It was sweet to watch Brian Bilbray take his oath as the new Congressman from California today, and hear him bear witness that he had been elected because of his strong stance on immigration enforcement [Politician won by anti-illegals stance, Washington Times, 6/13/06].

“… the greatest scandal in America is not that one man broke the law but that 12 million illegal immigrants are in this country and Washington isn’t doing enough about it,” Mr. Bilbray told his colleagues on the House floor. [...]

“There was one issue and only one issue that allowed me to be elected,” Mr. Bilbray said… “It was the fact the people in the 50th District wanted something done, they wanted a job and a message sent to Washington that now and here is the time to address illegal immigration.”

Also notable today was Speaker Hastert’s announcement that he wanted the House to take a “long look” at the McKennedy amnesty bill [Hastert Deals Blow to Immigration Bill, AP 6/13/06].

Hastert said hearings on the Senate bill should be held before appointing anyone to a House-Senate committee to negotiate a compromise immigration bill. Later, he said he was unsure what the House’s next move would be.

Hearings?! It would be delicious to drag the evil Senate bill out into the light of day for the examination it deserves. The American people need to know how low their Senate has sunk — that it has regressed beyond mere irresponsibility into treasonous acts by handing control of our borders and immigration to Mexico City.

Could these events — Bilbray’s election and the House’s growing resistance to the North American Union — be connected? Or perhaps the House friends of sovereignty have been doing their homework by reading the Senate’s poison. Either way.

If you wonder how Europe got itself into the immigration fix it’s currently in, keep in mind how much the governments and ruling classes of Europe fear and loathe natural displays of patriotism by their subjects. Here’s a hilarious June 1, 2006 article by Paul Lewis in The Guardian, the voice of the British left-of-center upper-middle class:

England flags ‘frightening horses’

Motorists who attach England flags to their car windows ahead of the World Cup may wish to reconsider. According to police in Hampshire, dangerously executed displays of patriotism can scare wildlife, cause horses to bolt, and may result in criminal prosecution.

Officers at the force’s wildlife crime office warned yesterday that the “loud flutter” generated by car window flags was startling horses and other wildlife, particularly in the New Forest area.

They also stressed that if flags became detached from vehicles they could turn into “plastic missiles hurtling though the air” which could cause serious injury.

The Colorado Supreme Court just struck a Proposition 200 style initiative from the ballot. Eugene Volokh calls it a “Pretty troubling decision. “

Kausfiles has a piece about General Motors trying to reply to an attack on them by the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman, who said, according to GM, that “GM is “more dangerous to America’s future” than any other company, is “like a crack dealer” addicting helpless Americans to SUVs, and is in a cabal with Ford and DaimlerChrysler to buy votes in Congress.” (I’m willing to take GM’s word for it, the Friedman piece is behind the much-ridiculed TimesSelect subscription wall.)

Mickey Kaus writes

The Gray Princess: Once again the Internet empowers the little guy with a blog to take on entrenched citadels of previously unchecked power! In this case, the little guy is the General Motors Corporation. I’m not saying GM has effectively used its web site to make the NYT letters editors look like self-protective twits of the sort you might expect would wind up editing the New York Times letters section. But I’m not saying they haven’t! … Does NYT Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins really object to the use of the word “rubbish”? She never seemed like the delicate type. Does Thomas Friedman (to whose column GM was objecting) need that kind of insulation? Who checks his mattresses for peas? …

In fact, this is the official policy of the New York Times letters to the editor page.

I was a little shocked to read in February, last year, via That Liberal Media, that NYT ombudsman Daniel Okrent had admitted that

Beyond that, many of the paper’s readers find certain practices and policies regarding letters either dumbfounding or objectionable. Chief among these is the paper’s general hesitance to publish letters that make accusations against The Times, criticize writers or editors, or otherwise call into question the newspaper’s fairness, news judgment or professional practices.

As letters editor Thomas Feyer points out, The Times does occasionally print correspondence of this sort. But he also notes his unwillingness to publish criticisms of individual writers, and a reluctance to publish letters that suggest bias. “Such letters,” he says, “seem to impute motives to reporters or to The Times that the letter writers have no way to know.” [When the Readers Speak Out, Can Anyone Hear Them? By DANIEL OKRENT, Feb 20, 2005]

Okrent, who wasn’t given any actual authority to reform the paper, said that while he understood “the policy that keeps out assaults aimed at specific writers” he would “make an exception for columnists, who pick their own fights.”

