Wow. Leave the country for a week (Amsterdam, to help some friends with a video project) and Clinton says some shit about drug legalization that kicks the the rest of the American media—and not just the voice-in-the-wilderness LA Times—into freaking out about how extremely bad life has become in Northern Mexico. Among the 4,063 Google News hits:

The Washington Post: Clinton, Mexico, Immigrants and Narcotics

CBS: The U.S. Guns In Mexico's Drug War

Gannett: Mexican cartel threat grows

And even FOX fucking News: Inside the Danger

Thank you, Secretary Clinton. And thank you, LA Times, for your relentless and harrowing stories about life among the narcos, just across the border.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government is trying to win via symbolic victories:

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP) — Officials in Nuevo Laredo have destroyed more than 35 statues dedicated to a "Death Saint" popular with drug traffickers.

The statues, most depicting a robe-covered skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper, lined highways and roads in and around the Mexican city on the border with Texas. One of the statues was located at the base of an international bridge linking Mexico and the U.S.

Soldiers stood guard Wednesday as city workers were seen taking down statues. The effort started before dawn on Tuesday.

A local official who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the drug gangs said remnants of the statues will be left at local police stations for owners to reclaim.

The Mexican government can't stop—or won't stop—those drug lords from leaving vats of acid full of dissolved bodies in the middle of a downtown sidewalk in broad daylight; can't stop them from walking into bars and pitching severed heads at people; can't stop them from killing journalists and shooting at the US Consulate.

But go ahead, dismantle a few of their favorite statues and smash up a few narcocorrido records if that makes you feel better.