What has happened to Texas that a Houston jury would let a cop-killer illegal alien off with just life in prison? This sentence is a huge disappointment to anyone who cares about justice, not to mention crime prevention. Every cop killer should expect to pay the ultimate punishment.

For earlier coverage on the murder of Officer Rodney Johnson, see Officer Down in Houston. He had arrested Juan Leonardo Quintero for driving without a license, but Johnson’s frisking missed a gun hidden in the prisoner’s waistband, which was used in the shooting. Quintero was an illegal alien who had been previously deported in 1999 for indency with a child and was arrested for drunk driving as well.

“We’re just very upset,” said Lorraine Crawford, mother of the slain officer’s widow, Joslyn Johnson.

“We wanted the death penalty,” Crawford said. “He had nothing but malice in his heart.”

She added that the jury did not seem to understand the difficulty of a police officer’s job.

The officer’s brother, David Johnson, was in the courtroom with his wife, Donna Mack, when the sentence was announced. He said he and his wife also had wanted to see Quintero sentenced to death.

“He shot him four times in the back, three times in the head,” Johnson said. “I can’t believe that. What’s mitigation?”
[HPD officer's family shocked by life sentence, Houston Chronicle, May 20, 2008]

One bit of good news is that Robert Camp, the crime-enabling employer of the killer, has not been forgotten: Slain Officer’s Widow Sues Killer’s Employer (MSNBC, May 20, 2008).

Ben Dominguez, Johnson’s attorney, also announced that a civil suit has been filed against Quintero’s employer, Robert Camp of Camp Landscaping in Deer Park. Dominquez said Josslyn Johnson is suing him for negligence.

“The owner of the company gave a man with a warrant out for his arrest, and who had alcohol and drug problems, a car to drive,” said Dominguez. “He did not have a driver’s license and he did not train him or teach him well. We believe if Camp did not employ Quinterro, Officer Johnson’s death might have never happened.”

Dominguez said Johnson wants damages of no less than $10 million from Camp. KPRC Local 2 was unsuccessful in attempts to reach anyone with Camp Landscaping for comment.

Camp has also been charged with a federal crime. In January, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him with harboring an illegal alien. United States Attorney Don DeGabrielle said Camp helped Quintero illegally enter the United States in 1999 and gave him a job and a place to live after Quintero was deported in 1998. Camp also posted bond for Quintero in 1998 when Quintero was charged with indecency with a child.

More about Robert Camp’s criminal charges: Feds arrest Deer Park businessman.

A Deer Park business owner has been arrested for harboring an illegal alien accused of capital murder of a Houston Police Department officer.

Robert Lane Camp, 47, the owner of Camp Landscaping, Deer Park, was charged by criminal complaint with encouraging Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez, the accused killer of HPD Officer Rodney Johnson, to unlawfully enter the U. S. and with harboring Quintero.

Here’s a funny article from the Boston Globe on the Larry Summers Quandary: Why have women professors made so much more progress at Harvard’s Law, Business, and Medical schools than in its mathematics and engineering departments? It’s a good article, but what’s amusing and depressing is how hard the journalist has to work to explain concepts that should be bleeding obvious to any college student, much less the college professors who will be most professionally interested in this topic.

The freedom to say ‘no’

Why aren’t there more women in science and engineering? Controversial new research suggests: They just aren’t interested.

Elaine McArdle

WHEN IT COMES to the huge and persistent gender gap in science and technology jobs, the finger of blame has pointed in many directions: sexist companies, boy-friendly science and math classes, differences in aptitude. …

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

(more…)

Scripps-Howard syndicated columnist Jose de la Isla, [Send him mail] has a column about the imaginary wave of hate that Janet Murguia is trying to suppress: See WeCanStopTheDebate.org—Treason Lobby Trying to Muscle MainStream Media Into Banning Immigration Reform Patriots. Look at the Rush Limbaugh joke he considers hate here:

Hate talk, the sound and the fury

By JOSE de la ISLA
Hispanic Link News Service
2008-05-14 00:00:00

In late April, National Council of La Raza chief Janet Murguia gave a rousing speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Talking about broadcast media, she said, “Harsh rhetoric has filled the immigration debate with code words that demonize and dehumanize not just immigrants but Latinos as a threat to the American way of life.”

It was the long-awaited sound and fury of righteous indignation. Latinos have a lengthy history at the receiving end of insults and mischaracterizations that media personalities dish out and get away with.

That’s what happened May 5 — Cinco de Mayo, of all days — when conservative radio antagonist Rush Limbaugh, describing on air an encounter with Bill Clinton, said he wasn’t sure whether Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was present, was a “shoe shine guy” or a “secret service agent.” [More]

This is hate? Look, I’m familar with hate. In this job I get exposed to a lot of it. That’s not it. But the main point is that the campaign seems to be failing: While the campaign is “dialoging” with CNN and MSNBC, Fox  News refused to even meet with them.

