This is a rapist who’s been climbing balconies and assaulting women in the Houston area:

Madden said workers at his complex posted letters after the attack warning tenants to lock their doors and windows and to contact the leasing office if they had questions.Police said victims the describe the man as 24- to 30-year-old, about 6 feet tall and 150 to 180 pounds, slender and clean-shaven. He usually wore dark-colored clothing, including a hooded sweatshirt or a turtleneck.

Do you think that if they could see that he was clean-shaven, they could tell what color he was? And do you think that that might help women know who to watch out for, and police who to suspect? I’m pretty sure the victims noticed, and I’m pretty sure they told the police. (There’s always a space for it on the form.) It’s even likely that the police told the Houston Chronicle, but that’s where it stopped.

Perhaps we should send the Houston Chronicle a copy of the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook, which included, when I read it in 1968, the technique of describing a suspect, starting from the top down, and not omitting any vital details like this. If the Hardy Boys could explain it to a ten-year-old, perhaps the J-school graduates on the Chronicle staff can grasp it without too much difficulty.

Police said the man, who may live in the area, is apparently motivated by the sexual assault. The only reported theft occurred during the Sept. 27 attack when he took a few small items.

“There’s enough there that we’re looking at that it could possibly be the same person,” Lt. Mike Waterwall, with the Houston Police Department’s sex assault unit.

The victims are 22 to 32, police said, and included an Anglo woman, a Hispanic woman and two black women.[Houston apartments tighten security after sexual attacks | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle, February 28, 2008]

I suppose they were willing to identify the races of the various victims, if not the suspect, as a way of showing that even if he was a vicious rapist, at least he wasn’t racially profiling.

Huey Long - He was a controversial governor and senator with plans for running for President against FDR on a populist platform before being gunned down in 1935 by a doctor (or perhaps by one of his own security guards trying to shoot the doctor who was brandishing a gun at Long) for reasons that still remain murky. Nobody cares.

Martin Luther King - After being arrested in London for the murder of MLK, career criminal James Earl Ray plea-bargained his way out of trial, accepting life in prison, where he eventually died. He eventually tried to recant his plea, spinning various theories about a man named Raoul (Duke?), although admitting to have at least some involvement. Ray certainly shot King, but did Ray act completely alone? Was there any offer of money from someone? Who knows? I would imagine there remains active interest in the black community in this case, but the mainstream media is totally apathetic after a flurry of stories in the 1990s.

Watergate - All along, it looked like the FBI and/or CIA was more heavily involved in the end of the Nixon presidency than in the end of the Kennedy presidency, but nobody cared. J. Edgar Hoover’s left hand man, Mark Felt, eventually came forward as Deep Throat, but nobody bought Bob Woodward’s book about it.

Pim Fortuyn - The Dutch immigration restrictionist politician was murdered by environmental lawyer Volkert van der Graaf in 2002, the day after Chirac defeated Le Pen in the runoff for the French presidency, the climax of a “two-week hate” in which all right-thinking people in Europe virulently denounced anti-immigrationism. The initial general opinion of Europe’s great and good was that Fortuyn had it coming. The consensus later changed to blaming it all on the gunman being one of those animal rights crazies, and that it didn’t actually have anything to do with immigration, a position that was debunked by the killer himself in court testimony. Outside of Holland, Fortuyn has largely been forgotten, with Americans more familiar with the subsequent murder of a less important figure, Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim.

Remember how the New Republic made this big stink about how Ron Paul should give back $500 from Jon White or somebody with a name like that who was an evil racist?

From The Scientist:

In an intriguing election-year twist, James Watson, the renowned biologist who made headlines last October when he told the Sunday Times that people of African descent were less intelligent than white people, has supported a person of African descent for President of the United States, according to the website opensecrets.org. Watson contributed $2,300 to the Barack Obama campaign this January.

In reality, Watson has always been a Democrat, as was, according to his autobiography, his father before him.

In a previous blog entry I wrote about a scheduled referendum in San Nicolas (suburb of Monterrey, Mexico) over whether or not to install a fence on the border with neighboring suburb Guadalupe (see map here ).

Well, they held the referendum on the 24th, and 70% of those who came to the polls voted in favor of the fence.
A Feb. 27th article reported that on Feb. 26th, San Nicolas mayor Zeferino “Chefo” Salgado, who promoted the fence proposal, said he wouldn’t discuss the topic anymore, until after meeting with the mayor of Guadalupe, who wasn’t pleased with the referendum.

Meanwhile, in San Nicolas, there are already two colonias (neighborhoods) in San Nicolas that have fencing around them.

Sometimes, a fence is just what’s needed.

We knew it was coming, and now the press assures us that a massive makeover is underway.

Sen McAmnesty is doing the tapdance and counting on Americans’ famous short attention span. He regularly recites that he “got the message” about immigration and now supports border enforcement — yeah, right — but will promise nothing beyond that. An appearance of crackdown on the border will only be a prelude and excuse for widespread forgiveness for tens of millions of illegal aliens residing in this country.

John McCain faces a dilemma on immigration as he works to persuade conservatives he’s tough enough on the issue without erasing his historic appeal to Hispanic voters. Once a crusader for offering the nation’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants a way to get legal status, McCain now says his first priority is fortifying U.S. borders.

The metamorphosis reflects McCain’s intensifying effort to consolidate his support among conservatives, who deride the Arizona senator’s past proposals on immigration as offering amnesty to lawbreakers, and bitterly resent his work with Democrats, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the issue.

Coming off a primary season where his immigration stance was seen as a major liability and GOP opponents hammered him for having an overly permissive approach, McCain is remaking his image with an eye toward the general election.
[McCain Retools Immigration Stance, Google AP. Feb 27, 2008]