If you want to know what the United States can do to enhance security and fight drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border, you listen to the experts: the border governors who spend every day living with these battles and their consequences. The governors of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are saying loud and clear that Congress has to stop playing games and come to the aid of Mexican President Felipe Calderón in his heroic effort to combat violent drug cartels by approving the Merida Initiative.

How is it that students can sit through 12 years of public school and exit with no skills to earn a living? Among myriad explanations is the decline in vocational education – school programs designed to instruct students in a salable skill. Vocational education fell victim years ago to the perception that putting students on track to be carpenters, auto mechanics, bookkeepers, secretaries, etc., condemned them to life in jobs with no chance of advancement and skimpy pay.