The Wisest of all Latinas—Racist Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor

El Paso Times

EL PASO — Thirty-one female drug smugglers are among the fugitives being sought by the DEA and FBI in U.S. border states.

They are among 385 people in border regions wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Federal agents described five of the women as “armed and dangerous.”

U.S. lists do not include an alleged kingpin that Mexican authorities identified as Enedina Arrellano Felix of the Tijuana drug cartel, Another woman — Sandra Avila Beltran, “Queen of the Pacific cartel” — is in custody in Mexico.

Arrellano, along with a son, is suspected of taking over the Tijuana cartel. Like Arrellano, Avila had relatives in the drug trade. She is awaiting extradition to the United States on drug charges.

According to prosecution witnesses’ testifying in the running El Paso trial of Fernando Ontiveros-Arambula, at least four women were involved in drug-trafficking.

Sylvia “Burra” Carbajal, one of the witnesses, testified that she and her sister, Yvonne Carbajal, smuggled marijuana in the El Paso-Juárez region. She said she also ferried money forOntiveros-Arambula, and that both she and her sister were romantically involved with the defendant.

“I grew up around drugs all my life,” said Sylvia Carbajal, who was indicted on drug charges in a separate proceeding.

Authorities have not said whether Yvonne Carbajal will be charged, too.

Last week, witnesses made references to a woman some knew as “La Guera,” or “blondie.” Other witnesses identified her as Elizabeth 

“Liz” Lares-Valenzuela, who survived a shooting in Juárez in 2008.

Lares-Valenzuela was indicted last year on U.S. drug charges. A DEA agent testified Monday that she became a fugitive after initially cooperating with the agency.

During the trial, a former Juárez police captain, testified that a woman known to drug-traffickers only as “La Tia” (the aunt), was the conduit for all communications between Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman Loera and his operatives in Chihuahua state.

A woman in Juárez named Juana said she got involved in drug-trafficking to help her husband, who was in law enforcement and was also a drug dealer. She is not involved in the federal trial in El Paso, so the El Paso Times is not publishing her last name.

Juana got caught once and served a two-year prison sentence. She said she and her husband avoided problems during the drug wars by not crossing the cartels.

“If you don’t steal from them, then they leave you alone,” she said. “Many of the people who were killed in Juárez owed money or stole drugs or money from the cartels.”

Sandalio “Sandy” Gonzalez, a retired DEA official formerly assigned to El Paso, said women drug-traffickers are no different from men in many respects.

“There have been high-profile women traffickers, Colombian and Mexican, who have not received as much publicity as their male counterparts. They can be just as bad as the men,” Gonzalez said.

Before he retired, Gonzalez supervised investigations of the Juárez drug cartel, and investigated Colombian cartels while stationed in Florida.

He said Griselda Blanco, of Colombia, was a notorious drug smuggler in Miami. She was called the “Godmother of Cocaine,” and had a reputation for ruthlessness.

DEA officials said her organization was tied to 200 killings in Florida during the 1970s and ’80s. She led a ring that operated from Medellin, Colombia; Miami; and Los Angeles. Convicted and sentenced to prison, she was deported to Colombia in 2004.

Ignacia “Nacha” Jasso was considered the first undisputed drug lord in Chihuahua state to control the traffic of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the early 1900s.

She worked from her home at 218 Degollado in downtown Juárez, and was involved in the drug trade from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s.

Mexican historians say she rose to power after ordering the deaths of 11 Chinese immigrants in Juárez who sought to control the heroin trade.

Oscar Martinez, author of several books on the border, said Jasso did not figure prominently in earlier Juárez history books because of the nature of the drug trade at the time.

“La Nacha was a major player in the drug trade back then, but even for a legendary figure like her, drug-trafficking was not as major a factor in the life of Juárez as it is now,” said Martinez, a Juárez native and history professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Everyone knew it was there, and there was the occasional gang fight over drugs, but drug-trafficking did not rise above a nuisance.”

Jasso allegedly enjoyed protection from police and other officials. Some believe she died a natural death in her 70s, although the exact date is unknown.

On Election Day, the goal of the Registrar of Voters Office is to have at least one bilingual poll worker at each polling place.

