southern District of Texas.

Velázquez's arrest came hours after marines captured 18 alleged Zetas gunmen close to the border upriver from McAllen, an area that lately has been considered Gulf Cartel territory. But running battles also erupted later Wednesday between marines and gunmen in the center of Piedras Negras, which shares the Rio Grande with Eagle Pass and is considered to be under Treviño's sway.

Caballero had reportedly sought to work with the Knights Templar and Gulf Cartels- the latter being former benefactors for the Zetas until a very high profile and bloody split where the Zetas went into business for themselves around 2009. The Knights Templar is based primarily out of Michoacan and quickly stepped in to fill the void after the leaders of the cult-like La Familia Michoacana cartels were either killed or arrested by Federal Police last year.

Earlier this month, Mexican Marines arrested a top member of the Gulf Cartel in the Tamaulipas city of Altamira.

Busy Beltway Thursday- Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Provision; House Finds Holder in Contempt

In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's signature healthcare law on Thursday morning by a 5-4 margin. Chief Justice Roberts had ruled that the individual mandate in Obamacare was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. However, he ruled that the mandate could be considered a tax despite Obama and the Democrat's insistence that the mandate wasn't a tax when they were trying to sell the public on it back in 2009.

Via Scotusblog and Legal Insurrection:

“In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.”

In even simpler terms, it's a tax for existing, basically. Using this ruling as precedent, there really would be nothing from stopping Congress from imposing a recurring annual 'Not Buying a Chevy Volt' surtax on any new vehicle purchased in the USA- including a Chevy Volt because only Volts with a certain VIN number are exempt.

While the decison may seem to vindicate Obama and the Democrats who supported it at first, the estimated $1.75 trillion pricetag means that the Democrats have passed the largest tax increase in American history durin a timeframe when the national unemployment rate was never less than 8.1%. The [rather tortured- NANESB!] definition of the mandate as a tax means that it can be struck down or eliminated in Congress with a simple majority instead of a supermajority. This also makes one wonder if the numerous Obamacare waivers the Administration passed out could be considered 'tax cuts for the rich'? Also, will any of the 800,000 or so illegal immigrants that he just gave totally-not-amnesty-amnesty to this month recieve waivers?

Reaction from both sides was immediate, with Obama taking the opportunity to hawk campaign t-shirts and reassure Americans how awesome his new tax was while reading from a prepared statement earlier today. At the same time, Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney's campaign raised nearly $2 million dollars from online donations within hours of the Supreme Court's decision.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives went ahead with a scheduled vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over the ATF Fast & Furious gunwalking scandal on Thursday afternoon.

The vote follows a roughly 16-month investigation by the chamber’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the failed gun-running sting known as Fast and Furious -- run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a division of the Justice Department led by Holder.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., filed two subpoenas over that period requesting additional information. But he has more recently focused on information related to a February 2011 letter to Congress that falsely claimed the ATF was unaware the operation involved the underground sale of the assault weapons.

“Today, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his continued refusal to produce relevant documents,” Issa said after the vote. “This was not the outcome I had sought and it could have been avoided had Attorney General Holder actually produced the subpoenaed documents he said he could provide.”

In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by heavily armed smugglers in a shootout near the US/Mexico border in Arizona- two of the weapons recovered at the scene were traced back to Fast & Furious. Attorney General Holder originally testified that no gunwalking took place under Fast & Furious before later admitting that ATF Field agents were ordered to allow more than 2000 firearms to be smuggled into Mexico by straw purchasers, losing track of all of them. In addition to Brian Terry's death, numerous guns from Fast and Furious have been turning up at hundreds of crime scenes in Mexico. Many on the House Government Oversight Panel requested more documents from Holder regarding gunwalking during often-contentious hearings, but in a move many saw as designed to shield Holder from further oversight scrutiny, President Obama invoked executive privelege on certain DOJ documents and correspondence.

One school of thought out there is that the sole purpose of Fast & Furious was to create more anti-gun sentiment and pass additional gun control laws after saturating an already volatile Mexico with weapons that could be traced back to the USA. This was dismissed by some in the media as being the stuff off kooky black helicopter conspiracy tinfoil hat brigades. Yet nearly every Democrat on that spoke on the House floor Thursday took the opportunity to call for additional punitive gun control laws here in the USA, despite the fact that the DOJ orchestrated arms trafficking already violated several laws on the books.

After a lengthy and incoherent diatribe by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a walkout by the Congressional Black Caucus, the measure to find Holder in contempt passed on the House floor by a 255-67 margin, with at least 17 Democrats breaking from their party to vote on their contempt vote.

Last week's vote in the House oversight committee to bring the contempt vote to the floor of the house passed along

House Oversight Committee Votes Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt Over DOJ's Fast & Furious Gunwalking

Despite a last-minute move by President Obama to invoke executive privilege over certain documents requested by the House Oversight Committee regarding a 'gunwalking' program from the ATF, the committee chairman went ahead with a vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

The oversight committee, chaired by Congressman Darrel Issa [R-CA 49], had been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operations Fast & Furious where field agents were ordered to stand down as illegally purchased guns in Arizona made their way across the border to Mexico. In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by a gang of heavily armed smugglers along the Arizona border. Two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the crime scene. Hundreds of guns from Fast & Furious have also been recovered at crime scenes across Mexico and by Holder's own admission, there are more than 1700 unaccounted for weapons from the ATF gunwalking program. These firearms will likely continue to surface at crime scenes in both the USA and Mexico.

