From: Mike Corsano (e-mail him)
Our Sunday August 24th rally in support of Jamiel Shaw Jr. and a proposed law that would permit police to investigate, detain and possibly deport illegal alien criminals got an excellent turnout with a lot of encouragement from honking drivers as they passed by.
As VDARE.COM readers know, Shaw is the young boy shot and killed by two assailants. One of them, illegal alien Pedro Espinoza, had been released from jail only the day before.
But Special Order 40 and Los Angeles's sanctuary city policy protect Espinoza.
The Shaw family and its allies have been meeting every weekend at Leimert Park gathering signatures to put the law on the ballot.
The Shaws are U.S. citizens. When he was killed, his mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was serving in Iraq.
On a previous weekend, the Los Angeles Police Department harassed us by asking for social security cards and driver's licenses. Overhead helicopters hovered and the park's rest rooms were locked.
Our group was further told, falsely, that it is illegal to gather signatures in the park and pass out free bottles of water.
While Special Order 40 prevents the police from questioning known punks apparently it is permissible to harass U.S. citizens peacefully assembling to exercise their lawful rights to gather signatures for a law that would benefit every Los Angeles resident.
But this week's meet up was especially heartening.
Chelene Nightingale from Save Our State, patriots Terry Anderson, Barbara Coe, Ted Hayes, Walter Moore (LA Mayoral candidate and author of Jamiel's Law), Frank Jorge (fiery as ever) and an older local black man who spoke very eloquently about how the black community is suffering from the invasion of illegal aliens.
Several vendors had t-shirts with Antonio Villaragosa's picture in a circle with the slash going through it. It was extremely popular.
Many people signed the petition initiative to put Jamiel's Law on the ballot to require the Mayor and the LAPD to investigate and arrest gang members here illegally before they get caught committing crimes—not just afterwards. (See Chief Bill Bratton's heartless defense of Special Order 40 here.)
I spoke privately with Jamiel Shaw Sr. (see him on YouTube here) for about 20 minutes about his son (he was being recruited by my alma mater Rutgers), the tragic circumstances of his boy's murder and the Shaw family's shameless treatment by the Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Michelle Hanisee (since taken off the case).
Shaw and Anita raised young Jamiel to do well in school, excel in athletics, stay out of gangs and trouble and prepare for college.
Hopefully the Shaw tragedy will be a catalyst to bring more good American citizens into the immigration reform fold and to highlight for those who have thus far ignored it the harmful—and occasionally deadly—effects of uncontrolled illegal immigration.
Although he lives in southern California, Corsano has rooted for the New York Mets for four decades. His thoughts about diversity in baseball are included in Joe Guzzardi's column here.
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From: Steve Smith (e-mail him)
Re: Peter Brimelow's Blog: Krugman Unfair To Know-Nothings
New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman has a point. [Know-Nothing Politics, New York Times, August 7, 2008] Republican energy policy is simplistic.
But Krugman misses the core issue. America cannot drill its out of a continuing criminal invasion of millions of illegal aliens.
Aliens come to the U.S. to be consumers, not conservationists. Just as Joe Guzzardi pointed about immigrant water consumption, the same is true of oil.
Using what may be a conservative estimate of two million new immigrants the U.S. accepts annually—legal, illegal and non-immigrant visa holder who never go home—oil usage will continuously increase.
Factor in that immigrant birth rate is higher than the American-born population and you have a real crisis.
America cannot ever "drill its way out" of our energy problem nor "windmill our way out" until we get a handle on our "immigration problem"
On top of that America is already a fully developed nation and more immigration will only decrease our efficiency with more traffic and higher taxes on energy to fund water reclamation programs that consume even more energy.
Had we adopted a sound energy policy forty years ago that tied immigration to domestic energy supply growth, we'd be 100 million persons fewer, have far more grain exports and probably wouldn't be in Iraq or care about Mexico.
Smith lives in Los Angeles. His previous letter about the relationships among President George W. Bush, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Ameriquest Mortgage Company is here. His most recent letter about the impossible-to-calculate cost of illegal immigration is here.
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From: Braveheart (e-mail her)
Re: Today's Letter: A New York Reader Says Not All Irish Supported John F. Kennedy
I respect that New York letter writer Dan Hayes is proud of his father's integrity as demonstrated by his refusal, despite being an Irish Catholic, to vote for Kennedy.
However, Hayes stated that his father is "one example" of Irish voters who did not support Kennedy.
Hayes' father, and other's like him, is the exception. They do not prove the rule.
In the 1960 election, 80 percent of all Catholics voted for Kennedy. The Irish Catholic vote was higher.
To deny the impact of identity politics and criticize the rise of ethnic and group influence on voter preferences as Pat Buchanan and others do denies the reality of American politics.
Joe Guzzardi comments: Barack Obama's challenge is to do what Kennedy did—convince the unconvinced.
Kennedy, even though he was a Catholic in name only, had that demographic in his pocket. But with only two months remaining in the 1960 campaign, Kennedy made a stirring speech to Protestant clergy assuring them that his Catholicism was not a threat to them. That put him over the top in the general election. Read Kennedy's speech here.
Obama has made speeches with the same goal—but without, so far, similar success. Putting aside the predictable and historically short-lived post-convention bump, Obama's poll numbers remain essentially unchanged over the last several months.
Blacks will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. As of today, Obama leads John McCain by 91 percent to 3 percent among African-American voters.
But every Democratic candidate since FDR has carried that bloc. The question is "How will Obama do with the other voters?"
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From: Herm Besse (e-mail him)
Feeling very depressed last night, I phoned a suicide hotline that routed me to a call center in Pakistan.
I told them I am considering jumping out the window.
They begged me not to and asked me instead if I could drive a truck.[PermaLink] [Top] [Letters Home]
