Thread: Obama to Create Border Czar Position

Obama to create border czar position
From the Associated Press
3:56 PM PDT, April 14, 2009

WASHINGTON -- A former Justice Department official has been picked to be the Southwest border czar -- a new position created by the Obama administration to handle illegal immigration and border issues, according to an administration official.

The new Homeland Security post will be responsible for issues related to drug-cartel violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and the estimated 1 million people who try to enter the U.S. illegally each year.


Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to name Alan Bersin to the position on Wednesday during a visit to the Southwest border, the official said. The official would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

Napolitano, who is making her second border trip in two weeks, will be discussing the agency's efforts to curb the flow of illegal immigrants, guns and drugs along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Obama administration has promised to crack down on border violence and work with Mexican authorities against drug cartels. Hundreds of federal agents, along with high-tech surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs are being deployed to the Southwest.


In his new capacity, Bersin will work with international officials and their counterparts in the U.S. and border states.

Bersin held a similar position at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration when he was responsible for coordinating law enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border. During his time as "border czar," he oversaw anti-drug and human trafficking problems.

The Justice Department would not respond to an inquiry about when and why its border czar position was eliminated. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, once part of the Justice Department, was dismantled and rolled into new agencies in the Homeland Security Department. The 2001 terrorist attacks spurred the creation of the new department, which was launched in 2003.

From 1993 to 1998, Bersin was the federal prosecutor who led the government's crackdown on illegal immigrants at the California-Mexico border. Bersin and Napolitano were both U.S. attorneys during the Clinton administration.

Most recently, Bersin was chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. He also served under California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the secretary of education.

Earlier, Bersin was the superintendent of San Diego public schools. When Bersin was named superintendent, some Hispanic groups decried his role in a border enforcement program called Operation Gatekeeper. They say the crackdown caused a steep increase in deaths by forcing immigrants to attempt treacherous mountain and desert crossings into the United States.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 1075.story

From 1993 to 1998, Bersin was the federal prosecutor who led the government's crackdown on illegal immigrants at the California-Mexico border. Bersin and Napolitano were both U.S. attorneys during the Clinton administration.

Most recently, Bersin was chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. He also served under California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the secretary of education.

Earlier, Bersin was the superintendent of San Diego public schools. When Bersin was named superintendent, some Hispanic groups decried his role in a border enforcement program called Operation Gatekeeper. They say the crackdown caused a steep increase in deaths by forcing immigrants to attempt treacherous mountain and desert crossings into the United States.

I like this guy already, and am starting to give Napolitano credit for common sense.

I like how the Mexicans blame us for deaths that they incurr while sneaking into our country. These people are whacked. It shows that they are not accepting responsiblity for their actions. Of course our Prez believes they are right after all, he hates Americans.

Obama to name Bersin his border czar

UNION-TRIBUNE
3:42 p.m. April 14, 2009



Alan Bersin
President Barack Obama plans to name Alan Bersin, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego, to a newly created border czar position, according to The Associated Press.

The new Homeland Security post will be responsible for issues related to drug-cartel violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, the news service said, attributing the information to an administration official.

Bersin, a Democrat, served as a border czar and U.S. attorney under President Clinton. In that post, his focus was mostly on illegal immigration.

The administration official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to announce Bersin's appointment on Wednesday during a visit to the Southwest border, according to the AP. The official would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

Bersin, currently chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, has served as superintendent for the San Diego Unified School District and as secretary of education for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.
Breaking News Team: (619) 293-1010; breaking@uniontrib.com

SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL: AN OPEN LETTER TO JANET NAPOLITANO, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY, REGARDING ALAN BERSIN--A TOP CANDIDATE FOR U.S. CUSTOMS & BORDER PATROL TOP SLOT


Editor’s Note: Alan Bersin has served as Superintendent of Public Education in San Diego City Schools and was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as California Secretary of Education. He is now in the running to head up the U.S. Customs & Border Patrol.



Dear Secretary Napolitano:

[b]April 1, 2009(San Diego)--I write this letter because Alan Bersin is rumored to be on a short list of people who seek to run the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. If I didn’t say anything against the possibility of him rising to such a position I would feel as though I was letting my fellow citizens down, especially in light of the faith that so many, like me, have placed in President Barack Obama.

