The Mexidata.info website, where I write a weekly column, was the scene of a recent dialogue between two Americans in Mexico–Nancy Conroy, editor/publisher of the Gringo Gazette and myself.

The topic was border incursions by members of the Mexican military or facsimiles thereof. Nancy and I have differing views on how such occurrences should be publicized. You can see there is some diversity of opinion among Americans in Mexico.

My first article in the dialogue was ““Are Mexican Soldiers Involved in Border Area Crime?” .

That was followed by Nancy’s “Why US and Mexican Officials Downplay Border Incursions”.

That in turn was followed by my column entitled “Columnists Debate Candidness in US-Border Issues.”

Ann Coulter has column on M. Stanton Evans’s new book on Joseph McCarthy (mentioned here by Kevin Lamb)

Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own perfidy, liberals were guilty of every sin they lyingly imputed to McCarthy. There were no “McCarthyites” until liberals came along. [AnnCoulter.com MCCARTHYISM: THE ROSETTA STONE OF LIBERAL LIES November 7, 2007]

But it’s not only liberals as such, it’s neoconservatives, as Sam Francis noted when Ann Coulter wrote her own book on McCarthy in 2003. [The Neocons Launch A Coulterkampf, August 7, 2003]

For her pains, she was attacked by Andrew Sullivan, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Steve Hayward and Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online,David Brooks in the Weekly Standard, David Horowitz, and Arnold Beichman. (Beichman’s attack on her, [McCarthyism Up Close, Washington Times, August 7, 2003, pay archive], is much harder to find than her robust response to it. ) But all these people are nominally Republican.

David Horowitz wrote just recently that

Alarms about the political subversion of the academic curriculum were first sounded more than a quarter of a century ago with such books as The Closing of the American Mind, Illiberal Education and Tenured Radicals.

Er, no. They were first sounded by conservatives in the Twenties and Thirties, continued in the Forties and Fifties, in what is called the McCarthy Era, and were being sounded really loudly in the Sixties and Seventies, when Horowitz was supporting the Black Panthers and the Viet Cong. (I have a copy of his Corporations And The Cold War (1969) on my bookshelf somewhere.)

A “quarter of a century ago” is when Horowitz and others started to have “second thoughts.”

Sam Francis said that once you understood what neoconservatism is–“a brand of liberalism that likes to masquerade as a phony conservatism, mainly so it can wheedle influence in the Republican Party—the puzzle is solved.”

That about covers it.

Just this weekend, we poor dumb Americans finally learned for the first time about one of the most important Soviet atomic bomb spies: George Koval, a GRU-trained agent who penetrated the Oak Ridge and Dayton atomic bomb manufacturing plants, then fled back to the Soviet Union in, apparently, 1948.

The U.S. government interviewed people who knew him, but then swore them to secrecy. In other words, there was a U.S. government cover-up of this horrific breach of security that lasted for over half a century until this month, according to the NYT:

“On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.”

And, it seems highly likely that Koval’s handler or handlers within our government are still being covered up for. So, is it time to rewrite the history of the McCarthy Era as well?

This article from News10 in Sacramento is so much fun I have to mine two blog posts out of it.

Educators Confront Achievement Gap; Is “White Privilege” to Blame?
Written by Karen Massie, Reporter
Written by Dana Howard, Anchor/Reporter

One of the stars of this conference called by the politically ambitious California state superintendent of schools, Democrat Jack O’Connell, is O’Connell’s chief consultant on racial sensitivity training, Glenn Singleton. The SF Chronicle wrote:

Also on center stage will be Glenn Singleton, the coach O’Connell hired for the Education Department’s racial sensitivity classes. Singleton runs a San Francisco consulting firm called Pacific Educational Group and is the author of “Courageous Conversations about Race: a Strategy for Achieving Equity in Schools.”

So, let’s listen in on one of those “courageous conversations” brought to you by News10 in Sacramento:

For many people, especially white Americans, there were two words brought up at this week’s summit as the principal cause for the achievement gap — words that will sting. They are “white privilege.”

The mention of such a term often brings a plethora of sighs and groans, while at the same time inciting others to say, ‘It’s time somebody called it like it is.

News10 brought together a group of presenters at the summit. Bill Huyett is the superintendent of Lodi Unified School District, where he has told his faculty and staff they must deal with the issue of ‘white privilege’ if they are to close the achievement gap.

(more…)

Recently, I checked the market odds at the Irish betting market Intrade.

Now, I looked at the odds of each major candidate getting their party’s nomination vs. getting the presidency. What is striking here is that Al Gore is the most electable candidate the Democrats have–by far. Ron Paul leads the pack of Republican hopefuls:

The odds of nomination and the odds of getting the presidency are both from active, real money markets that continually change. This technique has been shown to be better for predicting election results than polls. I got the “electability” measure by dividing the odds of getting the presidency by the odds of getting the nomination for each candidate. If we assume that none of these candidates would make a third party run, that is a pretty good indicator on how well each might do if they got the nomination.(This class of analysis is similar to Bayesian probability).

What do Al Gore and Ron Paul both have in common? Well ,they are both rather skeptical about the war in Iraq–and have a track record of both being cool on immigration relative to other serious candidates. (When Gore was a Senator from the state of Tennessee, he had an A- record on immigration. Thompson, as a Republican from the same state, got a C.)

Paul, of course, is an active candidate who raised $4.2 Million in his last major funding event–and will likely raise twice that amount in December during his Boston Tea Party event. The odds say that we are much more likely to see a Ron Paul candidacy than a Gore candidacy.

