The fight against drug cartels has become the signature issue of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's administration. Along with deploying the military to raid cartel shipments, Calderon decriminalized small amounts of drugs so that law enforcement would not be overextended with nonviolent drug crime, but traffickers still profit from sales to Americans. When President Obama visited Mexico City in April 2009, Calderon pressured him that about reforming gun and drug laws to curtail organized crime on both sides of the border. Mexican ambassador to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhan told NationalJournal.com why Calderon's administration will not let up the pressure on Obama.
Continue reading Mexico's Ambassador On Controlling The Border.
Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, took time out from preparing for President Felipe Calderon's state visit to Washington next week to share his views on the immigration debate with NationalJournal.com. Edited excerpts follow.
Continue reading Mexico's Ambassador Sees Immigration Tension.
National Journal, The Atlantic and Allstate host a discussion about the latest Heartland Monitor Poll examining the economic experiences and attitudes of the Millennial Generation. Watch highlights and complete video of the event below.
When Hurricane Katrina battered the Louisiana coastline in August 2005 and ruptured New Orleans' levees, flooding the city, then-Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) dispatched vessels from the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Service, rescuing thousands of city residents. But she was also criticized for not appealing right away for federal aid.
Now the region is again under siege as a gigantic oil slick approaches the Louisiana coastline, threatening marine life and the state's fishing communities, and in Washington, the recriminations have already begun. Blanco spoke this week with NationalJournal.com about the dangers posed by the spill, the effect this string of disasters has had on the people of Louisiana, and the speed and effectiveness of the government's response now as compared to four years ago. Edited excerpts follow.
Continue reading Blanco: Louisiana 'Exhausted' But 'Resilient'.
Alasdair Roberts, law and public policy professor at Suffolk University Law School, has written a new book that challenges the way policymakers think about government design in a globalized economy. In the book The Logic of Discipline (Oxford University Press, 2010), Roberts argues that the United States and other governments have become overly reliant on technocrats out of a fear of politicized decisionmaking, without thinking through the limits of independent institutions like the Federal Reserve. In an April 30 interview with National Journal, Roberts explored the question of redesigning financial regulation as the Senate begins debate on regulatory reform.
Continue reading Roberts: Rethink Regulators.
The Obama administration appointed its drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, a year ago this month, shortly after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led a delegation to Mexico to assess its devastating drug war and announced that America's appetite for drugs was a significant part of the problem.
While Kerlikowske has done away with the rhetoric about an endless war on drugs in his search for practical, cost-effective drug policy, the drug-funded violence of Mexico's cartels has been a persistent problem during his tenure.
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began taking aggressive steps to shut down the cartels, he has received American aid, and Kerlikowske has met numerous times with him and other high-level officials. Kerlikowske recently spoke with NationalJournal.com about this conflict, how it affects the border region, and how the administration hopes to deal with it going forward. Edited excerpts follow.
Continue reading Drug Czar Looks South Of The Border.
