The New York Times has just reported that Mike Huckabee(!) carried a plurality (36%) of Iowa caucus-goers who said immigration was their top issue. And it was the top top issue: named by a third of the caucus-goers, vs. only 17% for the war in Iraq.

I say (!) because Huckabee’s record on illegal immigration (and race-pandering in general) is awful, appalling, terrible. Even worse, like George W. Bush in 2000, he is obviously emotionally committed to illegal immigration. Just recently, he instantly equated the attempt to deny illegals tax-payer funded scholarships with being beastly to children.

Neverthless, Huckabee has simply been able to outpromise his rivals. This has taken some doing, because there’s been a gratifying bidding war. But Huckabee now has one of the strongest patriotic immigration reform platforms according to NumbersUSA.

Of course, you have to wonder at the sincerity, and even stability, of anyone who can flip-flop like this. But it worked. In contrast, Ron Paul started with one of the strongest, and obviously sincere, patriotic reform platforms and has let the issue be taken away from him. He got only 9% of Iowa immigration reformers.

Immigration authorities have announced that unruly illegal aliens in detention centers will be segregated from other detainees for 5 days. Apparently, they are currently allowed to isolate them indefinitely, but non-government organizations defending human rights of illegal aliens had demanded that there be some kind of limit on such segregation. So immigration authorities finally settled on 5 days as the maximum for segregation of unruly illegal aliens, although the NGOs had held out for 3 days.

Furthermore, immigration authorities have charged that some groups fighting for human rights of detained illegals are really criminal organizations, and some are actually profiting off illegal immigration!

By the way, did I mention that this story took place in Mexico? It’s Mexican immigration authorities who isolate unruly illegal alien detainees , and who criticized human rights organizations!

Meanwhile, down south in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, detained Cuban illegal aliens - joined by Central Americans–have rioted in a Mexican detention center, protesting against violations of human rights and bad food. The press was not allowed inside the facility, but they saw the police go there and could hear the shouting and see smoke coming out of the facility.

As Marcus Epstein noted on Wednesday, William Kristol, recently fired as a columnist by Time, has now been hired as an op-ed columnist by the New York Times.

Yet, the NYT already had David Brooks as their invade the world / invite the world columnist, so it’s hard to see what Kristol brings to the table that the more talented Brooks wasn’t already supplying better. Granted, Brooks sometimes sounds like his calls for more war aren’t really sincere, that he doesn’t pay much attention to which foreigners to slaughter next, that he’s just recycling stuff Kristol, Krauthammer and Ko. fed him. But, the pro forma nature of Brooks’s bloodlust is a good thing.

I guess the neocon world view has been proven so valid over the last four and a half years that the NYT just had to double up. After all, the neocons are the only respectable voices of conservatism.

Barack Obama has won the Democratic Iowa Caucus, and that means that the voters want change, but it also means that Mrs. Clinton is going to get really nasty. Is Barack Obama electable? Seriously? Maybe not, but see if you can find a Democrat to admit it. Of course, anything his Democratic opponents do to him will be considered to have “disparate impact.”

Mike Huckabee got the Iowa Republicans to vote for him. He’s a lot more electable, for a number of reasons. One problem is that his politics, except where they involve pro-life issues, are indistinguishable from a left-wing Democrat’s.(See Mike Huckabee And Hispanics Vs. America, August 17, 2007)

Ron Paul was fifth in the Republican Caucus,  which is to say, just about where McCain was, within limits of error. Look for the media to keep on saying how viable and Presidential McCain is, (the media themselves are actually McCain’s base) and look for them to not say anything like that about Ron Paul.

The double murder of Amina and Sarah Said near Dallas at the hands of their Egyptian immigrant father has honor killing written all over it: Muslim male arrives in the mid-1980s with his family, fails to assimilate but his female children do, expecting to lead American lives with individual freedom. He responds by killing them.

It’s another family culture clash that led to death, a syndrome that has become rather common in Europe, but not as much here. Yet.

Hopefully this terrible crime will open some eyes in this country that with Muslim immigration comes the whole gamut of culturally embedded pathology typical to the Religion of Peace. Many elite opinion makers believe that America does assimilation better and therefore we citizens have nothing to fear from Muslims residing in our communities. Polling of actual Muslims, however, shows that assumption is wrong-headed and dangerous.

Certainly the perp in question will eventually get Texas justice, courtesy of Old Sparky, and will learn assimilation the hard way.

Area police continue to search for a man who they believe killed his two teenage daughters and left their bodies in a taxi at an Irving hotel. [...]

She said the sisters, who wore typical American clothes, didn’t talk much about their family. “I didn’t know they were Muslims until she told me they were Egyptian and Muslim,” Liz said.
[Lewisville cabdriver sought in slayings of 2 teen daughters, Dallas Morning News, Jan 3, 2008]

Friends: Murdered Teens Were Afraid Of Their Dad

Sisters, Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, were each shot to death. Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. “”He was really strict about guy relationships and talking to guys, as well as the things she wears,” said Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers. “I’m definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her.”

And from Yemen, here’s a timely opinion piece: There must be violence against women. (See also Robert Spencer’s commentary.)

Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.

This Muslim writer expresses the traditional view of Islam, that women should be subjugated, which is being implanted into America with increased numbers of Muslim immigrants — tens of thousands every year. Why does Washington continue to welcome foreigners with values antithetical to our own? There’s no upside to this policy, just more deaths of innocents, like the Said sisters.