Let us raise our hats to Louis Barletta, Mayor of Hazelton, Pa. who is in Philadelphia tomorrow to testify at Senator Arlen Specter’s hearings on the Kennedy/Bush Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill.

The hearings will be televised on C-Span (curiously, at this point, I cannot find that the same day House Hearings will be equally equally treated).

Barletta knows what he is talking about.

It says a great deal about media access management in America that the opponent slated to object to Senator Specter’s wishes is, to put it bluntly, so obscure, and frankly, so inexperienced in dealing with the national media. VDARE.com wishes Barletta well.

It is also interesting that the concomitant Republican discovery supporting the Amnesty/ Immigration Acceleration measure is so rich.

The fact is, interests are diverging here, in a new way..

Everyone who knew paramedic Ryan Ostendorf agreed that he had a tremendously promising life ahead, as a cardiologist and married to his long-time girlfriend, Meagan Kennedy. But that future is not to be, because a previously deported drunk-driving illegal alien crashed head-on into Ryan’s Jeep Cherokee and killed him.

A resident of Lawrence, Kansas, 28-year-old Ryan was driving to his paramedic job in Topeka when his car was hit last December. When the ambulance arrived on the scene, the paramedics were shocked to find the body of their friend and co-worker.

Victor Anzua-Torres was sentenced in Topeka last week to a measly 13 years and nine months in jail for the head-on crash, which was the maximum sentence he could have received.

Anzua-Torres had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26 percent, more than three times the legal limit of 0.08, authorities said. He had no driver’s license, had a prior drunken-driving arrest and had been deported as an illegal immigrant once before.
[Drunken driver gets 13 years for fatal wreck, Lawrence Journal-World, 6/30/06]

Prosecutor Karen Wittman noted that Anzua-Torres insisted on driving to show how “bad” he was even though he was very drunk and a friend offered to drive. (Driving while drunk is believed by many hispanics to show macho attributes — a reason why they are hugely overrepresented in drunk driving crashes.)

At sentencing, Ryan’s friends and family spent two hours explaining how his death left a hole in their lives that would never go away.

UNREST IN MISSISSIPPI: CITY OF JACKSON DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY… is how the Drudge Report is carrying this story. [City state of emergency to continue, By Kelli Esters, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 3, 2006] Sounds like a headline from the era of civil rights marches, doesn’t it?

But things have changed–the Mayor of Jackson, Frank Melton, is black. The “unrest” may be Hispanic. Conflict between blacks and Hispanics in Jackson is becoming serious.

The latest incident is this

After midnight Friday, Jackson saw its second homicide during the state-of-emergency period in a quintuple shooting outside a west Jackson nightclub.

Uriel Castillo, 22, of Pearl was shot and killed outside the Taqueria Mexicana in the Bel Air Shopping Center at 1999 U.S. 80 West. Castillo was shot once in the chest and once in the arm, Hinds County Coroner Sharon Grisham-Stewart said Saturday.

Police would not release the names of the other four men, but described them as all being in their 20s.