Obama's 11th hour invocation of executive privilege on Wednesday came before the Oversight Committee was supposed to rule on whether or not to move forward with contempt of congress proceedings against Eric Holder.

While Attorney General Holder insists he's turned over all the documents that the committee has requested over the last 15 months, a number of the documents were heavily redacted and Holder has contradicted himself while appearing before Congress- Fast & Furious began in 2009 and Mexican officials weren't even alerted by the DOJ to the weapons being smuggled into the country.

On Wednesday afternoon, the panel voted 23-17 in favor of holding the Attorney General in contempt of Congress- with the vote being split along party lines. Democrats on the Oversight Committee claimed that the hearings are a politically motivated witchunt and that the Fast & Furious gunwalking happened under the Bush Administration as well- a claim that Holder himself eventually retracted.

However, Wednesday's vote does not mean that Holder is automatically in contempt of Congress- but rather a contempt motion goes before the rest of the House of Representatives. Speaker of the House John Boehner [R-OH8] and majority leader Eric Cantor [R- VA7] have indicated the contempt of congress vote is scheduled for sometime next week.

One Year Ago Today- Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry Killed in the Line of Duty

Today marks the one year anniversary of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death following a shootout with cross-border bandits in Rio Rico, AZ.

While law enforcement is an inherently dangerous profession in and of itself, perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Terry's murder was in how preventable it could've been.

The facts of the case are that during the overnight hours of December 14 and 15, armed Mexican nationals illegally crossed into the USA via a remote section of the US/Mexico border, reportedly to ambush and rip off other illegal border crossers and drug mules- although more recent reports indicate that the raiders were also looking for a confrontation with the Border Patrol as well.

Although records concerning Agent Terry's murder have been sealed, it has been established that two AK-variant guns recovered from the crime scene were from the ATF's 'Operation Fast & Furious' in which over the objections of gun stores and field-level ATF agents, guns purchased by straw buyers were allowed to 'walk'- to cross the US/Mexican border without further survaillance or notifying Mexican law enforcement where they ended up in the hands of cartels and other criminal gangs.

Not surprisingly, the family of Agent Terry is livid and wants to see heads roll at the Justice Department over what's being called a 'botched gunrunning sting'. There has been a number of Congressional hearings in the aftermath of Fast & Furious, but testimony from senior Justice Department officials has often been evasive and contradictory. Moreover, Attorney General Holder has complained that the hearings are politically motivated. During the most recent House Oversight hearings, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D; TX-18) gushed praise for Holder, called for stricter gun control laws obstensibly to protect law enforcement and couldn't even remember Agent Terry's name while reading her boilerplate 'condolances' off of a rambling script.



Earlier this week, the Brian Terry Memorial Act passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and is awaiting action from the Senate. The act would rename the Border Crossing station in Bisbee, AZ in honor of Agent Terry.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Calderon's 'Right Hand Man' Killed in Helicopter Crash; Knights Templar Leader Arrested; 26 Bodies Found in Guadalajara

MEXICO CITY: Mexico's Secretary of the Interior Blake Mora and seven others were killed when the helicopter they were travelling in crashed into a hillside south of the capital city on November 11th.

Mora had been described as Calderon's 'right-hand man' who favored the President's strategy of ongoing confrontation with the various cartels and considered a key member of Calderon's security team.

The helicopter was reportedly enroute to a meeting of prosecutors in Morelos when it went down. It's departure had been delayed by foggy weather and low visibility was reported around the crash site after takeoff, leading many to believe that this might've been an accident despite the significance of the passenger on board.

Mora is the third high-ranking public official in nearly six years to have been killed in an air crash. In November 2008, Secretary of the Interior Juan Camilo Mouriño and 13 other people were killed when his Learjet crashed into rush-hour traffic on approach to Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport. In September 2005, Public Security Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta was killed in a helicopter crash south of Mexico City as well.

As an eerie aside, Mora's final tweet from his official Twitter account read: Today we remember Juan Camilo Mouriño three years after his passing, a human being who worked to construct a better Mexico

CHICAGO: According to a 63-page filing by federal prosecutors this month, fugitive billionaire Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman allegedly laid out plans to launch a series of high profile assaults using military-grade weapons against American media, commercial and diplomatic interests in Mexico City.

At his mountaintop lair in Mexico, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, the head of the world’s biggest narcotics cartel, told a Chicago drug trafficker he wanted dozens of military-grade assault weapons to stage an attack in Mexico City in retaliation against U.S. authorities who were messing with their drug business, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

“This government is letting [American law enforcement] do whatever they want,” said one of Guzman’s lieutenants, Ismael Zambada-Garcia, according to a cooperator in the case, Margarito Flores. “It will be good to send [them] a message.”

