Congress dithers as Mexico drug war rages

In an editorial last week, the Chicago Tribune scolds Congress for failing to act on the president's proposal to fuel the Mexican government's crackdown on drug cartels:

Within weeks of being sworn in as Mexico's president in December 2006, Felipe Calderon launched a scorched-earth assault on the drug cartels that infest the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Thousands of federal troops and army soldiers were dispatched to the mountainous region that stretches through northwestern Mexico into southern Arizona. Cocaine shipments were seized; marijuana fields were burned. Local police suspected of protecting or abetting the cartels were disarmed. Imprisoned drug kingpins who made a mockery of the judicial system by running their operations from behind bars were extradited to the United States to stand trial for trafficking.