Here's more on the unfolding scandal. The finger pointing has begun: Feds deny S.F. claims on juvenile cooperation.

Federal authorities dispute assertions made by some current and former San Francisco officials that for more than a decade, immigration authorities went along with the city's practice of not turning over illegal immigrant juvenile offenders for possible deportation. [...]
    San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said in a letter published Tuesday in The Chronicle that federal immigration officials locally had agreed in 1996 to go along with the city's policy of "reuniting undocumented youth with their families" rather than deporting them.
    Joseph Russoniello, U.S. attorney for Northern California, said he had found no evidence of any such agreement and denied that federal officials had ever ceded authority to the city.
    "No one can find any support, either from an individual or in documents, of what Adachi claimed," he said. "There are a number of people who remember the years from the '80s and the '90s - there was never any agreement."

At his regular weekly think tank gathering, the division became clear - with one side urging Newsom to hold true to the sanctuary city ideals and show "compassion" for the crack kids, and the other side telling him that shielding drug dealers, of any age or immigration status, was political suicide.
    "Not only for someone running for governor," said one source who attended the meeting. "Even here in San Francisco, it was a 80-20 loser."
    The next day, Newsom made the call to end the sanctuary shield and start cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

•   •   •  

Hazleton mayor named Pa.'s Mayor of the Year   [7/20/08]
Great to see Mayor Barletta recognizd for his tough stance on law and borders.

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who is best known for a local crackdown on illegal immigration, has been named Mayor of the Year by the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association.
    Barletta is a hands-on mayor who has been on location at crime scenes, said Lititz Mayor Russell Pettyjohn, the chairman of the association's six-member Mayor of the Year award committee. The immigration crackdown was another reason for Barletta's unanimous selection, Pettyjohn said.
    "He's gone one step further to take on immigration," Pettyjohn said.
    The Hazleton City Council approved the Illegal Immigration Relief Act in July 2006. The law sought to deny business permits to companies that employ illegal immigrants, fine landlords who rent to them and require tenants to register and pay for a rental permit. A federal judge struck down Hazleton's ordinance as unconstitutional.
    Barletta, a three-term Republican mayor, is trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski. He is continuing to use the immigration issue in his congressional campaign.

•   •   •  

New Haven Issues 6,400 ID Cards in First Year   [7/20/08]
Happy first anniversary of the brave new world of post-sovereignty that you helped create, New Haven. The illegal aliens now feel welcome and part of the community. How lovely for them.
    Interesting how the illegal alien population is estimated at 10-15,000, but "only" 6,400 have applied for ID cards. Don't they want to come out of the shadows?

Last July, hundreds of city residents lined up inside New Haven City Hall to apply for the Elm City Resident ID card.
    For many like Marvin Guevara, they came to get the only photo ID available to them.
    "Finally just to identify that I'm a resident of New Haven." It also gives them access to city services, recreational facilities, and can be used to open up accounts at four area banks.
    Guevara is one of an estimated 10-15,000 illegal immigrants living in the city. Many are from Mexico, Guatamala, and Ecuador. City officials said they hoped the ID program would help bring these residents out of the shadows.
    "Actually, you feel it in the community. You do. When you go out there, there's a difference. People are, you know, they're out there,they're more visible."

We can look forward to a replay of this line-up in August when San Francisco begins issuing its owm city ID cards. And the city's generosity will cost the citizens plenty: S.F. to issue ID cards to illegal immigrants.

The cards - complete with cardholders' addresses and photos - would cost $15 for adults and $5 for youths. Discounts will be offered to those considered low-income.
    Ammiano estimates the program will cost San Francisco about $500,000, most of that expected during the program's first year. But some officials predict it could cost as much as $3 million.

•   •   •  

Wistful Singer, Jo Stafford, Is Dead at 90   [7/19/08]
Another member of the WWII generation is gone.

Jo Stafford, the wistful singing voice of the American home front during World War II and the Korean War, died on Wednesday at her home in Century City, Calif. She was 90.
    Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of American servicemen during World War II.
    The cause of death was congestive heart failure, her son, Tim Weston, said Friday.
    A favorite of American servicemen, Ms. Stafford earned the nickname G.I. Jo for her recordings in which her pure, nearly vibrato-less voice, with perfect intonation, conveyed steadfast devotion and reassurance with delicate understatement.
    She was the vocal embodiment of every servicemanÕs dream girl faithfully tending the home fires while he was overseas. First as a member of the Pied Pipers, who sang with Tommy Dorsey and accompanied the young Frank Sinatra, and later as a soloist, Ms. Stafford enjoyed a stream of hits from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. Her biggest hit, "You Belong to Me," in 1952, sold two million copies.