Obama has declared before the world that he is about reaching across aisles, about collaborating, about listening, so that better minds can make the changes our country and, indeed, our world needs if our troubled times are to be turned around. His recent outreach to the Iranian people said volumes about how dedicated he is to working with others, no matter how different their ideals and ways of thinking might be compared to ours.

Well, whales will be dancing at the Apollo before Alan Bersin works in collaboration with anyone, before he listens to anybody, before he treats anybody with the human respect and understanding they need to feel satisfied that they’re contributing to the creation of a better world.

Oh, he’ll give you and Obama and any upper level person in the administration a smile that will sweep you off your feet. He’ll shake your hand in standard ways or like a soulbrother, whatever will make him seem like “the man.â€

--lots more on Bersin from the San Diego Jewish Journal ---- He was born October 15, 1946
Brooklyn, NY

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The hardest job in America?

Alan Bersin is accustomed to success. He was an all-star linebacker at Harvard. He is personal friends will Bill Clinton. He was lauded for his work as America's first border czar. But as superintendent of San Diego city schools, he faces challenges unlike any he's ever seen before. So how does he keep his preternatural cool?

by Micah Sachs

The headquarters for the San Diego Unified school district is a depressing place. The exterior is painted a pale pink, the halls are drenched with water stains and even the office supplies come out of a vending machine. But step into Superintendent Alan Bersin's office and you almost forget your drab surroundings.

Like a museum, his office offers miscellany of such quantity and variety that there's something to disarm any visitor. For me, on the right wall, it was an award from the American Jewish Committee with elaborate Hebrew calligraphy and a quote from Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"

Just to the left is a slim bronze cat wearing an Indiana Jones-style cowboy hat. There is a Native American bow and arrow and a red tricycle with two sets of handlebars heading in opposite directions, a relic of Bersin's previous life as America's so-called "border czar." There are cartoons in French, plaques in Spanish and a poster in Russian.

Among the signed baseballs and footballs, there are pictures of Bersin with various movers-and-shakers, including Clinton, Hillary, Gore, Bush and Gray Davis alongside photos and drawings of heroes like JFK and Einstein. Beanie baby dogs, foxes, bears and birds - gifts of his children, he claims - sag on top of a black leather chair.

Pictures of Bersin's family co-mingle with a red, white and blue candle signed by Schwarzenegger. His desk (presumably used for work, but eerily neat) is plastered with a finished jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. and Mexico. On the front left corner there are a series of bookmarks with quotes from the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, including one from Thomas Jefferson: "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Overflow Beanie Babies teeter on the front-right edge of the desk.

Reproductions of Norman Rockwell paintings and honors from the Department of Justice obscure the view from the windows on the left wall. Below, on low shelves that run the length of the entire wall, are a multitude of books with titles like Jack: Stories from the Gut by Jack Welch and Governing Public Schools: New Realities. Tucked in a corner is a slim yellow volume with a plastic cover: The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It is probably the most relevant title in the entire office.

There is probably no job - public or private - that more fits the bill of Worst Case Scenario than school superintendent. It is a public, high profile job serving numerous, often contradictory constituencies: teachers, administrators, students, parents, the press, the school board, taxpayers. What's good for the teachers is often bad for the taxpayers. What's good for the students is often bad for the parents. What's good for the school board is often bad for the press. Somebody's always pissed: either you're not spending enough money or you're spending too much, or kids are doing great in English but terrible in math, or the schools are brand-new but the teachers are still creaky. You name the complaint, and Bersin's heard it. You try running a billion-dollar public corporation under constant public scrutiny with a nearly impossible goal: make an incredibly diverse population of 140,000 kids competent enough to thrive in the 21st century. Oh yeah, and do it on a shrinking budget.

But that's Alan Bersin's job.

A charmed life
Born in 1946, Bersin grew up in a traditional Conservative Jewish family in Brooklyn. He went to Hebrew school four days a week and was bar mitzvahed. Like many young Jews of his era, he developed an attachment to Israel early on.

