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Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Saturday joined his predecessor in office in unloading on Donald Trump, calling the Republican front-runner's campaign racist and saying his discourse on immigration is fueling anti-American sentiment around the world. Calderon, a conservative who was president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, even said he thought Trump was trying to exploit the same social feelings and resentments as did Adolf Hitler. "I think his logic of exalting white supremacy isn't even acting against immigration - Donald Trump is the descendant of migrants - it is acting and speaking against immigrants who have a different...

Manchester, New Hampshire (CNN)Donald Trump estimated on Tuesday that it will cost about $8 billion to build the wall he has promised to erect on the U.S.'s southern border if elected president.Trump has vowed to force Mexico to pay for the border wall and said Tuesday on MSNBC that the hefty $8 billion price tag "is a tiny fraction of the money that we lose with Mexico" on trade."The wall is probably $8 billion, which is a tiny fraction of the money that we lose with Mexico. We lose a tremendous amount of trade deficits. We have a trade deficit...

Former Mexican leader Felipe Calderon says he does not understand why Americans would vote for Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential candidate "completely crazy" and "not very well-informed". He further explained in the interview with CNBC that the border wall Trump plans to erect if elected is "stupid" and "completely useless". http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=102632

A former Mexican president had some tough words when asked about GOP candidate Donald Trump's much-touted plan to build a border wall that he says will be paid for by Mexico. "We are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless," said former Mexican president Felipe Calderón when asked about this at the AmCham Egypt for Business Conference on Sunday. Calderón told CNBC's Hadley Gamble his country will not be funding the construction of the wall, also adding that while Trump blames Mexican migration for the majority of illegal...

DAVOS -- The crackdown on illegal immigration combined with intensified border security has prompted large numbers of undocumented Mexican laborers to remain in the U.S. permanently -- even as many prefer to go home -- out of fear they will never be able to return, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told International Business Times. “Many of them are currently trapped,” Calderon told IBTimes. “There are a lot of these people [who] want to be in Mexico eight months every year, but they are unable to go there, because if they cross the border, they will never be able to cross...

“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” President Obama said at the memorial service for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, “but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this. If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent a new proposal to liberalize the country's antiquated labor laws to lawmakers on Saturday as he seeks to fast-track the legislation before leaving office at the end of November. Calderon's draft bill, submitted at the start of the new Congress by Interior Minister Alejandro Poire, is aimed at helping spur stronger growth in Latin America's second biggest economy. Agreeing on labor reform has long proved difficult in Mexico, and the proposal could be a litmus test of how the PRI and Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, cooperate in the new Congress, which lasts...

Mexico's leader sees potential in progress of Petrobras Guillermo Najera, a 42-year-old machine operator at Mexican state-controlled oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, gets paid to do nothing all day. Pemex management can't fire the union worker or transfer him from the ammonia plant in Ciudad Camargo, where he still shows up for work even though the plant stopped production in 2002. "We don't have anything else to do except keep our areas clean," Najera says as he and dozens of other idle workers enter the gates of the plant for the 7 a.m. shift. "I want to go back to work."...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — President Felipe Calderon on Thursday unveiled a “No More Weapons!” billboard made with crushed firearms and placed near the U.S. border. He urged the United States to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico. The billboard, which is in English and weighs 3 tons, was placed near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the United States.

Voters from Mexico's ruling conservative party selected their first woman presidential candidate on Sunday, choosing a former education minister to battle the opposition's nominee, who has a big lead in the polls. National Action Party (PAN) voters threw their support behind former party congressional leader Josefina Vazquez Mota, pushing aside Ernesto Cordero, a close ally of President Felipe Calderon. Jose Espina, who organized the vote, announced Vazquez Mota was ahead with 55 percent support with around 87 percent of the votes counted, more than enough to secure the party nomination. Cordero came in second with 38 percent. National polls show...

Protest March in Mexico City Against Drug WarMonday, 15 August 2011 10:28 More than 1,000 people have joined a protest in Mexico City against the government's strategy in the fight against drug gangs. Carrying banners and pictures of dead relatives, the activists marched in silence to the presidential palace to demand peace. As reported by BBC, the protest was led by the poet turned activist Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed earlier this year. He wants President Felipe Calderon to pull the army off the streets. The activists are also demanding changes to a national security law reform being considered...

San Jose, Calif. (AP) -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in the San Francisco Bay area where he spoke at a San Jose job training center about immigration issues and other topics. Speaking at the Center for Employment and Training on Saturday, Calderon told a crowd of more than 600 people that walls or what he called "abusive laws" will not stop people from migrating to the U.S. He told the gathering that Mexico needs more labor opportunities.

While the Obama administration worries about security issues half way around the world in such places as Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea, a serious problem is brewing right on our southern border. Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed some 29,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels four years ago. The situation is now so bad that some analysts worry that Mexico could become a “failed state.” That outcome is a relatively unlikely, worst-case scenario, but the violence is already bad enough that it warrants far more attention from America’s

(via The Drudge Report) CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram. Mexico's military says it found two suitcases full of marijuana in the cab of the pickup truck. Two soldiers later testified that they drove the two Americans to a military compound on the outskirts of town, questioned them briefly, then turned them over to civilian authorities. The Americans were charged with possession of marijuana with...

You know the basics. The unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. Jobs are still being lost. Worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street. And millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings. What you may not know is that, during this moment of terrible economic anxiety, the Obama White House found the time -- and the money -- to turn itself, at least for a night, into a showcase of glitzy extravagance. On May 19, the White House held a state dinner for Mexican President...

Security: After letting Mexico's president trash Arizona's immigration law and his immigration enforcement chief say he won't enforce it, the president wants to send a token National Guard contingent to the border. There's something disingenuous about the president's plan to deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to the Arizona border to help the Border Patrol catch illegal aliens. His director of immigration and customs enforcement, John Morton, has said he might not enforce immigration crimes reported by Arizona officials, though the state's new law merely copies federal law. Morton is director of ICE, not chief justice of the Supreme Court. He...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon called on Congress on Thursday to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons that he said are ending up in the hands of violent drug cartels south of the border, using a highly contentious estimate of U.S. guns seized in Mexico when addressing Capitol Hill lawmakers. Mr. Calderone said he respects the Second Amendment, but argued that violence south of the border spiked in 2004 after the expiration of a U.S. ban on semiautomatic weapons. Echoing statements made by President Obama Wednesday, Mr... --snip-- "With all due respect, if you do not regulate the sale of...

Immigration: An Arizona official asks a good question: If California wants to boycott Arizona over the way it enforces federal law, what about the electricity California gets from there? The problem with righteous indignation is that when others call you on it and tell you to put your money where your mouth is, it can cause an embarrassing leak in your hot air balloon. Gary Pierce, a commissioner on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission, has done just that, calling the bluff of the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Pierce wrote Villaraigosa a letter saying in essence that...

Allow me to share a personal note. Today a friend of mine obtained her US Citizenship (I’d share photos, but I don’t have permission). She’s beaming ear to ear. She has dropped a tear or two today in thankfulness. She proudly waves her American flag and has been talking all day about how now she has “freedom”. I’ve been choked up about it myself today. See…my friend EARNED her “freedom”. She jumped through all of the legal hoops, studied our Constitution, and learned all of the privileges and obligations of being an American and will share her experience with her...