This is from Wired magazine, about a test that would identify a suspect’s race from DNA found at a crime scene, that police don’t want to use.

Frudakis’ test is called DNAWitness. It examines DNA from 176 locations along the genome. Particular sequences at these points are found primarily in people of African heritage, others mainly in people of Indo-European, Native American, or South Asian descent. No one sequence can perfectly identify a person’s origin. But by looking at scores of markers, Frudakis says he can predict ancestry with a tiny margin of error.

Since the Baton Rouge case, DNAWitness has been used nationally in nearly 200 criminal investigations. In several, the science played a crucial role in narrowing the suspect field, ultimately leading to an arrest. But its success hasn’t made the technology popular with law enforcement. Frudakis’ company, DNAPrint, has yet to turn a profit and may not survive much longer.

Part of the problem is cost — basic tests run more than $1,000. But the real issue? DNAWitness touches on race and racial profiling — a subject with such a tortured history that people can’t countenance the existence of the technology, even if they don’t understand how it works.

“Once we start talking about predicting racial background from genetics, it’s not much of a leap to talking about how people perform based on their DNA — why they committed that rape or stole that car or scored higher on that IQ test,” says Troy Duster, [Send him mail]former president of the American Sociological Association.

“This is analyzing data derived from a crime scene,” Frudakis counters. “It’s just a way for police to narrow down their suspect lists.” But his position, rational as it may be, is no match for the emotions that surface with any pairing of race and crime.

Tony Clayton, a black man and a prosecutor who tried one of the Baton Rouge murder cases, concedes the benefits of the test: “Had it not been for Frudakis, we would still be looking for the white guy in the white pickup.” Nevertheless, Clayton says he dislikes anything that implies we don’t all “bleed the same blood.” He adds, “If I could push a button and make this technology disappear, I would.”[A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's Race, But Police Won't Touch It]

Sam Francis wrote about this technology in 2003[Race Denial Costs Lives, June 9, 2003] and Steve Sailer mentioned Troy Duster around the same time [Race Flat-Earthers Dangerous To Everyone’s Health, May 11, 2003] when Duster was objecting to what he called “racialized drugs”–drugs like BiDil which can help blacks more than whites.

There are all sorts of scams people employ to use and abuse U.S. immigration law. Phony marriage is one such tactic, and it’s apparently rather easy to get away with it.

A recent case in Miami involved one woman who was simultaneously married to ten men:

A 26-year-old Miami woman was married to 10 men at the same time, prosecutors allege, in a
marriage-for-pay scheme to enable the men to remain in the United States. Eunice Lopez was charged with nine counts of bigamy Wednesday. The charges say she married the men between 2002 and 2006 without divorcing any of them. In one case, she married two men in the same month.

The article reporting this case includes a detailed breakdown on when she married all these guys.
What’s amazing, or maybe not so amazing nowadays, is that the Miami bureaucrats didn’t figure out what was going on until the scam had been going on several years and she was simultaneously married to 10 men.

Atlanta is close to recording the dryest year in its history. But even if rainfall over the next couple days rescues the city from that unfortunate statistic, Georgia and the general area are facing “exceptional” drought conditions. (Pictured is Lake Lanier, a drastically reduced source of water for Atlanta, currently 20 feet below normal.)

In October, I reported that the state of Georgia had no plan of what to do if the unthinkable catastrophe happened and the water were to run out: Water Supply: Where the Overpopulation Rubber Hits the Road. (See also No Backup if Atlanta’s Faucets Run Dry.)

Georgia’s Governor famously held a prayer service to implore a higher power for rain (Perdue asks crowd to ‘pray up a storm’), where he blamed Georgians for wasteful consumption patterns. “We have not been good stewards of our land. We have not been good stewards of our water,” he said. The Governor might better have blamed Washington for its policy of endless population growth, against all reason.

Now Georgia at least has a short-term plan, although the sight of people lined up with buckets to get water from a tanker truck like some third world country may be deeply unsettling. Particularly if the National Guard must be called up to deliver water to a major city.

The state of Georgia said it has lined up contracts with vendors to bring in bottled water and tanker trucks that could dispense water into jugs, jars and buckets.

