I met Mike Scruggs [Email him] at Stanford’s business school when he was only just back from Vietnam in 1970. In recent years, we reconnected through the miracle of the internet and he has written for VDARE.COM several times. (See here for his take on Ron Paul’s huge missed opportunity in the decisive South Carolina primary last year.)

Mike has now written Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, reflecting on his experiences in Vietnam, where he was an A-26 navigator, shot down and wounded in 1967. You can order from the publisher here, scroll down (Mike makes more) or through Amazon (VDARE.COM gets a commission) here. For an interview with Mike, see here. I’m not somehow not surprised to see there details of Mike’s ordeal that he never told me.

The Vietnam War made a huge impression on me, growing up in Britain. I still think it was a war the U.S could and should have won–as I argued here, in a review that earned me a congratulatory letter from Richard Nixon, to my great surprise. I know this annoys my libertarian friends. But what use are they on immigration?

Like many others, I was surprised by the Department of Justice’s decision to drop charges against Black Panther members who paraded menacingly outside a polling place in Philadelphia. As the Washington Times writes, imagine Ku Klux Klansmen doing the same thing, and the antics that would ensue.

But I found a small clue that could explain prosecutors’ priorities. In the front of a “continuing legal education” publication of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute on “hate crimes” (not online), federal prosecutor Nancy Beam Winter submits a helpful cheat sheet titled “Interview Topics for Subjects/Friends of Subjects in Hate Crime Investigations”.

In two short pages, Ms. Winter packs enough politically troubling questions to bother Nat Hentoff, Camille Paglia, Ron Paul, George Orwell and probably a host of others. What are your views on racial separation? she wants to know. What do you think of affirmative action? she wants to know. Do you think blacks work less hard than whites? (Would it matter if they truly didn’t?)

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the questions are all aimed at “neo-Nazis” or “skinheads”. There were no questions for a Black Panther.

“You need to get them talking” Ms. Winter tells other would-be prosecutors, in a passage sure to gladden the hearts of criminal defense lawyers and civil libertarians everywhere. The questions themselves don’t quell concerns that “hate crimes” are 1) meant to target whites, and only whites and 2) end up criminalizing politically incorrect thought and speech instead of illegal actions.

I remember from law school that the “selective prosecution” defense is almost impossible to make out. But a federal defender in Philadelphia might make this cheat sheet Exhibit A in the next attempt.

Sarah Palin admirer Ryan Kennedy writes

Old MTV interview where she applauds Ron Paul. Alludes to not being a party loyalist:

Calls him, “really cool” so one can presume Paul’s anti-immigration stance didn’t turn her off too badly.

Found another video of her addressing her church. It’s obvious she is a devout Pentecostal. I don’t know if this good or bad. As you know, many devout Christians think it’s un-Christian to enforce immigration law.

There are two remarkably contrasting articles out this week on the Presidential frontrunner.

Newsweek offers us a cover story on Sen. Obama’s religion, “Finding His Faith,” that is so skeptically insightful that you’d think it was written by Will.I.Am and Scarlett Johansson and edited by David Axelrod.

Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker has a much more informative article on Obama’s coldly calculated rise to power in Chicago from 1991-2004: “Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama.”

Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.

Lizza doesn’t provide much explanation of what Obama wants to do as President, although he makes it clear that that’s kind of like asking Tiger Woods what he wants to do if he wins the US Open: Tiger wants to be the U.S. Open champion, just as Obama wants to be President. Among people who run for President, only weirdos like Ron Paul want to be President primarily in order to do something or other. Normal candidates want to be President in order to be President. (more…)

This is from the Lew Rockwell blog a week ago:

May 07, 2008
Backwards Illegal Immigration Policy
Posted by Anthony Gregory at May 7, 2008 09:24 PM

Arresting illegals trying to leave the United States. That makes sense. Thanks to Manuel Lora for the link.

Well, in fact it does make sense, since according to the story, [Feds arrest illegal immigrants who are trying to leave USA, USA Today, May 7, 2008] which is scalping an LA Times story, Border busts coming and going, May 7, 2008, the agaency says that:

“If our officers come upon people who are here illegally . . . regardless of whether they’re leaving the country, we detain them, make a record of the fact they were here illegally and return them to Mexico,”

That way they’ll know, if the illegal comes back again, that it’s not a first offense. Also

Federal agents say the checkpoints are a productive way to stop dangerous criminals, drug shipments and money launderers.