“They are f**king us everywhere,” Guzman allegedly said of the government during a meeting on the mountaintop compound. “Let it be a government building, it doesn’t matter whose. An embassy or a consulate, a media outlet or television station [attack a Mexican or U.S. government or media building in Mexico City].”

Although Guzman remains at large, the claims surfaced in the 'Santaigo Proffer', a filing that reportedly offers the most detailed look at the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel.

The filing also lists a pair of Chicago-area brothers as witnesses for the government against Guzman and other top-ranking members of the Sinaloa organization.
The newly-filed papers by the prosecution also claim they have a recording of Vincente Zambada-Niebla asking about details on procuring explosives and heavy-caliber weaponry to mount an attack against the Mexican government or American interests in Mexico nearly three years ago.

“Twin, you know guys coming back from the war. Find somebody who can give you big powerful weapons, American s**t.... We don’t need that small s**t, I want to blow up some buildings. We got a lot of grenades, we got a lot of .50 calibers, we’re tired of AKs,” Zambada-Niebla allegedly said. “You’re good with me. You want to be really good with me, get me my s**t, my guns. F**k the money, f**k the drugs, I want to blow s**t up. I want some bazookas, some grenade launchers.”

The recording reportedly dates back to November 29, 2008.

JALISCO: The bodies of 26 young men stuffed into two vans and a pickup were discovered near the heart of Mexico's 2nd largest city on Friday. According to investigators, the bodies were reportedly bound and gagged with the words 'Los Zetas' or 'Milenio' scrawled in motor oil across their chests.

The slayings bear an uncanny resemblance to a September 2011 incident in which gunmen in Veracruz dumped more than 30 bodies from trucks in the middle of rush hour traffic. The dead in Veracruz were reportedly identified as being affiliated with Los Zetas. Shortly after the bodies were found, a group of masked men calling themselves Los Matazetas (the Zeta killers) took credit for the Veracruz slayings.

According to investigators in Guadalajara, many of the 26 bodies found on Friday were between the ages of 25-35 and killed by asphyxiation or blunt force trauma less than 24 hours prior to their discovery- although there were reports that some of the bodies had sustained gunshot wounds. Authorities have since released the identities of 14 of the dead in Guadalajara- So far only two of them are confirmed to have any sort of criminal record. Among the dead were a baker, a truck driver, a soft drink vendor and a dental technician.


The Grisly find comes two days after sixteen charred bodies, some of them handcuffed or wearing bulletproof vests, were discovered in the back of two burned-out trucks in the city of Culiacan- the capital of 'El Chapo' Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.

GUATEMALA: Officers from Guatemala's Civilian National Police arrested two Guatemalan nationals who were thought to be providing Los Zetas with arms, vehicles and safehouses in the country while helping them launder money. Authorities in Guatemala have arrested more than 70 people over the last two years on suspicion of aiding cartels and groups like the Zetas in setting up operations in the rugged northern frontier region of the Central American country.

The Zetas, former special operations soldiers themselves, are said to be recruiting from the Kabiles Special Forces unit of Guatemala's Army.

News of the arrests come shortly after Guatemala's Supreme Court authorized the extradition of former President Alvaro Colom to the USA. Federal Prosecutors contend that Colom used the American banking system to launder more than US$70 million that his administration looted from the nation's treasury.

HOUSTON: A civilian truck driver was killed and an undercover police officer in Harris County, TX was wounded after driving into an ambush that was described as a 'Zetas-style attack'.

The incident occurred in Texas' Harris County, where parts of Houston are located, when the secret operative disguised as a truck driver delivering a 300 pound package of marijuana was driving through the northwest part of the county to a rendezvous point. Out of nowhere three sport-utility vehicles carrying alleged Zetas drug cartel gunmen cut off the 18-wheeler truck and opened fire on the cab, killing the driver.
As the gunmen opened fire on the truck, law enforcement officials descended on the scene in an effort to apprehend the shooters. "Officers engaged in gunfire with the suspects. That exchange resulted in the undercover officer being shot in the leg and the death of the occupant in the 18-wheeler," a press release from Harris County Sheriffs Office stated.

So far four suspects, all believed to be Mexican, have been arrested and charged with murder.

While the men - Eric De Luna, 23; Fernando Tavera, 19; Ricardo Ramírez, 35 and Rolando Resendiz, 34 – have all allegedly admitted to an affiliation with the violent Mexico-based Zetas cartel, U.S. authorities are still puzzled as to why the group would authorize such a brazen attack on U.S. soil for 300 pounds of marijuana.

"If it was a straight assassination, there were points in this controlled delivery where he would have just been a sitting duck," a law-enforcement source speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Chronicle. "Pretty brazen to kill a man over 300 pounds of grass.”

In Mexico, low level sicarrios (gunmen) for the Zetas are known to travel in convoys of SUV's while brandishing weapons and wearing bulletproof vests.

ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS: SWAT teams from multiple agencies descended on the tiny south Texas town of Escobares as armed smugglers fled from a shootout with the Mexican military across the Rio Grande earlier this month.

The shootout reportedly began shortly after noon but details were not immediately available. Residents on the U.S. side reported seeing members of the U.S. Border Patrol and Starr County Sheriff’s Office securing the area near the border.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Rosalinda Huey said agents had been tracking a suspected drug load near La Rosita and pushed it back to Mexico.

Border Patrol alerted Mexican authorities of the suspected load and then found an injured Mexican national on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, Huey said. Emergency crews rushed the man to an area hospital. His condition remains unknown.

The man, a suspected cartel gunman, had been shot by Mexican authorities, a separate U.S. law enforcement official said.

The official confirmed a group of as many as 15 gunmen had crossed the Rio Grande, though it remained unclear whether they were Mexican soldiers or cartel gunmen.

The November 9th incident comes after assurances from the government that the border with Mexico is the safest its ever been in decades and that concerns about spillover violnce are greatly exaggerated.

MICHOACAN: Mexican Marines have arrested a top lieutenant with the recently-formed Knights Templar cartel in the west coast state earlier this month.

Juan Gabriesl Orozco Favela is accused of masterminding the Knights Templar smuggling network and participating in the torture and murder of as many as 21 people. The Knights Templar began as an offshoot of the moribund La Familia Michoacana cartel in the last year.

Also in Michoacan, reporters and federal officials are looking into reports of voter intimidation and harassment during local elections. The charges come after a Mexican TV network aired an audio tape that was reportedly of a local underboss for La Familia making threatening phone calls to would-be voters.

"A family member will be killed of whoever votes for the PRD," Horacio Morales Baca, the No. 3 leader of La Familia, a once-strong Michoacan gang, is heard saying on the recording. If anyone protests, he added, "their houses will be burned down with their families inside."

Baca also claimed that the Knights Templar put US$2 million in the campaign coffers of the governor's candidate for the Democratic Revolutionary Party.

ARIZONA: Details leaked from a sealed federal grand jury indictment show that smugglers armed with AK-47s were 'stalking' US Border Patrol agents shortly before the shootout that led to the death of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Five illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole known as Mesquite Seep just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and one U.S. agent was killed, records show.

A now-sealed federal grand jury indictment in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry says the Mexican nationals were “patrolling” the rugged desert area of Peck Canyon at about 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 14 with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” Border Patrol agents.

At least two of the smuggler's guns recovered on the scene were obtained through the ATF's inafmous 'Fast & Furious' gunwalking program.

NEW MEXICO: Life continues to imitate AMC's Breaking Bad in the Land of Enchantment. According to a Region II Narcotics Task Force Audit, Cartels and organized crime is further entrenching itself throughout the state of New Mexico in recent years.

[Task Force Director Neil] Haws said that for the past two years the major Mexican drug cartel operating in San Juan County has been the Juarez cartel, but recently the Sinaloa and Michoacan cartels have gained ground.

"What's happening here is reflective of what's occurring in Mexico," said Haws, adding that Region II is concentrating its investigative efforts on individuals three or four levels above the drug addicts, or those who are directly connected to the cartels.

Going deeper into how the cartels operate in Bloomfield, Haws said that four to five males are usually sent by the Mexican cartel to Bloomfield to live, and they spend 80 percent of their time in and around the city.

The cartel members bring their families with them to try to fit into the community and to be less noticeable, and do not deal directly with drug addicts, which makes them difficult to detect.

"These cartel members recruit local gang members to sell drugs to lower-level dealers, who then sell the drugs to the addicts," said Haws.

Region II agents rely on background checks and surveillance to identify cartel members, and watch for signs like tattoos and the collection of religious artifacts like shrines.

Recently, the Sinaloa cartel has added Albuquerque as a stepping stone for its drug distribution in New Mexico, and much of the drugs coming into San Juan County are coming from Phoenix, passing through Albuquerque and then being transported into San Juan County via Highway 550. Drugs continue to be transported to the area from Mexico after going through California.

Albuquerque is seeing more "enforcers," or cartel members who resort to kidnappings and violence on order of the cartel leaders in Mexico, Haws said.

While some of the drugs reaching the county stay in the area and are sold to local drug addicts, much of the drugs are further distributed to other states such as Colorado, Utah, Missouri and the Dakotas.

"We are definitely a distribution hub here," said Haws.

Addressing why our area makes a good distribution hub, Haws said that the cartel members find it easy to import the drugs via wide-open New Mexico roads and reservation lands, and storage of drugs is also relatively easy here.

Obtaining fake documentation is also easy to obtain in this area, despite Bloomfield taking away the ability of illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses.

While Region II has seen a slight increase in the use and distribution of heroin, Haws says methamphetamine remains the drug of choice in San Juan County, and that 98 percent of the drug cases Region II works on involve meth.

What is changing, he said, is the purity of the meth coming into the county.

"The purity here in San Juan County amazes the rest of the state," he said.

"We're seeing 94-98 percent purity here, and one recent sample sent to the DEA lab was 100 percent pure. The DEA didn't even know this level of purity was possible."