Bersin was an outstanding student. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1968, where he was also an all-star linebacker. He was a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University from 1969 to '71. In 1970, he spent six weeks on a kibbutz in the Galilee while rockets rained down from the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights.

His connection to Israel remains strong; he has returned to Israel twice since and plans on bringing his daughter Madeleine there for her bat mitzvah in 2005.

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1974, Bersin rose through the ranks of the profession. In the '70s, he defended Alaskan Native Americans' claims to property illegally bought by the U.S. government a century earlier. While traveling from L.A. to Alaska, he often made pitstops in Hawaii ("it was always the same price to take the triangle flight," he says), where he picked up scuba diving. In the late '80s and early '90s, he represented the government of the Philippines in a massive racketeering case against former dictator's wife Imelda Marcos.

His career is marked by a knack for making friends with the right people at the right time. While at Oxford, he became friends with a dazzling young Georgetown grad named Bill Clinton; later, at Yale, he befriended Hillary Rodham.

In 1992, he took a sabbatical from the prestigious Los Angeles law firm Munger, Tolles and Olson to teach law at the University of San Diego. Less than a year into his tenure there, his friendship with Clinton paid off: he was appointed U.S. Attorney for San Diego despite having no previous experience as a prosecutor. He took to the task with aplomb; he simultaneously cracked down on illegal immigration while improving dialogue between American and Mexican officials.

In 1995, years before the Department of Homeland Security combined law enforcement, border patrol and immigration under one roof, Bersin was named "border czar" for the entire U.S.-Mexican border. His job? Oversee all the municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies policing the 2,000-mile border.

The timing was impeccable. Only a year earlier, the Clinton administration had launched "Operation Gatekeeper," a multi-billion-dollar initiative intended to firm up security at the border. During his three-year tenure as border czar, San Diego went from being one of the woolliest border crossings to one of the quietest. Illegal immigration went down as fences went up. Meanwhile, legal border crossings became quicker and more efficient than they had been in the past. As usual, Bersin showed a knack for cultivating the right friends: he had coffee on a weekly basis with Luis Herrera-Lasso, the Mexican consul general in San Diego.

In 1998, while basking in the glow of praise for the cleaned-up border, he was approached by members of San Diego's business community with a very unique proposition: apply for superintendent of schools for San Diego, the 16th largest school district in the country.

In 1998, the San Diego Unified School District was a peaceful, if not particularly high-achieving, district. After a nasty teachers' strike in 1996, Superintendent Bertha Pendleton and the teachers' union were finally on good terms. Graduation rates were up and class sizes were shrinking.

But leadership was decentralized. Since the late '80s, San Diego's schools had been moving towards a so-called "site-based" management system, with teachers and administrators at individual schools fashioning curriculum and instruction techniques. It worked for good teachers in schools with strong support systems; but for others, especially those in poorer, minority-heavy schools, achievement was falling. The latest research on education said that site-based management was flawed; strong, centralized management based on strict standards - Education Reform they called it - was the new vogue. The five-member school board, led by Ron Ottinger, felt it was time for a major change. With Pendleton ready for retirement, the time was ripe.

"There were some tough changes that needed to take place," recalls Ottinger, a 12-year veteran of the board and current board president, "and you can't do that with 180 schools going 180 different directions."

Despite Bersin having only a year's experience as a law professor - and zero experience in education administration - the board liked his track record and his commitment to a high level of accountability. They were looking for, in Ottinger's words to the Los Angeles Times in 1998, a "change agent," not a peacemaker.

With a 4-0 vote of the board (with one member abstaining), Bersin was named superintendent on March 9, 1998.

Challenge zero: The job
You wouldn't be able to guess it from the utterly sanguine way that Bersin speaks about his profession, but superintendent of schools is one of the most difficult jobs in America.

According to a 2001 paper by educational researcher Thomas Glass, nearly three quarters of superintendents felt their profession was in "crisis." Sixty percent said the stress level was "very great" or "considerable." Superintendents complained of long working hours, excessive bureaucracy and difficult relationships with school boards. A study by the Council of the Great City Schools the same year reported that the average superintendent of a large district had only been on the job 2 1/2 years.