“Are we going to get to that point? I don’t know. But the most important thing is to be prepared,” said Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

But the state, the city of Atlanta and the Georgia National Guard, which could be called into action by the governor to deliver water in an emergency, have yet to work out the details of exactly where the water would be distributed and how, saying it is too soon to say where it might be needed.

In any case, those are just emergency measures for supplying people with the water they need for drinking, cooking, bathing and flushing the toilet. Atlanta and other communities have yet to settle on a long-term solution if the water runs out.
[Amid drought, Georgia is lining up tankers and bottled water, but still has no long-term plan, Associated Press, Dec 5, 2007]

The skunk at the garden party here is immigration-fueled population growth. Georgia has mushroomed to double the population it had 1960, from 4 million then to over 8 million counted in the 2000 Census. So not only has the supply of water decreased (droughts are a normal part of nature) but the demand has increased enormously.

I want to thank VDARE.COM readers who rallied to my last appeal. And I want to commiserate with the surprisingly significant number of VDARE.COM donors who have written to say they have lost their jobs, due to outsourcing and immigration. Our fight is truly your fight. We are really grateful—but we need help from all of you - and especially those of you who have capital gains in 2007 and are in a position to shelter them by giving larger sums.

A few generous individuals still constitute the bulk of VDARE.COM’s support. You can really make a difference—now.

Please go to our donation links and give generously, before clicking on the link for today’s postings, just below.

“The Immigration Encyclopedia” Needs Your Support

By Nicholas Stix

[Peter Brimelow writes: New York journalist Nicholas Stix has once again very kindly supported our Christmas appeal with this unsolicited article on his blog, Nicholas Stix, Uncensored. His energy and effectiveness amazes me—and I just recently edited his definitive account of the black-on-white murders Stix calls the “Knoxville Horror”. Scroll to end, BELOW TO DONATE LINK, to get to today's postings.]

Bewildered former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, recently told the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza that everywhere he goes, voters’ number one concern is immigration.

It does appear to be the issue out here wherever we are. Nobody’s asked about Iraq—doesn’t ever come up. The first question out of the box, everywhere I go—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, it doesn’t matter—is immigration. It’s just red hot, and I don’t fully understand it.

Welcome to America, Mike!

Here’s the problem. With the help of the MSM, Huckabee has conned millions of voters into thinking that he supports enforcing America’s immigration laws, when in fact he is a confirmed supporter of abolishing America through open borders.

What if I told you that there is an online encyclopedia – though its editor/publisher doesn’t use that term – devoted (though not limited) to immigration, which is vastly superior in factual reliability (unlike the New York Times, it has its own house fact-checker) to any daily newspaper, but which at the same time has more scholarly rigor than you’ll find from tenured professors? (With the notable exception of immigration economist George Borjas.) And what if I told you it has an archive of eight years’ worth of thousands of such articles? And what if I told you it’s free?

Readers of The Immigration Encyclopedia know all about Mike Huckabee’s chameleon routine, because TIE’s dogged researcher-writers have scrutinized the Governor every step of the way.

Keeping track of presidential aspirants’ flip-flops is just one of the many services that TIE provides on a daily basis through its articles and blogs.

And while it costs nothing to read TIE, it does cost money to produce and maintain it. Not just due to Web servers and bandwidth, but because TIE pays its writers and its fact-checker, which is how it can provide you such top-notch reporting, scholarship, and commentary. (Full disclosure: I am proud to say that I am one of those writers.)

The site isn’t actually known as The Immigration Encyclopedia. I gave it that title, because it is the most encyclopedic source on legal and illegal immigration into America on the Web, and to mock a certain pretend Web encyclopedia that has just collected so many millions of dollars in donations that it is embarrassed to even cite the figures. The pretend encyclopedia pays contributors nothing, and nothing is what it provides—but at a cost of millions! By contrast, The Immigration Encyclopedia is a priceless resource that is run for mere tens of thousands of dollars per year in tax-deductible donations. But that relatively small sum is essential.