One of the challenges for local cartel members is getting the drug money back to Mexico. Bulk cash smuggling is one way to do this, but a relatively recent trend is to utilize money remitters such as Western Union and local businesses.

"The cartels know how to stay under the radar, and they'll repeatedly wire $999 back to Mexico to avoid reporting requirements. Since no reporting is required for this amount, the transfers are hard to detect."

Statewide, there has been a noticable uptick in kidnapping, assault and extortion, although the perpetrators attempt to single out ilegal aliens, confident that they would be reluctant to go to the authorities.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Gunmen Dump 35 Bodies on Expressway in Rush Hour; Female Ex-Cop & Zeta Leader Arrested; Border Patrol Finds Arms Cache

VERACRUZ: In a gruesome and brazen display of force, masked gunmen in the Veracruz suburb of Boca De Rio dumped 35 corpses by the side of a busy highway in the middle of rush hour this week.

Veracruz state Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez said the bodies were left piled in two trucks and on the ground at an underpass near the city's biggest shopping mall and its statue of the Voladores de Papantla — ritual dancers from Veracruz state.

Motorists caught in the horrifying scene Tuesday afternoon posted warnings on Twitter that masked gunmen in military uniforms were blocking Manuel Avila Camacho Boulevard and pointing their guns at civilians.

"They don't seem to be soldiers or police," one tweet read. Another said, "Don't go through that area, there is danger."

Escobar said police were reviewing surveillance video recorded in the area.

Local media said that 12 of the victims were women and that some of the dead men had been among prisoners who escaped from three Veracruz prisons on Monday, but Escobar said he couldn't confirm that.

At least 32 inmates got away from the three Veracruz prisons. Police recaptured 14 of them.

The bodies were dumped less than a mile away from where Meixo's top prosecutors were scheduled to meet on Wednesday. A banner left behind at the scene claimed that the dead bodies were the handywork of 'The New Generation', a Jalisco-based gang reportedly allied with Sinaloa Cartel head Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman.

The Gulf cartel had control of smuggling and distribution in and around the port of Veracruz until 2010, when they were usurped by their former enforcers- Los Zetas. At least a dozen of the corpses have been identified as having a criminal background, reportedly working with the Zetas.



NUEVO LEON: Mexican Marines arrested a female underboss for the Zetas in the northern part of the state last week.

Mireya Moreno Carreon is the first woman linked to the Zetas leadership who has been arrested by authorities, the secretariat said.

Moreno Carreon managed drug sales in San Nicolas de Los Garza, a city in the Monterrey metropolitan area.

She apparently took over from Raul Garcia Rodriguez, who was arrested by marines last month in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, the secretariat said.

Moreno Carreon was arrested in the Colonia Santa Fe Oriente section of San Nicolas de Los Garza, thanks to "intense intelligence and urban operations work," the Navy Secretariat said.

The suspected drug trafficker was armed with a revolver and driving a stolen vehicle at the time of her arrest, the secretariat said.

Carreon- aka La Flaca- was a former policewoman in Monterrey until 2010 when she was dismissed by supervisors for a "lack of confidence. Reportedly she was wounded by flying glass in a 2009 shootout between police and extortionists that left a kindergarten class pinned down in the crossfire.

TAMAULIPAS: The bodies of a man and a woman left dangling from an overpass in the border city of Nuevo Laredo last week included handmade signs explicitly threatening bloggers and internet.

Not only have social networking and microblogging sites like Twitter demonstrated themselves to be quicker than local media in most cases, but organized crime has succeeded in intimidating local media into silence throughout much of Mexico. Odds are that Twitter users knew about the 35 bodies being dumped on the expressway outside of Veracruz before the local authorities did, as many witnesses were using smartphones to warn motorists of the gruesome spectacle.

"This is going to happen to all the internet busybodies, Listen up, I'm on to you" one placard read. It was signed with a 'Z', presumably for Los Zetas. Two of the blogs mentioned in the threats- Frontera Al Rojo Vivo and El Blog Del Narco [caution, the latter isn't the least bit squeamish about posting graphic crime scene photos- NANESB!] have shown no signs of letting up. The two victims found in Nuevo Laredo have yet to be identified

TEXAS: US Border Patrol agents discovered an abandoned black bag containing six automatic rifles, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher and three packages of whats believed to be C4 explosive along the Rio Grande outside of Fronton, TX last week.

Agents found the weapons on Tuesday in a black bag along a quiet stretch of the Rio Grande near Fronton, a small community about 210 miles south of San Antonio. No arrests have been made.

The weapons are similar to those reported used in the borderland drug wars and smuggled south from the U.S. into Mexico, and were found in an area of the river that is easily crossed and close to a Mexican cartel battleground.

But authorities stopped short of making any direct link between the guns and the drug cartels, saying only that they signaled a threat to public safety in both Texas and Mexico.

"These deadly weapons could have had a devastating impact on communities on both sides of the border and to our agents and other law enforcement officers," Rosendo Hinojosa, head of Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector, said in a statement.

