Plea deals are another way that victims and the public get shortchanged by the justice system. Prosecuters like avoiding the bother of organizing evidence for a trial. But citizens miss out by not learning all the details of terrible crimes (see the murder of Mary Nagle), which would viscerally educate about how illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.

Sadly, the drunk-driving killer of George Smith will only receive 2-3 years in jail due to the confluence of the plea deal plus North Carolina state sentencing guidelines.

“I will never forget the feeling of dread I experienced when I saw that big black Tahoe swerving across the median racing towards my car.,” Hageman said. “I was powerless to get out of the way and knew it was going to crash into me. I will never forget what it sounded like when I was hit, the metal crushing or the horrid smell of the airbag when it deployed.”

“What really impacted me most after I found out about his death is how many people considered him their best friend,” Chris said.

Some of those people sat in the courtroom holding up pictures of George.
[Illegal immigrant charged in fatal DWI gets minimal sentence, WTVD-TV Raleigh/Durham 11/15/07]

Another remembered George as a great friend: “He’s probably the best friend several thousand people had,” said Tommy Carraway of Goldsboro.

The death of George Smith was another preventable crime that need not have happened if the government had done its job of securing the borders (as promised in Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution).

Dan over at Ron Paul Graphs picked up on my recent blog and published a graph of the electability of Republican candidates the last 7 weeks. Ron Paul has been the clear leader in terms of electability as projected by real-money markets the last 7 weeks(Electability is the conditional probability of winning the presidency if nominated). John McCain did hold that title 2 of the last 7 weeks–and Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson both had brief spurts of electability. However, there is no evidence that the markets consider Huckabee or Romney anything but likely defeat for the GOP.

Now, it is illegal in many states for folks to use foreign betting sites to bet on US elections. Still, I can’t help but wondering if some supporters of some of the “long shot” candidates might not use the existence of these sites to assure that there is lots of money rapidly available to their campaign if they get early and unexpected victories.

For example the odds of someone other than Thompson, Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Hagel or Gingrich winning the New Hampshire primary is currently assessed by Intrade.com at around 11.9%. That means that a Paul supporter could theoretically place a bet of $100 and pledge $840.00(or $633.00 after taxes) to the Paul campaign contingent on the Paul campaign winning New Hampshire at the same cost to themselves as making a $100 donation before the New Hampshire primary. I suspect that would not would be entirely legal under current legislation-but I’m also not sure there are effective enforcement mechanisms that would prevent it.

Election markets theoretically change the “game” of political funding quite a bit. It means that candidates capable of early victories have ways to leverage those victories that didn’t previously exist. I’m also not sure if this entirely a bad thing–it might well reduce the power of campaign financing–and focus more attention on candidates that would be electable if they had adequate funding.

Just the existence of these betting markets is injecting truth into a political discourse dominated by corporate infomercials with pretenses of journalism. Someone with enough money can lie on an election market–but they can do so only by risking their money–and possibly enriching the supporters of other candidates.

For example, Ron Paul supporters could wave the powerful evidence of Ron Paul’s electability in front of the plutocratic Corporate Media, putting the RNC strategists in a double bind: Either let the evidence stand and admit the RNC establishment is neither competent nor inclined to win general election, or buy down the prediction market on Ron Paul to the point Ron Paul supporters have extremely favorable odds to buy in and rake in fast profits early in the primary season.

Immigration has always been a populist issue. Those who oppose rapid replacement of the existing American people should welcome any developments that threaten to unseat established interests that have supported mass immigration.

William Saletan’s defense of James Watson in MSM Slate (owned by the Washington Post) is turning out to be a three parter and he’s not holding back. Today, he looks at the environmentalist attacks on hereditarian ideas and concludes:

“When I look at all the data, studies, and arguments, I see a prima facie case for partial genetic influence. I don’t see conclusive evidence either way in the adoption studies. I don’t see closure of the racial IQ gap to single digits. And I see too much data that can’t be reconciled with the surge or explained by current environmental theories. I hope the surge surprises me. But in case it doesn’t, I want to start thinking about how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic difference, even between races. More on that tomorrow.” [More]

Will the shameful case of wrongful imprisonment for Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean turn out to be the Mexichurian Watergate?