I asked Peter Brimelow if the Times had given him any trouble over replying to the attack on him by the late A. M. Rosenthal, in which Rosenthal imputed his own motives

Just a few words, no more needed, about that British-born immigrant�Peter Brimelow is his name, I remember now. His book is much too farbissen, my mother’s Yiddish word for embittered, to be of value. Save time and money by reading instead Ira Glasser’s seven-paragraph letter in The Times of June 16 about his racism–a masterpiece of intellectual demolition.

That British immigrant really must go home. Mercy extends just so far.[On My Mind; Arianna, Go Home! June 20, 1995]

Peter said that they actually gave him less trouble than the Wall Street Journal, and they printed his reply which appears below. It must be that the New York Times hated him less than the WSJ did.

To the Editor:

Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a personal attack on me (letter, June 16) seconded by A. M. Rosenthal (column, June 20), purports to prove his charge of racism through selected quotations from my book “Alien Nation: Common Sense about America’s Immigration Disaster.”

Cardinal Richelieu claimed that he could find something to hang the most honest man in six lines written by him.

But despite the best efforts of Mr. Glasser, the 16 quotations he has carefully winnowed and arranged have this unfortunate characteristic:

They are all entirely true.

For example, it is a fact that the American nation has always had a specific, white, ethnic core.

It is a fact that the 1965 immigration law dramatically skewed immigration toward the third world.

It is a fact that public policy is now making the United States a multiracial society.

It is a fact that there is no precedent for a sovereign country undergoing such a rapid and radical transformation of its ethnic character.

And it is a fact that race is destiny in American politics, in the entirely empirical sense that here, unlike Europe, political allegiances are generally determined by ethnicity, not class.

Mr. Glasser and Mr. Rosenthal make no attempt to deny these facts. They simply decree that any mention of them is anathema.

This is an extraordinary attitude to truth, which must be rejected by anyone concerned with honest public debate.

It is also a fact that my little son, Alexander, has blue eyes and blond hair.

I mention this only once in a book of 275 pages, but both Mr. Glasser and Mr. Rosenthal are sufficiently outraged to highlight it in, respectively, a letter of 425 words and a column that is shorter than it seems.

The passion he has innocently provoked is an example of the blind hysteria that for 30 years has made impossible the rational discussion of America’s out-of-control immigration policy.

PETER BRIMELOW New York, June 21, 1995

A Republican Congressman has introduced a act that will mirror Mexican immigration laws–treating immigrants from Mexico the way the Republic of Mexico treats immigrants from Central American. It need hardly be said that he has no intention of introducing the violence of corrupt Mexican prison officials and police to American law enforcement–that would be unconstitutional, and such conduct, which includes rape, is technically illegal even in Mexico.

No, he’s just applying the same legal rules that Mexico applies to its immigrants. Allan Wall readers will remember that Mexico has what’s called a ” Ley General de Población.“[PDF]

Congressman John Linder’s version is the same thing in English: “U.S. General Population Act.”

“The question of immigration will, in my opinion, become the defining issue of the next generation. Unfortunately, the debate over securing our borders and protecting the interests of our citizens is too often demonized by the opposition and turned into an ugly accusation of racism. For this reason, I have introduced the U.S. General Population Act, a bill designed to align the immigration laws of the United States with those of Mexico. This bill simply reflects the same immigration restrictions implemented by Mexico with the same consequences for those in violation.” [Linder Introduces "U.S. General Population Act"]
”

In the many columns and letters posted on VDARE.COM about the Roman Catholic Church’s activism on behalf of illegal aliens, writers have frequently asked if the church’s immigration advocacy is hurtful to its image among its faithful.

Three letters published June 7th in the Orange County Register [Bishop Letters: Is bishop tending flock or agenda?] indicate deep discontent with Bishop Tod Brown’s speech interrupting the Mass to deliver passionate pleas to the congregation to become politically pro-active in support of amnesty.[Catholic Diocese of Orange County"Immigration Statement"PDF]

Parishioner Miguel Villasin noted that the Mass was also a confirmation ceremony for young men and women thereby making Bishop’s Tod Brown’s political grandstanding all the more inappropriate. Villasin writes

“I saw a few people walking out while he was speaking, and I would have, too, but I guess I was in too much of a state of shock that the bishop would do such a thing.”[Bishop urges immigration change | Brown calls for overhauling U.S. policy during confirmation Mass in cathedral,By Erika I. Ritchie, June 5, 2006 ]

P.S. The letters also include one from Vietnamese John Nguyen who says that learning English is the key to success in America.