President Felipe Calderon

When President Obama goes to Guadalajara, Mexico, this weekend for the North American Leaders Summit, he will surely praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the courage he has displayed fighting the war on drugs. The applause is well deserved. Calderon has turned the crackdown on drug traffickers into the centerpiece of his administration and has pursued organized crime with undeniable zeal.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico resigned Saturday after angering Mexican President Felipe Calderon over leaked diplomatic cables that bluntly described shortcomings in Mexico's 4-year-old war on drug cartels. Carlos Pascual, a veteran diplomat who arrived in Mexico in 2009, helped retool U.S. aid in the drug war to place greater emphasis on improving judicial institutions and civic involvement than on weaponry. But the embassy's analyses in confidential cables of Mexico's military-led drug strategy, which included praise but noted interagency rivalries and called the Mexican army "risk averse," raised hackles.

During a one-day trip south of the border, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday lauded Mexico for battling drug cartels she once compared to an insurgency. Clinton said President Felipe Calderon has been "courageous" in shouldering his share of the two nations' battle against cross-border criminal networks. "This is very hard, and what President Calderon has done is absolutely necessary," Clinton said after meeting with Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Guanajuato, a colonial-era mining city.

As part of his administration's fight against organized crime, Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed new steps Thursday to curb money laundering. Calderon said he will give Congress a package of legislation that would limit big-ticket cash purchases through which drug traffickers launder billions of dollars smuggled south across the U.S.- Mexico border. It would also stiffen reporting requirements for businesses and strengthen the government's hand in detecting transactions aimed at helping drug lords launder proceeds.

Nearly four years after President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers, the cartels are smuggling more narcotics into the United States, amassing bigger fortunes and extending their dominion at home with such savagery that swaths of Mexico are now in effect without authority. The groups also are expanding their ambitions far beyond the drug trade, transforming themselves into broad criminal empires deeply involved in migrant smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and trafficking in contraband such as pirated DVDs.

Almost everything to do with the Mexican government's war against drugs is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The threat from narco-trafficking is overblown. Fighting cartels won't stop the flow of illegal drugs or erase Mexican corruption. The real battle over drugs lies on the U.S. side of the border. That's the gist of a provocative new book that challenges virtually every premise on which Mexican President Felipe Calderon has based his 3-year-old offensive against drug cartels. "El Narco: La Guerra Fallida" ("Narco: The Failed War")

Locked in a grueling and bloody war with drug cartels, Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday replaced the nation's top legal official, whose lackluster stint had failed to improve paltry narcotics conviction rates or stem human rights abuses. Atty. Gen. Arturo Chavez Chavez stepped down after 18 months on the job. Calderon nominated Marisela Morales, head of the high-profile organized crime unit of the prosecutor's office, to replace Chavez. The Mexican Senate must ratify the appointment.

Bearing white balloons and fake bloodstains, tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded Mexico City's historic downtown Sunday to call for an end to the country's unrelenting drug violence. The primary target of the protest was President Felipe Calderon, who has ruled during a period of extraordinary bloodshed. More than 34,000 people have been killed since Calderon declared an all-out assault on drug cartels after taking office four and a half years ago. Demonstrators, holding placards saying "No more blood!"

WASHINGTON - President Obama hosted the leaders of Mexico and Canada on Monday in a White House summit aimed at boosting the region's growing economic ties, but the scourge of drug violence in Mexico muddled the message and highlighted friction between the neighbors. Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the three announced an initiative to cut regulations that constrict trade across the northern and southern borders. But Mexico's drug war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, dominated a Rose Garden news conference.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon implored a joint session of Congress on Thursday to ban assault weapons that are showing up in his country in great numbers, and he also denounced Arizona's strict new immigration law. Winding up a two-day visit to Washington, Calderon said that his security forces were seizing tens of thousands of powerful guns that they have traced to the United States. Calderon said the U.S. needed to "regulate the sale of these weapons in the right way."