I love a good Congressional hearing, where citizens actually get to speak to the Beltway suits, so I scanned the C-SPAN schedule earlier, looking to see whether today’s Laredo House immigration hearing would be televised, but nothing has shown up yet.

Hopefully there will be an adequate number of House field hearings about immigration to explore the many relevant issues. A couple more hearings were mentioned in today’s AP story as being planned [Immigration Hearing Held at Border, AP 7/7/06].

Republican-led House committees will hold hearings outside Washington later this month on making English the nation’s official language, and how enforcement of immigration laws affects American workers.

A hearing the week of Aug. 14 in Arizona will focus on costs to local and state governments “caused by an unsecured border.”

Some hearings might usefully be dedicated to uncovering the many downright awful provisions tucked away in the Senate bill, including the wretched “Widows and Orphans” unlimited refugee scam.

The hearings have already revealed at least one Senate time bomb: when Prof. Kris Kobach appeared on a July 5 panel in San Diego, he described how Section 240D of the Senate bill strips local police of their capacity to arrest illegal aliens.

Section 240D would restrict local police to arresting aliens for criminal violations of immigration law only, not civil violations. The results would be disastrous, and would significantly undermine the United States in the war on terrorism.

Also, a panel of crime victims or their relatives would be powerful and a good balance to the wonky policy stuff. Plus there are still some genuine environmentalists out here, not happy about the skyrocketing population numbers, e.g. 400M Americans predicted by 2041 (just 35 years from now)!

And let’s get some decent-sized rooms, so a lot of local people can attend. (Like the time when Rep. Darrell Issa invited Homeland Security honcho Asa Hutchinson to speak in southern California, and radio hosts John and Ken invited their audience to come and listen — hundreds of people showed up on a weekday morning for a famously lively event.)

Come on, House guys, let’s rock and roll! We’re trying to save the country here. It’s no time to hold back.

Operation Wetback, the mass deportation program with which President Eisenhower ended the last illegal immigration crisis, is rarely mentioned by anyone outside of VDARE.COM. But an article by John Dillin published yesterday in the Christian Science Monitor outlines the historic crackdown. (How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico, July 6 2006).

With one-tenth the Border Patrol agents now working, Eisenhower got nearly 2,000,000 illegals out of the country. Significantly, only a fraction were actually deported - most (488,000 in California and Arizona, and 500,000-700,000 in Texas) left voluntarily, alarmed by the threat of arrest.

So much for George Will and his caravan of buses.

Also notable, is a quote from the New York Times that Eisenhower used in a letter to Senator William Fulbright in 1954. With regard to corrupt politicians pandering to cheap labor the NYT had this to say:

The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican ‘wetbacks’ to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government.

Seems they’ve changed their tune.

The Mexican election has a winner–Felipe Calderon of Fox’s PAN party, who barely squeaked out a victory over the PRD’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The margin of victory was only 243,934 votes, with 15,000,284 for Calderon and 14,756,350 for Lopez . Hardly an overwhelming victory, and not even a majority. However, it was a clean and transparent election, and in accordance with Mexican law, so Calderon is the winner.

The significance of this election for the U.S., and specifically for the U.S. National Question, has already been misread in the mainstream media. I plan to deal with that in an upcoming article.

But yesterday’s outrageous piece of spin by professional spin doctor Dick Morris deserves an immediate reply.

Morris’ “The Republican Base Backs ‘Amnesty’ ? assures us that “The Mexican people have just …embraced free-market capitalism in a dramatic vote.”

Once again, provincial Americans are seeing everything through an American lens. Felipe Calderon certainly has a more free-market platform by Mexican standards, but his platform does not correspond to that of a conservative American limited government free marketeer.

Furthermore, Calderon got 35.89% of the vote (vs. 35.31% to Lopez) so that’s hardly an overwhelming victory.

It’s highly likely that Morris was actually working for Calderon, just as he worked for Fox six years ago, so he has a vested interest in puffing Calderon’s free market credentials.

Morris tells us that, in the Mexican campaign, Lopez Obrador “played on popular resentment against American immigration policies.” However, as I documented in a previous Memo from Mexico all the Mexican candidates, including Morris’ probable paymaster Calderon, support open borders. Calderon joked about the U.S. building a wall on the border and said “we’ll jump over it anyway” and said he supports Mexicans in the U.S. “fighting for human rights, labor rights and political rights.” Did Morris coin that line ?

I agree that Calderon has a better economic program than Lopez, but he has no more respect for U.S. sovereignty than any other Mexican politician. But then again, it’s not the responsibility of Mexican politicians to look out for U.S. sovereignty - that’s the responsibility of American politicians. And that’s where our real problem lies.

Today is the anniversary of the bombings in London by Muslim terrorists, and the website Biased BBC has a post called “What Elephant?”

The Today programme devoted most of the half-hour between 7 and 7.30 to the anniversary. As Sarah Montague so perceptively pointed out, today is the day when “four British men blew themselves up” (an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman and a Welshman ?), but it was 7.23 before the M- or I-words were mentioned - when Church of England Bishop Tony Robinson told us that the bombers ‘weren’t Muslims at all’ !

It is fascinating to watch the BBC and the Church of England as they redefine Briton to include Muslims, while at the same time redefining Muslim to exclude jihadis.

Both are incorrect; historically, Britons are a people who escaped becoming Muslim, and most actual Muslims consider jihad an essential part of their faith.

Here are some of our postings from last year:

• Media Mostly Amok Over London Bombings
• Immigration and The London Bombings
• Thinking About 7/7: Enoch Powell’s Revenge?

It is a MSM manager’s worst nightmare. All over the country immigration is surfacing as a key election issue – Alabama, for instance: (Gubernatorial Candidates Debate Immigration Issue NBC13.com July 6 2006).

In Arkansas, the enterprising Republican candidate for attorney general has a concrete proposal:

Gunner DeLay said Wednesday that as the state’s chief legal officer he would sue employers who hire illegal immigrants to recoup the cost of any Medicaid benefits granted to the workers…He said he would hold accountable employers who supply bogus social security numbers or other documents to employees, or who do not ask for proper documentation at all when they hire someone.

(Immigration issue enters attorney general’s race Arkansas News Bureau Thursday July 6 2006)

What makes this development particularly interesting is that Arkansas politicians generally have an atrocious record on immigration issues, particularly for a Southern state. I have always felt the malign influence of the big Agri-businesses headquartered there (like Tyson Food) has much to do with this. Even the Wall Street Journal has noted the damaging effects of immigration on the State’s workers!

Prominent among the atrocious are the retiring Republican Governor, Mike Huckabee, and even worse the current Republican candidate for the office, Asa Hutchinson

In a clear sign that DeLay is right in describing illegal immigration as

an issue that is first and foremost in voters’ minds this year

the Hutchinson campaign is actually trying to coat tail on DeLay’s initiative

“There’s a clear contrast between candidates like Asa Hutchinson who are willing to offer substantive proposals for fighting illegal immigration and candidates like Dustin McDaniel [DeLay’s opponent] … who have nothing to offer to the debate but weak political attacks,” Hutchinson spokesman David Kinkade said”

It is a fixed principle at VDARE.com that sensible immigration reform requires a coalition, but Hutchinson as an ally takes a couple of swallows.

The Democrat has responded with some spluttering wonkery and an attempt to anathematize:

On this issue, Gunner is outside of the mainstream of even his republican party nationally and in Arkansas,” McDaniel said.

(Again with the illegals Arkansas Times July 6 2006)

Arkansas voters should hope that this is so!