Officials theorized that the guns were waiting to be smuggled across the border into Mexico, but said that was just speculation.

The discovery took place about 10 miles south of Falcon Lake and on the other side of the border where Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel are locked in a bitter struggle over lucrative smuggling routes.

WASHINGTON DC: In a series of secretly recorded audio tapes dating back to March 2011, an ATF field agent disclosed to an Arizona gun dealer the existence of a 3rd weapon recovered from the December 2010 shootout between the Border Patrol and armed smugglers north of Nogales, AZ that killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Court records have previously only mentioned two weapons: Romanian WASR "AK-47 type" rifles. Both were allegedly sold to suspects who were under ATF's watch as part of Fast and Furious.

Also, a ballistics report turned over to Congressional investigators only mentions the two WASR rifles. The ballistics report says it's inconclusive as to whether either of the WASR rifles fired the bullet that killed Terry.

The third weapon was reportedly an SKS purchsed from a Texas gun shop.

The recordings were obtained by CBS news as well as copies being turned over to the Office of Inspector General and Congressional investigators.

In other Fast & Furious news, before stepping down this month, US Attorney Dennis Burke had opposed the Terry family's motion to qualify as crime victims in the eyes of the court.

[Hat Tip Support Your Local Gunfighter; Friends of Ours; Pat Dollard]

Illegal Immigrants Taken Into Custody in Vermont Traffic Stop; Governor Demands Investigaton- of State Trooper

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin demanded an internal probe of the State Police stemming from traffic stop on Interstate 89 in Middlesex, VT involving two illegal aliens who were taken into custody this week.

After reading this account from the Burlington Free Press, I'll let you guess Gov. Shumlin's political affiliation.

Gov. Peter Shumlin on Tuesday night ordered an internal investigation of a Vermont State Police traffic stop earlier in the day involving migrant farm workers that later led to a protest at the Middlesex state police barracks.

Two passengers were detained in the traffic stop on Interstate 89, including a leader of the Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project.

“The governor is concerned by accounts of the incident and ordered an immediate internal investigation to determine the facts of what happened and if Vermont State Police bias-free policies were followed,” a news release issued by Shumlin’s office stated.

How exactly does 'bias-free policing' work, anyway? If a policeman pulls over a motorist wearing a Lone Ranger Mask, Hamburglar shirt and bags marked with dollar signs next to him, does he refrain from asking the motorist a few basic questions for fear of having some sort of 'bias' complaint lodged against him?

Vermont State Police Director Tom L’Esperance said a state trooper stopped a vehicle for going 88 mph on the interstate in Middlesex. The trooper followed the vehicle for a short distance before pulling it over, police said.

During the traffic stop, the driver provided valid identification and faces a civil citation in connection with the vehicle’ speed. But the trooper became aware that two of the passengers might not have been in the country legally, L’Esperance said.

The two passengers taken into custody were determined to be in the U.S. illegally, said Mark R. Henry, operations Officer at the Swanton Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

They were later processed at the U.S. Border Patrol station in Richford, Henry said. Henry said both men — whose names and nationalities were not made public – were most likely to be released with an order to appear for a hearing at a later date.

I find it quite telling that the Vermont State Trooper in question did nothing out of the ordinary, yet Gov. Shumlin demanded a probe of the traffic stop that very day. In 49 other states, I think what that State Trooper did would be considered basic police work.

Good to see that in less than a month, Vermont has sufficiently recovered from the worst flooding in nearly 80 years for the good governor to investigate why the State Police are doing things like pulling over speeding motorists and taking people who are in violation of the law into custody.

Don't worry- it gets even better!

After the traffic stop, state police took the two suspects to the Middlesex barracks, where an incident took place involving supporters of the men who were in the car. When the Border Patrol attempted to leave with the two illegal-immigration suspects, five people attempted to block the federal officers, state police said. Troopers ordered the individuals to move, and three did not, police said.

Those three individuals were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct. The individuals are accused of forming a shield, said Capt. Dan Troidl, commander of Troop A, which covers five northwestern counties.

I'm guessing that at some point during either the traffic stop or at the Middlesex barracks, the phrase 'Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?' was uttered- and not by anybody in uniform.

Well, the good news is that the Governor of Vermont's term lasts two years instead of the four years that is typical in most other states, so Shumlin could be looking at an ouster for this Bloomberg-caliber micromanaging as early as next year. The bad news is that this is Vermont, and odds are enough people will either see no problem with this or think Shumlin didn't go far enough that he will remain safely ensconced in Montpelier after November 2012.

Reports: Acting ATF Director May Resign Over Fast & Furious Program; WaPo Covers For Obama Administration

Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is expected to step down in the next couple of days in the wake of controversy and damning testimony from field agents before a Congressional oversight committee.

In the operation, straw buyers were allowed to purchase illegally large numbers of weapons, some of which ended up in the hands of cartels in Mexico.

Attorney General Eric Holder will meet Tuesday with Andrew Traver, head of the ATF field office in Chicago, about possibly becoming the agency's acting director, according to senior federal law enforcement sources, who are familiar with the details of the controversy.