TIE’s official name is VDARE.com. The reason I didn’t name it earlier was to be coy, to stress what I believe is VDARE’s true character, and to fool Google. Since this is my third fundraising post this month, had I stated its purpose at the top, Google’s blogsearch would have seen this as a repetitious post, and not listed it.

Please hit this link to support VDARE with a tax-deductible donation. (Did I mention that your contribution is tax-deductible?)

Thank you.

With best holiday wishes,

Nicholas Stix

Readers report that PayPal is now making TWO confusing efforts to get you to sign up for its proprietary system option when you just want to make a one-time credit card payment to VDARE.com.

When you click on the “credit card” link below (HINT!), you go to our donation page. If you click on “make a donation” in the credit card section, you see the PayPal login stuff on the right - and the Don’t Have PayPal account?/credit card option in very small print on the bottom left.

If you click on “continue” there, basically the same page comes up EXCEPT THAT you can enter a payment amount, top right.

If you do that and then again click on “continue”, bottom left, it gives up trying to get you to sign up for PayPal and takes you to a page where you can enter your credit card information.

PayPal is a great system, but its marketing people are aggressive - like those annoying ads on newspaper websites, something I really want to avoid on VDARE.COM. (HINT! HINT)

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The mainstream media’s willful mis-reporting on many aspects of the immigration issue brings to mind Stalin’s rhetorical Q and A:

“How do we manage the ideological and political work of a party as large as ours? Only through the press.”

Luckily for the public, there is the internet and a handful of local papers which are willing to…well, report on the issue.

This from an eleven-part series on a recent refugee influx in Shelbyville, Tennessee [Somalians respond poorly to local hospitality, By Brian Mosely, Shelbyville Times-Gazette, December 29, 2007 ]

”Over the past few years, this community has given a helping hand and opened their arms to the new arrivals from Somalia.

In return, many of these refugees have given Shelbyville the finger.

When I began researching this story about the Somalis, I knew it would be controversial. We were aware that many in Shelbyville were having serious concerns about hundreds of Sunni Muslims moving here.

But as I began to talk with officials and others about our new neighbors, I was stunned by the reaction. Practically every person I spoke with locally said they had done everything possible to help out the refugees in adjusting to their new home and were treated very badly in return.

On the other hand, some I contacted for background on this story seemed to be so blinded by political correctness that they would excuse any behavior, no matter how upsetting or disruptive, as “part of their culture.”

Did anyone involved in integrating these folks into American society stop to think that many in the heartland of America might not share this overly optimistic and myopic view of cultural diversity?

There are also the stories that come from other communities that have many locals nervous. For example, in October of last year, Said Biyad, a Bantu refugee from Somalia, killed his four children in Louisville, Ky., and attacked his estranged wife with a blunt object, turning himself into police afterward. He slashed the throats of the children, aged 2 to 8, because his wife “disrespected” him, he said.

A difference in culture, no doubt.

If Shelbyville’s Somali community really wishes to “integrate into different societies to live together and to make our future here,” as Imam Haji Yousuf told me, that process must work both ways. The arrogant sense of entitlement demonstrated by these new additions to Shelbyville must stop.

One can not expect a community to keep bending over backwards to help folks, only to treated with rudeness, disrespect and hostility. At some point, our welcoming attitude and southern hospitality will turn into resentment and distrust.

And as the comments posted on our website demonstrates, that is already occurring, in far greater numbers than we ever imagined.”

Phyllis Schafly writes at World Net Daily:

A Duke University spokesman said that 40 percent of Duke’s engineering graduates cannot get engineering jobs. A Duke University publication suggests that the best prospect for good engineering jobs is for the U.S. government to start another major project like going to the moon.

U.S. News warns us that “government is becoming an employer of choice.” Corporations are getting leaner, but government can continue to pay good salaries with lots of vacation days, sick leave, health insurance and retirement benefits, because government rakes in more tax revenue in good times and can raise taxes in bad times; and if the Democrats win in 2008, we can expect government to expand even more.

Presidential candidates have gotten the message from grass-roots Americans that we want our borders closed to illegal immigrants. Headlines now proclaim “Immigration moves to front and center of GOP race” and “GOP candidates hold fast on immigration at debate.”