Superintendents are subject to practically impossible scrutiny. They are typically hired precisely because they are different from their predecessor; they are often therefore expected to change a massive institution from day one, hardly a recipe for organizational peace.

Financially, they are rarely dealt a generous hand. Education is far and away the largest budget item in most cities and towns, and superintendents are typically charged with cutting or at least reining in that budget.

Meanwhile, they are constantly expected to raise student achievement in a country that persistently scores lower than most of its developed, industrialized rivals.

Teachers are rarely easy to please. Teachers' unions often cast a wary eye at new superintendents, as the unions are led by teaching veterans with decades of experience in the district. How friendly would you be toward a man a few months into his job telling you to do things differently than you have for 20 years?

Bersin retains his characteristic cool over these challenges. "I think that the degree of scrutiny is something that is expected and healthy," he says. "Anyone without a thick skin should really avoid this job."

Challenge one: The teachers
San Diego's 9,000-plus teachers have been wary of Bersin from day one. Unlike his predecessor Pendleton, who had worked in San Diego city schools for 36 years before becoming superintendent, Bersin had zero experience in public education. There was also suspicion the well-connected Bersin was preordained as superintendent; school board member Frances O'Neill Zimmerman, a former teacher, abstained from the vote to hire him because she felt the selection process was tainted.

Before Bersin assumed his duties on July 1, 1998, he hired an outsider from New York - the brash but brilliant Anthony Alvarado - to be his number two man. Alvarado immediately started drafting plans to overhaul, centralize and standardize teaching in San Diego. This plan was eventually called the Blueprint for Student Success.

The Blueprint moved through the pipeline at lightning-fast speed. On Oct. 12, 1999, the school board directed staff to schedule a work session on the issue of education reform. On Dec. 14, the superintendent's office had a first draft. And on March 14, 2000, after only two weeks of presentations to teachers, the board adopted the Blueprint with a vote of 3-2. Teachers bristled at being on the sidelines of the most sweeping education reform in San Diego history.

But Bersin repeatedly said that was the only way to implement reforms quickly.

"The sad history of urban school reform," Bersin told San Diego magazine earlier this year, "is that collaboration that purports to vest veto power with each side is a recipe for paralysis."

Soon after the Blueprint's adoption, Bersin demoted 13 principals and two vice-principals who were not friendly to the Blueprint's reforms.

"It's been that style of leadership since day one," complains Terry Pesta, current president of the San Diego teachers' union and a 30-year teaching vet. "Everything's been dictatorial. It's 'Our way is the only way.'"

As the Blueprint has gathered steam, teachers have become increasingly frustrated with a system they say discourages creativity, shortchanges math and science and holds teachers to impossible standards. "Morale among our members is at an all-time low," Pesta says. "It's almost not that teachers are being evaluated on how well they teach, but on how well they're being a team player." (Retorts Ottinger, "The issue of morale has always been raised. I haven't seen a superintendent that the teachers' union has liked.")

In May 2002, 2,000 teachers held a protest outside school district headquarters against the Blueprint and Bersin's leadership. But the focus of many people's ire was Alvarado, who teachers saw as arrogant and ruthless. One big source of discomfort with Alvarado was the fact his long-time girlfriend - Elaine Fink - ran a district-funded training institute for new principals.

Bersin sees their complaints as part of the culture of teacher unions, which he says view teaching as "an employment machine" and not an "educational enterprise." "I think it's important for teacher unions to realize that the reason they're the most powerful union in California is because other unions have lost the franchise because their jobs have in fact been exported," he says, "and for my friends in the teachers union who contend that teaching can't possibly be exported, I would point out that the functional equivalent of exporting jobs is vouchers and charter schools."

In recent months, there have been small signs of a thaw between Bersin and the teachers. In February, the school board and Bersin decided to reduce Alvarado's duties and release him from his contract a year early, which many saw as an olive branch. And in May, Pesta and Bersin jointly announced a deal that would prevent 1,500 possible teacher layoffs.

The eternally diplomatic Bersin says the agreement was "a turning point in the relationship" between the teachers and him. Pesta is not so charitable.

