Former DEA and FBI agents don't see eye to eye on the potential threat to the U.S. of Mexican border violence caused by cartels. A former FBI agent tells Fox News:

"It's moving across into the rest of the country, so we can't just look at it and say it's just the border, don't worry about it," said Don Clark, former director of the FBI Office in Houston.

Former DEA Agent Gary Hale, a 30 year veteran of DEA, takes an opposite view. He writes in a published paper (available here):

While some spillover violence does in fact occur, it is generally confined to the border region, most specifically near the border city pairs, and rarely reaches the interior of the United States in such a manner that should cause alarm or incite fears of threats to national security, when compared to jihadist terrorism or other extremists that publicly proclaim their desire to kill Americans.”

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The U.S. has spent $900 million of its Meridia Initiative money on training of Mexican prosecutors and law enforcement and providing them equipment. The countries just announced another training program:

Proyecto Diamante [is] a comprehensive training program designed and developed jointly by the U.S. Department of Justice and Mexico's Procuraduria General de la Republica to train 2,500 PGR prosecutors and 6,000 investigators over the next 12 months in core competencies.

This week, a senior prosecutor in the Attorney General's Office (PGR) in Saltillo, Coahuila, Claudia Gonzalez Lopez, was among those arrested on organized crime charges of allegedly providing protection to the Zetas in exchange for large sums of money, paid monthly. The former police chief was also arrested. as was the head of the Special Investigations Group.

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Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is almost as bad as Joe Arpaio -- he's often called the "new Arpaio." One example of his over-the top style of policing: In 2010, he mandated the use of lethal force against drug smugglers.

I've given specific instruction, no less than lethal force is going to be used. It's all lethal force only and we go into that environment knowing that we're likely expecting an armed threat from these people," Babeu said.

He's the "face" of Arizona's border war against unlawful immigration and now he's running for Congress. Friday, Phoenix New Times outed him as gay, based on information from a Hispanic man Babeu had a long relationship with and who claims Babeu threatened him with deportation if their relationship became public. Babeu now acknowledges he is gay, but denies making the threat. He's also staying in the Congressional race. [More...]

Simsbury High School in Hartford, CT is joining a troubling growing trend: Employing cops with drug dogs to routinely patrol the halls, conducting random searches for drugs. What other schools have recently added random drug dog searches? To name just a few: [More...]

Here is President Obama's 2013 proposed budget for the Department of Punishment Justice. The total comes to $36.5 billion. Among the lowlights.

• Prison budget: $8.5 billion, a 4 percent increase over 2012. (It notes that there 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons and 1 in 32 American adults are under some kind of correctional supervision.) [More..]

Guatemala's new President, Otto Perez Molina, said today he will propose that Central America legalize drugs at an upcoming meeting of leaders in the region.

"I want to bring this discussion to the table," he said. "It wouldn't be a crime to transport, to move drugs. It would all have to be regulated."

Does he mean it? Or is he only attempting to start a dialogue? A former military general who ran on a law and order platform promising an "iron fist" policy against organized crime, he authorized the army to join the fight against the drug cartels just one day after his inauguration..

I wrote yesterday that as I tuned in to the end of the Fast and Furious hearing yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder was castigating some Republican who had just questioned him, calling the Republican disrespectful.

Here's the text of Holder's comments in response to some of the questions. Holder isn't the only one who should be disgusted by these Republicans. Everyone should be. Good for Holder for showing some backbone and ripping into them: [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder testified today before the Korematsu McCarthy Star Chamber Renewal Committee (aka the House Oversight Committee, led by Darryl Issa.) When I tuned in, Holder was castigating one of the House members who had just finished questioning him for his lack of civility and disrespect for the Justice Department as an institution. It must have been quite an attack because the next questioner, a Republican, agreed with Holder that his colleague's approach was unfortunate and should not have occurred.

The last Republican who spoke said no one on the Committee is accusing Holder of having actual knowledge about Fast and Furious. Just goes to show these Republicans are not out for the truth, but for Holder's head.

As Republicans prepare to grill Attorney General Eric Holder again over Operation Fast and Furious, the Democrats on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have released a report. The executive summary is here. The full report is here.

Shorter version: There is no evidence higher-ups at DOJ were aware of the gunwalking operations, which were initiated during the Bush Administraton. [More...]

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), current Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, has always struck me as a public menace. He's now advocating more mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Other Republicans are joining him.

If you don't remember Sensenbrenner from 2004- 2005, when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, here are some of his dooziest proposals:[More...]

The Office of National Drug Control Policy today released its first National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy . The full 80-page report is here. The report is required to be submitted to Congress under the Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy Act of 2010 (Act).

What's to come: More intelligence-gathering and sharing. [More...]

The Weed Wars continue. Here's the U.S. Attorney's press release on yesterday's California medical marijuana dispensary raids. DOJ's "justification" for the raids is in this earlier press release.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear two medical marijuana cases.

The California Supreme Court has jumped into the fray again over the legality of medical marijuana laws, deciding on Wednesday to review two lower court rulings that impact how and whether local governments can regulate pot dispensaries across the state.

In their weekly closed-door session, the justices voted unanimously to review cases out of Long Beach and Riverside that dealt with the ongoing conflict between California's voter-approved law allowing the use of medical marijuana and federal laws barring the use or sale of the drug. The state Supreme Court's rulings in the cases are likely to have a widespread impact in the Bay Area, where cities from San Jose to Oakland have regulations dealing with medical marijuana providers.

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