Bilingual pamphlets, ballots, signs, outreach materials and publications are part of the effort to get bilingual voters to cast ballots.

“We really go above and beyond to provide almost all of our information in both languages,” said Registrar Kari Verjil.

The Registrar’s Office hasn’t been going it alone in its quest to serve the needs of voters with limited English skills.

In 2005, a group of concerned citizens asked the Registrar’s Office to form a bilingual advisory committee to increase outreach to Latino and Spanish-speaking voters.

The group was concerned that the county wasn’t meeting the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act with regard to language-minority voters. It used a 2004 court case involving Ventura County as a model for what should be done in San Bernardino County.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint stating that Ventura County failed to provide an adequate number of bilingual poll workers trained to assist Spanish-speaking voters. The county also did

Trained bilingual poll workers were hired and an advisory group was created to improve outreach to Spanish-speaking voters.

Local community leaders told the San Bernardino County Registrar’s Office about the Ventura County case.

In response, the Registrar’s Office took steps to increase the number of bilingual poll workers. The number exploded from 439 workers in 2004 to 1,600 in 2008. Bilingual poll workers are paid an extra $10.

“We feel it’s important because we want to be able to serve all the voters of San Bernardino County,” Verjil said. “Having bilingual workers makes the experience easier for all voters.”

While they believe progress has been made, group members say the Registrar’s Office should do more to increase voter registration and turnout among Latino and Spanish-speaking voters.

Gil Navarro, a leader of the group, cites the federal law recommending a “vigorous outreach program” to help citizens who don’t speak English well.

Navarro said he wants the Registrar’s Office to boost outreach by advertising in Spanish-language newspapers and TV and radio stations.

“We have a lot of potential voters that will become and already are citizens who prefer to receive communications in their native language,” said Navarro, a member of the San Bernardino County board of education.

Verjil said she would like to advertise in Spanish but her office doesn’t have the money for it.

The group also wants the Registrar’s Office to increase the font size of the letters of polling place signs so they are the same size in English and Spanish.

Verjil said she will look into the request.

Tom Rivera, the associate dean of undergraduate studies at Cal State San Bernardino, said the Registrar’s Office should work with community-based organizations, schools and churches to increase voter participation.

“We were hoping to develop an outreach plan to get the information out and provide education for our communities,” said Rivera, another committee member. “It seems the plan is still in the hopper and we haven’t been able to put it together.”

Verjil said her office is planning to increase outreach by hosting several registration and get-out-the-vote drives at senior centers, community fairs and other events starting in April.

The outreach efforts are strictly nonpartisan and geared to all voters, she said.

Verjil said she expects her office will spend about $350,000 to mail sample ballots for the June primary. About 20percent of that cost – $70,000 – is for the Spanish-language part of the ballot, she said.

Occasionally, Verjil said, the Registrar’s Office receives complaints about why election materials are printed in English and Spanish.

Verjil mails out a letter explaining that census data and federal law mandate bilingual election materials.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires the county to provide forms, notices and materials in Spanish because more than 5percent of its voting-age citizens speak Spanish as their native language and have limited English skills.

Latinos made up about 35percent of the county’s voting-age population in the 2000 Census.

Not everyone agrees that voting information should be provided in more than one language.

“We think it’s ridiculous,” said K.C. McAlpin, executive director of Pro English, a Virginia-based nonprofit that aims to make English the official language of government operations in the United States.

“People are supposed to be able to speak English in order to naturalize. We think it’s a very divisive step politically and extremely wasteful to have ballots in languages other than English.”

Elsa Valdez, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino and a committee member, supports ballots in multiple languages as a way to boost political participation among Latinos and other minorities.

Verjil said the committee and the Registrar’s Office want the same thing.

“We have a common goal,” she said. “We want to see all voters participate in the political process.”

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Many people assume that just because parasitic ingrate wise Latino’s aren’t capable of assimilation (learn English, bathe…) that they are ineligible to vote. Not so for all. Many Latinos are anchor babies (they breed like cacaroaches), many were given amnesty in 1986, and many were apparently fraudulently naturalized. There are of course quite a few who do vote via bogus papers. Regardless, the Latinos are going to get their way come hell or high water and short of a revolution there isn’t much real Americans can do about it.

