Gunmen throw grenade at Mexican TV station[While on the Air]

Gunmen threw a grenade and opened fire outside a television news station during its evening broadcast in Mexico on Tuesday and left a message warning journalists from reporting on drug war violence.

Gunmen hurled the grenade at the regional studios of Mexico's top broadcaster Grupo Televisa in the northern city of Monterrey during the evening news show, the station's reporters said live on the air.

No one was hurt in the attack, believed to be the first against a TV station in Mexico, and in which the gunmen sprayed one of the complex's outside doors with bullets. The grenade exploded in a studio workshop used to build sets.

Gunmen also left a handwritten message on a car bumper near the studio that read: "Stop reporting just on us. Report on the narco's political leaders," in a apparent reference to the Mexican government.

Mexico is facing spiraling violence between warring drug gangs and the army in a battle that killed some 5,700 people last year.

Attacks on the media have mounted since President Felipe Calderon launched his military assault on cartels at the end of 2006. Suspected drug hitmen shot dead a crime reporter in the border city of Ciudad Juarez in November.

Since 2006, 15 journalists have been killed in Mexico, making it one of the world's most dangerous countries for the media, according to the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Committee to Protect Journalists.

Monterrey, a prosperous manufacturing and services city close to the U.S. border, was mainly calm in the drug war last year, but the powerful Gulf cartel and its feared Zeta hitmen run drugs through the area to Texas.

I'm not sure if Rooters is correct here? We've been told over and over and OVER that..

These are "God's Children".
That Mexicans are "Good", hard working people.
They all have strong "family values".
They are all very religious and conservative.
They only come here to make a better life for themselves.
And.......
We should let them invade us unabated as, "Family Values Don't Stop At the Rio Grande".
And........
They only come here to, "Do the jobs Lazy Americans refuse to do".

So these murders and overt violence can't be happening.
Mexico is like Fiji of 1750, only with clothes.

(Drat, I lost my sarcasm macro.)

Gunmen also left a handwritten message on a car bumper near the studio that read:

What, no windshield wiper to put it under? Get the Midas Touch.

Eighteenth ammendment-
from Wiki:
"Because of many Americans' dismay at the emergence of Prohibition, there was a considerable growth in organized crime in the United States in response to public demand for illegal alcohol. Considered a very unpopular law, the amendment was subsequently repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. It remains the only constitutional amendment to be repealed in its entirety."

The answer to some problems often stare you in the face. Legalize the crap and you put organized crime out of business (they'll have to fall back on gambling and prostitution). Turning off the cash spigot will result in fewer gangsters both here and abroad. And the cash collected by the treasury could be spent to enhance our sovereignty by building an impenetrable wall at the border. Two birds, one stone(r).

There is a lot of truth in one through five of your list. Most Mexicans really are good hard working people. Most are religious and socially conservative, and most do have strong family values. What we get as illegals here are generally the poorest and least educated from Mexico. They're not the cream of the crop. There are over a 100 million people down in Mexico. Like anywhere else most are going to be pretty decent people and some not so decent. A very small percentage of Mexicans are involved with the drug trade. Of course with over 100 million people even if just half of one percent are involved that's over a half a million people, and probably more are involved than that. It's still a tiny minority of the Mexican people though. Some of the small percentage involved are sick murderous thugs. These drug trafficking organizations are fighting over billions of dollars a year and they employ some of these sick murderous thugs to do their dirty work. The ONDCP estimates that they make nearly $14 billion dollars a year in drug sales just to Americans alone. That's a lot of money in Mexico, and they have domestic sales and are expanding out to other parts of the world as well so their total gross is a good bit higher than $14 billion dollars a year. They have four major cartels fighting against each other down there, and several subgroups of these cartels and smaller separate groups all vying for a bigger piece of the pie. They had the government mostly all in their pockets, but now the government is cracking down so they are waging war with those elements in the government trying to harm their business interests, and anyone else who gets in their way.

Eventually with our help the government will get the upper hand, take down a couple of the cartels and cause the others to lay low and get out of the limelight. The multibillion dollar drug trade will survive, as it always does. There is too much money to be made for it to go away, and Mexico will always be a huge part of it because they are the only country on our southern border, have a good climate for growing marijuana, a relatively poor populace, and geography dictates that their country is the bottleneck for all other drugs, like cocaine, coming from countries to their south and headed into the U.S. to satisfy the voracious demand here.

Sooner or later the violence we are seeing now will largely abate, for a while. It's bad for business. Then we'll see the same cycle happen again probably because that's just the nature of the massive black market drug trade. I suppose it's easy to look at the drug trade and all the violence and come away thinking all Mexicans are criminals, but you'd be mistaken. It's only a small minority fighting over a whole lot of money.

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