But Republican Party candidates haven’t yet gotten the message that jobs are just as big a gut issue as immigration. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted Dec. 14-17 reports that, by 58 percent to 28 percent, Americans believe globalization is bad because it subjects U.S. companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor.[A Degree of Insignificance. December 28, 2007]

Now, the thing is that the jobs issue and immigration are greatly intertwined. In The Jobs Crunch, I showed that in IT, immigration,especially via programs like H-1b, is a bigger factor in decreasing employment opportunities for Americans than outsourcing. Immigration is also a major factor in the reduction of disposable income for Americans in less skilled employment.

Outsourcing spurred by bad trade deals is still a major factor–but when you add bad immigration policies to bad trade deals the results are synergistic and devastating. The folks being most impact are those that are younger-and with less of an established lifestyle and career.

I applaud Mrs. Schafly for being a more genuine “family values” conservative than we typically see–because if we don’t have and economy that supports families, we won’t see that many truly stable families.

Promoting education will do very little if the US continues to have horrible trade and immigration policies.

How many Presidential debates have been held this year? A quazillion? And how many have you, personally, watched? If you are like me, maybe half of one and three minutes of another.

Is this our fault? Well, of course it is. But, still … couldn’t the candidates try a little harder to make it interesting?

For example, one cause of voter cynicism is the suspicion that the candidates are complete ignoramuses on every topic on which they haven’t been preprogrammed by their handlers. So, instead of having them stand around and semi-argue with each other, why not have them play Jeopardy instead, with the categories weighted toward history and current affairs.

Sure, the frontrunners wouldn’t be likely to agree to it, but why not let laggards like Duncan Hunter and Dennis Kucinich volunteer for a match. They don’t even have to be in the same party. Come on, you’d watch that, right? And once a Hunter-Kucinich-Paul Jeopardy match got triple the ratings of the last debate, pressure would mount on the big boys and girls to pick up their buzzers and fight.

Couldn’t the match be rigged by producers who leak the questions to one candidate or another? Sure, but there are ways around that. The show doesn’t have to write new questions–it has tens of thousands of old questions, far too many for a candidate to study. All the producers would have to do is categorize old categories as Relevant, Middling, and Irrelevant with a weighting toward the Relevant, then have a random system that picks old categories moments before the show starts taping.

America’s editors and news directors voted on the year’s top ten list of most important stories, with the terrible campus murders at Virginia Tech getting the top slot. Also noted (with insufficient enthusiasm) was the amazing grassroots victory against of Bush’s amnesty monstrosity.

1. VIRGINIA TECH KILLINGS: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, who had avoided court-ordered mental health treatment despite a history of psychiatric problems, killed two fellow students in a dormitory on April 16, detoured to mail a hate-filled video of himself to NBC News, then shot dead 30 students and professors in a classroom building before killing himself. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

9. IMMIGRATION DEBATE: A compromise immigration plan, backed by President Bush and Democratic leaders, collapsed in Congress due to Republican opposition. The plan would have enabled millions of illegal immigrants to move toward citizenship, while also bolstering border security. The issues remained alive in the presidential campaign.
[Virginia Tech Massacre Voted Top Story , San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 28, 2007]

Of course, VDARE.com readers know full well that the Virginia Tech mass murder was absolutely about immigration: the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was a Korean legal immigrant with severe assimilation problems, who expressed his fury about being unable to adjust socially in the most horrific way.

The Virginia Tech case additionally showed just how politically correct the educational establishment has become. Cho was a psychologically disturbed and dangerous young man, but no teacher or administrator was willing to insist that he be held to account for criminal actions like stalking co-eds. He was cut far more slack than an American kid would have been for similar behavior, apparently out of misplaced tolerance toward an immigrant.

This is from Florida, and is fairly typical. Illegal immigrants aren’t supposed to like enforcement, and neither are their employers. Sorry about that!

Undocumented workers bemoan U.S. crackdown - 12/29/2007 - MiamiHerald.com
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND HELENA POLEO, December 29, 2007

For thousands of South Florida’s illegal immigrants, the new year offers more uncertainty, discontent and, for many, resigned departure.

