James Kirchick [send him mail] in The New Republic has found a whole bunch of old Ron Paul Reports, and has been looking through them for shocking turns of phrase. He found several. [Angry White Man | The bigoted past of Ron Paul, By James Kirchick, The New Republic, January 08, 2008] TNR also has excerpts from the letter online here, and the issue published at the time of the Los Angeles riots is available here.

Dave Weigel has interviewed Ron Paul briefly for Reason Magazine, where they’re tearing their hair out over this. Weigel says “Paul’s position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.” (More here.)

In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.”

People seem to think that he was calling blacks “animals.”This was actually the Mount Pleasant riots, the largest in DC since the 1968 Martin Luther King riots, and it was immigrant Hispanics rioting against the African-American city government, so that’s not what what’s going on here, it’s just a normal headline like “Inmates Take Over Asylum.”

Not all the the quotes are things I agree with, but what the hell, I don’t always agree with what’s written in VDARE.com. But we’re committed to presenting the facts (Kirchick’s references to the newsletter’s ’s criticism of MLK contain no hint of what is actually known about MLK’s personal life and plagiarism, which, I promise you, will be unfamiliar to TNR readers ) and we need to keep pushing the limits of what the Mainstream Media is not saying. But there’s a paragraph in the hit piece that really defines what it’s about:

Ron Paul is not going to be president. But, as his campaign has gathered steam, he has found himself increasingly permitted inside the boundaries of respectable debate. He sat for an extensive interview with Tim Russert recently. He has raised almost $20 million in just three months, much of it online. And he received nearly three times as many votes as erstwhile front-runner Rudy Giuliani in last week’s Iowa caucus. All the while he has generally been portrayed by the media as principled and serious, while garnering praise for being a “straight-talker.”

The New Republic wants to police the “boundaries of respectable debate”–that’s what this is about. See how many “conservatives” pile on to help them.

In Slate, Hitch unloads on Obama. It’s a lot of fun, but Hitchens totally misses how similar Obama is to Christopher Hitchens, Esq.

Identity Crisis: There’s something pathetic and embarrassing about our obsession with Barack Obama’s race.

To put it squarely and bluntly, is it because he is or is it because he isn’t? To phrase it another way, is it because of what he says or what he doesn’t say? Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool. He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive. Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been “our first black president.”

Or perhaps not. Isn’t there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be “black,” anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson? Would we accept, if Obama’s mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president?

This is a a very odd thing for Christopher Hitchens to say. According to an old drinking buddy of Hitch’s, he used to claim he was “the world’s biggest anti-Semite,” but then, Hitchens made the belated discovery that he is something like 1/8th or 1/16th Jewish through the maternal line. The famous atheist has taken to dropping in on synagogues as a gesture of ethnic solidarity and moved far in the neocon direction politically, much to the bemusement of his brother Peter Hitchens.

The simple reality is that identity politics really are important to people, including Obama and Christopher Hitchens.

(more…)

Senator John Edwards (D-SC) is already beating up on poor Ms. Hilary (which is probably more of a hobby than a strategy) but not because she is the candidate for him to beat in the Primary election:

I think he sees her as the candidate to beat for the VP slot on Senator Obama’s Presidential ticket next fall.

But maybe little Eddie should be careful: What if it becomes Hilary’s Presidential ticket? Seriously, tonight’s battle in New Hampshire is only the second of many Primary elections to come—it’s still anybody’s game and right now, Hilary is in the lead!

Gee whiz, Senator McCain is winning (according to FOX News but only 14% precincts are reporting as of 8:30 EST) in NH just like he did in 2000…you know, before he lost the nomination to Bush II. Remember: New Hampshire has an extraordinarily large number of registered Independent voters. Registered Independents in NH can vote for any candidate, Republican or Democrat…or Green Party, or Peace and Freedom party, or Vampires…either way, they enjoy the benefits of Open Primary selection.

(Not kidding, remember that kooky guy who ran for office in Minnesota as a Vampire? Yeah, the freaks come out at night…)

The only thing keeping McCain alive ANYWHERE is the fact that he backed off his ridiculous position on illegal immigration. He stopped playing patty-cake with Ted Kennedy and started listening to all the conservatives who oppose illegal immigration.

I haven’t heard him say “path to citizenship” or “undocumented workers” in ages which for him must have required at least a few rounds of good old fashioned shock therapy.

The night isn’t over–I’ll be back to report the totals in just a bit!

It’s long past time for one of the Republicans promising defense of America’s borders and immigration laws to tell intrusive Mexicans to shut their taco holes about our internal affairs.