The illegal immigrants they apprehend are typically turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol for processing. Unless they have serious criminal records or numerous immigration violations, most are returned to Mexico within a few hours, the agents say

I presume they also check to see if they are out on bail and have promised to appear in court to answer criminal charges, since it’s common for Mexican illegals to skip bail and head to Mexico. On the larger border control issue, illegals are more or less ignoring the border–see my blog item Illegal Aliens Commuting To American Schools.

There’s also a larger Lew Rockwell problem–while some paleolibertarians recognize the need for countries to control their borders, there’s a lot of Open Borders nonsense on Lew Rockwell.com

Being Illegal
Or
Why Ron Paul Stands Head and Shoulders Above his Challengers on Immigration

by Rick Fisk, September 1, 2007
The worst rhetorical device used when discussing immigration and border control is the ad hominem, “illegal alien.” It is used daily but its absurdity is rarely challenged other than to suggest it is a politically incorrect term.

There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.

[Blah, blah blah...]
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
[Blah, blah blah...]

A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.

[There's a lot more, all very silly]

Tonight we plan to do a full-scale article on LewRockwell.com, examining this tendency. Look for it on the front page.

It’s not his (her?) main point, but VDARE.com letter-writer Long Live Liberty mentions (A California Asian-American Reader Says Jared Taylor Needs A Broader View) a “Chinese for Ron Paul website (Mandarin only) that attempts to educate limited-English speaking voters so that they can make informed decisions when casting their ballot.”

But why should people who can’t understand English well enough to follow American political debates be voting in the first place? And, thus, why should they be citizens?

My objection isn’t easily dismissible. As Jim Boulet, head of English First, has written

Translation requires a remarkable amount of trust in the translator, unless everyone involved is fluent in both languages. A translator with an agenda can be a dangerous person if no one else notices what he is actually doing. [The Peril of Perfidious Translators, October 8, 2003]:

(Of course, if everyone were fluent in two languages–English and Spanish, say–then no translators would be needed! And, in fact, one of the languages would be superfluous, a point that doesn’t seem to have occurred to those who argue that native-English-speaking Americans should all become comfortable in Spanish.)

While outright perfidy may not have been involved, VDARE.com’s Mexican correspondent Allan Wall has written that 2002 Texas gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez (who ultimately lost to Rick Perry) campaigned on very different themes before English-speaking audiences and Spanish-speaking audiences. And given what Allan tells us (trusting this translator!), those who were limited to English might have been highly unenthusiastic about what Sanchez was saying to audiences who understood Spanish.

Reader Long Live Liberty’s remark was only about electioneering materials, and we don’t know his (her?) views on multi-lingual ballots, but perhaps the distinction isn’t so important. Consider a bit of 1995 Congressional testimony by then-president of Boston University John Silber. Silber remarked that such ballots “impose an unacceptable cost by degrading the very concept of the citizen to that of someone lost in a country whose public discourse is incomprehensible to him.”

The Silber quote comes from a 1996 article (English Is Broken Here) by John J. Miller in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review. Miller added his relevant two cents:

Not everyone need speak English all of the time, but it must be the lingua franca of civic life. Since the voting booth is one of the vital places in which citizens directly participate in democracy, it must be the official language of the election process.

While it would, indeed, be un-American to forbid electioneering in languages other than English, the points made by Boulet, Silber, and Miller all suggest that we should discourage it.

And we should encourage ordering cheesesteaks in English.

Remember how the New Republic made this big stink about how Ron Paul should give back $500 from Jon White or somebody with a name like that who was an evil racist?

From The Scientist:

In an intriguing election-year twist, James Watson, the renowned biologist who made headlines last October when he told the Sunday Times that people of African descent were less intelligent than white people, has supported a person of African descent for President of the United States, according to the website opensecrets.org. Watson contributed $2,300 to the Barack Obama campaign this January.

In reality, Watson has always been a Democrat, as was, according to his autobiography, his father before him.

Nedra Pickler and Beth Fouhy write at Associated Press:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been waiting to get to Texas to begin her comeback against a surging Barack Obama. She might be more careful about what she wishes for.

Clinton has been banking on the state’s large Hispanic population — typically about a quarter of the turnout in Democratic primaries — to give her a victory on March 4. But the Democratic Party in President Bush’s home state has a complicated, hybrid primary-caucus that might just be better suited for Obama.[Texas' complicated rules may favor Obama, By NEDRA PICKLER and BETH FOUHY, Associated Press,February 20, 2008]

I tend to think Obama is a shoo-in in Texas because of the organizational ability his campaign has shown. Now, what this means is that if Obama wins in Texas and Ohio, is that Obama may lock in the Democratic nomination with less than overwhelming support from Hispanic Democrats. I can’t help but wonder what the implications of that would be to Obama’s immigration policy if he becomes president.

