More Than 300 Arrested in Raids on Mexican Cartel:  Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett reports on one of the largest single strikes on a Mexican drug cartel operating in the United States.  The drug raids were aimed at the La Familia cartel, the newest and most violent of the five Mexican drug cartels.  Over the past two days, more than 3,000 federal agents and police officers carried out arrests in more than a dozen states, as part of a long running anti-drug operation that has netted nearly 1,200 arrests over almost four years.  The cartel has been pumping methamphetamine into the United States and has been linked to the murders of Mexican law enforcement officers.

DNA Fingerprinting, Criminals Think Twice:   San Francisco based MissionLocal.org writer Patrick Kollman reports on the use of the DNA fingerprint as a tool for law enforcement.  In August 2007, only eight states required DNA samples from some arrestees.  The number rose to twenty-one states this year.  Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against California stating that the statute on DNA collection violates the search and seizure laws of the Fourth Amendment, and the due process clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.  The lawsuit, Haskell v. Brown, has also brought into question the issue of human error when using the DNA database.  Michael Rushford, President of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation says the positives of DNA usage in law enforcement far outweigh the negatives.  "I don't know why anyone would want to inhibit such a valuable tool to exonerate the innocent and convict the guilty." DNA's use in the penal system has led to the exoneration of over 200 wrongfully convicted American citizens, as well as convicting thousands of criminals who otherwise may never have been caught.  Recent court rulings provide no indication as to the success or failure of the ACLU's suit against the state.