Lock ‘N Load!

Via the pro-Latino illegal alien rag the Houston Chronicle

Stalled immigration reform is making it harder to increase college-going rates among Hispanics, a problem that ultimately will mean a less-educated work force, the president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities said Thursday.

The rancor over immigration hurts Hispanics here legally, too, Antonio Flores said after addressing a group of higher education leaders at the University of Houston-Downtown.

“There are a lot of misconceptions … that are applied to the entire Latino community,” he said.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities represents schools where Hispanics account for at least 25 percent of enrollment. In Houston, that includes UH-Downtown, where more than 36 percent of students are Hispanic, as well as Houston Community College, San Jacinto College and the University of St. Thomas.

“We look like Houston, and we look like the future of America,” said UH-Downtown President Bill Flores, who is not related to Antonio Flores. “Every single day, there are more Hispanic students going to college.”

But the numbers haven’t kept pace with Hispanic population growth, and increasing Hispanic enrollment is one of Texas’ top higher-education goals.

Antonio Flores said that’s important because half of all new workers will be Hispanic by 2025.

Some suggestions

He offered this advice to improve graduation rates among Hispanics:

• • Improve remedial education. Hispanics are more likely to enter college with inadequate academic skills.

• • Ensure a Latino flavor in academic, as well as extracurricular, programs.

• • Educate parents and families about student loans.

Hispanics borrow less money for school than other groups, Flores said.

“In their mind — and they have it wrong — they don’t want to borrow. They are afraid of accumulating debt,” he said. “They work too much, and their academics suffer.”

He said the association will study what works to help Hispanics succeed and spread the ideas to other schools.

Money is one issue. Schools designated as Hispanic-serving institutions, where at least 25 percent of students are Hispanic, qualify for additional federal funding. But Flores said they still receive less public money than schools that serve fewer Hispanics.

“Money matters,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

Most of the group’s legislative agenda deals with increasing funding. But it also favors passage of legislation to provide a path to citizenship for students brought to this country illegally before the age of 16 if they complete two years of college or military service. The DREAM Act, or Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, has stalled in Congress since 2001.

Texas allows undocumented students to attend public colleges but, without legal residency status, they often can’t find jobs.

“It’s a waste of talent,” Flores said. “That is a tragedy.”

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Latinos lag in college because 87% of Latino females drop out of high school due to pregnancy and the rest drop out simply because they’re Latinos.

A waste of talent? Please. Look at any Latino nation and it is a literal shithole and for a good reason: All those “talented” Latinos.  Throwing U.S. tax dollars at stinky parasitic turds doesn’t make the shit all of the sudden smell good. It just makes it expensive worthless smelly shit.

NY Post

That would be state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada, the subject of a filing by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last week describing “extensive evidence” that the sticky-fingered Bronx pol had filched taxpayer cash via his Soundview Health Center.

Cuomo is seeking court enforcement of a subpoena demanding documents from an apparent shell company — the clearest sign yet that the hounds are closing in on Espada.

Yet the Democratic leader’s response to the filing was refreshingly, uh, candid.

After obliquely accusing Cuomo of racism — he claimed the AG was “using me, the state’s highest-ranking Hispanic elected official, as his personal political piñata” — Espada vowed to keep doing exactly what he had been doing.

To wit: “I will not be distracted by this and will continue to focus on creating jobs, controlling government spending, providing tax relief, strengthening ethics reform and improving education for our children,” he said.

Now, we can’t say we’ve seen much from Espada (or anyone else in Albany) on those last three. But “creating jobs”?

That’s something he can do.

Jobs, that is, for folks named Espada.

Post probes last year revealed that the senator had arranged for the Senate to create a $120,000-a-year no-show job for his son, Pedro G. Espada — and that the Soundview payroll teems with Espada kin.

Now Cuomo’s filing suggests that Pedro G. was surreptitiously working for his father’s 2008 election campaign while drawing his salary from Espada’s shell company, which does the clinic’s custodial work.

As for “controlling government spending” — let’s just say he’s trying to control as much of it as he can.

Soundview, a nonprofit, relies heavily on Medicaid dollars — yet Espada appears to run it as a personal and political piggy bank.

