The source of information for the Narco News story published last night about the hostage rescue in Colombia this past Wednesday contacted us to clarify a few details about the operation.

A total of two helicopters were involved in the rescue mission; however, one of those helicopters, for logistical reasons, did not land at the meeting place where the hostages were being held, the source says. The second helicopter was held back, on the ground, at a nearby location.

Congressman Silvestre Reyes, whose office called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for assistance in rescuing a Mexican citizen kidnapped in Mexico, has issued a statement concerning the incident -- which was first reported by Narco News.

The initial Narco News report indicated that the kidnapping victim was Reyes' sister-in-law. A subsequent report by Narco News, based on a leaked ICE document, indicated that the victim, Erika Posselt, was Congressman Reyes' "relative," but was silent on the precise nature of the relationship.

The Associate Press published a story a few hours ago about the Juarez kidnapping case involving a relative of U.S. Congressman Silvestre Reyes that takes the art of repackaging someone else’s reporting, without credit, to a new level of sleaziness for the nation’s supposed premier news service.

New details have surfaced concerning the recent kidnapping of a U.S. Congressman’s relative in Juarez that provide a clearer picture of the crime, and the U.S. government’s involvement, than was reported earlier this week by Narco News.

The bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez being fueled by the drug war must have triggered a major alarm in Washington, D.C., this past weekend when the sister-in-law of a prominent U.S. Congressman was kidnapped while on a shopping excursion in the Mexican border town.

I didn't realize the full extent of this when I wrote the original post on the State Department's purging of Secrecy News, but another act of egregious reader censorship is occurring over at what used to be the authentic Field.

Al Giordano's blog on the presidential election has been erased, along with thousands of reader posts and commentary, and visitors are now redirected to a limp version of the Field called the "Back Forty." (Backward Forty might be a more apt name.)

Here’s a new twist on censorship — a publication wiping a subscriber from its mailing list because the subscriber had the audacity to point out some shoddy reporting.

Welcome to the digital age, where the consolidation of the media — in this case in the hands of the biggest monopoly of all (our own U.S. government) — makes it possible to not only censor the news, but the readers as well.

Roland Carnaby lay prone on the pavement of a freeway access road at 200 West Loop South in Houston. He is handcuffed and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to his back. A group of Houston police officers hover over him, their parked squad cars blocking traffic.

The House of Death at 3633 Parsioneros in Ciudad Juarez, located just south of El Paso, Texas, became part of a macabre parade of homes earlier this year when two additional houses in the Mexican border city grabbed headlines due to their similar landscaping features.

Like the Parsioneros house, where 12 bodies were found buried in the backyard, these latest homes also boast backyards that doubled as graveyards.

I was headed to Ciudad Juarez, despite the U.S. State Department warnings urging U.S. citizens to avoid this Mexican border town because it is too dangerous.

In recent months, Juarez has been engulfed in bloodshed due, according to mainstream media reports, to a violent turf war being waged by narco-traffickers. The bloodshed in recent months has been so extreme (some 200-plus murders since the beginning of the year) that Mexican president Felipe Calderon recently deployed hundreds of federal police and military troopers to the city.