Here's a song from 1944, "Long Ago And Far Away"

•   •   •  

U.S. To Offer 'Green Cards' To Up To 25,000 Iraqi Contractors   [7/19/08]
This is so wrong. Thousands of young Americans have died and continue to fight to turn the Middle East sewer known as Iraq into a decent nation.
    What is with these Iraqis that they are happy to leave now that their country is improving somewhat? Wasn't that the point of their efforts? Apparently now.
    Whatever their motivation, Washington should not allow it. Americans will regard these people as rats leaving a sinking ship, and it's not even sinking.

The United States plans to admit as permanent residents up to 25,000 Iraqi nationals, along with their families, who performed work for American contractors during post-invasion hostilities in Iraq -- including high-tech workers who helped U.S. companies restore the country's computing and communications infrastructure.
    According to a July 7 memo written by senior U.S. immigration official Donald Neufeld, the United States last week created a special immigrant visa that will allow up to 5,000 Iraqi contractors and their families to enter the country as immigrants each year for the next five years. "This guidance is effective immediately," wrote Neufeld, who is acting associate director for domestic operations at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. [...]
    Iraqi contractors' spouses and children are also eligible for permanent resident status. If each eligible contractor has, on average, a family of four, the United States could see an influx of up to 100,000 Iraqis over the next five years.

The correct number of Iraqi refugees, or whatever they are called, is zero.

•   •   •  

Where does all that state money go?   [7/18/08]
SacraMexico Democrats are squawking that taxes need to be raised to fix the big budget mess, and the Governor is singing back-up in favor of a squirrelly scheme that includes both borrowing and tax increases. But USC Professor John Matsusaka has crunched the numbers and sees things differently.

California state government spent $145 billion last fiscal year, $41 billion more than four years ago when Gov. Gray Davis got recalled by voters. With all that new spending -- a whopping 40% increase -- we ought to be in a golden age of government with abundant public services for all.
    So why does it seem like the quality and quantity of government is not all that different from 2004? How many of us feel like we are getting 40% more public services, 40% better schools, roads, parks and so on?
    The Legislature and governor, grappling with another huge budget deficit, are suggesting raising taxes, so it seems opportune to ask what we got from the last $41 billion.
    Some of it went to cover increases in the cost of living, and state spending naturally grows with the size of the population. But even adjusting for inflation and population growth, state spending is up almost 20% compared with four years ago, a big enough bump that ordinary Californians should be able to notice it. The state's financial statements describe where the money went -- the big gainers were education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion) -- but not why these billions don't create even a blip on our day-to-day radar.

In other California economy news, unemployment has reached a 5-year high: California's unemployment rate rises to 6.9% in June.

California's unemployment rate crept up to 6.9% in June, a tenth of a percentage point higher than the month before and the highest in nearly five years, the government reported today.
    The latest figure ties California with Mississippi for the third-highest jobless rate among the states, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
    California's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate a year earlier stood at 5.3%. According to state records, the current unemployment rate is the highest since October 2003.

So we probably don't need millions of additional foreign workers, via an amnesty or more employment visas. Right?

•   •   •  

Execution of Houston girls' killer still on track for Aug. 5   [7/18/08]
Hopefully just a few weeks remain until some justice is achieved for the families of the two girls so brutally raped and murdered in 1993 as part of a gang initiation. One of the other killers was executed in July 2006.
    Keep in mind that President Bush took the side of the killer, that he should not have been executed because Jose Medellin was not informed during his arrest of the right to contact the Mexican Embassy: Bush Crushes Justice for Victim Families.
    It was a great relief when the Supreme Court overruled the one worlders and reaffirmed American sovereignty.

Texas will go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of Houston rapist-killer Jose Medellin despite Wednesday's United Nations world court order for a stay, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry said.
    The U.N.'s International Court of Justice's call for stays in the cases of Medellin and four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution in Texas came in response to a petition filed last month by the Mexican government.
    The petition sought to halt executions to allow for review of the killers' cases to determine whether denying them access to the Mexican Consulate after arrest impaired their trial defenses. [...]
    Meanwhile, Randy Ertman, father of Jennifer Ertman, hotly denounced the world court's order for stays.
    "The world court don't mean diddly," he said. "This business belongs in the state of Texas. The people of the state of Texas support the execution. We thank them. The rest of them can go to hell."
    Adolfo Pe–a, father of Elizabeth Pe–a, agreed.
    "I believe we've been through all the red tape we can go through," he said. "It's time to rock and roll."

