HUMPTY DUMPTY DRUG WAR POLICY

Re: "Ensuring Justice - Congress needs to approve border courts,"
Editorials, June 29. This editorial reminds me of the story of Humpty Dumpty.

The U.S. laid an egg with the drug war policy. The egg inevitably cracked
under the promise of a drug-free America. And with that crack came the
"tough on drugs" scramble of legislative escalation: build a wall, close
the border, call the National Guard, send in the military, use more
surveillance, dispatch more patrol, spend more money than last year and get
tougher than ever before.

And, yet, the result of escalation is as your column noted, "the situation
has left border courts looking like an inner city hell, where judges work
as furiously and as forgotten as any overwhelmed Bronx magistrate ... the
situation is a mockery of the constitutional promise of a speedy trial.
More than 25 percent of all federal criminal prosecutions are now filed in
the five judicial districts that run along the U.S.-Mexico border."

And just as all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put
Humpty Dumpty together again, the "Let's do more of the same and expect
different results" behavior of Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Phil Gramm and Kay
Hutchison produces little more than the stench of rotting egg on their faces.

J.F. Wilson
Kettle Falls, Wash