In a piece titled Sanctuary Was a Lovely Word. Then the G.O.P. Got Hold of It, Clyde Haberman, the Times’s NYC columnist [Email him] writes:

When they finally got down to business, after being serenaded by a guitarist on YouTube, it took the Republican presidential candidates 11 ½ minutes Wednesday night for one of them to acknowledge that illegal immigrants are human beings.

Quite. And it would take longer than that, during a Democratic debate for candidates to admit that they were criminals. But that’s by the way–“Sanctuary“ may be a lovely word, but it’s frequently an extremely ugly thing, and its other name is “corruption.”

Here’s an American Conservative article by me that’s never been online before:

Test Case
By Steve Sailer
Bureaucracy fails when civil servants aren’t put to the test.
The American Conservative
September 10, 2007
You might think that liberals who want to expand the federal government and conservatives who want to shrink it could at least agree to improve how well it works. Yet, good government projects, such as boosting the quality of the federal workforce, have largely dropped out of media discussion despite ample evidence that the federal government no longer functions as well as it once did, relative to what’s now technologically feasible. In its mid-20th Century prime, the federal government matched up reasonably well in efficiency and effectiveness against, say, Sears-Roebuck. Today, however, it’s blown away by Wal-Mart’s relentless improvements.
For example, in June, while the Senate was blithely considering mandating a convoluted new immigration system for the federal bureaucracy to administer, the State Department’s nearly century-old responsibility for issuing passports was melting down under the strain of merely a moderate increase in demand predictably caused by a law passed three years before. In an era of cheap networked computing, many Americans still had their summer travel plans ruined by federal incompetence.Everything about the federal government is extraordinarily complicated, and thus there are many plausible explanations, both specific and general, for its current malaise.

Democrats, for instance, have denounced Bush Administration appointments. Indeed, the latest political picks seem prone to “marketing major post-modernism,” the assumption picked up in college that some egghead over in France proved there’s no such thing as truth, so there’s no need to feel guilty about shamelessly spinning everything for maximum political benefit. Still, there are roughly 600 civil servants for each Presidential appointee, so the nefarious impact of the thin top layer can be overstated.

Much less debated is what Steve Nelson, director of the Office of Policy and Evaluation at the Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal watchdog agency, calls the “human capital crisis” facing the federal civilian workforce of nearly two million (not counting the Post Office).

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At Cato Unbound, Linda Gottfredson is debating Jim Flynn, Stephen J. Ceci, and Eric Turkheimer:

Proponents of the taboo on discussing race and IQ assume that the taboo is all for the common good, but whose good, exactly, is served? It is most certainly not individuals of below-average intelligence, who face a tremendous uphill battle in modern, literate societies where life becomes increasingly complex by the day. General intelligence (g) is simply a general proficiency to learn and reason. Put another way, it is the ability to deal with complexity or avoid cognitive error. Virtually everything in life requires some learning or reasoning and thus confers an advantage on brighter individuals. Life is complex, and complexity operates like a headwind that impedes progress more strongly for individuals lower on the IQ continuum. Everyone makes cognitive mistakes, but lower intelligence increases the risk of error.

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This the review of Pat Buchanan’s new book, and the reviewer is Peter Wehner, [send him mail] a former executive assistant to George W. Bush, a

Peter Wehner on Day of Reckoning on National Review Online
Good Morning, Patrick!
Reports of our decomposition are premature.

By Peter Wehner

The man who authored The Death of the West has now turned his considerable spirit of despair to America. Patrick J. Buchanan has written Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart.

According to excerpts posted on The Drudge Report Monday, Buchanan writes, “America is coming apart, decomposing, and …. The likelihood of her survival as one nation … is improbable…” He adds, “America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive.” Our culture is collapsing, according to Buchanan, and we face a perfect storm of crises.