Below, murder victims Jennifer Ertman (14) and Elizabeth Pena (16).

  In other crime news, more than 3,000 illegal aliens are serving time for murder in California prisons:  

Special Report: Prisons Crowded with Illegal Inmates

The numbers can look staggering. Nearly 20,000 inmates in California's state prison system have ICE holds on them, meaning there's a good chance they're illegal immigrants. More than 3,000 of those inmates are serving time for murder.
    Because many of those convicts likely spent time in and out of local jails before committing the crimes that landed them in state prison, federal officials have begun working with more city and county jails to try to identify and deport more illegal immigrants earlier in their criminal careers.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's employees started working with ICE agents in 2006. Now, every week, county employees interview more than 100 inmates to try to determine their immigration status. The county employees have access to federal computers, including a fingerprint database that can match inmate fingerprints to see if the inmate has ever been deported.

•   •   •  

Study: More than one-third of LAUSD students drop out   [7/17/08]
This is the totally expected result when the government allows millions of unscholarly Mexicans to fill up a city. Keep in mind that Mayor Hahn declared Los Angeles a "Mexican city" in 2001, as if that were a good thing.

More than one-third of Los Angeles Unified high school students drop out, according to a new study released Wednesday that is expected to end a long controversy over the accuracy of state dropout rates.
    The district's four-year dropout rate of 33.6 percent was well above the statewide average of 24.2 percent, sparking renewed calls to beef up academic standards in the nation's second-largest school district.
    State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said the new numbers indicate the state's schools are facing a crisis.
    "The dropout rate of 24 percent is too high. It's unacceptable and must be addressed," he said.

Did the State Superintendent just wake up from two decades of unconsciousness? The only news here is that there are more dependable statistics that California's schools are an unmitigated disaster because of immigration, with emphasis on Mexicans.

•   •   •  

Why do Asian students generally get higher marks than Latinos?   [7/16/08]
Remarkably, the LA Times has waded into the area of the influence of culture on academic success. Lincoln High School has a lot of immigrant kids from similar economic circumstances, but it is their parents expectations that make a big difference.
    The reporter actually pays heed to what the kids think, and the Asian students seem to understand the simple fact that they work harder for good grades because mom and dad lean on them pretty hard to succeed.

Both the neighborhood and student body are about 15% Asian. And yet Asians make up 50% of students taking Advanced Placement classes. Staffers can't remember the last time a Latino was valedictorian.
    "A lot of my friends say the achievement gap is directly attributable to the socioeconomic status of students, and that is not completely accurate," O'Connell said. "It is more than that." [...]
    To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few generalities: Latino and Asian students came mostly from poor and working-class families.
    According to a study of census data, 84% of the Asian and Latino families in the neighborhoods around Lincoln High have median annual household incomes below $50,000. And yet the Science Bowl team is 90% Asian, as is the Academic Decathlon team.
    "Look at the statistics. It's true," said George De La Paz, 17, whose single mother works as a house cleaner.
    Asian parents are more likely to pressure their children to excel academically, the students agreed.
    "They only start paying attention if I don't do well," said Karen Chu, 15, whose parents emigrated from Vietnam. "They don't reward me for getting straight A's. I don't get anything for that. But if I get a B, they're like, 'What's this?' "
    If her grades slipped, she said, her parents laid on the guilt extra thick. "My parents are always like, 'If you don't do well in school, then it's all going to be worth nothing,' " Karen said, laughing nervously.

In more education news, failure to graduate was considered today: California high school dropout rate far higher than expected   [7/16/08]
Even these dreary figures look unduly optimistic to me. One newly added factor is the exit exam required for graduation.

California's first true count of high school dropouts shows that one in four kids quit school last year - 127,292 - which is far more than state educators estimated before they began using a new student-tracking system.
    The statewide 24-percent dropout rate also shows African American and Latino students leaving school at much higher rates than other ethnic groups, according to data released today by state schools chief Jack O'Connell.
    The dropout rate is well above the 13 percent (67,107 students) that educators had earlier estimated using a less sophisticated counting method relied on for years.
    "I was quite shocked at how many students are falling through the cracks," said O'Connell. "This is a crisis."

Can you say "permanent underclass"?

•   •   •  

Review Finds Slurs In '06 Saudi Texts   [7/16/08]
Why does the State Department continue to allow a Saudi-funded school in Virginia? This is a junior terrorist training camp and has been for years. The Bush Administration is happy to send American military around the world to fight and die, but taking reasonable steps against threats right down the road, not so much.