My sense is that Obama will probably want to expand immigration from countries like Kenya (and other countries that aren’t terribly well represented–perhaps in the name of making US immigration more “fair” and “diverse.” However, in an election against McCain, all he really needs to do is offer a package to various constituencies that appears better to them than McCain. I don’t think that necessarily has to mean catering to Hispanic and corporate interests like McCain would. I can easily imagine Obama expanding some social programs(like access to medical care)-and restricting illegal immigration in ways that are more gentle than most VDARE.com.com readers would advocate. I don’t expect Obama would be a restrictionist. I just suspect that corporations that want his support are going to have to support him and his administration is a strong and tangible way. I can also easily imagine Obama expanding H-1b visas in areas where those programs haven’t been traditionally used–and in ways that would specifically affect Republican voting blocks. This would be consistent with what Obama mentioned in his Senate speech:

And before any guestworker is hired, the job must be made available to Americans at a decent wage with benefits. Employers then need to show that there are no Americans to take these jobs. I am not willing to take it on faith that there are jobs that Americans will not take. There has to be a showing. If this guestworker program is to succeed, it must be properly calibrated to make certain that these are jobs that cannot be filled by Americans, or that the guest workers provide particular skills we can’t find in this country.

The simple fact is that virtually all employment in the US is a matter of supply and demand. At the height of the dotcom craze, I heard a lot of corporate managers whining about not being able to find IT people-and was personally able to recruit easily by simply going to the places that IT folks were likely to congregate rather than rely and old-fashioned HR tactics(and I helped staff the better part of a 150+ person start-up that way).

Similarly, the skills that Americans tend to invest in, are related to perceptions of long term demand. Expanding guest worker programs in any area will drive Americans out of that area over time. However, Obama’s approach would tend to restrict guest worker programs from being used for a lot of extremely low-wage and unskilled jobs-but would effectively mean that any skill specialty that started earning more than a “decent” wage would be subject to competition with guest workers. The simple fact is that often, if US workers wont’ take a job, there is a very good reason. Low cost guest worker programs inherently appeal to the baser instincts of corporate managers. The only somewhat workable examples of guest worker programs are those like Singapore’s in which companies much pay a substantial fee to the government to use foreign labor in Singapore(and the fees are substantial enough there is no clear cost advantage to guest work labor).

Traditionally, Obama has allied himself with “technocratic” Republicans-and right now, the best immigration the GOP excuse for “mainstream” can come up with is Romney’s idea of restricting illegal immigration and attaching a green card onto the diploma of anyone that can get a Ph.D. at a US university(Ron Paul I consider to be a GOP outsider and Huckabee’s immigration plan has some serious holes in it). Perhaps under an Obama administration that will include foreign recipients MBA’s and JD’s–and that just might work politically if Obama can figure out how to accomplish that while affecting the livelihoods mainly of Republican voters most unlikely to ever support Obama(and replacing them with immigrants more likely to vote Democrat).

Now on the positive side Obama has endorsed increase employer sanctions. However he has claimed that the price of reducing illegal immigration must be increases in legal immigration-and hopes to still “unite” Americans even while doing so.

If Obama is really as left sympathizing as some folks here have suggested, at some point he’ll have to address some of the traditional left economic issues-like jobs. These are issues that real leftist leaders like A. Philip Randolph realistically came to grips with a long time ago.

A lot of this depends on just how badly Obama wants to be president. Once he gets the nomination, the key factor is which constituencies that would tend to otherwise vote Republican he can appeal to. From that angle, Peter Brimelow’s suggestion that Obama choose a running mate like James Webb is probably a good one. Obama has a lot of advantages over McCain-and one of them is that he hasn’t been so vocal on a lot of issues that he can’t take the stand that would actually propel him into the presidency.

Of course, no-one who actually believed the things Mitt Romney claimed to believe would have folded his campaign and endorsed John McCain, even if beguiled by hints of the vice-presidential nomination.

GOP managers obviously think they’ve been very clever by front-end loading the primaries to make Goldwater/ Reagan style insurrections more difficult. But it’s another reason I expect to see new parties. This new system means that activists now have to endure some six months of insult and indifference from a candidate they don’t like and think can’t win before there’s even a convention. And then there’s another three months of agony before the election. At some point, they’re going to take their marbles and stomp off.