Wehner goes on and on about how wonderful everything is, compared with, specifically, the period of the 1990’s, and how there will soon be as few murders in New York as there were in 1963. He also mentions an article that he and Yuval Levin recently published in Commentary Magazine, , “Crime, Drugs, Welfare — and Other Good News,” [December 2007]

You may be less interested in the issue of neoconservatism vs. paleoconservatism than VDARE.com’s writers are, but take a look at Peter Wehner’s curriculum vitae:

Mr. Wehner served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations prior to becoming deputy director of speechwriting for President George W. Bush in 2001. In 2002, he was asked to head the Office of Strategic Initiatives, where he generated policy ideas, reached out to public intellectuals, published op-eds and essays, and provided counsel on a range of domestic and international issues.

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Wehner was executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative public-policy organization headed by William J. Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Mr. Wehner also served as a special assistant to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and, before that, as a speechwriter for then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.

Given that kind of CV, it’s obvious that you would only give a guy like that a Pat Buchanan book to review if you really didn’t like Pat Buchanan. Remember what I said, on the front page today, and also here, about us being the alternative to National Review? This is another reason why. And it’s one more reason that we need to ask you to send money.

As VDARE.COM prepares to launch its ninth annual War Against Christmas Competition, readers who share our concern about the national trend to abolish the holiest of days might will want to know where to go to find reassurance that Christianity still thrives at Christmastime.

I recommend a wonderful book by Brenda J. Verner titled 101 Ways To Have A Christian Christmas available at Amazon.Com and from the publisher, Tyndale House.

Verner’s book will resonate with VDARE.COM readers. Each of the six chapters–“Your Home,” “Your Family,” “Your Neighborhood,” “Your Town,” “Your Church,” and “Christian Christmas Activism” offer practical advice for celebrating a true Christian Christmas.

In the sixth chapter Verner, who is also known as the Christian Christmas Lady, gives the correct terms for today’s politically correct lingo.

In her author’s note, Verner writes that she “never encountered anyone who openly voiced opposition to the lordship of Jesus Christ until she went away to college –first to Ithaca College and then to Harvard University.” Despite the pressure put on her during her student years to reject her faith in Jesus and become more “progressive,” Verner resisted and has taken her Christmas message to the world in her book.

Verner, who you can contact directly at her e-mail here Chrchristmaslady@aol.com sends this message to VDARE.COM readers:

I am Brenda Verner, the Christian Christmas Lady. I am the author of the book “101 Ways To Have A Christian Christmas.” As we begin this 2007 season of Advent, most Christians are aware that not only the celebration of Christmas, but also our very Christian culture is experiencing relentless assaults by secularists, with the intent of diminishing the open practice of Christianity in the United States. Over the course of the past fifty years, organized consistent campaigns to de-Christianize the marketplace and the public square, particularly the celebration of Christmas, have been relatively successful at dampening exuberant public displays of worship of Jesus Christ. Presently, the American Christmas shopper is in the grip of merchants who demand to present a secularized Christless Christmas. This should be considered no small issue.

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I have an interview with Silvio Canto, Jr., you can listen to it here. Topics include Christmas in Mexico, the Tabasco flood, the Mexican economy,  emigration, and Elvira Arellano.

Usually a head-on crash at highway speeds leads to fatality, as evidenced by the deaths of Jim and Margie Rook, four-year-old Tyler Evans, film director Bob Clark and his son Ariel, paramedic Ryan Ostendorf and nursing student Natalie Housand — Americans killed by illegal aliens who have been remembered on VDARE.com.

Even so, Bettie Coates suffered serious injuries that have severely altered her life. Watch the video included in the link below to get an idea of the pain and cost to one American family caused by Washington’s open borders policy.

Coates, who had recently moved back to North Carolina from Pittsburgh, was trapped inside her Ford Mustang, which was crushed in the collision.

“I just remember a lot of blood just running down my face,” she said.

The wreck shattered her thigh and ankle bones, and she underwent three surgeries during 29 days in WakeMed. She has moved in with her grandparents in Northampton County for the next few months while she recuperates.

Her lack of mobility makes it difficult to keep up with her 2-year-old son, Donovan, she said.