He took home a $460,000 salary in 2007, while Soundview pays his for-profit custodial outfit nearly $400,000 a year, far more than the job should cost. That’s money, Cuomo believes, that flows directly into Espada’s campaign accounts — and pockets.

No doubt, there’s more still to be uncovered.

But never let it be said that Pedro Espada is bashful about what he’s really up to.

ST. JOHNS, Ariz. (AP) — A 10-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting his father’s friend in November 2008 apologized Thursday for hurting the man’s family and was ordered to a residential treatment program.

"He’s sorry," said Ron Wood, who represented the St. Johns boy and addressed the court on his behalf. "He’s sorry that he hurt the Romans family, he’s sorry he hurt his own family and he’s sorry he killed his dad."

Defense attorneys and prosecutors had pushed for the boy to be placed in a private treatment facility in Maricopa County, but Judge Monica Stauffer also had the option of sending him to a county juvenile detention facility.

The boy left the Apache County courthouse with his mother and is expected to report to the treatment facility in a couple of weeks, where he will stay for an undetermined amount of time. He also was placed on intensive probation until he turns 18. The Associated Press is not identifying the boy because of his age.

"I think the right result was reached, because how does society turn its back on an 8- or 10-year-old if we want to continue as a civil society," Apache County Attorney Michael Whiting said following the hearing.

The boy was 8 when he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero, and his father’s friend, 39-year-old Timothy Romans. He pleaded guilty to shooting Romans and the charges related to his father’s death were dropped as part of a plea deal.

Talk of a plea deal surfaced less than a month after the shootings, but an agreement wasn’t reached until February. Arizona law allows criminal charges to be filed against anyone 8 or older.

A motive never has been made clear, although the boy told investigators he kept a tally of spankings. Wood suggested Thursday that the boy reacted to psychological and emotional abuse but said he was not physically hurt. Whiting said he wouldn’t classify whatever went on in the boy’s home as abuse.

The sentencing ends a 14-month saga that created a buzz in legal circles as experts questioned whether the boy had the mental capacity to understand the hearings. Experts who evaluated him said he would have been incompetent to stand trial.

Members of Romans’ family said they struggled with not knowing why the boy took the life of a man they said had a big heart and was completely dedicated to his wife and two daughters.

"I just wish I could have my dad back," said Romans’ youngest daughter, Taylor, pleading with the judge for justice and closure. "I tried being strong but I can’t."

The boy’s paternal grandparents and aunt told the judge they have relied on faith to get them through the difficult time. The boy’s grandmother, Liz Castillo, opened up her home to the boy and his biological mother, Eryn Bloomfield, after the shootings – as her son would have wanted, she said.

The boy was living with his father and stepmother at the time of the shootings.

"You don’t have a child and then turn your back on his child," Castillo said, later asking the judge to impose treatment as her grandson’s sentence.

Bloomfield said she could make no excuses for her son or his actions and that he will have to live with knowing how many people he has hurt.

Stauffer, the judge, warned the boy that he could end up in jail if he committed a felony while on probation and when asked whether he understood, the boy replied, "Yes, ma’am." The boy kept his head down during most of the hearing, and only looked up when asked to address the court.

Wood said residential treatment gives the boy the best opportunity to have a normal life as he’s taught how to cope with the emotions that led to the killing. Treatment is expected to cost $3,000 to $4,000 a month, which will be offset by the boy’s Social Security benefits that the judge ordered sent to the facility.

The boy will undergo psychological and mental evaluations when he’s 12, 15 and 17.

By Karen E. Crummy
The Denver Post

 Judicial Watch

Keeping with her race-conscious and activist judicial philosophy, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has made her Supreme Court debut by introducing a pair of new terms aimed at describing illegal immigrants in a more friendly and politically correct way.

A former top policy maker at the leftist Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), Sotomayor used “undocumented immigrant” and “undocumented worker” in lieu of illegal immigrant in her first opinion (Mohawk Industries, Inc. vs. Carpenter) as a Supreme Court Justice. The Supreme Court had never before used the phrase “undocumented immigrant” though “illegal immigrant” has appeared in a dozen decisions.