A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found.
    Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in 2006. School administrators said that they have been scrambling to change the texts and that all potentially offensive passages will be gone by the coming academic year. But, they said, teachers have always been told to avoid inflammatory material in the classroom.
    A sampling of 2006-07 Islamic studies textbooks showed that much of the controversial material had been removed. At least one book still contained passages that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one's enemies and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was "justified."
    The academy, founded in 1984, has about 1,000 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 and is separated into boys' and girls' schools. It is the only Saudi-funded school in the United States. About 70 percent of the academy's students are U.S. citizens drawn from the region's Muslim communities. About a quarter are Saudi.

See also Rep Frank Wolf's letter of concern about the school to the Secretary of State, and more from the Counterterrorism Blog.

•   •   •  

Italy grapples with polygamy   [7/15/08]
Is there a better way to turn back the clock on women's progress toward social equality than Muslim immigration? If so, I don't know what it is.
    Italy is acting like a deer in the headlights about the polygamy problem. And naturally the LA Times focuses on the poor long-suffering Muslim women who have to put up with a new little wifey in the house. What about the harm to the rule of laws and the rights of women generally in a civilized western nation? In Sweden, women are supposed to accept Muslim rape, as a part of diversity immigration. Is that next for Italian women?

Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi's have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country.
    Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi's case.
    "It is absurd that in a civilized country like Italy, so little is acknowledged about this," said Souad Sbai, a Moroccan-born Italian lawmaker who has emerged as a one-woman champion of female Muslim immigrants here.
    Italy is one of several European nations faced with the issue of polygamy. In Britain and Spain, where large Muslim communities have also settled, some officials favor recognizing polygamous marriage as a way to ensure the wives' access to pensions, medical care and other state benefits.
    But Sbai, who has lived 27 of her 47 years in Italy, thinks that misguided attempts at cultural sensitivity backfire when customs that stray into illegality are tolerated. Italian law sanctions marriage between a single man and a single woman only.
    Sbai estimates that there are 14,000 polygamous families in Italy; others put the number even higher. Many take advantage of the so-called orfi marriage, a less formal union performed by an imam, that does not carry the same social or legal standing as regular marriage.
    She is convinced that the polygamists in Italy are practicing a more fundamentalist and abusive form of multiple marriage. Because they feel so threatened by the Western culture around them, the men often imprison their wives and confine them to a life of solitude wholly dependent on the husband.
    "They are kept in a kind of ghetto," Sbai said.

•   •   •  

Tensions Persist For Blacks, Latinos In New Orleans   [7/14/08]
NPR presents a story about the culture clash in the Big Easy between local black citizens and hispanics of various immigration status. The "job competition at the bottom of the economic ladder" is named as the source of the tensions.

Economic competition between Latino and African-American residents has intensified in post-Katrina New Orleans. The tensions are a snapshot of challenges facing the presidential candidates.

•   •   •  

Chinese Immigrants in the United States   [7/14/08]
There is a nice compilation of information in this article/fact sheet.

• More than a quarter of all Chinese foreign born in the United States arrived in 2000 or later.
• Two-thirds of Chinese immigrants in 2006 were working-age adults.
• Women accounted for the majority of the Chinese-born population living in the United States in 2006.
• Over half of Chinese immigrants were naturalized US citizens in 2006.
• Nearly two-thirds of Chinese immigrants in 2006 were limited English proficient.

Lots more where this came from in the link.

•   •   •  

'New Yorker' cover angers Obama campaign   [7/14/08]
Does this mean BHO's honeymoon with the liberal media is over? Could be. A "satire" that perfectly captures the genuine reservations of many citizens is pretty edgy.

On the cover of the upcoming New Yorker: Satirical portrayal of Obama through the eyes of his opposition, or McCain recruitment poster?
    Senator Obama shrugged and said he had "no response" when asked about the cover on Sunday by CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic. The Obama campaign, on introspection, was more decisive on the issue; it might have appreciated the humor, if not for the delivery.
    The cover art, depicting Senator Obama in a turban, while wife Michelle, packing an assault rifle, shares a "fist bump" with him, is described by the New Yorker as artist's Barry Blitt's lampooning of "scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign."

After Obama's complaints, Michelle Malkin put together a great collection of far more outrageous images of politicians on the other side. See also Daniel Pipes' Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood.

Larger image here.

