David Seminara’s new CIS report Hello, I Love You, Won’t You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon contains this useful graphic, which should help explain the problem exposed by Joe Guzzardi in his article Marriage Visa Fraud: More Evidence—But It Was All In A Nicole Kidman Movie!

In late October, when the four black men eventually charged in the Winchester Atrocity (see here and here) armed robbery-torture-murder of interracial newlyweds, Marine Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, and gang-rape of Mrs. Pietrzak, were questioned by Riverside County (CA) Sheriff’s investigators, according to the Sheriff’s Office, they all “confessed” to the crime, and that is how the media reported it. (Each denied having committed certain crimes within the set that made up the atrocity, but no one denied having been present in the Pietrzaks’ home, and having voluntarily committed some of the crimes in concert with the other confessed perpetrators.)

In court in late November, however, all four defendants pleaded not guilty to all charges. And the press has retroactively changed the verb “confessed,” to “admitted,” which has a very different legal meaning.

Look for the defense attorneys to claim that the confessions were coerced, in order to get them thrown out as inadmissible, and thus get any evidence secured on the basis of those confessions likewise thrown out as inadmissible, as the tainted fruits of illegal searches and seizures. If the defendants’ attorneys can get the dominoes to topple, the prosecution’s case will become unwinnable, since the jury would get to hear nothing incriminating at trial.

More bad craziness from Washington regarding Mexico. That country has plenty of money to finance its own internal law enforcement efforts; Mexico’s GDP consistently ranks about #15 in national listings. American taxpayers shouldn’t be dinged for a penny to support wealthy, corrupt Mexico.

The U.S. government finally released the first part of a $400 million aid package Wednesday to support Mexico’s police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels.

The money comes at a critical time: Mexico’s death toll from drug violence has soared above 4,000 so far this year, and drug-related murders and kidnappings are spilling over the U.S. border as well.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza formally released $197 million at a signing ceremony in Mexico City, calling it “the most significant effort ever undertaken” by the U.S. and Mexico to fight drugs. The rest will be disbursed throughout the year.

“The Merida Initiative is not just about money. It is about a closer and more collaborative effort by the United States and Mexico to work more effectively together to share information in a more timely fashion,” Garza said. [US releases first part of drug aid for Mexico, By Traci Carl And Frank Bajak, Associated Press, December 3, 2008]

See my 2007 VDARE.com article about the Merida Initiative ($1.4 billion over 2 years), A “Marshall Plan For Mexico”—Sending Welfare To A Crack House.

Editors know that one of the easiest ways to keep readers from using their brains when reading a poorly reasoned story is to put a picture of a brain in it. Thus, from the BBC:

The brains of children from low-income families process information differently to those of their wealthier counterparts, US research suggests.

Normal nine and 10-year-olds from rich and poor backgrounds had differing electrical activity in a part of the brain linked to problem solving.

The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience study was described as a “wake-up call” about the impact of deprivation.

A UK researcher said it could shed light on early brain development.

The 26 children in the study, conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, were measured using an electroencephalograph (EEG), which measured activity in the “prefrontal cortex” of the brain.

Half were from low income homes, and half from high income families.

During the test, an image the children had not been briefed to expect was flashed onto a screen, and their brain responses were measured.

Those from lower income families showed a lower prefrontal cortex response to it than those from wealthier households.

Dr Mark Kishiyama, one of the researchers, said: “The low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well - they were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex.”

Since the children were, in health terms, normal in every way, the researchers suspected that “stressful environments” created by low socioeconomic status might be to blame.

Previous studies have suggested that children in low-income families are spoken to far less - on average hearing 30 million fewer words by the age of four.

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