Free Republic

Crossing a Mexican drug cartel usually comes with a price — death. On the U.S.- Mexico border, that price is being paid daily with an endless stream of execution-style slayings in a war to control drug routes to the north. As Mexican officials crack down on these cartels, violence spreads. Lives are merely the cost of doing business, and since 2007 the international press has documented more than 7,400 drug war-related murders on the border. Police are gunned down in public squares. Failed drug smugglers are tortured to death and bound from head to toe in duct tape. Enemies are...

What do you talk about at lunch with Tom Tancredo? I thought I knew, but to my surprise (and relief), we spent much of the hour discussing the wisdom of legalizing drugs rather than rehashing our disagreements over illegal immigrants. "The status quo isn't working," Tancredo says, meaning the war on drugs has failed — spectacularly. And while that's hardly a novel insight, most people who reach it don't take the next step of questioning the drug war itself.

(This column is based on a report submitted to the National Association of Chiefs of Police by the US Department of Homeland Security.) During Monday's edition of Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck Show, the decidely conservative host asked his viewers to answer a question: outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden had stated that Iran was the Number One threat to the security of the United States; what country did Hayden rank as Number Two? The answer was Mexico. Meanwhile, retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, the former U.S. drug czar, told the Los Angeles Times that the Mexican government "is fighting...

Drug prohibition militarizes our police, enriches our enemies, undermines our laws, and condemns our sick to suffering. At around 6pm on January 27 of last year, 80-year-old Isaac Singletary spotted a couple of drug dealers attempting to do business on his front lawn. It wasn’t the first time. Singletary, described by relatives as territorial and a bit crotchety, did what he’d done in the past. He grabbed his gun, and walked out on to his lawn to scare them off. Problem is, this time the men weren’t drug dealers. They were undercover Jacksonville, Florida police posing as drug dealers. They...

Shortly before his inauguration President Barack Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and discussed, among other things, the need for greater international cooperation in reducing drug trafficking and the associated violence. Although drug-related violence in Mexico is nothing new, the past couple of years have been especially turbulent. Not only has there been a substantial increase in drug-related homicide, the methods of murder have become nightmarishly macabre with drug traffickers decapitating their rivals and scattering the heads in public places. The drug cartels have also become increasingly brazen in their assaults on Mexico’s justice officials. Last year, several high-ranking...

A Pasco, Wash., man was arrested this morning by Oregon State Police after about 115 pounds of marijuana was found in a van he was driving north on Interstate 5. Lt. Brian Powers said Jesus Lopez-Ramos, 53, was the only occupant in the van, which was stopped about 8 a.m. south of Ashland for a traffic violation. There was a marijuana odor in the van. Lopez-Ramos is being held in Jackson County Jail on suspicion of possession, distribution and manufacturing of marijuana. State police valued the marijuana at about $345,000.