Speaking of B Hussein Obama, see Robert Spencer's analysis of the candidate's nutty recent comments regarding Islam. Another example of his cluelessness about our enemies is revealed in the New Yorker article Making It, in which he was quoted about his struggle with "understanding the sources of such madness."

And here's the candidate himself, pandering to the open-borders Mexicans at La Raza by saying that America's hard-working law enforcement officers engage in terrorism.

•   •   •  

On the Border: What Is To Be Done   [7/13/08]
This item is the transcript from a panel discussion during the David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Santa Barbara held May 30-June 1. The panelists were Rep. Tom Tancredo, filmmaker Chris Burgard, activist Chris Simcox and retired INS agent Michael Cutler.

Tom Tancredo: There's a city about 90 miles south of El Paso that is presently under siege. It's about 600,000 people; 170 police officers simply fled when the cartels arrived to start doing battle. The military is there now trying to take the city back. This is happening just 90 miles south of our border. There's a camp near Matamoras, Mexico at which these people, the Zedas, are training people for a variety of things. We don't know. I mean it's supposedly to just bring drugs in and how best to smuggle drugs into the United States. Ê
    By the way, 300 tons of cocaine last year. We have no idea the number of tons actually of marijuana and other drugs. Ninety percent of all methamphetamine comes into the United States from Mexico, 90%. [...]

Michael Cutler had some snappy remarks about accurate language.

When we as Americans travel to other countries, we become aliens, and no other country will have a problem telling you that. When the president said that he wanted to legalize the immigrants, it's like me telling you I want to make this water wet. Immigrants are legal; he wanted to legalize illegal aliens, and he knew damn well that if he said it, people would go berserk. Ê
    The difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is the difference between a houseguest and a burglar. We all like to have people visit our homes but not when they crawl through the back window. And when someone does run the border, it's not the equivalent of somebody failing to pay a toll when they go across a toll bridge because what it really means is we don't know who they are. We don't know their names. We don't know their nationalities. We don't know their criminal histories. We don't know with whom they're affiliated. And we don't know what their intentions are.

•   •   •  

California's sanctuary city no more   [7/13/08]
The LA Times, long a supporter of border anarchy and a Mexicanized America, can hardly contain its glee that San Francisco has taken the #1 spot among California sanctuary cities, at least on the media noise-meters, due to the recent illegal alien scandal. Which takes the heat off Los Angeles as being the worst offender, or so the Times hopes.

There is no doubt that Los Angeles is a capital of illegal immigration, based on numbers alone. But a sanctuary city? L.A., take a seat. If you want to see what a real sanctuary city does, have a look at San Francisco.
    The cliche of the beautiful City by the Bay as a leftist outpost is tiresome, but sometimes the shoe fits. That became clear this month with revelations that public officials there actively assisted juvenile illegal immigrants in avoiding federal deportation, even though they were also charged with state crimes.
    What's the big deal about flying young Hondurans back to their home country? After all, it gets them out of town and beyond U.S. borders, which is where they legally belong. But it is, in fact, a big deal because it puts San Franciscans in the position of actively shielding offenders from federal authorities. The offenders avoid immigration proceedings, which means they could easily return and be subject only to a first-offense misdemeanor charge, rather than the felony of illegal reentry after deportation. Mayor Gavin Newsom was embarrassed by the reports and, appropriately, he put an end to the practice. The U.S. attorney's office is investigating.

Los Angeles has probably lost more lives (like Cheryl Green and Jamiel Shaw) because of its Special Order 40 which protects foreign gangsters. But the triple killing of three members of the Bologna family in San Francisco by a previously arrested MS-13 gangster shows that the city by the bay may be catching up on that terrible score.

Below, San Francisco as seen from the proper distance.

•   •   •  

Cuts nip traditional news-staff ratio   [7/13/08]
Interesting remarks from a newsroom veteran who knows the business end of publishing as well. He points out how staff cutbacks are seriously diminishing the ability of newspapers to do their job of information gathering.