It’s clear that the Bush administration acted to please Mexico by smacking down the Border Patrol in prosecuting two of its finest for simply doing their jobs. Drug cartels must have done cartwheels over the way their boy Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila (shown below) was treated, i.e. given a government-issued border-crossing card that he used to smuggle further loads of drugs. For criminals, it doesn’t get any better than that.

But today’s news is the renewed effort to get Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean out of prison and reunited with their families on the occasion of Aldrete-Davila’s indictment.

We have heard that President Bush is a big friend of family reunification, so he should regard pardoning the officers as an opportunity to practice compassionate conservatism.

Top conservatives have joined ranking House leaders in their bid to pressure the president to pardon two jailed El Paso Border Patrol agents for the nonfatal shooting of a Mexican drug smuggler in 2005.

In a letter to be delivered tomorrow to the White House, 31 major conservative petitioners joined a campaign being led by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and presidential candidate, to ask President Bush to pardon Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean before Thanksgiving.

The letter comes on the heels of the arrest of admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila on charges of trafficking marijuana while he was profiting from the federal-immunity deal as the star witness in the shooting case against the agents.

“History has proven that the mere words and deeds of a president can change the course of history and profoundly affect both the tone and direction of the nation”s moral character for generations to come,” said the letter signed by 31 petitioners, mostly from Christian conservative groups and national security organizations.
[Pressure mounts to pardon Border agents, By Sara A. Carter, Washington Times, November 18, 2007]

For more, listen to investigative reporter Sara Carter [MP3] on the John and Ken Show last week.

The flip side of the opportunity presented to the Republican party of making gains by a sensible immigration policy (an opportunity I’ve predicted they won’t take) is the danger presented to Democrats of being marginalized.

In spite of Democrats concern for minority voters, they do need a lot of votes from regular Americans, and the Wall Street Journal reports that they may be losing them:

The debate over how to deal with illegal immigrants split the Republican Party two years ago, infuriating its social-conservative base and driving away Hispanic voters. It could be even more perilous for Democrats.

Democratic strategists believe that Hispanic voters could swing a decisive handful of states — including Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada — to the Democrats in 2008, ensuring the election of a Democratic president and cementing a Democratic majority for years to come. But the party’s blue-collar, middle-income and African-American supporters are increasingly angry about illegal immigration, much of it Hispanic.

Democrats “are pretty jumpy on the issue,” says Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who pushed for immigration overhaul in the House. “They would prefer to allow the Republicans to shepherd the Hispanic votes into the Democratic column without having to scare away a single other voter themselves,” he says.

“That’s not likely to happen. “This election could turn on this issue if we don’t handle it intelligently,” says Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate. After a recent Iowa City foreign-policy speech, four of the 30 questions passed up to him from the audience were about immigration.[Immigration Is the Question, By JUNE KRONHOLZ November 19, 2007]

This is a graph of a poll they took, showing that Democratic voters aren’t all in favor of mass immigration:

Remember, a large majority of the American people are in favor of reducing immigration. This includes both parties. Unfortunately, a large majority of Washington politicians are in favor of increasing immigration. This also includes both parties.

Steve Sailer’s post about the problems of tourists going to see the “government yard in Trenchtown” that Bob Marley sang about in “No Woman, No Cry” reminded me that both Norman Podhoretz and Florence King had found it necessary to tell historically minded inquirers that a visit to the scenes of their youth would be almost certain death. The problem for Marleyphile tourists is that Trenchtown is what the BBC describes as a “Jamaican ghetto” and a “gritty, violence-wracked district of Kingston.”

The problem with Norman Podhoretz and Florence King is that Podhoretz grew up in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn, and Miss King in Washington, DC.

Norman Podhoretz:

Perhaps as good a place as any to begin is with a phone call I received some years ago from a woman doing publicity for the Brooklyn division of the New York Public Library system. From her broad midwestern accent alone, I could tell that she came from neither Brooklyn nor anywhere else in New York, but even without that detail, the question she asked me would have proved definitively that she knew next to nothing about the city.