"When the superintendent talks to me, he says he wants a better relationship with the teachers and I want to believe him," says Pesta, "but until I see actual changes at the site, until I see respect for teachers, it doesn't mean anything."

Challenge two: The school board
Ron Ottinger is the president of the San Diego Unified District's school board. He has served on the board since 1992 and has won re-election twice. You'd think he'd be optimistic about the role of school boards. You'd be wrong. After studying districts across the nation he told San Diego magazine, "There are very few districts where you can say that school boards have been a constructive element."

San Diego is no different. The board is sharply divided between a 3-person pro-Bersin majority and a 2-persion anti-Bersin minority. It's been that way since the day Bersin put the Blueprint to a vote.

On the pro-Bersin side are Ottinger, Katherine Nakamura and Edward Lopez. On the other side are Zimmerman and John de Beck, both former teachers.

There have been two sets of elections for the board since Bersin has been superintendent. Both have been marked by a level of spending and vitriol unprecedented in San Diego electoral history.

In 2000, Bersin supporters pumped nearly $1 million into a campaign to defeat Zimmerman. Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, Padres owner John Moores and Wal-Mart heir John Walton each gave $100,000 to the campaign. That election, which Zimmerman narrowly won, has only hardened Zimmerman's stance against Bersin. Since that election, Zimmerman has maintained a website where she rails against Bersin and his backers. She has described the expansion of the Blueprint as an "Anschulss" (making allusion to the Nazi takeover of Austria) and has called Ottinger "the administration's water-boy."

In 2002, two positions on the board were up for grabs: de Beck's and Sue Braun's districts. De Beck ran for re-lection; Braun, who like Ottinger is Jewish, did not.

This time, the anti-Bersin side would not be blindsided by the business community's money. The San Diego Education Association (the teachers' union) and its state counterpart, the California Teachers Association, spent nearly $1 million on the campaign to re-elect de Beck and another anti-Blueprint candidate. In the end, it was a draw: de Beck won re-election by a landslide, but Nakamura, who is now solidly pro-Bersin, was elected over the teachers' favored candidate.

Dialogue on the board has regressed to such a point that board members have sought professional counseling to mend fences. That was little help, but there may be some light at the end of the tunnel: in July, the board approved a redistricting plan that puts Ottinger, de Beck and Zimmerman in the same district. Zimmerman is not planning on running again and Ottinger has indicated he may not run if Zimmerman does not. With the two most intense ideologues off the board, there may be some hope yet for the board to be a "constructive element."

Challenge three: The business community
As much as the teachers have reviled Bersin, the business community has embraced him. Bersin's biggest cheerleader is one of the richest Jews in America.

Eli Broad, who is based in Los Angeles and is worth nearly $5 billion, is a fan of so-called "non-traditional superintendents" like Bersin who come from outside the education world. The Broad Foundation has funneled more than $5 million towards the implementation of the Blueprint. Bersin gets top billing in a section on the foundation's website labeled "Our Heroes." Says the site, "[Alan Bersin and Tony Alvarado] relish challenging the status quo and are prepared to be judged by the results… We're betting on San Diego's leadership team to transform San Diego's schools."

In San Diego, Bersin is widely respected in the business community for his devotion to reform and his CEO-like management style. The Business Roundtable on Education, a 125-member group of local businesses, is an enthusiastic supporter. "I think the Business Roundtable was active in helping him make the decision to be a superintendent," says Roundtable President Ginger Hovenic. "I think a lot of people [in the business community] felt we needed a reform-minded effort, and Alan fit the bill."

Challenge four: The parents
For the most part, parents have been relatively quiet about Bersin. Both the pro-Bersin forces and the teachers' union have paraded out parents at different times to back their claims.

His record on reaching out to parents is a mixed bag: soon after the Blueprint was adopted, he eliminated some parent committees. But he also launched the Parent Congress, a district-wide group of parent representatives that meets monthly. Bersin sends out a short monthly letter to parents.

But while parents are supportive of the Blueprint's goals, they don't seem to be on board with its methods. In an early 2003 survey that asked 75 parent representatives for suggestions on trimming the budget, nearly all the top targets were Blueprint innovations. Nearly half suggested reducing staff development time and more than a third wanted to reduce the hours of peer coaches - both of which are cornerstones of the Blueprint.

