Denver has been stunned by the brutality of a recent crime in which a woman was dragged to death behind a truck. Her mangled body was found on Monday, after she had been hauled over the roadway for more than a mile. The victim’s face was unrecognizable from the damage and an autopsy revealed that she had been alive while being dragged.

The woman was identified on Thursday as Luz Maria Franco-Fierros, 49, of Mexico. She and the accused killer, Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, lived together even though he has a wife and children back in Mexico.

The alleged killer has been arrested, and he is an illegal alien who worked in construction [Arrest made in gruesome murder, 9News 9/20/06].

During the Wednesday morning press conference, Weaver also said the suspect, Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36 of Glendale, was being held on first degree murder charges. Weaver added that “a detainer has been placed” on Rubi-Nava from Immigration Customs Enforcement due to the fact that he is believed to be in the country illegally.

He is currently being held at the Douglas County jail on a no-bond hold.

It was later discovered that the accused had been arrested on April 21 and charged with false identification, no driver’s license and no proof of insurance. However, those charges were dismissed in court and he was released, another foreign criminal set loose in America with deadly results.

The Nation has published a hit piece on The Washington Times by Max Blumenthal, the son of Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal.

It’s the usual thing, quoting the SPLC, et cetera.

Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project executive director Mark Potok credits the Times with helping to fuel the nativism that has taken hold this year in Republican political campaigns.

If it needs to be said, once again, it’s the majority of the American people who are “nativist,” if you want to call it that. Only massive and expensive lobbying has prevented the Republican Party from using this issue to beat the Democrats like a drum.

One of Blumenthal’s targets is Marian Kester Coombs, one of whose sins, apparently, was to sell us an article: High Noon For The English Language? [May 22, 2004 ]

Asked whether her husband agrees with her politics, Marian Coombs said, “Pretty much,” but claimed his personal views were not reflected in the pages of the Times. But she has contributed some thirty opinion pieces to the paper. In a November 2001 article she cited the BNP’s Griffin, who was prosecuted twice in Britain for inciting racial hatred with his anti-Muslim rhetoric, as an expert on Muslim culture. Marian Coombs’s byline has appeared in many of the far right’s flagship publications, from Chronicles to Vdare to The Occidental Quarterly, which was edited by her friend Sam Francis until his death in 2005. [Hell of a 'Times'(from the October 9, 2006 issue)]

Of course, Blumenthal doesn’t mention that he’s spent a lot of time bashing Vdare.com, and the we’ve replied: see Children Of The Angry Apes: Salon And Its Stale Smear and VDARE.com: 06/21/03 - That Stale Salon Smear: Tancredo Speaks by Peter Brimelow in 2003.

The Grand Rapids Press has a story by Nardy Baeza Bickel, [email] a legal immigrant from Chile, about Peter Brimelow’s debate at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, with Linda Chavez, Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco , Bill Ong Hing and Russell M. Magnaghi. I have a feeling she’s using Wikipedia as a source.

Brimelow heads the Center for American Unity, [Actually, the Lexington Research Institute, which, as of today will be known simply as the Vdare Foundation.] which considers “mass” immigration, multiculturalism, multilingualism and affirmative action as a threat to the survival of the United States. The center and its online publication VDare are considered by some as a hate group. [GVSU immigration forum stirs debate, September 20, 2006]

Well, the “some” that consider us a hate group is mostly the SPLC, which makes its living considering people hate groups, and our political opponents.

Audio and perhaps video of the Hauenstein Center debates should be available soon, we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you might amuse yourself by reading Peter Skerry’s take on Bill Ong Hing’s immigration writings.

Mr. Hing has written a long, meandering essay that relies for evidence on a motley mix of tedious summaries of technical economic studies, unpersuasive newspaper articles and personal anecdotes. He also has the regrettable habit (perhaps from his law school teaching) of posing Socratic questions that he never gets around to answering. ”Is their displacement by immigrant workers a clear sign of injury at the hands of immigrants?” he asks about African-American workers. If this important question engages you, look elsewhere for guidance.

A more fundamental problem is that Mr. Hing’s dedication to diversity overrides inconvenient facts. He points out that overall immigrant reliance on welfare is equivalent to that of native-born Americans, and consequently rejects the view that it is ”inordinate.” Fair enough. But he neglects to mention that immigrant welfare rates have been rising steadily in recent years. Similarly, he argues that illegal immigrants are not a fiscal burden, since they are ineligible for most social welfare programs. Yet as a lawyer with considerable field experience, he has to be aware of the brisk market in fake papers that permits a large number of illegal immigrants to obtain social services to which they are not entitled. Nor does he consider the possibility that it might be appropriate to curtail immigration. While he concedes that immigrants probably depress the wages of some American workers, his solution is to raise the minimum wage, expand the earned-income tax credit and improve education and job training programs.

[ We the Peoples , New York Times, April 27, 1997]