Early this month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a death sentence that dates back to 1988. The defendant claimed that the prosecutor, Jack McMahon, had, contrary to the rule in Batson v. Kentucky, stricken black jurors on racial grounds alone. [Justices OK Juror Challenges Involving Prosecutor From Controversial Training Tape By Amaris Elliott-Engel, The Legal Intelligencer, August 5, 2008]

The journalist and her favorite in the fight, death row inmate Robin Cook, were excited by McMahon’s having been taped giving advice on how to skirt Batson. This advice from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, in varying forms, is circulated in the law schools as an example of naughtiness, although I remember my own unfailingly liberal professors being pretty blase about it (the ones who had practiced law, anyway). And the actual remarks are nuanced: older black men from the South, for instance, are preferable because they’re more conservative and likely to convict.

But a few points. One, any attorney who’s ever tried a case, civil or criminal, in any place in America with more than one race, knows the reality on the ground: blacks and other minorities are likely to side with plaintiffs and criminal defendants, and whites (and to some extent, Asians) side with civil defendants and prosecutors. It’s so blindingly obvious that most attorneys, regardless of their personal political views, will agree to this.

One supervising attorney years ago said his own Jewish mother wouldn’t vote for his client (a frequent civil defendant), even if he were defending the case. In areas where the jury pool is predominately black, that fact alone can be the biggest driver of a personal injury case’s value, especially when the plaintiff is black. A plaintiff’s attorney with the ubiquitous Hispanic injury victim once told me, as the case languished without settling, “Well, I’ll just have to hope I get some sympathetic Hispanics on the jury.”

Which brings me to my second point. The rule in Batson is that a trial lawyer can’t strike a potential juror for solely — or perhaps even partly — racial reasons. In other words, “Oh, I see that Juror No. 3 is black” is not a lawful reason for striking him. There must be a “race-neutral” reason, like, his brother’s in jail, so he’s not likely to side with police and prosecutors.

But presumably, Batson would not prohibit keeping a juror solely for racial reasons. As in, “Juror No. 2 is Hispanic, and so’s my plaintiff, so I’ll scramble to keep him on.” (It does prevent striking white jurors solely for being white, and a former colleague was said to have brought up several “reverse Batsons”). Does this square with the spirit of “race doesn’t matter” said to inform these issues? Isn’t the “keeping attorney” engaging in the same racial generalizations as the striking attorney? Wouldn’t consistency require barring all profit from racial generalizations? Ah, well, not when the beneficiaries are black or Hispanic, you see.

As a sub-point, note that these challenges typically come up when there’s a black criminal defendant, which means that black criminal defendants have an attenuated right to a jury of as many fellow blacks as possible (courts will deny that anyone has this right, but it’s a practical result of Batson games). Do whites benefit as often, either as criminal defendants themselves, or members of society at large? Probably not, and one wonders how sympathetic white jurors are to white criminal defendants, anyway.

As another sub-point, note how nobody in any of these dramas ever questions the reality of race, a point so satisfyingly noted in Race: The Reality of Human Differences, by Sarich and Miele. I suppose a prosecutor in a jam might retort, “Well, your honor, given that various authorities have declared that ‘race does not exist,’ I think the burden switches to the defense to show that the juror I struck was actually black.”

And keep noting: the assumption that a black juror is likely to be sympathetic to a black defendant is never questioned by lawyers or the courts, who, as Sarich and Miele observe, would be expected to question anything even remotely questionable. (Nobody ever questions this in Voting Rights Act cases, either.)

Some reformers, mindful of these games, have suggested getting rid of “peremptory” (no explanation required) juror challenges altogether, which is worth considering. But the Batson batty-ness is yet another example of the way in which we can’t, in fact, all “just get along.”

