This just in—Hmong are uninterested in assimilation. Listen to Blong Yang, a Hmong lawyer residing in Minnesota, discuss his people:
"For many Hmong, culture trumps everything else, including the law... Hmong culture is so strong that few will defy it. It is so rigid that it forces people to comply, even when noncompliance would save them from criminal sanctions."
Commendably, Blong Yang then goes on to say the powerful clan leaders must stop excusing prosecutable crimes that are cultural norms among Hmong. Among those are statutory rape, slavery (politely called a "bride price"), marriage by capture (aka kidnapping), polygamy, bribery, animal sacrifice, and opium use.
Counselor Yang concludes, "It's time for us to clean our house before someone else does it for us."
Translation: The American justice system still ignores Hmong criminality, but might—MIGHT—eventually prosecute crimes committed by immigrants as energetically as it does those committed by citizens.
As I was reading this story, ( Girl has car stolen by Hispanic car thief, girl gets car back herself) I was amazed to read that the police were trying to look up the thief's phone number in a hardcover reverse directory, (Haines Criss-Cross, still in business, but hey, some people are still making buggywhips) when anyone can look up a phone number on Infospace.com or even on Google.
Then I saw the date: 1999, near the end of the 20th Century. Things have changed a lot since then.
I mention this because Bryanna's story today mentioned checking out the websites of the Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, which Patterico refers to as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. I've more or less given up on hardcopy newspapers, (treezines) and it would be bad if I did have a dog to train. Recently, I had to glue something and I couldn't find a newspaper anywhere in my apartment to keep the glue from dripping on the counter.
I finally used a distressed copy of Commentary, and a Lands End catalogue, instead, and weighted it down with two phonebooks and a Columbia Encyclopedia, all of which are available on line. It may be that in the future you'll have to buy newsprint in specialty craft shops, and books will only be used for things you might actually enjoy reading.
Is there is point? If there is, it's that VDARE.COM is the wave of the future. Oh, and send us money, please, because we don't get ads from downtown drygoods merchants, also going the way of the Dinosaur.
Law Professor Gail Heriot, of The Right Coast has a three part post titled Don't Blame Pete Wilson for Making California a Blue State, [1, 2, 3,]
Brendan Miniter's comment in today's WSJ Political Diary (subscription required) seems quite unfair to me. He suggests that former California Governor Pete Wilson and Proposition 187 (which denied illegal immigrants certain state benefits, including welfare benefits) are responsible for making California a Democratic electoral stronghold. I'm starting to hear this everywhere I go and its utter nonsense. 1,
This inaccuracy is characteristic of the WSJ, which just today, hammered on the oft-refuted "immigrants will save social security" myth. One thing Professor Heriot points out is that proportionately more Latinos voted for Proposition 187 than vote Republican.
Proposition 187 actually polled better among Latinos than either George H.W. Bush before it or Bob Dole after it. 2,
The actual cause of California's Democratic shift: Hispanics and Asians entering, blue-collar whites packing up and leaving.
Between 1990 and 2000, California's population increased 13.82%. From the standpoint of race and ethnicity, the increase was overwhelmingly the result of an increased number of Hispanics and Asians. The numbers of whites (including Hispanic whites) actually decreased in absolute terms by 1.73% as a result of out-migration and low birth rates. 3,
Professor Heriot doesn't share VDARE.COM's view of what should be done about immigration, of course, but she does have an academic's commitment to the truth. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand…may be invincibly ignorant [Vdare.com Note: or dishonest.]