Upcoming cuts at a pair of Tribunes show how publishers are nibbling away at the long-held standard for the minimum number of journalists deemed necessary to staff a newsroom.
    The unwritten but widely honored rule of thumb in the industry always has been that a newspaper should employ one journalist for every 1,000 in daily circulation.
    But plans announced today to lighten the Chicago Tribune newsroom by some 14% to 498 journalists will drop the ratio there to 0.88 newsfolk for every 1,000 of the paper's 556.8k daily readers. The staff will be 25.7% smaller than it was in 2005, according to the newspaper.
    The ratio will be 0.90 journalists per 1,000 readers at the Tampa Tribune, which last week announced plans to eliminate a fifth of its news jobs. Those cuts will leave the paper with 200 journalists to serve 220k readers.
    In other recently announced staff reductions, the Los Angeles Times will have a ratio of 0.92, the Baltimore Sun will be 0.98, the Kansas City Star is going to 1.00 and the Palm Beach Post will be 1.11, according to the cutbacks logged by Erica Smith at GraphicDesignr.Net. Erica says 1,510+ positions were lost in June and 5,991+ were eliminated in the first half of the year.
    One of the lowest metro staffing ratios is at the San Jose Mercury News, which today employs approximately a third of the 420 journalists who worked there in 2001. The latest round of cuts has reduced the MercÕs staff to 0.67 journalists for each 1,000 of its 229.5k subscribers.

•   •   •  

NY Times Hits 10-Year Low on Downgrade   [7/12/08]
Oh shockeroo, the legend-in-its-own-mind New York Times has fallen to a new low in its stock value for a decade. Its relentless liberal pandering to illegal aliens and its undermining of American values are not the only reasons why people don't buy the thing any more, but you cannot disregard those aspects either.

Hours after The New York Times Co. suffered the embarrassment of a third person scaling its Eighth Avenue headquarters in recent weeks, the company got pounded by Wall Street, which sent its shares tumbling when an analyst said its stock was pricey relative to its peers.
    The stock sank 7 percent, or $1.05, to $14.01 yesterday, near its lowest point in 10 years and 77 percent off its 52-week high of $24.76.
    The drubbing came after Lehman Brothers analyst Craig Huber slammed the Times' shares for being too expensive, compared with Gannett and McClatchy.

Following is a typical piece of open-borders glop from yesterday served up to the readers as part of the NY Times daily fare: An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants.

During fast-paced hearings in May, 262 of the illegal immigrants pleaded guilty in one week and were sentenced to prison Ñ most for five months Ñ for knowingly using false Social Security cards or legal residence documents to gain jobs at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in nearby Postville. It was the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

The whole point of the Times article is the misery of the poor little Guatemalans who didn't know what was going on in their trials. But there is no mention of the citizens who suffered identity theft when those illegal aliens ripped off their Social Security numbers. As business journalist David Lazarus recounted, having your identity stolen can create years of personal financial chaos that may never get sorted out.

"It can take victims years to deal with this," said Linda Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego. "Some victims never do recover their lives."

•   •   •  

S.F. now turning over juvenile immigrant offenders for deportation   [7/12/08]
There is some progress to report from the Smug City by the Bay. After years of shielding crack-dealing illegal aliens claiming to be juveniles, San Francisco has reversed policy after a firestorm of controversy after revelations in the press.

San Francisco officials have given up the identities of 10 potential illegal immigrants housed at juvenile hall since Mayor Gavin Newsom declared that the city would stop shielding young drug offenders from federal deportation, officials said Friday.
    "I'm happy with the level of cooperation we are receiving from the Juvenile Probation Department," said Nancy Alcantar, supervisor of the local office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
    Alcantar said one of the 10 youths has been turned over to ICE as deportable, and the other nine remain at juvenile hall pending the outcome of their criminal cases.
    Two of the juveniles have already been deported once before, but made their way back into the United States, Alcantar said. William Siffermann, chief of juvenile probation in San Francisco, confirmed that city officials had referred the youths for "consideration" by ICE. Authorities said most of those in custody were being held for drug-related offenses.

•   •   •  

Muslim woman deemed too submissive to be French   [7/11/08]
Way to go, France! I can't think of another person less likely to adjust to a western society than those wilfully "submissive" slaves of Allah.
    Can it be that the French are willing to admit that not all cultures are compatible enough to successfully cohabit the same national space? If so, that is a tremendous step forward.

France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes, a legal ruling showed on Friday.
    The case will reignite debate about how to reconcile freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the French constitution, and other fundamental rights, which many in France feel are being challenged by the way of life of some Muslims.
    Le Monde newspaper said it was the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected for reasons to do with personal religious practice.
    "She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes," said a ruling by the Council of State handed down last month and sent to Reuters on Friday to confirm a report in Le Monde.

•   •   •  

Voters Reject Obama's call for Bilingualism   [7/11/08]
The polling company Rasmussen Reports has some useful statistics and analysis on the recent Obama kerfuffle over language. It takes a somewhat broader view than just bilingualism and focuses on the issue of assimilation, and how Americans still hold to the traditional social contract that immigrants should culturally join the national community.

