Watching the antics of the neoconservatives generally and the NRO gang in particular as they scramble feverishly to recover from the Amnesty/Immigration Surge Bill rout is like watching a rodeo rider, with one foot in a stirrup, hopping alongside a bolting mount, battling to get back astride. Some astonishing contortions are going on–none more bizarre than Jonah Goldberg’s latest You can’t say that USA Today July 3 2006.

This essay is in fact excellent. Jonah has discovered the National Question and objects to its repression.

last week’s defeat of the immigration bill …was, for good or ill, a milestone in America’s transformation into a “normal” country. Normal countries have arguments about their national identity and immigration’s effect on it. In normal countries, it’s not illegitimate to suggest that too many immigrants, or too many immigrants of a specific origin, may upset the social peace or do damage to the national culture. In America, however, to raise such concerns is to open yourself to charges of racism, bigotry, nativism and all-around hate.

He takes note of the constant effort to shut down debate:

Anyone who disagreed with this was automatically lumped in with the forces of bigotry and hate. Referring to opponents of the bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “We’ve been down this road before. No Catholics, no Jews, Irish, need not apply. That’s not the America I want.”

He objects to the fraudulent economics:

At one point, the White House trumpeted a new study showing that immigration contributes about $30 billion a year to the economy. Even assuming the numbers are accurate, and leaving aside how it includes legal immigration which was never at issue that’s still a trivial amount in a $13 trillion economy

He takes issue with the anti-WASP bigotry so common amongst the Bill’s advocates:

In a piece last week on small-town America’s revolt against the immigration bill, The Washington Post chronicled how elderly residents of Gainesville, Ga., were taken aback by the transformation of their bedroom community by a huge influx of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants, parking on the grass, failing to understand how flush toilets work and the like. Of course, the Post couldn’t help but point out that the bemused locals still have a monument to “Our Confederate Soldiers.” Still, the Post was better than The New York Times, which in an earlier story cast grass-roots opponents as barely one generation removed from the cast of Deliverance.

And he resents the blatant double standard:

The point here is not to say that America has become “too Mexican.” Though it’s ironic that liberals who see nothing wrong with talking about America, the GOP, or various universities as being “too white,” “too Christian,” or not black or Hispanic enough should recoil in horror at such a thought.

The comment thread is full of applause, much of it clearly from people new to the controversy. This is a pity and it is dangerous. This is the Goldberg who actively assisted in the redirection of National Review away from these questions and toward servile sycophancy towards the rising George W., a development which, as Neil Freeman has said, had a lot to do with the mess the country is in today. So much so, that in early VDARE.com days we rechristened it “The Goldberg Review“. Like the Senators voting against Cloture last week when they realized it was defeated, Goldberg and his friends only opened fire from their privileged locations in the MSM when they saw how the battle was going. They are doing so because they fear losing their influence.

And that influence, when and if regained, will not be used in the interests of this country

Tell Jonah Goldberg he is a fraud.

BiasedBBC has a report on the latest (extremely lame ) terrorist attempt in Scotland, and they note that the BBC usually lies about race and nationality:

It’s been a long-established BBC tradition that where a foreign national commits crimes in the UK, his nationality and immigration status should be downplayed or ignored entirely in their news reporting.

Hence we see the Algerian illegal immigrant transformed into a man from ‘Shepherds Bush‘, the Moroccan drug dealer (obsessed with beheadings and al-Quaeda videos) who becomes a man ‘from Lisson Grove, north-west London‘ (with no notable habits), the Somali ‘of Small Heath, Birmingham’, the Nigerian nationals and illegal immigrants who become ‘South Londoners’ (see next paragraph for the links).

There’s one notable exception to this rule - if the foreign national is American the BBC goes to town on the story. Even if he’s a naturalised British citizen he’ll always be American to BBC news.

Yet BBC coverage of the latest UK terrorist attacks is going out of its way to emphasise the ‘non-Britishness’ of the attackers.

None of the suspects involved in the Glasgow attack and the foiled London car bombings are British in origin.

“British in origin” ? It’s the “in origin” bit that gets me. Only a year or two back a politician using language like that would be getting the John Humphrys treatment on the Today programme. Are they channelling Norman Tebbit here, or Nick Griffin ?

‘Terrorist’ suspects ‘not Scots‘ : Mr MacAskill said the suspects were not “born or bred” here but had lived in Scotland for a “period of time”.

[July 02, 2007 Amazing BBC volte-facel]

Terrorist suspects “Not Scots!” Well, I could have told you that. What they mean is that they’re not Muslims who live in Scotland, like the Kelvinbridge Muslims that Brenda Walker reported were trying to stop Scots from drinking on patios because drinking alcohol outdoors was “offensive“. to the Glasgow Muslim community. That is to say, not the people the local politicians feel the need to appease. The business about them not being Scots is a response to this inane statement by a Scottish Government official:

Scottish chief defends Muslim ties after Glasgow attack

Agence France-Presse
07/01/2007

GLASGOW–The two men who rammed a blazing car into Glasgow airport were not from Scotland, the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said Sunday, while denying that ties with the Muslim community may suffer.

Salmond, speaking after touring the airport a day after the attack, described it as a “very serious incident,” also said no community should feel “scapegoated” by it.

“As far as we can tell at the present moment the people involved in this incident had not been in Scotland for any length of time,” he told reporters, declining to give any further details.

Some eyewitness accounts of the attack Saturday described the two men as being of “Asian” appearance, while one witness cited by television recounted that one of them shouted “Allah, Allah” before being overcome by police….

“We have hugely strong community relations in Scotland. Our Muslim community is part of the fabric of Scottish society,” he said. “It’s hugely important to our economy, to our social life, and these community bonds will remain strong.”

And he added: “No community in Scotland should feel in any way scapegoated by this incident.”…

Now, don’t call it a “pardon,” just as the late Senate immigration bill wasn’t amnesty–both Scooter and the illegals have to pay a fine!

Here are a couple of blog items on Scooter:

Scooter Libby, Mob Lawyer
The Scooter Libby-Marc Rich Connection

The basic question remains: why was this guy allowed to have a high-ranking government job in the first place?

I don’t see a link yet, but Tuesday is supposed to be the day my book review comes out in the Washington Times. The last time I reviewed an economics book for a daily newspaper, my review of Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist appeared in the New York Post on December 25, 2005, so the Third of July is a big improvement in terms of being a high traffic day.

Here’s the opening:

Harry Truman longed for a one-armed economist who couldn’t tell him, “But, on the other hand …” As the economic mismanagement of the 1970s is forgotten and the profession’s confidence soars, however, the opposite has emerged: the two-fisted economist. These scholarly brawlers self-assuredly venture far beyond their traditional topics.

Steven D. Levitt’s 2005 pop economics bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything featured his views on the Ku Klux Klan (he’s against it), real estate agents (they’re kind of like the KKK), sumo wrestling (it’s dishonest), and, most famously, the legalization of abortion in the 1970s (it reduced crime in the 1990s by, in effect, pre-emptively executing unwanted babies more likely to become criminals).

Freakonomics, which sold three million copies, included a half page of scandalmongering about rival economist John R. Lott Jr., author of More Guns, Less Crime, who had attacked Dr. Levitt’s abortion-cut-crime theory. Dr. Lott responded by suing Dr. Levitt for defamation. Now, Dr. Lott has struck back more constructively with his endlessly thought-provoking Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t (Regnery, pp. 275, $27.95).