The question was this: As one of a number of “prominent people” born and bred in Brooklyn, would I be willing to have my picture included in a brochure celebrating an upcoming anniversary of the library? I would be honored, I said; just send the photographer up to my office. “Oh no,” she answered, “we want to take your picture in front of the local branch you used as a kid.”

I had to pause before replying with a laugh that I had no objection to this arrangement provided they could send me in a tank, or at least with a police escort. And they had better do the same for the photographer. Even if the branch from which I had regularly borrowed books many years earlier was still standing-which I doubted-the neighborhood surrounding it had become a war zone, and any middle-class white who ventured into it would be lucky ever to get out in one piece, if at all.

It was clear from her hemming and hawing that she was trying to decide whether to take this as a piece of especially extravagant hyperbole or a shameless display of racism; and since I never heard from her again, I concluded that she had opted for the latter. Yet I was exaggerating only slightly about the danger of setting foot in the 1970s or ’80s into the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where I had spent the first twenty years of my life (1930-50), during most of which Fiorello H. LaGuardia was the mayor of New York.

Florence King, writing in The Florence King Reader, (Everybody’s Gotta Right To Be Famous, p. 292) about two extremely annoying female fans (stalkers, more or less) who had been pestering her with letters, and had written that they planned to make a pilgrimage to her childhood home…in a formerly white neighborhood in the District of Columbia:

Living through an extended period of mental tension affects different people in different ways. With me, release takes the form of giddy, cackling mischief. It occurred to me that if The Two carried out their plan to make a pilgrimage to my old D.C. neighborhood, my problem would be most efficaciously solved. I grew up in the section that was burned down during the Martin Luther King riots. The 14th Street of my childhood with its segregated dimestore lunch counters is now known as the Combat Zone; the Park Road of my birth is now lined with crack houses; and Meridian Hill Park, where Mama took me in my stroller, has been renamed for Malcolm X.

All I had to do was wait, and the Brothers would rescue me from my dilemma. Moreover, it would be the book-promotion coup of the century, the stuff that Jacqueline Susann’s dreams were made of, something not even Irving Mansfield would dare try to arrange: two bodies found at 14th and Park Road with autographed copies of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady clutched in their lifeless hands.
It was all but guaranteed that two lone white women roaming around such a neighborhood would get into serious trouble. When I thought more about it my mischief receded. Since they obviously knew nothing about Washington I felt it was my responsibility to warn them, but I couldn’t do it without getting myself in deeper. They would interpret my warning as loving concern and be encouraged. For my own sake, I would have to stand by and do nothing while they walked into a trap.

In fact, she “detonated into a towering rage” and wrote them “what is known in certain quarters of the publishing world as ‘one of Florence’s letters.”

This cured them of writing her letters, (it would have cured me, too,) and may have saved their lives. But it’s important to remember such stories, when you hear multiculturalists like Jane Elliott say white flight is caused by racism. Maybe it is, but not white racism.

After a great triumph for Oklahoma and the nation against the forces of illegal invasion, Randy Terrill, author of H.B. 1804, has more plans.
According to a report in the Oklahoma media :

When the Legislature returns in February, Terrill said he plans to file what he is calling the “son of HB 1804.” He said he will seek to make English the official language in Oklahoma. The bill also will allow law enforcement not only to hold illegal immigrants until they can be deported but will give authority to seize assets used to transport or house illegal immigrants.
School districts would have to provide a more accurate accounting of how many children, here illegally, attend their schools. The law that went into effect this month ends practically all public services for illegal immigrants except for schooling and emergency health care…

…(Terrill’s) proposed legislation would give financial incentives to local law enforcement agencies to send officers to federal immigration training.[Author of HB 1804 says he's proud law is 'setting the standard for the nation', By Jennifer Mock, NewsOK.com, November 11, 2007]

And, Terrill has a clever plan for assaulting the insane anchor baby policy:

Terrill also would like to crack down on children whose mothers come to the United States to give birth. The U.S. Constitution states children born in this country are U.S. citizens. He would like to see the state be able to refuse to issue a birth certificate for these children, instead requesting one from the consulate of the parents’ nation of origin.

This is great news, because if we are to get a handle on this problem, the anchor baby loophole must be dealt with as soon as possible.