Fred Thompson, (who is not yet a candidate for anything) chimes in on the Hazleton decision:

Let’s be clear about what’s going on here. No matter what some groups may be trying to do to muddy the water and portray Hazleton’s law as something playing to an uglier agenda, this law is not about legal immigration. This law is about dealing with the illegal immigration problem in Hazleton. The town’s mayor and city officials made this clear from the beginning, and it seems like they took a common sense approach.

Our constitutional system allows cities to take reasonable steps to protect their citizens. When the federal government is unwilling to enforce immigration laws effectively, then cities need to be able to act, and take reasonable steps to secure their citizens from the social, financial, and criminal costs of illegal immigration.

No doubt, this ruling will be appealed. And it should be.Fred File – The Friends of Fred Thompson Blog » Blog Archive » Hazleton Immigraton Decision

I want to point out that the problems with mass immigration would be just as bad if the immigrants were legal,(Derek Kichline, who was murdered in Hazleton would be just as dead if his attacker had had a Green Card ) but if the were legal there would be nothing that could even be attempted to be done by the Hazleton City Council, because of the Civil Rights laws. That’s why the defeat of amnesty is so important.

A Story of Race and Inheritance? Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect is irked that the Harry Potterbooks (not to mention Lord of the Rings) are full of sexism, racism, and hereditism:

Harry Potter and the Complicated Identity Politics

J.K. Rowling subtly critiques, yet ultimately hews to, a fantasy script dependent on stereotypes culled from real-life racism.

Gosh, I’m so astonished that the most popular children’s literary work of our time reflects deep human archetypes about sex, family, and inheritance. I can’t imagine why feminist ideology hasn’t been able to produce anything remotely as appealing to kids. It must be society’s fault. If only feminists and multiculturalists were given more control over the education system, children’s interests could be social-engineered into perfection!

(My old essay “KidTV: A Guide for the Perplexed” explains why the things children like are so politically incorrect.)

The ACLUPA’s “Andy in Harrisburg” says on their blog that you can expect more posts during the day. He quotes from the decision, [Available online here]. Andy finds this “particularly powerful.”

Judge Munley wrote, as part of a 206 page decision:

The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. In that way, all in this nation can be confident of equal justice under its laws. Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community. Since the United States Constitution protects even the disfavored, the ordinances cannot be enforced.

While the Constitution protects disfavored Americans, it is also designed to protect the people of the United States from alien invaders. A couple of commenters have already said that, but there’s room for more–comment here.

A federal judge, Judge James Munley, (appointed by Bill Clinton) has struck down the law Hazleton, Pennsylvania passed to defend townspeople against a surge of illegals. Lou Barletta, the Mayor Of Hazleton, called the decision “bizarre.”

“This was a case where a federal judge protected the rights of anonymous illegal aliens,” he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “This fight’s far from over.”

The Republican mayor had pushed for the strict laws last summer after two illegal immigrants were charged in a fatal shooting. Barletta argued that illegal immigrants brought drugs, crime and gangs to the city of more than 30,000, overwhelming police and schools.[AP NewsBreak: Pa. immigrant law voided - Yahoo! News]

Bryanna Bevens wrote about the lawsuit being filed here–that was less than a year ago, which is fast as lawsuits go. Of course, Barletta is going to appeal.

In the wake of the defeat of the Senate’s “Comprehensive {~Insert Chorus of Laughter Here~}Immigration Reform Bill,”Microsoft announcedthat it was going to set up a new facility in Vancouver, B.C.

The reason Microsoft gave for a new shop outside that U.S. is that, this “allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S.”

This move generated much media coverage. The media’s general reaction was that it, “Highlights Need for Immigration Reform.“ [VDARE.COM note: Not on VDARE.COM, of course. See Rob Sanchez’s column Has Microsoft Found A “Temporary Worker” Loophole In Canada?]

After the Microsoft announcement, several news organizations asked me for my opinion as to what it meant. My analysis went like this:

1. In 2002, when the H-1B cheap labor visa quota was triple what it is today, Microsoft was telling its managers to, “Find something to offshore today.” So I knew that having effectively unlimited access to foreign labor was not keeping Microsoft in the U.S.
2. It takes time to decide to set up a new facility and the Senate’s bill that would have rewarded Microsoft with unlimited foreign workers in the U.S. was defeated only days earlier. So I knew that this move was not a result of the legislative defeat.
3. This was confirmed when Microsoft’s spokesman, Lou Gellos, said the facility was going to be opened regardless of the Senate action.
4. Then I thought about the practicable matter of suddenly dropping several hundred newly hired foreign workers into a new remote facility. How do manage that?
5. Worse yet, Microsoft, “hasn’t yet determined what types of software development will take place in the Vancouver office.”

