Free Republic

...some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion. A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government's war on drugs summed up recently what he's learned from his long career: "This war is not winnable." [] Growing numbers of Mexican and...

Back in the early 1990s, when Los Angeles was stuck in the pits of a deep recession, somebody facetiously suggested that if Southern California were returned to Mexico _ maybe throw in south Texas and the San Joaquin Valley as well _ it could improve the economies of both countries. But given the current debate about immigration in all its economic and social complexity, that facetious idea left an increasingly compelling question: Where _ and what _ is the border? The obvious answer is that it's the line established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the...