It’s conventional to complain about the ethnocentrism of American television coverage of the Olympics, but northeast Asian countries are much more monomaniacal about focusing on their own nationals. Japanese television, for example, devoted hours of coverage to Japanese athletes washing out in the preliminary rounds of obscure events. My man in Japan writes:

“You may be thinking that Sam Wanjiru’s victory in the marathon was due to his genetics. Wrong. If you had been listening to Japanese TV you would know the truth. He went to school in Japan and it was the training and techniques he acquired in Japan that allowed him to win.

“Fortunately, he speaks Japanese so he was interviewed on TV, the only non-Japanese athlete honored in that way during the last two weeks.”

Mickey Kaus points to a 1988 NY Times article by E.J. Dionne on Joe Biden that reads like a transcript from the old “Mr. Show” comedy series, which was a sort of American Monty Python. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross often appeared as characters uncomfortably apologizing for not being totally accurate in their previous statements:

The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ”Frank.” Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ”I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.”

He then went on to say that he ”went to law school on a full academic scholarship - the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ”ended up in the top half” of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ”the outstanding student in the political science department” and ”graduated with three degrees from college.”

In his statement today, Mr. Biden, who attended the Syracuse College of Law and graduated 76th in a class of 85, acknowledged: ”I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection of this was inacurate.”

As for receiving three degrees, Mr. Biden said: ”I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science. My reference to degrees at the Claremont event was intended to refer to these majors - I said ‘three’ and should have said ‘two.’ ” Mr. Biden received a single B.A. in history and political science.

”With regard to my being the outstanding student in the political science department,” the statement went on. ”My name was put up for that award by David Ingersoll, who is still at the University of Delaware.”

(more…)

Joe Guzzardi is scheduled to be interviewed by Chuck Wilder on “George Putnam’s Talk Back” show (George Putnam has been off the air lately due to health problems.) The interview is scheduled for 1:05 p.m Pacific Time, Monday, August 25th (that’s 4:05 Eastern). You can listen live here and it’s repeated at 8 p.m. Pacific Time each night.

Joe, who recently moved away from California, will be talking about his new life in Pittsburgh, PA.

Quite possibly the Republican National Committee thinks only immigrants and their cheerleaders can speak Spanish. According to Boston.com, they intend to run a Spanish radio ad this week which I estimate is capable of turning off 20 GOP voters for every Hispanic it attracts:

The Republican National Committee unveiled a Spanish-language radio ad today that it plans to run during next week’s Democratic convention that promotes John McCain’s support for comprehensive immigration reform, while deriding Barack Obama as all talk and no action.

…”How do you know someone is a friend? You know because they stand up and defend you when it is hard. When Hispanics needed a friend in Congress during the immigration debate, who stood up? Who spoke out? John McCain,” the announcer says, according to a translation by CNN.

“…only McCain demonstrated a real commitment to reforming immigration in a way that honored our laws as well as our immigrants and traditions,” the announcer continues….Obama supported measures designed to insert a deadly ‘poison pill’ to kill the immigration legislation. If Obama didn’t even have the courage to stand up for immigrants, how can he claim to have the strength to change the way Washington works?”

GOP courts Latinos on immigration Posted by Foon Rhee August 22 2008

If taken seriously – and why not? -this means we will be back in the trenches next year.

This slimy piece of treasonable sycophancy is more or less what can be expected from the RNC, which as VDARE.com has noted before, is a comtemptible bunch of unprincipled hacks and too much influenced by Hispanics.

However the reader responses are valuable. It appears there are a few patriots in the Boston area:

1. What has happened to the Reagan Republicans…remember them…those who represented decency and respect for the human race, family values, and morals. Who are these new Republicans? Why have loyal Republicans allow an ugly and unfamiliar decay and decadence an opportunity to destroy the once pride and sturdy foundation the Republican Party!

Posted by Dee August 22, 08 03:42 PM

3. McCain really threw his conservative followers under the bus on this one…..If he is friends with illegal aliens then he must be an evangelical conservative’s adversary. Make up your mind, Mr. McCain.