Barack Obama said yesterday that "instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English," Americans "need to make sure your child can speak Spanish." A national telephone survey conducted last month by Rasmussen Reports found that U.S. voters overwhelmingly disagree with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. (see video)
    Eighty-three percent (83%) place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language. Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.
    In his comments, Obama emphasized the economic benefits of learning a second language: "If you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job." Data suggests that most voters see the issue in a broader context.
    A separate survey found that one factor fueling the anger over immigration is the belief that most government officials encourage immigrants to retain the culture of their home country. This helps explain why voters who are angry about immigration are primarily angry at the government, not immigrants. Among those angry about immigration, 59% believe most government officials encourage immigrants to retain their home country culture.
    Last fall, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 77% of Americans believed that employers should be allowed to require employees to speak English while on the job. With the Supreme Court recently upholding tougher standards for voter identification at the polls, 65% of voters now believe election ballots should only be printed in English. Thirty-two percent (32%) say they should be printed in both English and Spanish.
    The importance of assimilation into the culture is highlighted in another recent survey: 54% of voters say it is more important to encourage all immigrants to embrace American culture than it is to reduce the number of immigrants. Just 36% take the opposite view and say reducing immigration is a higher priority. That survey, as with many others, also found a strong preference for ballots and other government documents to be printed in English only.
    Only 26% believe that every American should be able to speak at least two languages. In his recent comments, Obama said parents should be thinking, ÒHow can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.Ò

In response to the controversy, elitist Obama shows he still has no clue what Americans are all about: Obama dismisses conservative criticism.

DAYTON, Ohio - Democrat Barack Obama batted away conservative criticism Friday over a comment he made about Americans' lack of foreign language skills.
    "The Republicans jumped on this. I said, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages," the likely Democratic nominee said as the 1,000-plus crowd in a school gymnasium cheered. It's a position he long has held. [...]
    "I agree that immigrants should learn English," Obama said. "But instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English Ñ they'll learn English Ñ you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language."

BHO said American kids must learn to speak Spanish and he made that remark in the context of a discussion about immigration. There are many more useful languages to learn in terms of commercial value than Spanish (Cantonese, for example). BHO was pandering to hispanics, hoping to glean more of their votes.
    But as Steve Sailer has been pointing out for years, hispanic voters have been slow to actually show up at polling places: In 2006, the Long Predicted Tidal Wave of Angry Hispanic Voters Failed to Materialize Once Again.

•   •   •  

Governor's $9.3 billion bond to expand, protect state's water system   [7/11/08]
Every time the Governator opens his mouth about a water bond for California, the price goes up a billion dollars. When he talked up his infrastructure plans in 2007, the cost was a mere $4 billion. Now the price tag has more than doubled as the wish list has gotten longer.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today unveiled a sweeping, $9.3 billion water bond proposal that would expand the state's water storage capacity, help sustain the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and promote conservation projects across the state.
    The governor's plan, aimed for the November ballot, comes after Democrats in the state Legislature balked last year at the governor's proposal for a $9 billion overhaul of the state water system that focused primarily on building three dams.
    But the governor has a huge political ally this time in Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who came to Sacramento in February to urge lawmakers to negotiate a water bond deal. Feinstein co-sponsored the new proposal with Schwarzenegger.

A water-storage bond is an immigration tax, pure and simple. If the government hadn't opened the border to the whole world, we wouldn't have this problem.
    In the late 1970s California's population was less than 24 million and it took several years of sub-normal rainfall to require mandatory conservation, and even then in northern areas only. Now the state has 38 million residents with no end in sight, and only 2 years of less-than-average rain creates a panic. Tree-ring studies show decades-long droughts. What would California do with such a climate event now? Business wants 50 or 60 million residents because it's easy money for them. The desires of us mere citizens for a livable California with enough water count for little of course.

•   •   •  

S.F. working on protocol for teen illegals   [7/10/08]
A loony counterattack is now being waged in San Francisco by the Juvenile Probation Department to protect (again) the illegal alien crack dealers.

San Francisco should do everything it can to protect the rights of young Honduran drug offenders before it turns them over to federal authorities for possible deportation, several activists urged members of the city's Juvenile Probation Commission at its meeting Wednesday.
    In the wake of a national firestorm over the city's practices, Juvenile Probation Chief William Siffermann told the little-known commission about how the city is developing a protocol to surrender underage Hondurans caught dealing crack on the streets of San Francisco over to the federal authorities if they are here illegally.
    The protocol was announced after The Chronicle detailed how previous efforts to shield the young offenders from federal authorities had been blocked or backfired. Mayor Gavin Newsom has announced the city will soon begin turning over offenders to immigration authorities.

