Making a federal case of it: Traditional federal crimes squeezed out by pot, immigration cases

From US Sentencing Commission data (pdf), Grits compiled this table showing how immigration cases have pushed aside other, traditional priorities for federal prosecutors in Texas compared to their counterparts in other states:

FY 2010 Federal Cases by Type, Texas vs. National

	National	Texas
Immigration	34.4%	62.0%
Drugs	28.9%	23.0%
Fraud	9.7%	4.8%
White Collar (Non-Fraud)	3.6%	1.7%
Larceny	2.0%	0.7%
Firearms	9.6%	3.8%
Child Pornography	2.3%	0.8%
Other	9.5%	3.3%

Another big difference between federal cases in Texas vs. the rest of the country is that the majority of Texas drug cases prosecuted by the feds are for marijuana (56.9%) compared to just over a quarter of federal drug cases (26.3%) nationwide. Cocaine, heroin and meth all make up lower proportions of federal drug cases in Texas than nationally.

Growing up, you'd hear the phrase "don't make a federal case out of it" as an admonition not to treat trivial matters as though they're of the utmost seriousness. But with immigration and marijuana cases so dominant in Texas' federal courts while traditional fraud, larceny and white-collar cases are being minimized, maybe that phrase should be retired as an anachronism.