But the telling precedent is 1996. Bob Dole was annointed GOP candidate early, because the whole Establishment was terrified of Pat Buchanan and his victory in the New Hampshire primary. By the time the convention came around, however, it was so obvious to everyone that Dole was a useless campaigner that even Beltway token conservative George Will called for his replacement. (As I recall - can’t be bothered checking Will).

Buchanan, like Ron Paul, stayed in the race, But, as in 2008, the well-heeled, comfortable alternative to the apparent nominee blinked, and dropped out.

Then it was Steve Forbes. Clinton consultant Dick Morris in his 1997 Behind The Oval Office gave this scathing analysis: had Forbes stayed in, he

…would have gone to San Diego with a large block of delegates. Not a majority, but a lot.

When Dole faltered, Forbes could have mounted an effort to force him to step aside, citing his ineffectual candidacy. As they gathered in San Diego for their convention in August of ’96, the Republicans were so afraid of losing the election with Dole as their nominee that Forbes might have found it possible to cream off enough nervous Dole delegates to win. In any case, Forbes could have inherited the “on deck” slot for 2000 and begun to capture the legitimacy so vital for Republican presidential candidates…But Forbes showed that he was an amateur by folding after Arizona and mounting weak efforts in the remaining states.

(p. 275-276)

(Actually, Forbes insiders say he was betrayed by the advice of Dole moles in his campaign, like Jack Kemp, who actually did get Dole’s VP nod. But that’s another story).

As Steve Sailer has noted, there’s real reason to think McCain will be an ineffective candidate. And, unlike the bland Dole, McCain positively enrages conservatives (and patriotic imigration reformers). And there are going to be a lot of released Romney delegates wandering around (they are not bound by Romney’s endorsement of McCain) as well as McCain delegates getting cold feet.

It’s a recipe for trouble. And opportunity.

For example, Rasmussen Reports currently shows that in Texas McCain leads Governor Huckabee very modestly, 45%-37%. (Ron Paul has 7%). Throughout this primary season, immigration has been named as the most important issue by a significant fraction of GOP primary voters, but in Texas it’s actually first (26% vs. 25% for “Economy”). McCain gets only 22% of the immigration-focused voters. (Paul gets 28%, unusually good for him).

As I’ve said before, the immigration issue is now clearly the rock beneath the water in American politics. And, with this year’s unstable situation, it could well rise again.

Dick Morris is an animal with only a limited intellectual understanding of the immigration issue. But he does instinctively sense its power. He actually suggested that George W. Bush could guarantee victory with it in 2004. And this is his account of how he would have advised Dole to beat Clinton, which he would certainly have been happy to impart for the appropriate fee:

Had I been running Dole’s campaign, I would have said, “President Clinton did a fine job of helping us to get our economy in order. He set us on the path to a balanced budget. But now we must turn to the new issues we face, the values issues.” Then I’d have focused on a host of issues that the president was afraid to touch or that his interest group support wouldn’t let him touch—ending teacher tenure, school choice, school prayer, an end to school busing, the balanced-budget amendment,

a moratorium on immigration,

passage of a federal right-to-work law, a ban on porn on the internet. I’d have piled it on.

(p. 271-2). [My emphasis].

In 1996! But, as Morris also notes, GOP campaign consultants just haven’t got the message - yet:

I had studied the Republican Party from within as one of their consultants. If you are in their field of fire, they are deadly. Raise taxes, go soft on crime, oppose work for welfare, weaken the military? They’re all over you yelling “liberal”. If you wander into their line of fire, they’re going to kill you every time. But they have no other game plan, no other way to win. If you come around behind them or alongside and don’t raise taxes, if you’re tough on crime and want to reform welfare, use the military effectively, and cut spending, they can’t hit you. A tank can rotate its turret—a Republican can’t.

(p. 317-318)

This is a fair description of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Establishment Right. It’s why we started VDARE.com.

Ron Paul people are understandably depressed as much as anyone by Super Tuesday Even the sources who confidently expected Paul would run as an independent - from which point of view John McCain is the perfect foil - are reduced to hoping the Texas Congressman will reconsider his Friday night refusal to do so once he nails down his Congressional GOP nomination in the March 4 Texas primary. (He’s reportedly worried, but elected officials always worry).

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has massacred John McCain in the Kansas caucuses, results just reported. This is continued evidence of the GOP’s profound malaise.

I continue to think, as the late Lynn Nofziger, Ronald Reagan’s long-time aide, wrote shortly before he died in 2006, that all the preconditions are now present for a Third Party. I realize that this marks me out (not for the first time) as a kook. But I’ve seen it before, in Canada. And, hey, it’s more interesting than shilling for President Giuliani.