[Raza VP Lisa]  Navarrete gives CNN and MSNBC the benefit of the doubt, but she says they are ill informed about how their words go down because they don’t have Latinos, or enough of them, to serve as culture interpreters in their newsrooms.

Navarrete insists the two news organizations they dialogue with simply lack knowledge about the community and the issues.

It doesn’t sound very persuasive to this listener’s ears. On the face of it, hateful speech and misinforming the nation is about company policy and marketing–and how intellectual integrity is compromised. Who gets internships and who is the next hire is another topic, not the same thing.

The campaign to sledgehammer the networks to get their attention started out with a bang. But now it’s sounding more and more like a whimper.

De la Isla is the author of the 2003 book The Rise of Hispanic Political Power. That rise, as Steve Sailer puts it “hasn’t quite gone through the formality of actually taking place.“

We’ve written about the plan Dianne Feinstein has hatched to slip a five-year amnesty into an Iraq War bill, largely for the benefit of California employers..

The amendement is sponsored by Feinstein and the disgraced-but-not-gone Senator Larry Craig, who I didn’t like even before his famous bathroom break.

Mickey Kaus writes

What’s John McCain’s position? Didn’t he promise to “secure our borders first,” holding off on “other aspects of the problem” (i.e. legalization) until a “widespread consensus” that border-security had been acheived? I think he did! He will presumably have to vote one way or the other (or else be conveniently absent). A not-small test case of whether he’ll keep any of his promises to the right when he decides he’d rather not. …

I never believed said promises in the first place, but it will be interesting to see if he has the nerve to break them before the election.

There’s a lot going on in the post-apartheid paradise:

Anti-immigrant violence rages on in South Africa
By Barry Bearak and Celia W. Dugger
International Herald-Tribune, May 20, 2008

JOHANNESBURG: The man certainly looked dead, lying motionless in the dust of the squatter camp. His body seemed almost like a bottle that had been turned on its side, spilling blood. His pants were red with the moisture.

Nearby was evidence of what he had endured. A large rock had been used to gouge his torso. Embers remained from a fire that had been part of some torture. Shards of a burned jacket still clung to the victim’s left forearm.

Then, as people stepped closer, there was the faintest of breath pushing against his chest. “This guy may be alive,” someone surmised. As if to confirm it, the man moved the fingers of his right hand.[More]

There are a lot of reasons for this–black South Africans are desperately poor, by Western standards, but by the standards of neighboring countries they’re well off. And three million refugees from Zimbabwe, plus Mozambicans, have the familiar effect of depressing wages:

“White people hire the foreigners because they work hard and they do it for less money,” Booysen said. “A South African demands his rights and will go on strike. Foreigners are afraid.”

Immigrants are taking jobs from the natives:

Many South Africans consider themselves at a disadvantage with employers. “If you have a surname like mine, you can’t get a job,” said Samantha DuPlessis, 23, a woman of mixed race. “I’ve been looking for a job for four years. All the employers want to hire foreigners.”

Also, there’s immigrant crime:

George Booysen said that as a born-again Christian he did not believe in killing. Still, something had to be done about these unwanted immigrants.

They are bad people, he said: “A South African may take your cellphone, but he won’t kill you. A foreigner will take your phone and kill you.”

And a new version of the “middleman minority” effect:

Most certainly, not all immigrants push ahead of South Africans economically. But Somalis and Ethiopians have proved themselves successful shopkeepers in the townships.

The Herald-Tribune says of these problmes that

A familiar litany of complaints against foreigners are passionately, if not always rationally, argued: They commit crimes. They undercut wages. They hold jobs that others deserve.

Of course, all these complaints are perfectly rational–the problem is the rioting and killing, not the complaints themselves. The Law of Supply And Demand is so simple that only the highly educated can fail to understand it.

I will be on the legendary George Putnam talk-radio show on Tuesday May 20. I will be live broadcast at 1:30 PM PST.

Putnam’s show is available online in streaming audio which can be listened to at either of these websites:

http://www.crni.net/

http://www.crntalk.com/default.aspx

To listen to the show, click the box on the right where it says “now playing, listen live” “CRN1″

There is a toll free call-in telephone number if you want to chat with us: 1-800-336-2225

This is show schedule:

CRN1 12-2pm PT\3-5pm ET (live)

CRN1 8-10pm PT\11p-12a ET (replay)

CRN1 12am-2am PT\3-5am ET (replay)

<<<<<>>>>>

I have been on the air with George Putnam many times, but this time the host will be Chuck Wilder who is standing in for George.

We will probably discuss the pending vote by the Senate on allowing an amnesty to be amended to the Iraq supplemental spending bill.

Perhaps if we have time we might also talk a little about fishing. Go to this link if you think you might want to work in the fish business,

Click the picture to see a larger image. Be sure to follow the link to Ryan Kennedy’s op-ed to read even more about Alaska’s immigration mess.