Thus, it was clear to me that Microsoft was not setting up a tent in Vancouver because of immigration issues in the U.S.

My experience in the corporate world has been that whenever a company opened an office in a location that made no business sense when you looked under the baloney, the real reason was some senior manager wanted to live in that in the location.

I told every member of the media who asked me about this issue to look for a senior manager in Microsoft who is from Vancouver.

The responses to that opinion were along the lines of, “Why would Microsoft lie about this?” and “Why would a company spend the kind of money it takes to open an office just for the benefit of a manager?”

Not one media outlet printed my opinion.

Last week Microsoft announced that it was appointing Don Mattrick to head its Interactive Entertainment Division.

The Microsoft press release does not mention that Mr. Mattrick was born and reared in the Vancouver area nor does it mention that Mr. Mattrick will continue to live in the Vancouver area.

Does anyone want to bet that the Microsoft Vancouver facility will be in a location that is an easy commute to Mr. Mattrick’s house?

Via Kathy Shaidle I note that Barack Obama said in the debate that he couldn’t get a cab in New York, making him authentically black. “You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials.” and Ann Coulter has a good column about it.

Actually, I suspect a guy who looks like Obama wouldn’t frighten anybody, but here’s why drivers are nervous of blacks: when a New York Times writer asked one driver why he didn’t pick up black passengers,

…. the driver displayed a scar across his neck, a souvenir from a black customer who had robbed him. “I have to choose which is worse,” the driver said, “a fine or death.”

Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, cab drivers in New York no longer have to make that choice. Under his mayoralty, New York City became a lot safer for cab drivers – and everyone else. The murder rate went from about 2,000 murders a year under Mayor David Dinkins to about 700 by the end of Giuliani’s term. The last time a cab driver was killed in New York was in 1997.

In addition to making it safer for (mostly African-American and Muslim) cabbies to pick up African-Americans, Giuliani made it costly for them not to. He started “Operation Refusal” in 1999, sending out teams of black undercover cops and taxi commissioners to hail cabs and give fines to those who refused to pick up blacks.

Even back in 1999, in the first 12 hours of “Operation Refusal,” out of more than 800 cabs hailed, only five cab drivers refused to pick up a customer – one of whom was a white woman with children. And by the way, I’ve had dozens of cabs refuse to stop for me on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes they forget to turn on the “off duty” light, or they’re daydreaming or maybe they’ve read my columns on Muslims. [Obama hails a unicorn, By Ann Coulter, July 25, 2007]

And here’s a 1999 column from Thomas Sowell on why he used to rent a car when he’d go to Manhattan:

As a black male, I have for years either rented a car or had somebody pick me up to drive me to places in New York where I had to go at night, because I was not about to stand around waiting for a taxi to pick me up. There were no problems getting taxis in the daytime in midtown Manhattan, but night is a different ball game.

Do I resent having to make special arrangements? Of course. Do I blame the cabbies? No.

Given the crime statistics, do I have a right to demand that taxi drivers risk their lives for my convenience? What am I going to say to the widows and orphans of dead cabbies? “Hey, I have to get to the Manhattan Institute to give a talk and don’t feel like bothering with Hertz or Avis”? That would be a very hard sell, especially to the widows and orphans of black taxi drivers, who also pass up black males at night.

The tragic irony in all this is that things were not always this way. There was a time when my biggest problem with taxis in New York was being able to afford one. Crime is the real culprit, however much the demagogues may prefer “racism.” Do the cabbies suddenly become racists after sundown?

Professor David Levering Lewis’ great book about the 1920s, “When Harlem Was In Vogue,” refers to taxis available there at night and being hailed by whites from downtown after they emerged from Harlem parties in the wee hours of the morning. That was a different world. The reality was different, not just “perceptions.”[ Sorting by race, By Thomas Sowell, November 18, 1999]

The issue here is crime, and the question here is not whether Barack Obama can get a cab–he’s a United States Senator, he can go by limo–but whether Senator and Presidential hopeful Obama is for or against crime.