mr. chairman mccaul, and i'd like to recognize mr. keating five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ambassador brownfield made note to the fact that merida is in transition and moved from equipments in goods and training, and i just want to ask a question in that regard, and also make an aside that, you know, in 2010, we with held 15% of merida funds with compliances and basic human rights. i want to ask you gsh r -- i'll jump to this -- what extent to people in local communities, indoing nows community -- indigenous communities feel comfortable going to the police to report crimes? >> congressman, obviously, it depends upon the community, and there is a difference between the military and the police. the military does not tend to be local. they obviously have it from somewhere else for the mission of whatever duration. the police is local, and are members of the community. in some communities in mexico, the community is uncomfortable reaching out to the authorities seeing them as part of the problem rather than part of

mr. chairman mccaul, and i'd like to recognize mr.eating five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

mr. chairman mccaul, and i'd like to recognize mr. keating five minutes for questions. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ambassador brownfield made note to the fact that merida is in transition and moved from equipments in goods and training, and i just want to ask a question in that regard and also make an aside that you know, in 2010 we with held 15% of merida funds with compliances and basic human rights. i want to ask you gsh r -- i'll jump to this -- what extent to people in local communities, indoing nows community -- indigenous communities feel comfortable going to the police to report crimes? >> congressman, obviously, it depends upon the community, and there is a difference between the military and the police. the military does not tend to be local. they obviously have it from somewhere else for the mission of whatever duration. the police is local and are members of the community. in some communities in mexico, the community is uncomfortable reaching out to the authorities seeing them as part of the problem rather than part of the

mr. mccaul, the vice chair of subcommittee on the western hemisphere. >> thank you, madam chair, welcome he panelist. mr. ambassador, great to have your presence twice in a week. ex>> [inaudible] >> extreme pleasure for me as well. i'm sure it's been discussed, i had a mark up on homeland security, but the events of this week clearly called into question the relationship between terrorists and the drug cartels, and it's something that we, i think, we've been talking about it for quite some time. certainly, the hezbollah influence is nothing knew. we've known that has existed in latin america, particularly with venezuela. we had the operative who was brought across the border by a coyote and prosecuted in detroit several years ago, but what happened this week is again, i think, hard evidence that these groups are now attempting, at least from their point of view, to reach out to members of the drug cartels, in this case, the z etas to carry out their plot of a high level official, an ambassador in the u.s. capitol. a brave move on the part of iran. it wonders if they have not tried to make

mr. mccaul, i like you lot, and i appreciate and respect you, but i have to be brutal with the time. >> okay. well, i appreciate it. >> thank you, i apologize. mr. conley is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, and if my friend were to formulate a question, i'd yield to him. >> thank you for your generosity. i really appreciate that. i'll return the favor in the future. >> i know you will. >> just real quickly. if this was an act at the highest levels in the iranian government, a political assassination, that drsh after all -- after all, a political assassination started world war i. would you view this if sanctioned at the high education levels as an act of warfare? nobody wants to answer that? >> mr. chairman, as ambassador goldberg said, you got the wrong panel for this one. i can offer you bill brown field's personal opinion, but that's not why we're here. it's safe for us to say, ebb i bet i speak for all of us on this one, that we share the same personal view of what has been revealed to us this week than you do. where we go from there, obviously, requires other people with other

mr. mccaul was recognized to the estimates before mr. chairman. excuse me. when the chairman and i were down in mexico city we saw exactly what you were talking about. i think president culbert own believes there is a sort of turning point which was encouraging. i am not sure of that is the reality or not with the goal is to replace his military with the national police force which makes sense and people cracking down their own country there is also high levels of trust with the national police and their polygraph's. we dhaka that is, the ambassador, we are down in columbia called by the special forces almost just as good as our guys and assisting mexico and was very willing to assist in any way that he could commit we took that message to president kalona and is very interested in buying understand they are providing some training but can you elaborate? a lot of people say we put our military down there. you and i know with the sovereignty issues. the colombian special forces can assimilate better from a cultural standpoint and we thought could provide some

mccaul. >> thank you, mr. chairman. justice scalia, in your opening remarks, you talked about how brilliant or system is, our institution, and the kinds of disagreement it provokes, and how difficult it is to get things done. that's the greatness of american constitution. in contrast of so many other countries, and yet we are described now by people all over the country as dysfunctional and unable to get anything done, and the level of dissatisfaction is now up to about 88 or 90% now among the american people because they say we can't get anything done, that the system doesn't work. how do you respond to that? >> well, i suppose there is a point at which you do reach gridlock, however, i think the attitude of the american people, and this is the point i was making, is largely a product of the fact that they don't understand our constitution, that its genius is precisely this power contradicting power which makes it difficult to enact legislation. it is so much easier to enact legislation in france or in england, but, yo