"With the polls I've seen, when you spell out the reforms, voters very much support the reforms," says Ottinger, "but the [anti-Bersin] attacks have taken a toll on Alan and the board… there's a mixed sense in the public about the board's leadership and Alan's leadership."

Bersin of course professes little interest in his image.

"I've earned the right in my life to do exactly what I want to do, and public service was my way of giving back," he says. "With the public charge comes criticism… and the criticism is fair game."

Challenge five: The press
The press has taken to Bersin and his detractors like flies to, uhhh… moldy food. Nationally, some of the biggest - and most conservative - papers, like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, have embraced Bersin as a champion of reform.

Locally, the typically conservative San Diego Union-Tribune has been very supportive of Bersin. The paper has endorsed all his candidates for the school board and has been a big backer of the Blueprint.

The Reader, on the other hand, has picked Bersin as one of its local whipping boys, filling stories on him with innuendoes about back-door deals and rich businessmen cronies.

Challenge six and a half: The students… and himself
What it all comes down to, of course, is student achievement. And that's where both sides can gather ammunition.

"Our scores haven't really outpaced the rest of the state and the country," says Pesta, "and they haven't spent millions on the Blueprint."

But Ottinger says, "We've made major strides, most importantly in raising student achievement, particularly for those who have not achieved in the past."

According to a district-funded objective study on the Blueprint, the Blueprint - and Bersin's stewardship - has been a mixed bag. Performance on standardized tests has improved significantly in the lower elementary levels, not as much at the higher levels and not at all in middle schools and high schools. The report showed an increase in teacher resistance and implored the administration about the need for teachers to "buy in" to the reforms. But it also showed that reading has improved among non-white students and economically disadvantaged students.

With typical cool, Bersin applauds the Blueprint's limited successes and preaches patience: "this is a 7- to 10-year cycle," he says.

Despite the so-so results of the reform he has staked his reputation on, despite the challenges and demands from all quarters, despite the 12-hour days, Bersin expresses no regrets about becoming superintendent. To this day, he still possesses an air of philosophical nonchalance about his sea change of careers in 1998. Continually pressed, all he says is, "Left turns are part of life."

I guess we'll have to wait for his memoirs to find out his true feelings. Suggested working title? The Bersinator.


For feedback, contact editor@sdjewishjournal.com.


http://www.sdjewishjournal.com/stories/ ... ept03.html

Obama picks Bersin to serve as border czar




Prominent S.D. figure once held similar role

By Leslie Berestein (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. April 15, 2009

Alan Bersin

Alan Bersin, whose career in San Diego has included turns as U.S. attorney, school superintendent and airport board chairman, has been selected to fill a newly created position of U.S. border czar, an Obama administration official confirmed yesterday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to announce the appointment today in El Paso, Texas.

The announcement is timed to coincide with Napolitano's visit to the Southwest border, where she is discussing the administration's immigration enforcement plans, said the official, who asked not to be identified pending the announcement.

Rumors had been circulating for weeks that Bersin, who spent nearly five years in the 1990s as the U.S. attorney for the San Diego region, was a candidate for a top Homeland Security position. During the Clinton administration, he served as the U.S. attorney general's Southwest border representative, also known as border czar, responsible for coordinating federal law enforcement on the border from Texas to California, with a focus on stemming illegal immigration.

In the new Homeland Security position, he will be responsible for tackling this and other border issues, including drug trafficking and drug-cartel violence, working with international officials and their counterparts in the United States.
The Obama administration has promised to work with Mexican authorities to weaken the cartels, pushing initiatives that will include increased southbound traffic inspections for guns and currency being smuggled into Mexico. Obama is set to travel to Mexico tomorrow to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Bersin did not reply to requests for an interview. The news that he had been chosen for the Obama administration job was not surprising to some who remember his previous tenure as a border enforcer.

“He was known in that role as a pragmatist, which seems to fit the Obama administration profile,â€

Bigger government, more spending, and another job that will accomplish nothing. Kind of like our Drug Czar.

It's time we sweep out Washington and start over!

Alan Bersin seems okay so far.