The Justice Department refused comment. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters he had no new information on the issue.

The operation has come under intense criticism since the December killing of a U.S. Border Patrol officer.

Operation Fast and Furious was "a colossal failure of leadership," Peter Forcelli, a supervisor at the bureau's Phoenix field office, said recently.

The program focused on following people who legally bought weapons that were then transferred to criminals and destined for Mexico. But instead of intercepting the weapons when they switched hands, Operation Fast and Furious called for ATF agents to let the guns "walk" and wait for them to surface in Mexico, according to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The idea was that once the weapons in Mexico were traced back to the straw purchasers, the entire arms smuggling network could be brought down. Instead, the report argues, letting the weapons slip into the wrong hands was a deadly miscalculation that resulted in preventable deaths, including that of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Terry was killed last year north of the Mexican border in Arizona after confronting bandits believed to be preying on illegal immigrants. Two weapons found near the scene of the killing were traced to Fast and Furious.

"I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it at first," Terry's mother, Josephine, said when she learned the ATF may have let some of the guns used in the attack slip through its fingers. Terry's relatives said they want all those involved in his killing and who helped put the weapons in their hands to be prosecuted.

"We ask that if a government official made a wrong decision, that they admit their error and take responsibility for his or her actions," Robert Heyer, Terry's cousin and family spokesman, said in a hearing last week by the House panel.

Reportedly, the Obama Administration is tapping former Chicago ATF Chicago branch head Andrew Traver to head the agency should Melson resign. Traver appeared in a misleading 2009 segment on a Chicago NBC affiliate's report on gang warfare implying that gangs were arming themselves with military style weapons purchased from retail outlets. Traver also reportedly supported Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's recent efforts to make public the name of Firearms Owner Identification Card (FOID) holders to the press available on request.

The successful nomination or appointment of Andrew Traver to the head of the ATF would basically be rewarding the Department of Justice and Obama Administration for this clusterfuck known as Fast & Furious.

In what can only be described as a pathetic, flailing attempt at damage control on behalf of the Obama administration, the Washington Post began circulating reports on Tuesday evening that House Oversight Committee chair Darrell Issa had already been briefed on Fast & Furious as far back as April 2010.

At the briefing last year, bureau officials laid out for Issa and other members of Congress from both parties details of several ATF investigations, including Fast and Furious, the sources said. For that program, the briefing covered how many guns had been bought by “straw purchasers,’’ the types of guns and how much money had been spent, said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was not public.

“All of the things [Issa] has been screaming about, he was briefed on,’’ said one source familiar with the session.

Wow...so even if I were to take the WaPo's VERY convenient anonymous source at face value that there was a private briefing for members of both parties regarding Fast & Furious, according to the WaPo, they discussed the number and types of guns purchased by 'straw buyers' and how much money was spent. I wonder if THE ATF INTENTIONALLY ALLOWING THE WEAPONS TO BE FORWARDED TO MEXICAN CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS came up in that same briefing.....which took place when the Democrats had a supermajority in the House of Representatives and were focusing on things like 0bamacare, cap and trade or card check.

Probably not- I'd like to think that if that was explicitly mentioned to members of Congress in that aforementioned briefing the WaPo assures us took place, that members of both parties would've demanded answers and hearings into exactly what the hell the ATF was doing right then and there.

But that's just me.

ATF Gunrinning Operation to Mexican Cartels- AKA 'Fast & Furious'- Comes Under Congressional Scrutiny This Week

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry- slain in December 2010. Weapons from ATF's Operation Fast & Furious Were recovered at the crime scene along the Arizona/Mexico Border

Earlier this week, certain politicians and media outlets that support gun control were frantically out there trying to establish the 70% myth [i.e. the narrative that '70% of the weapons recovered in Mexico' come from America, which curiously is down from 90% in a few short months- NANESB!] just days ahead of the House Committee on oversight and Government Reform hearings into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms operation Fast & Furious.

As predicted, this is one of the downside of the Anthony Weiner fiasco- probably the most important Congressional hearings in three decades is usurped by the media circus surrounding the former Congressman from Queens. Outside of CBS News' Sheryl Atkinson, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms poorly-conceived Operation FAst & Furious didn't get alot of coverage in the mainstream media- let alone the Congressional inquiry.

The full committee hearings got underway at Capitol Hill on Wednesday with testimony from Brian Terry's family, 6 months to the day after the Border Patrol was shot and killed by Mexican smugglers armed with AK-variant rifles acquired by straw purchasers who were under surveillance as part of the ATF operation. Yet instead of interdicting the guns before they could be moved across the Mexican border, field agents were ordered the allow the guns to 'walk'. Two of the guns found at the scene of Terry's murder were part of thousands the ATF allegedly allowed gun traffickers to purchase.

The ATF called it letting "guns walk" -- a tactic they hoped would lead to them to drug kingpins. Agents who disagreed with the strategy blew the whistle.

