Frances Semler, the Kansas City Parks commissioner who’s been under attack by La Raza, has resigned. You can read her resignation letter here in PDF.

A local blogger, Eric Barton, writes

The letter is telling about Semler’s state of mind. There’s a lot of anger here, directed at a variety of targets, including The Kansas City Star and illegals. Semler ends the letter, and perhaps the controversy, with all caps: “I feel BETRAYED.”Plog - So Long, Semler

Well, yes, a massive national and local campaign of harassment will do that to you. The point is that Semler, who as a Parks Commissioner would be responsible for things like grass and benches, was associated with the Minutemen, who are defending the border from illegals. La Raza has been threatening boycotts, and for some reason, so have African-American civil rights types,  in spite of the fact that  African-Americans are victims, rather than beneficiaries of illegal immigration.

I was interviewed by Silvio Canto, Jr. on his show, you can listen to it here (scroll down to where it says “Click here for the show!”). Topics include
Christmas in Mexico, President Calderon, the Mexican Congress, the drug cartels and weapons, the need for energy reform and illegal immigration.

Cracked.com features many lists of amusing things–one of the most recent is on the subject of racist Disney cartoons, racist here mostly meaning stereotypical.

These old Disney movies are a little bit like your aging Uncle Frank. Honestly, he means well when he points out that Will Smith is “well-spoken.” It’s just that he, like the assemblage of clips below, dates from a time when people were unfairly characterized by their ethnic background (the acceptable methods are, of course, religion, geography, sexual preference and income).
The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters | Cracked.

I think they’re wrong in a couple of instances, and they missed a couple of obvious ones. The first is the Siamese Cat Song, from Lady And The Tramp, and the second, possibly invisible to the writers of Cracked.com is the portrayal of the white settlers in Pocahontas.

I guess that depends on your definition, and whether you believe the story told about the powerful California Assembly Speaker in today’s San Francisco Chronicle…

Life began modestly for Nunez, who was born Dec. 26, 1966, at a San Diego hospital to Pablo and Soledad Nunez. The couple, who lived in Tijuana, wanted to have at least one child born on the other side of the border, and their opportunity came thanks to a program that allowed impoverished Mexicans to work in the United States.
[How Nunez rose to power so fast, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan 22, 2008]

Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora doesn’t care for American gun laws. After the Virginia Tech shooting last year he said that

American law seems absurd to me, because ….the citizens can easily acquire arms. American society lives the consequences of this on a daily basis, and it has begun to be reflected upon as a result of that Korean not long ago.

One of the reasons Medina Mora doesn’t like our gun laws is that arms purchased in the U.S. are being smuggled to Mexican drug cartels.
The Mexican government wants an open border for Mexicans traveling northward, but it doesn’t want weapons traveling southward. It doesn’t work that way though.
Many of the arms that wind up in Mexico are purchased at gun shows in Texas and Arizona, using an intermediary “straw purchaser”–someone who is legally entitled to own a gun in one of those states.
On January 16th , U.S. Attorney General Mukasey met in Mexico City with Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora (who doesn’t like U.S. gun rights, remember) and President Calderon.[ U.S., Mexico Set Sights on Stopping Flow of Weapons to Cartels , By Alfredo Corchado, Laurence Iliff, Dallas Morning News, June 17th, 2008]
Mukasey has announced a new operation known as “Project Gunrunner” designed to prevent the flow of weapons to the Mexican cartels. Mukasy said that,

I certainly foresee a tightening-up of the way gun dealers distribute guns if, in fact, they are selling to straw purchasers. I see tighter enforcement of regulations requiring that they get proper identification and that they check these people before they sell guns, and inevitably we are going to find people who are not doing what they ought to do, and they will be prosecuted.

Part of Project Gunrunner includes the sharing of a database with Mexican officials:

The new measures will also give Mexican law enforcement officials greater access to the eTrace computer database in the United States, allowing them to use the serial numbers to trace weapons used in Mexican crimes to U.S. gun dealers.

The database, currently accessible at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, will be made available to officials at all nine U.S. consulates in Mexico, beginning with those in Monterrey, Hermosillo and Guadalajara. A Spanish-language version of the database might also be created, U.S. officials said.

Keeping American weapons out of the hands of Mexican drug cartels is certainly a noble goal. But we’d best examine carefully how to go about it, making sure that we take into account Second Amendment rights, the difference between American and Mexican gun laws, and the risks of distributing a database of American gun dealers in Mexico.

Micky Kaus writesin Slate Magazine that:

Another country is complaining about an influx of Mexicans crossing its borders looking for work. That country is Mexico.

What he’s talking about is this story: Sonoran officials slam sanctions law in Tucson visit, By Sheryl Kornman, Tucson Citizen, January 16, 2008.

It seems that sanctions work, and that means that Mexico is going to be getting some of its citizens back, and they’re panicking, because of course they don’t have schools, hospitals, or jobs for them. The American taxpayer is supposed to take care of that.