Mexico’s foreign minister accused U.S. presidential candidates Monday of worsening an already “adverse climate” for Mexican migrants and vowed to redouble efforts to protect the rights of her country’s citizens living and working in the United States.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of a conference for Mexican diplomats here, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said, “Being effective in the defense and support of the migrants implies treating them the same way whether they are in Mexico or outside of the country.” She did not specify what steps would be taken.

Mexican officials have said they are concerned that migrants are being treated unfairly in workplaces and, in some cases, being denied public services. The presidential campaign has frequently inflamed tensions on issues related to immigration.
[Mexico Rebukes U.S. Candidates On Migrant Issues Washington Post, Jan 7 2008]

You see, if illegal Mexicans were denied public services on the American taxpayer’s tab, then they would have to pay more for their own upkeep and would have less cash available to send home to Mexico in the form of remittances — over $24 billion in 2006, $13 billion from California alone.

Guess what? That new Arizona employer sanctions law, well, the Mexican government doesn’t like it ! Big surprise, huh ?
According to an article in the Associated Press:

The Mexican government promised Friday (January 4th) to defend any Mexicans affected by an Arizona law that punishes employers who hire undocumented migrants.

And what is that new law?

The Arizona law, which went into effect Tuesday (January 1st) , prohibits businesses from knowingly employing illegal immigrants. Violators face business license suspensions for up to 10 days; a second offense triggers permanent revocation.

Notice that the new law goes after employers, which is one of the things we need to get this situation under control. But, of course, the Mexican government does not approve:

The (Foreign Relations) department said it will “intervene, through its consulates, in any situation in which the rights of Mexican workers are affected, regardless of their immigration status.”

A big part of the problem here is that despite all the meddling carried out by Mexican diplomats, our own government allows it. Can you imagine the U.S. government reprimanding a meddling Mexican diplomat?

By the way, there are five Mexican consulates in Arizona, in Phoenix, Tucson, Nogales, Douglas and Yuma.

Meanwhile, in political news, guess which American candidate has been attacked in Mexico?

Mike Huckabee. Yes, the same Mike Huckabee who encouraged illegal immigration as governor of Arkansas, who actively worked to set up a Mexican consulate in Little Rock, who joked to LULAC about white Southerners becoming a minority? That Mike Huckabee.

Jeremy Schwartz reports in a blog entry entitled “Mexicans Fear Huckabee” that

A week ago, most Mexicans had never heard of Mike Huckabee. After the former Baptist minister’s victory in Iowa, many here now view Huckabee as a danger. Huckabee is generally seen as the most conservative of the Republican candidates and as such, the toughest on immigration (Mitt Romney might have something to say about that characterization).

Schwartz quotes Mexico’s Reforma newspaper:

“The triumph of Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucus is not good news for Mexico. It happens that the ex-governor of Arkansas … is winning supporters in great part through his plan to seal the border with Mexico with a wall and more Border Patrol. He also has the support of such “wonderful” people as James Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigrant Minuteman movement and the actor Chuck Norris, who played the role of a violent Texas Ranger.”

And according to Diego Petersen Farah, writing in Milenio :

“Huckabee’s position on immigration is absolutely radical…Without a doubt, for Mexico and Latin America in general, Barack Obama would be a much more empathetic president, although not free of problems.”

Well, that’s gratitude isn’t it ?

Meanwhile, way down south of the border, even Chile took time to bash the construction of the U.S. border wall (which may not ever get completed anyhow). According to a report by Vittorio Hernandez:

Chile has joined the growing number of nations against the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Chilean Senate passed a resolution formally protesting the continued building of a wall on the border, saying it is an insult to Latin American countries.

The article reports that

Chilean Senators Jaime Naranjo and Pedro Munoz authored the resolution on December. They said the wall is a racist policy that goes against various international human rights treaties.

There was a little opposition to the resolution though:

The Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee warned against pushing through with the resolution since it may be interpreted as intervening into the U.S.’ internal affairs.

When it came time to vote though, it sailed through:

But the Senate nevertheless approved the resolution, with few legislators voting against it.

One of the resolution’s authors had this to say:

Munoz told Santiago Times in today’s world of globalization, walls are no longer acceptable, citing the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany as evidence.

Yes, the tired old Berlin Wall analogy. How irrelevant! Here’s what the resolution calls for:

The resolution asks Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to order Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley to inform the U.S. government of its stand and to ask for a halt to the construction. It also sets a national policy to side with Mexico and other Central American countries if they will bring the issue to the United Nations.

So why is Chile, which is thousands of miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, getting mixed up in this?

There has been some immigration from Chile to the U.S. through the years (since the 1850s, in fact) but the numbers have not been that great. And Chile has one of Latin America’s most successful economies.

But apparently, the main reasons for the resolution are Latin American solidarity and the fact that it’s an easy way for Chilean senators to show off and feel good about themselves .