“He wants me to play with him. He doesn’t understand why Mommy can’t do certain things,” she said.

Coates said she has thought about writing a letter to Cruz to let him know how hard it is for her not to play with Donovan, not to go check on the construction of her house and not to return to work.

“He’s taken a lot from me,” she said. “For him to have sneaked into the country (and) then for him to just think he can do whatever he can do and get away with it is very frustrating.”
[Woman Injured in Wrong-Way Wreck Angry, Thankful, WRAL-TV November 27, 2007]

The accused, Eblin Fabiel Ocampo-Cruz, has a long rap sheet and should not have been in this country at all. Why wasn’t this dangerous man deported after his first conviction? His record shows that he is a poster boy for the need to incarcerate and deport.

At the time of the wreck, Cruz was on probation for several offenses, according to court records.

In February 2006, he was convicted in Durham of DWI. A month later, he was convicted of misdemeanor unauthorized use of a vehicle and misdemeanor breaking and entering. In May 2006, he pleaded pleaded guilty to reckless driving and passing an emergency vehicle. Last October, he was charged with resisting an officer, and he was charged with possession of stolen goods in December.
[Man Charged in Wrong-Way Wreck in U.S. Illegally, WRAL-TV October 31, 2007]

I didn’t watch it, so I’m just going through to transcript now. Rudy Giuliani is defending his sanctuary policies, partly by saying “the reality is that New York City was not a sanctuary city,” which is ridiculous. But there is one point where he had an excuse, and he doesn’t seem know about Plyler vs. Doe, a Supreme Court decision that guarantees the children of illegal immigrants K-12 schooling:

The reason for the confusion is, there were three areas in which New York City made an exception. New York City allowed the children of illegal immigrants to go to school. If we didn’t allow the children of illegal immigrants to go to school, we would have had 70,000 children on the streets at a time in which New York City was going through a massive crime wave, averaging 2,000 murders a year, 10,000 felonies a week.[Part I: CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate transcript - CNN.com]

But as reported here on VDARE.com, [America Educating The World–At Taxpayer Expense, February 10, 2003 and Plyler vs. Doe: The Solution, February 13, 2003] the Supreme Court has forbidden any state or city from preventing illegal aliens being educated at taxpayer expense. They base this on the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which is stupid. (For why it’s stupid, see Burger’s dissent.) So if Giuliani had refused to provide free education for children and “youths” illegally in the United States, and he had fought that all the way to the Supreme Court, as he fought for his sanctuary policies, he would have lost, because of this invented “right.” But he didn’t of course–it never occurred to him, and that’s why he didn’t know it was impossible.

Henry Hyde, once the Republican congressman from the 6th district of Illinois, has died. He was quite good on immigration, according to NumbersUSA, but I remember him for his noble service during the Clinton Impeachment, where he was attacked savagely by the press, and received many death threats from Clinton supporters.

Ann Coulter wrote recently that

Rep. Henry Hyde saw an affair he had in 1965 become front-page news because he wouldn’t waver from doing his job under the Constitution.

You can read a speech by Congressman Hyde here, from a speech delivered September 24, 1984, at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

Here the question of consistency comes clear. Had the Archbishop of New York quizzed a conservative Catholic President about his commitment to nuclear arms control, would there have been impassioned hand-wringing at the New York Times editorial board about “mixing politics and religion?” Yet this is precisely what happened when the Archbishop of New York questioned a liberal Democratic candidate for Vice President about her approach to the public policy of abortion. Why is it that Archbishop O’Connor threatens the separation of church and state when he tries to clarify Catholic teaching about abortion, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson doesn’t when he organizes a partisan political campaign through the agency of dozens of churches? These confusions are not merely a matter of anti-Catholic bias, although that is undoubtedly present; they reflect the chaotic condition of public understanding on the larger questions of religious values and the public policy debate.[Keeping God in the Closet]

I have an interview scheduled with Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, on Thursday, November 29th at 6:35 a.m. Pacific Time, on KSFO 560 AM, San Francisco.
You can listen online here.