I have an interview scheduled with Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, on November 16th , 7 a.m. Pacific Time, on KSFO 560 AM, San Francisco.
You can hear it online here.

The latest tally of over 2,000 bodies in the warfare between Mexican drug cartels shows how the mask is falling from the face official Mexico tries to present to the world. An average of six people are killed daily in the country’s drug wars, and the formerly sacrosanct tourist areas are now home to gun battles and heads washing up on the beach. The number killed in the narco-wars last year was 1500, so the violence is increasing.

Sadly, the journalists brave enough to tell the truth about Mexico’s violence and corruption tend to end up dead. [ Mexico's drug war death toll tops 2,000, San Francisco Chronicle 11/14/06]

The death Friday of Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of the daily newspaper El Despertar de la Costa, appeared to be the sixth killing of a Mexican journalist this year, according to the group Reporters Without Borders. [...]

Days before he was found dead, the editor had written a column denouncing local corruption. The southern state of Guerrero, which includes Zihuatanejo and Acapulco, has been ravaged by a battle between competing drug cartels and the police. Tamayo’s newspaper reported extensively on the violence.

“Are we becoming used to this being a ‘normal’ day in our country?” El Universal asked in a Saturday editorial, as the paper reported on the deaths of Tamayo and a wild shootout in the southern state of Michoacan that left a suspected cartel “soldier” dead.

See Vacation Spot Becoming Narcopulco? for the answer.

Meanwhile, the White House is pushing forward with its plan for a shotgun marriage (aka the “North American Union”) with the failing state next door.

For those of you who’ve been frustrated at being unable to get the immigration authorities to arrest illegals, it may interest you to know that illegals have the same problem; they can’t get arrested.

Of course, this woman doesn’t actually want to be arrested, what she really wants, according to her lawyer, is for the immigration authorities to start removal proceedings, (without detention, of course) so she can get “cancellation of removal.” “Cancellation of removal” is almost as good as a green card, as far as an illegal is concerned. (See Juan Mann, here, on this.)

That means that immigration officers may have done the right thing, here. But as a policy, it’s ridiculous.

DenverPost.com - “I am here illegally. They wouldn’t take me in.”
Case exposes odd twist: Feds usually reject those who surrender
By Bruce Finley,
November 12, 2006 1

Eloina Meza, whose 8-year-old son Edgar has Down syndrome and heart problems, tried to turn herself in to immigration officials in hopes of having her case reviewed, but she was turned away. She is afraid that she and Edgar, a U.S. citizen, will be separated. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)

Federal agents who hunt for illegal immigrants have a policy against arresting those who voluntarily turn themselves in - as Eloina Meza discovered recently in Denver.

After hiding for 12 years, Meza mustered her courage and approached immigration agents at their offices - “I saw the security, the police, the cameras up around the room” - and tried to surrender.

Her son, Edgar, 8, a U.S. citizen who suffers from Down syndrome and heart trouble, needs her constantly. A single mother, Meza had grown increasingly worried that, if immigration agents were to catch her, she and Edgar could be separated.

Instead, she wanted to turn herself in and have a judge review her case so that she might stay legally in Denver with her son.

Edward Luce and Alim Remtulla of the Financial Times write:

More significantly a majority of the intake, including Mr Webb, are economic populists who are deeply suspicious of free trade and quick to blame China and other developing countries for the loss of US jobs. Some, such as Sherrod Brown, the new Democratic senator for the key Midwest state of Ohio, which has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since Mr Bush came to power, won the election virtually on that issue alone.

“We will focus on economic fairness in a country divided too much by class in an age of the internationalisation of American corporations,” said Mr Webb in a victory rally speech that devoted more to the economy than all other themes combined. “At a time when profits are at a record high and wages are at a low, we will focus on bridging the class divide.”

Now, what this means is that Democrats will need if they wish to be successful to have a strong, viable economic agenda. I would seriously question whether they can similtaneously increase wages while increasing immigration levels.

The rhetoric of “putting Americans first” can be applied both to trade an immigration–and will I expect have to be applied to both for that kind of program to work at all.

Evidently someone at the RNC got round to noticing that Michael S. Steel, the defeated black GOP Maryland Senate candidate, who was under consideration to replace the awful Ken Mehlman as party Chairman, had strayed off the Plantation on Immigration.

Gonzo!

Instead we are getting one of the Plantation overseers, Senator Mel Martinez (R-Cuba). Martinez has a D grade in the Americans for Better Immigration rankings. (Martinez to be face of GOP By Anita Kumar St Petersburg Times November 13 2006)

(Rep Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, quoted gushing

“Sen. Martinez is superbly qualified to lead our party at this challenging time…Mel personifies the American Dream, as well as our party’s commitment to diversity.”

has an F. )

Martinez can be counted on to systematically neglect the interests of the core Republican vote, white men of Christian heritage.