Posted by jm August 22, 08 03:45 PM

4. That’s it. The last straw. Anybody But McCain. Email this news item to all your friends so they can know what McCain has in store for them.
A New America filled with New American that all us Old Americans can take care of for generations to come with free medical care, free college education, free tutoring, and worst of all free lessons from our betters for all eternity on how evil and hateful we are and how we are not dying out fast enough and being replaced with better people from anywhere else but here.

Posted by Ted Strickland August 22, 08 05:04 PM

And more important in terms of illumination the destructive stupidity of the RNC/McCain approach, an honest Hispanic has surfaced:

7. I am hispanic and and no matter how many ads they have in spanish or whatever this former republican will never vote republican again. And to all of you demagogues and xenophobes….karma baby, karma. All of your hate and narrowminded thinking will never reward you, it will bite you back in the end. You and all of your right wing rhetoric……..defeated in the Civil war…..defeated during the Civil Rights Era…..defeated in court (antiimmigrant ordinances found unconstitutional). Whatever you try to do to stifle hispanics and other immigrants…you wil fail. I’ve ran into a lot of rednecks who think of us as dumb mexicans but you know what…keep thinking that(your doing me a favor)….it will ensure us victory in the end.
Posted by David Hernandez August 22, 08 05:10 PM

Abraham Lincoln, who orchestrated and won the Civil War to his eternal shame, was of course the first Republican President. But in clearly stating that he sees the immigration issue as a matter of racial conquest, our Hispanic friend (and implausible Republican) is doing his (no doubt forcibly) adopted country a favor. Unless the native-born wake up to the fact this view is widely held Hernandez has it right

it will ensure us victory in the end.

Thanks, RNC

Here’s a classic mega-sniffler headline from the Associated Press: Mexicans deported from US face shattered lives (August 24, 2008).

Oh, the horror of Mexicans forced to live in Mexico! Is there any more abominable cruelty?

The AP apparently believes not, as it notes every tear on every tiny cheek of every illegal alien child. Dreams are being crushed, families are forced to live apart and returnees must sleep on mattresses strewn on cold cement floors — all because of Americans’ stubborn insistence on law and sovereignty.

Actually, only a small percentage of Mexicans and other illegal foreigners are self-deporting and being repatriated by ICE–an 11 percent decline in illegal residers since last August according to the numbers crunchers at CIS. While welcome in these quarters, the movement does not yet amount to a major re-population of Mexico with its outsourced citizens.

The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: “The End.”

For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.

Every time the gate slams shut, it wipes out a dream, divides a family, ends a life lived in the shadows of the law.

Of course, there is no need for families to be separated. It’s only the Mexicans’ greed for American freebies that causes parents to be split from their kids. No one in the US government is keeping any dad or mom from taking little Jose Jr. back to the beloved homeland when the parent is deported.

After the obligatory recitation of sob story stuff, a few relevant statistics are revealed:

U.S. deportations have jumped by more than 60 percent over the past five years. Mexicans accounted for nearly two-thirds of those deportees, helping to roll back one of the biggest migrations of recent history. All along the border, shelters once full of people trying to cross into the United States are now home to thousands of deportees who sleep on mattresses strewn inches apart on cement floors. [...]

There are also criminals. The U.S. does not break down figures by country, but it has deported about 55,000 prisoners so far this year. One man walked through the gate in slippers with 80 cents in his pocket, after being picked up by police during a violent fight with his wife in their backyard.

Typically, even criminals are given vaguely sympathetic treatment by the AP, as seen in the previous paragraph. No kudos to ICE for deporting dangerous people, whose repatriation may prevent some terrible crime, like the San Francisco murders of three member of the Bologna family by a previously arrested MS-13 gang member and an illegal alien from El Salvador (Edwin Ramos).

I’ll say it: Thanks, ICE, for deporting 55,000 bad guys. Let’s have lots more of same!