Here’s another mug shot from San Francisco of one of its “juvenile” crack dealers — oh wait, he’s actually 25. What a surprise.

When San Francisco made clear its intention to coddle underage illegal aliens, the local dealers got their fake IDs made up for minors. This guy is an example.

When he was caught selling crack in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in April, the Honduran immigrant who called himself Javier Martinez first told police he was 18. Then he said he was 16.

Because he insisted he was underage, police were duty-bound to take him to Juvenile Hall, where he would be shielded from deportation under the city’s long-standing policy of not reporting juvenile offenders to federal immigration authorities. He was soon put up in a $7,000-a-month group home in Southern California at city taxpayer expense.

In short order, he became one of the eight offenders who walked away from unlocked homes in San Bernardino County, escapes that contributed to a national outcry over San Francisco’s policies and prompted Mayor Gavin Newsom to announce that the city would no longer afford juveniles a refuge from deportation. Four of the offenders are now back in custody - and Martinez is one of them, arrested in San Francisco for allegedly dealing drugs.

Martinez now says he was 25 all along, and that his true name is Jose Mendoza Cerrato. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty in adult court to drug dealing and is expected to be transferred to immigration authorities for possible deportation as soon as next month.
[Honduran drug suspect gamed juvenile system, by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle, August 31, 2008]

San Francisco — always the leader in immigration anarchy!

Our Alaskan friend Ryan Kennedy writes to note that GOP VP-designate Sarah Palin was a member of the “Buchanan Brigades” that carried the state’s straw poll for Pat Buchanan in 1996.

Of course, this is very interesting. (Did McCain know? Is the GOP Establishment now prepared to admit that Buchanan was not the Devil Incarnate? - because the MSM will want to know.)

But it doesn’t obviate Patrick Cleburne’s points that (a) we don’t know Palin’s views on immigration and (b) Palin is, undeniably, an affirmative action hire. (Heather Mac Donald makes the same point here, so it must be respectable).

Unfortunately, picking Palin is going to make it difficult for McCain to campaign against affirmative action/ quotas although this devastating wedge issue has actually presented itself to him in 2008, by getting itself on several state ballots.

But even the quota issue is nothing compared to the potential power of the immigration issue, as witness yet another account of American workers spontaneously applauding as illegal aliens were rounded up and led away in the Howard Industries raid this week:

Immigrant raid divides a Mississippi town
Many black and white residents of Laurel applaud the crackdown; it sends fear through the Latino community. Political change may end such raids, by Miguel Bustillo and Richard Fausett, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2008)

“They need to go and do this in every little town,” Tonya Jackson said.

Jackson, who is black, said that over the years she had applied numerous times for a job at the locally owned manufacturer, which employs about 4,000 workers. Jackson, 30, said she never received a callback. The raid, she said, was a welcome purge of illegal Latino laborers who had taken jobs they didn’t deserve.

“We’ve been here all our lives,” she said. “And it seems like they have just arrived and are getting the nice cars and the good homes.”

Her stance puts her at odds with Obama. The Democratic presidential nominee’s website describes such raids as “ineffective” measures that have “placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant families.”

McCain staffers are justifying the Palin pick in terms of staggeringly conventional stupidity:

As one McCain aide put it: “We either get Hillary’s voters and we win, or we don’t. It’s not a mystery.” Said another: “This campaign is all about the middle.”

McCain’s New Palin
McCain’s decision prompts one important question: Huh?, by John Dickerson, Slate, August 29, 2008.

Too bad McCain’s campaign is not about America. Then it might even win.

Joe Biden’s famous plagiarism scandal, in which he paraphrased a speech by British leftist politician Neil Kinnock, is described, and somewhat minimized here, in a chapter of    The Appearance of Impropriety. [By Glenn Reynolds and Peter Morgan] (A good book, the point of which is that many people spend so much time looking for the appearance of impropriety that they ignore the real thing.)

But Biden didn’t just plagiarize Kinnocks’s speech, he plagiarized his life. Kinnock may have been the first person in his family in “a thousand generations” to attend college–Biden, who used exactly the same phrase, wasn’t. The same with Kinnock’s coal-mining Welsh ancestors. Biden switched that to  coal-mining Northeast Pennsylvania ancestors, for the sake of plausibility, but he didn’t have any coal mining ancestors in Pennsylvania either.

Biden also plagiarized Bobby Kennedy’s speeches, although at no time did he claim that his martyred brother had been President of Pennsylvania.

All this is by way of mentioning that when I was discussing the Biden pick with a more or less liberal friend the other day, I brought this up, and he said “I’m sure he’s learned by his experience,” and I said “Really? Are you sure he didn’t learn by someone else’s experience?”

[Disclaimer: this whole post, except for the last paragraph, is based on ideas and facts developed by Ann Coulter, Jeffrey Lord, David Greenberg of Slate, and (believe it or not) Maureen Dowd, all linked above. But not Mickey Kaus, who has a separate complaint about Biden. ]

California legislators, like those in Washington, enjoy passing bills that cost the taxpayers money for useless projects but make the lawmakers feel virtuous in a liberal sort of way. One such is Assembly Bill 2064 which requires schools to teach material about the Vietnam War including the “role of Southeast Asians in that war, and the refugee/immigrant/new American experience.”

Keep in mind that California was the home of the self-esteem movement, promoted by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos as the answer to social problems.

The college student writing the article linked here recounts her angst-riddled search for identity (a normal part of growing up as I recall) and believes that cultural studies of her tribe foisted upon American classrooms will make Hmong students happier. When the debunked idea of self-esteemism was married up with tribal multiculturalism, an increased desire for cultural propaganda has resulted. [Textbook Update Could Give Hmong Youth Cultural Pride, by Connie Vang, New America Media, August 28, 2008]

But, if Governor Schwarzenegger signs Assembly Bill 2064 into law this month, it could change that and increase the cultural knowledge of many high school students in California. A.B. 2064 would require that the war and refugee history of Southeast Asians be included in the next textbook curriculum update. [...]

In school, I did not learn anything about my Hmong culture, so it made me think that being Hmong was not important. I tried my best to separate myself from Hmong people.

I didn’t go to cultural events. I refused to speak Hmong. I even said I would never date or marry a Hmong person. I succeeded in separating myself from Hmong culture, but from sixth through ninth grade, my self-esteem lowered drastically.

It grew worse each year, along with my grades. I started fighting with my parents, about my grades and social life.

But then the author reconnected with the culture of her ancestors and life became wonderful and fulfilled: “When we know our cultural history, we can feel proud about who we are.”

Redemption! Ain’t multiculturalism grand?