As I write, one of the largest and highest ranked group of news stories on a Google News search on Immigration derives from the weekend Talk Shows. A number of Senators and Congressmen appeared to be trying to encourage one another that a version of last year’s Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration bill will be easy to pass. The overseas press has been particularly pleased to carry these stories.

Meanwhile, out on the Front Line of State and City politics, where legislators actually have to live amongst their constituents and look them in the eye, things are totally different. The most extensive story group on Google News is actually about the efforts by the Texan town of Farmers Branch to follow the lead of the increasingly impressive Mayor Barletta of Hazleton, Pa. and establish local ordnances repellant to illegal immigrants. (For instance Farmers Branch to put immigration-related measure on ballot Associated Press Tuesday January 9 2007)

But even more ominous for the Border-Openers lurking in Washington is a story from Tennessee. Immigration anger drives lawmakers By MICHAEL A. WEBER, Tennessean.com. Tuesday 01/09/07 is remarkable for the breadth of sentiment it reports–and the range of politicians responding:

Dewayne Brown says the new wave of immigration has made him feel unwelcome in his own community….His sentiments are held by many in Middle Tennessee…. The National Conference of State Legislatures last week forecast that illegal immigration would be the hottest issue for legislators across the country this year…(VDARE.com emphasis)

As the 132 legislators pour into the Capitol…they face mounting pressure from the public to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants to the Volunteer State….most of the immigration legislation that didn’t pass last year probably will be reintroduced in the new session, sponsors said.

“We need to demagnetize the state. We need to stop Tennessee from being a
magnet for illegal immigrants,” said Rep. Glen Casada, R-Franklin.

Candidates from both parties made a campaign issue in the recent midterm elections of the need to do more about immigration (VDARE.com emphasis)— a fact that led state Sen. Bill Ketron to predict that some of the bills that failed last year will pass this time.

Here is a Democrat who can tell the time:

“We have an irresponsible and irresponsive federal bureaucracy that is unable to deal with the issue of illegal immigrants,” said state Sen. Joe Haynes, D-Goodlettsville, the sponsor of the only immigration bill that the legislature passed last year

Equally remarkable is the volume and ferocity of the comments –overwhelmingly pro-restriction. (As, just as James Fulford predicted, were the comments on the Brokaw whitewash. Scroll down.)

The Inside the Beltway Grandees may want to gratify their paymasters and pass Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration. They will face a Peasant Revolt (which historically were usually extremely nasty) - and they know it.

Has the violent Sunni-Shia feud of centuries’ duration reached the United States? Some in Michigan believe so.

So far it’s only some broken windows — no IEDs exploding or blood running in the street. But small incidents have a way of escalating, particularly when the religious divisions involved are enthusiastically engaged in killing each other a few thousand miles away. We shouldn’t naively believe that merely exposing Muslim groups to the magic of apple pie and the Constitution will end a long history of intramural warfare.

The idea that Muslim immigrants in America are better assimilated than their snarly brethren in Europe has long been a dreamy fantasy of multiculturalists with no basis in reality. Immigrants bring their ethnic baggage with them, from criminal cultural practices to historic enmities.

As they repaired the broken windows of at least a dozen businesses and mosques along Warren Avenue in Detroit, many Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims wondered Monday if the vandalism was retaliation by local supporters of Saddam Hussein who resented that they celebrated the hanging of the Iraqi dictator.

Sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, someone vandalized at least nine businesses and three mosques, all but one Shi’ite, according to Ali Zwen, manager of the Kufa Cultural Forum, a mosque at Warren and Archdale that sustained $4,000 in damage.
[Damage to businesses and mosques in Detroit raises wider fears, Detroit Free Press 1/9/07]

Here’s the story from the city’s other paper, the Detroit News: Vandals hit Shi’a stores.

They say the vandalized property was owned or operated by people of Iraqi descent who are Shi’a.

“People are scared to come here. It’s very dangerous, this place,” said Inaam Alkhafaji [shown here], referring to her Detroit business, Dana Media, whose windows were broken.

“It’s a war with the Iraqi people. Maybe next time they kill us.”

Can we chill on Muslim immigration yet?

Good grief…I have written about this poorly coiffed (photo) lad a few times and each time the story reaches a new level of absurdity!

(Examples here and here.)

This time we have three nine year-old boys in Arizona playing with matches…and umm, gasoline.

Wouldn’t you know it, one of them managed to catch on fire and it happened to be the Black child–the other two (his best friends) were White.

Tragically, the young boy died from his burns in spite of his friends’ best attempts to put out the fire. Enter Jarrett Maupin–so sorry, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin–and his latest (and most ridiculous) accusations of racism.

According to a story on ABC 15 KNXV this morning (and thanks to an anonymous email from a fellow Jarrett Maupin non-believer), the Al Sharpton protege is disappointed with the investigation and of course wants to make race the big issue.

Sheriff’s office, family at odds over burned boy’s death 1/08/07

“The sheriff doesn’t want the attention turned on his ridiculous, unorganized and unorthodox investigation,” Maupin said. “In the meantime, a 9-year-old black child is dead and his mother does not know why. This is outrageous.”

The fire didn’t somehow target him because he is Black…his White friends didn’t stand by and let him burn because he is Black…he was not uniquely immune to the treatment he received in the emergency room because he is Black…in short, he is not dead because he is Black.

He’s dead because he made a bad decision–or to put it bluntly, he’s dead because he did something really, really stupid.

It’s a terrible tragedy but how can an ignorant blunder be propped up as a social cause? Seriously…even for Maupin, this is an amazing stretch of the circumstances requiring the complete and utter suspension of anything resembling logic.

Wait a minute…I suppose this is right up Maupin’s alley!