"To walk a single gun is in my opinion an idiotic move," said ATF senior special agent Pete Forcelli. "We weren't giving guns to people who were hunting bear. We were giving guns to people who were killing other humans."

After Terry's murder, ATF quickly rounded up gun trafficking suspects they'd watched for a year. That's when the first reports of gunwalking began to surface. Asked if they were true at the time, ATF Phoenix chief Bill Newell told reporters "hell no" -- surprising those who worked for him.

"I was appalled, because it was a blatant lie," Forcelli said. Newell didn't respond to interview requests.

Also under attack: the Justice Department which oversees the ATF. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich says the agency is cooperating with Congress, but Rep. Darryl Issa says information is being withheld.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Issa said at the hearing Wednesday holding up a blacked-out sheet of paper. "The pages go on like this forever. You've given us black paper instead of white paper. How dare you make an opening statement of 'cooperation.'"

Issa pressed Weich on who in Washington authorized the program -- and received no answer.

"There was serious profound disagreement about strategy -- but the common goal was to stop gun trafficking to Mexico," Weich said. "Some of the testimony provided today is of great concern. That is why the attorney general asked the inspector general to look into it."

When Brian Terry was gunned down last December, he'd already mailed Christmas gifts.

"The gifts that Brian had picked out with such thought and care began to arrive in the mail that same week," recalled Terry's cousin Robert Heyer, a Secret Service agent. "With each delivery, we felt the indescribable pain of Brian's death."

Terry's family wants someone to accept responsibility. The Department of Justice inspector general is investigating -- and any gunwalking that was taking place has been halted.

Perhaps to nobody's surprise, the Democrats on the Oversight Committee attempted to make the hearings about gun control rather than any sort of accountability from the Department of Justice or ATF. On top of apologizing to Assistant Attorney General Ronald Wiech after Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R- CA49) berated the Justice Department official for turning over pages of redacted documents in response to a subpoena, Representative Elijah Cummings (D- MD7) has proposed setting up a separate minority-led hearing with witnesses of his choosing. In doing so, the Democrats have demonstrated that they are deliberately ignoring the fact that even if the entire United States had strict gun control laws reminiscent of Chicago or Washington D.C. there's still the fact that it was a government agency that facilitated the acquisition of at least 2000 weapons to Mexican criminals. On top of that, US Diplomatic cables released by wikileaks indicate that the overwhelming number of weapons seized in Mexico- including explosives, grenades and anti-tank weapons- are actually procured by cartels from poorly-guarded military armouries in Central America before being smuggled into Mexico.

[I know I've asked this before, but it bears repeating- the Los Zetas organization is mostly comprised of former soldiers from the Mexican army, including Special Forces. Now, keeping in mind their connections to not only the black market, but the international arms market- why should I believe for a second that they are shopping for guns at Cabela's or Wal Mart?- NANESB!]

Weapons allowed across the border under Fast & Furious (or Rapido y Furiosa in the Mexican press) continue to turn up throughout Mexico- in April, Mexican police raided a house in Ciudad Juarez that turned up a half dozen Romanian-made AK-variant rifles that were traced back to the ill-conceived ATF operation [the raid also turned up dozens of grenades and three anti-aircraft machine guns, which probably weren't purchased from American gun stores- NANESB!] .

In May, Mexican soldiers came under fire and a Mexican Air Force helicopter was forced to make a crash landing during an anti-narcotics operation in Michoacan- weapons seized from there were also traced back to Fast & Furious.

Some of the preliminary findings of the Committee include:

● Agents expected to interdict weapons, yet were told to stand down and “just surveil.” Agents therefore did not act. They watched straw purchasers buy hundreds of weapons illegally and transfer those weapons to unknown third parties and stash houses.

● ATF agents complained about the strategy of allowing guns to walk in Operation Fast and Furious. Leadership ignored their concerns. Instead, supervisors told the agents to “get with the program” because senior ATF officials had sanctioned the operation.

● Agents knew that given the large numbers of weapons being trafficked to Mexico, tragic results were a near certainty.

● Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.

That last finding is sure to anger Mexico, which has so far been muted in its criticism. In a March 2010 memo, ATF says it allowed gun smugglers to buy 359 guns while 958 people died in Mexico the same month. Internally, the agency was “trumpeting up the violence that was occurring as a result of an ATF sanctioned program

A full PDF file of the Committee's reports can be found HERE

Prior to the hearings and Agent Terry's murder, a number of gun stores in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico went to the ATF with their concerns about suspicious transactions and concerns that the guns could be used against Border Patrol agents and other lawmen. However, the ATF assured dealers that the suspected straw purchasers and the guns purchased were being 'continually monitored'. More disturbingly is that the ATF reportedly didn't even bother contacting Mexican law enforcement (however compromised, corrupt or ineffective) or military to let them know that criminals were trafficking weapons from the USA to their jurisdiction- not even after Fast & Furious guns were recovered at crime scenes south of the border.

So in a nutshell, you had the supervisors in the ATF facilitating the sale of guns to Mexican cartels through proxies to prove that Mexican cartels were getting firearms from American stores.

[Cross posted on Pundit Press]