From farms in Homestead to day laborer pickup sites in Florida City and Fort Lauderdale, migrant workers are struggling to find work as Homeland Security steps up enforcement after a firestorm of public opinion derailed an immigration overhaul in Congress. That proposal, which failed in the summer, would have eventually legalized millions of undocumented workers.

Adding to the turmoil: a slowing economy.

More than two dozen South Florida employers and undocumented workers interviewed by The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald said they worry about tough times ahead. Evidence suggests immigrants are sending less money back to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean.

At Global Money Express in Little Havana, money transfers have dropped by a third in the past few weeks.

”This season is usually the one with the most remittances, but the flow has gone down,” Global manager Roberto Carlos Tejeda said, adding that similar declines occurred at two other branches near downtown Miami and Little Havana, where many Central American immigrants live.

Several immigrants without work papers are seeing job opportunities dry up and said they’re thinking of packing up and leaving employers who count on their cheap labor and seasonal work.

”The raids that have happened during the summer and early fall are a concern,” said Larry Dunagan, a pole bean farmer in Homestead. Dunagan said labor shortages are possible if the crackdown intensifies.

”There will be a tremendous demand on labor, and a shortage is a concern because we deal with a perishable product,” he added.

So the beans could be rotting in the fields if Mr. Dunagan doesn’t raise his wages. There already is an  H-2A program, which will allow farmers willing to take responsibility for their workers to import them temporarily and then send them home, [PDF] but most farmers would prefer to hire from a pool of illegal labor that’s just hanging around. The problem is that those illegals, just hanging around, are causing problems for everyone, whereas the farmers are the only ones who benefit.

Someone asked me if the recent outbreak of listeria in Massachusetts, where two people died from tainted milk, involved immigration. The answer is, apparently not. A similar outbreak in North Carolina did involve immigrants:

Listeria Warning Issued in North Carolina Following Three Confirmed Cases of Listeriosis

Date Published: Thursday, December 27th, 2007

A Listeria outbreak has prompted a warning from North Carolina public health officials. Following at least three cases of listeriosis in North Carolina, the North Carolina Division of Public Health is cautioning pregnant women to avoid eating soft cheeses, hot dogs and deli-style meats, and prepared salads. The Listeria cases were identified in Moore, Durham, and Mecklenburg counties; a probable case was identified in Buncombe County. All three confirmed listeriosis cases involved Latinas; two were pregnant women whose pregnancies ended in miscarriage. The third Listeria case also involved a pregnant woman; she delivered early but she and her baby are doing well. The probable listeriosis case involves another pregnant Latina who also lost her baby. All four women consumed soft cheeses from a variety of sources.

The problem, as I’ve said before, is that Third World immigrants don’t understand the germ theory of disease, and may refuse to believe it even if we teach it to them. This is from the Centers for Disease Control, Immigrant and Border Infectious Disease Concerns for Women, November 2004

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices among Immigrant Hispanic Women Regarding Consumption of High-Risk Foods

Hispanic/Latino immigrants are at high risk for listeriosis, a disease that can cause severe pregnancy complications, including miscarriage, stillbirth, uterine infection, premature labor, and death in the newborn period. The goal of CDC’s Futura Mama program is to assess community attitudes and knowledge about unpasteurized milk products (a common vehicle for listeriosis) and use this information to develop culturally sensitive disease prevention strategies. Eight focus groups were conducted in a Hispanic/Latino immigrant community in Georgia. Most participants reported regular consumption of homemade cheese and thought that unpasteurized milk and milk products are healthier and tastier than store-bought products. None of the participants were aware of listeriosis, of other infections related to unpasteurized milk products, or of the association between infection and pregnancy complications. Women <32 years of age were more likely than those >32 years to accept the idea that health risks are associated with unpasteurized milk products. The study concluded that public health messages delivered through in-person formats (workshops and discussion groups) and mass media may be effective in reducing the risk of listeriosis in Hispanic/Latino communities.[Emphasis added]

And this is where the restaurant and hotel industry insists on hiring its cheap labor.