Liberal legal scholars and immigration advocates are cheering Sotomayor’s choice of words, praising her as a jurist who has made a difference by penning just one opinion. A well-known California public university law professor wrote on his legal blog that Sotomayor has added significantly to the Supreme Court’s dialogue on immigration, which is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future.

This sort of inappropriate activism by a high-ranking judge his hardly new, though it’s largely unprecedented on the nation’s High Court. Just last year the chief justice of Arizona’s Supreme Court got blasted for enforcing the Hispanic Bar Association’s demands of banning the terms “illegal” and “aliens” in all of the state’s courtrooms. 

Chief Justice Ruth McGregor, who has since stepped down, agreed with the influential Latino attorney group (known as Los Abogados) that the terms are dehumanizing and inflammatory and ordered judges statewide to stop using them at trails or hearings because they create perceptions of judicial bias. Among the acceptable terms, according to the directive, are “foreign nationals,” “unauthorized workers” and “human rights advocates.”

As for Sotomayor, this first opinion is certain to be a tiny snippet of what lies ahead. Since President Obama announced her nomination earlier this year, Judicial Watch has extensively investigated her storied judicial career and published a series of informative documents detailing her improper political activities as well as her prejudicial and racial comments over the years. Click here to read all about it.  

Francisco Wellington Barros-Gomes
Sturbridge Police Department

Dave Gibson

On Tuesday, police in Sturbridge, MA arrested Francisco Wellington Barros-Gomes, 26 at the J.C Penney’s department store on Route 131. He has been charged with the forcible rape of a child, after allegedly attacking him in one of the store’s dressing rooms.

According to prosecutors, the alleged rape took place around 5:00 p.m., while the boy’s mother was making a phone call. Apparently, Barros-Gomes began a conversation with the boy, offering to bring him more clothes. At some point, the clerk entered the dressing room.

Upon her return, the boy quickly reported the attack to his mother.

During his arraignment on Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Shayne Picard told Dudley District Court Judge Neil G. Snider: “At some point in time his mother needed to step away for a brief period of time to make a phone call while the young man was trying on clothing in a dressing room.”

Picard continued: “At some point in time he began to touch the young man. There was some fondling, your honor, touching private parts. The young man indicated he believed at some point in time the defendant did penetrate him … as well as touching his private areas and having the young man touch his private areas.”

Picard said that Barros-Gomes has admitted to touching the boy but that the defendant would not answer “when asked specifically if he penetrated the young man.”

Due to the serious nature of the crime and the fact that Barros-Gomes is not a U.S. citizen, but a Brazilian national, the district attorney asked that bail be set at $100,000. However, despite the obvious risk of flight, Judge Snider instead set bail substantially lower at $25,000.

Barros-Gomes has been in the country for 10 months, and was working in the children’s department of J.C. Penney’s at the time of the reported attack.
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Contact JC Penny 1-800-322-1189

 By Daily Mail Reporter

Actress Sofia Vergara left viewers shocked after making an ill-advised ‘rape joke’ on U.S. television.

The Colombian-born screen star – who was romantically linked to Tom Cruise in 2005 – was trying to make light of her youthful appearance on American TV show The View.

One presenter expressed surprise that Sofia, 37, dubbed ‘Sofia Viagra’ for her effect on certain men, was old enough to have an 18-year-old son.

Host Sherri Shepherd said: ‘And also, you’re a single mum of a teenage son, who’s 18?! 

‘You look so good!’ she said. ‘I cannot lie about my age because they count.’

As viewers saw a photo of her with son Manolo Gonzalez, host Sherri said: ‘What, did you have him when you were 12?’

Laughing, she replied: ‘Thirteen. I was raped.’

 Sofia Vergara makes her rape joke as Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters look on in shock

Another of the show’s presenters, veteran reporter Barbara Walters, looked stony-faced as Sofia made the remark.

And Whoopi Goldberg, who also hosts the daytime talk show, appeared shocked at the comment.

The Ghost star came under fire last month for saying on The View that Roman Polanski’s alleged rape of a 13-year-old in 1977 was not ‘rape rape’.

Gasps could also be heard from the studio audience during the show’s broadcast on Wednesday.

Cruise went on several dates with Sofia Vergara back in 2005. She previously dated British singer, Craig David.