What the odds here also say in concrete terms, is that Ron Paul is the most electable major Republican candidate. This isn’t my opinion–or that of any one person. It is the evidence presented by a reputable, active, real money market. If folks think that market is wrong–they can place bets and make money. What is required now is that the masses of the Republican party be awakened to the fact of Ron Paul’s electability. We can fully expect to see some humiliating defeats for McCain in the not so distant future. McCain was supposed to be the electable candidate–but he has shown himself to be neither electable in a general election nor capable of getting his party’s nomination. If folks understand that Paul is the electable candidate, those people-and their money will have someplace to go.

Now, there are people in the Republican party who are deeply concerned about whether their candidate will be elected. Those folks generally don’t know it, but they should be supporting Ron Paul. Once McCain and Thompson are out of the way, they’ll have a choice between a candidate who may be greeted by his children making nomination speeches at the Democratic National convention and a man with a long family history of polygamy who denies his personal interest in that topic–both of whom are relatively non-electable–and a man with a serious track record of ideological integrity who has a more serious shot at getting the presidency.

One thing missing here: is an analysis of how the nomination of different candidates might impact the nomination of other candidates. I tend to think that a “Draft Gore” movement in the Democratic party becomes far more likely if Paul gets the nomination-because it is only then the Democrats will feel the need to actually do significant work to get their candidate elected.

I don’t think that Paul has really thought the immigration issue through yet. Likewise, I don’t think he’s fully thought through what he’ll do if his policies have rather different effects than he’s hoping for. Still, there is hope on that front–and right now, we have a country and a world that desperately need a little hope.

Remember this week’s 4,000-educator conference convened by California state superintendent of schools (and potential 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Jack O’Connell to close the racial achievement gap?

A month after the James Watson witch hunt, doing a Google search on the entire WWW for “Watson’s defender” brings up zero hits, while “Watson’s defenders” brings up one page. “In defense of James Watson” finds one page, as does “In defense of James D. Watson.”

On the other hand “‘James Watson’ racist” brings up 173,000 hits.

Funny how getting verbally horse-whipped for several weeks by polls, voter fury, fellow politicians and Lou Dobbs can lead even a Democrat politician to sanity.

Here’s Gov. Elliot Spitzer in full arrogance mode Oct. 31, proclaiming that his dangerous scheme to reward illegal aliens with New York state drivers licenses was opposed by racists:

SPITZER: The sort of racist venom that has underlined much of the criticism I think is shameful because what we are really talking about here is security and how we run our society.
[New York Governor Spitzer on American Morning Transcript CNN]

Apparently 70 percent of the American people are racist, according to Spitzer reasoning, since polling in early November showed opposition to DLs for illegals running at that level.

But when he decided to roll back the idiot policy, he surrendered politely to the public opinion he had so recently insulted:

Governor Spitzer said, “I have listened to the legitimate concerns of the public, and those who would be affected by my proposal, and have concluded that pushing forward unilaterally in the face of such opposition would be counterproductive.”
[Spitzer drops license plan News 10 Now 11/14/07]

Aren’t we all relieved to no longer be considered racists by Gov. Spitzer?

At least the flipflop was in the right direction!

A year ago, prominent Harvard political scientist Robert D. “Bowling Alone” Putnam let slip that according to a massive survey of American communities he had completed 5 years before:

In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.

Financial Times columnist John Lloyd wrote “Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’”

Apparently wishing to validate Dr. Putnam’s finding, a parents’ school advisory board in LA has been putting on a clinic in diverse distrust:[See also Peter Brimelow's comments here]

Discord roils L.A. Unified parent panel: Acrimony with racial overtones has plagued the advisory council. The key issue: whether meetings in Spanish should be allowed.

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2007

For months, parents on a Los Angeles Unified School District advisory council have disagreed over whether their meetings should be conducted in Spanish or English. Such arguments became so abusive that district officials canceled meetings for two months and brought in dispute-resolution specialists and mental-health counselors.

(more…)

This from Jerry Seper who will have more on it later:

Border violence rising against authorities

November 14, 2007

By Jerry Seper - For more on this story, check tomorrow’s editions of The Washington Times.

Alien and drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border have spawned a rise in violence against federal, state and local law enforcement authorities, who say they are outmanned and outgunned.

“They’ve got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems, spotters and can react faster than we are able to,” said Shawn P. Moran, a 10-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego.

“And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles,” he said. “There are so many agent ‘rockings’ that few are even reported anymore. If we wrote them all up, that’s all we would be doing.”

Assaults against Border Patrol agents have more than doubled over the past two years, many by Mexico-based alien and drug gangs more inclined than ever to use violence as a means of ensuring success in the smuggling of people and contraband.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledges that although the department has begun to make progress against “the criminals and thugs” operating along the U.S.-Mexico border, “we are beginning to see more violence in some border communities and against our Border Patrol agents as these traffickers … seek to protect their turf.

“We must provide the manpower and resources they need to carry out their duties, and we are working hard to make sure they get them,” Mr. Chertoff said during a speech in Houston this month.

Of course, what they need is to mobilize volunteers from the local citizenry, the same way you do in a natural disaster. There may only be as many Border Patrolmen as Congress has funded, which is not enough, but there’s the American people themselves, who have their own weapons, GPS devices, cellphones, pickup trucks, horses and whatever’s needful to protect the border. They’re even organized into a variety of groups known as the Minutemen. (See our Minutemen Map for more information.)

But so far, Secretary Chertoff, President Bush, and the Border Patrol have acted like they don’t want help.