As I wrote in my recent VDARE.com article Is San Francisco At The Tipping Point?, coddling criminals has made the city a far more dangerous place.

•   •   •  

A Hispanic Population in Decline   [7/10/08]
Whew, I can't believe the Washington Post described newly departed Mexicans in such rude terms...

The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.
    Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. "So much has changed," she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.

Yowza! Way to go, WaPo.
    The article continues with some snifflers about falling business in the local Mexican restaurants -- but hey, that could be a reasonable fear of salmonella salsa.
    Just kidding. Illegal Mexicans are leaving Prince William County in substantial numbers because the citizens there insisted that a crackdown occur on the group causing so much of the local social breakdown. Enforcement works. It's not news in Arizona or Oklahoma either, where sensible prohibitions against illegal employment convinced many foreigners to scram.
    And there's more...

Catching illegal immigrants has made Prince William safer, said Corey A. Stewart (R-At-Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors said. Stewart also said the county's policies have led to "a plummeting of the crime rate." Police statistics show that the county's crime rate has been declining since 2004, even as the population increased.
    More importantly, Stewart said, Prince William has become a model for other jurisdictions hoping to act against illegal immigration. "We've started a wildfire in terms of other localities and states adopting similar tactics," said Stewart, who discussed the county's immigration enforcement success Tuesday with the House Republican Policy Committee on Capitol Hill.
    While critics say ethnic tensions in Prince William have worsened in the past year, Stewart said he believes the debate over illegal immigration has empowered residents to speak up after "stewing" in frustration for years. "It's allowed people to discuss their feelings," Stewart said, citing a new level of public interest in local government. The board's chambers have been packed with hundreds of residents on several occasions over the past year.

A elected county official says that crime is down since the enforcement Mexodus. Outstanding!

•   •   •  

Honor Killing in Georgia   [7/10/08]
Robert Spencer comments on the murder of a young woman by her Pakistani father because she wanted a divorce from her arranged marriage.

Last Sunday Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant living in Clayton County, Georgia, strangled his daughter to death. According to police, Rashid explained to them that he had killed his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, in order to restore his familyÕs honor, which she had sullied by planning to divorce the husband to whom she had been given in an arranged marriage. Clayton County Police spokesman Tim Owens explained: ÒApparently she and the father had argued over the marriage and the fact that it was arranged, and at some point during the altercation he did end up killing his daughter.Ó [...]
    The price of this politically correct refusal to confront the ugly realities of the Islamic link to honor killing will be, quite simply, more honor killings. No one will call upon Islamic groups to do something about this practice. No special scrutiny will be focused upon Muslims in the United States, or any studies undertaken about how honor killings can be prevented. No one will examine the question of unrestricted Muslim immigration in light of this problem. While learned analysts search for clues in South Asian cultural habits and the practices of European royalty, more young women will be murdered by their Muslim fathers, husbands, and brothers to cleanse their familyÕs honor. These young women are the ultimate victims of political correctness.

Nice to see him connect the dots between immigration and vile criminal acts of Arabs and other Sons of Islam living in this country. Sometimes the issue is a little vague among the politically correct critics of Islam, like LittleGreenFootballs. Do they think that terrorists drop from the skies? They usually arrive on tourist visas or come as immigrants.

•   •   •  

Unassisted Suicide   [7/09/08]
Investors Business Daily continues to watch with alarm Britain's failing life signs, as fearful political correctness poisons the correct response to hostile Muslim immigrants, who should be made to behave themselves.

Worse than a fear of offending a religious group is what appears to be an eagerness to simply give up and accept the fact that Islam is overrunning the West and we can't do anything about it because it would be intolerant, arrogant, hegemonic, racist and just plain mean to try to preserve our culture. It was with this sort of effete shrug that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams earlier declared that "Shariah law is inevitable" in the United Kingdom.
    Following Williams' gingerly trod footsteps is Nicholas Phillips, the lord chief justice of England and Wales. Last week, the day before the U.S. celebrated its independence from Britain, Phillips said that while the severe punishments of Shariah law cannot be "applied to or by any Muslim who lives within this jurisdiction," he did allow that it was not "very radical to advocate embracing Shariah in the context of family disputes" and contractual agreements.
    "There is no reason why Shariah principles, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution," he said while speaking at an East London mosque.

It's a truly dismal state of affairs.