A week before our nation’s capitol braces for what public officials fear could be overcrowded throngs of attendees at Barack Obama’s inauguration (some Metro stops on Washington, D.C.’s subway are reported to be designated “exit only” stops to accommodate overflow crowds), the Social Contract released a timely 83-page report by researcher and VDARE.com contributor Edwin Rubenstein on immigration and infrastructure at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 2009.

The well-attended event–which featured Rubenstein, moderator Dr. Wayne Lutton, editor of the Social Contract, and Eugene Delgaudio, Sterling District representative of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors–included members of the press, concerned citizens, activists and leaders in the immigration-reform community, and at least two Marxist radicals intent on disrupting the event.

Midway through the press conference an attendee on the front row stood up and passed out flyers smearing the Social Contract, its editor Dr. Lutton, publisher John Tanton, and Rubenstein, author of The Twin Crises study.

During the question and answer session, a man wearing a stretch-over knitted cap with a Chicago Cubs insignia barged into the back of the room carrying heart-shaped red balloons (with the source listed on the balloons as the fringe open-borders group Imagine2050) with a white-icing sheet cake that read: “Congratulations Social Contract Press on another racist report! Your white nationalist friends must be very proud!” The red balloons contained white lettering, “Social Contract Press loves bigotry… www.youtube.com/IMAG2050”.

Both were promptly escorted from the press conference. The “delivery man” who entered the conference room refused to say, when pressed, which delivery company he was employed with but noted that he was “just doing what he was paid to do” Security cameras captured the individual as security officials at the National Press Club ushered him from the building.

Maoist and Trotskite activists associated with militant groups, such as the Progressive Labor Party, have a well-established history of disrupting civic meetings they oppose and this was clearly no exception.

Fortunately a few alert attendees at the back of the room promptly showed these intolerant militants the door. Their presence was a minor distraction of an otherwise highly successful press conference on a most timely topic: the impact of immigration and population growth on nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Apparently, good fences do make good neighbors, especially if you live near President George W. Bush’s new home in exclusive Preston Hollow, Dallas.

The Dallas City Council recently voted to install “access gates, related fencing and structures” in and around President Bush’s new neighborhood. In 1993, President George H.W. Bush, also had gates and fencing installed near his post-presidential home in the tony Tanglewood section of Houston.[Bush wants gate installed on route to new Dallas home , By Rudolph Bush,The Dallas Morning News, January 8, 2009]

Bush has complained that securing the border sends the wrong message, but because of inability to control our borders we have actually been forced to construct mini border fences all over the country.

According to Ed Blakely, author of Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, more than seven million American households now exist in gated communities. And it’s no surprise they are most common in parts of the country that have seen the most immigration. This includes 40% of the new homes in California and more than half of the new developments in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Gated Communities are, of course, most common in heterogeneous Latin American countries like Mexico and Brazil, and they are an essential survival requirement for white South Africans. However, you’d be hard pressed to find gated communities in more homogeneous states like Maine or Vermont.

Immigration Enthusiasts like the Bushes and the Kennedys hate border fences, except of course when it comes to their own homes.

Vanessa Williams writes in the Washington Post’s “Root” magazine (I’m guessing the author is a different Vanessa Williams than this former Miss America, singer, and actress):

“Hey, dark ‘n lovely!”

Gotta love the brothers who show their affection for the dark-skinned girls, even if they are hollering out the window of a passing car.

Gotta love it even more when the brother is the president, and the object of his affection is front and center for the world to see.

It’s true: A lot of black women fell for Barack Obama the moment they saw his wife.

If a black president represents change, a dark-skinned first lady is straight-up revolutionary.

I won’t apologize for taking note of Michelle Obama’s physical appearance. Plenty has already been said about how she, with her double Ivy degrees, six-figure salaries and two adorable daughters, is crushing the image of the struggling black single mother. She is a real life Clair Huxtable! But the true breakthrough here is that sisters who look like Michelle Obama seldom become cultural icons, aesthetic trendsetters—a proxy for the all-American woman.

And don’t roll your eyes and ask why we have to go there; we haven’t completely gotten over our prejudices about skin tone and hair texture. Despite years of scholarly, literary and popular debate—from Dr. Kenneth Clark’s baby-doll tests, to Toni Morrison’s tragic characters in The Bluest Eye, to the showdown between [racial term that doesn't appear in iSteve] in Spike Lee’s School Daze—too many of us continue to accept a standard of beauty that does not favor ebony-hued skin, woolly hair and full lips (and not those surgically enhanced smackers, either).

I know from first-hand experience. I remember being taunted and shunned by some people who didn’t believe that old saying about the blacker the berry. Back when we were Negroes, the word “black” was used to describe the dark-skinned among us, usually not with affection. My mama assured me that I was a pretty black girl, but it was the brothers on the streets, cooing such compliments as dark ‘n lovely, chocolate drop, brown sugar, who convinced me.

I’m not sure how to break the news to this writer, but being a good enough-looking woman to have black guys shout stuff at you while you walk by is a pretty low hurdle…

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Basically, we’re broke because for the whole decade we’ve been buying more stuff from abroad than they’ve been buying from us. So, what can a President do to help us sell more stuff overseas?

Screwing in lightbulbs and filling potholes won’t do it. But what will?

The most obvious ways the government can quickly help business become more productive at making stuff that foreigners want to buy is by easing environmental and affirmative action regulations that add to the cost of everything we produce.

Similarly, the easiest way for the states and localities to save money on social services is for the federal government to pay for unemployed illegal immigrants to go home.

Funny, though, simple ideas like that don’t seem to come up much.