A big hat tip to my friends at Help Save Herndon for letting me know about last night’s ouster of Herndon’s mayor and Town Council members who voted for a taxpayer-supported “day labor” center for illegal aliens in Herndon, Virginia, just down the road.
Yes, using public funds for illegal purposes is, well, illegal, but why quibble? Last year I wrote a two-part op-ed for Townhall.com about a then-proposed day labor center in Herndon. For the first part, I interviewed Council Member Dennis Husch — who opposed the center and was reelected to his seat. I sought comment about the proposed center from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the spokesperson fed me an empty line about “working with law enforcement partners.” In the second part, I followed up on the developments.
Only 3,000 voted in the Virginia elections yesterday, but it’s a big victory for law and order. From the Washington Post:
Residents replaced the incumbents with challengers who immediately called for significant changes at the center. Some want to bar public funds from being spent on the facility or restrict it to workers living in the country legally. Others want it moved to an industrial site away from the residential neighborhood where it is located.
The labor center forced the western Fairfax County town into the national spotlight last summer as the immigration debate grew deeply contentious…The council voted 5 to 2 last August to establish the center, but yesterday’s vote created an apparent 6 to 1 majority in opposition. Steve J. DeBenedittis, 38, a health club operator and political newcomer, defeated Mayor Michael L. O’Reilly with 52 percent of the vote.
Most day center-supporting members got a swift kick to the curb, including Mayor Michael O’Reilly, who I called a fool for implying that taxpayers in Herndon had no right to influence the feds or their local legislators. How dare they complain about public funds being used for illegal purposes! Right now, O’Reilly’s probably wondering what right the people had to vote him out of office. Whatever America is — a democracy, a constitutional republic, a borderline Socialist nation, take your pick — a dictatorship it ain’t, and the people have the right, the duty, to express their will by voting and influencing people who write the laws.
I hope and pray the recent illegal immigration “demonstrations” backfire and cause a backlash, as some activists fear they will. Perhaps seeing and hearing unjustifiably irate foreigners demanding rights they don’t deserve will wake up complacent Americans.
Recommended: Nobody blogs about ICE the way Debbie Schlussel does. See posts like See Why Women REALLY Don’t Run Plants…Or Immigration Agency’s Corruption Investigations. She’s dubbed the inexperienced, unqualified chief Julie Myers “The ICE Princess.” I wish Debbie had an “ICE” category for easy linking to all the posts.
Related posts:
Illegal Aliens and You
Insulation
Every little bit helps:
I’m taking a short sabbatical. Next week I’ll post a report on this event.
In the meantime, check out the long blogroll. Lots of good blogging going on.
Update (4/27): Just a quick update because I think this is important. The Duke rape accuser has cried rape before. Ten years ago she claimed three men had raped her three years earlier. (Source)
Filed under: General
Shortly after I sent Townhall.com’s editor my review of Star Parker’s White Ghetto, I read an op-ed called First comes baby, then comes marriage?, by Maryann Reid. As if the dire statistics in Parker’s book hadn’t depressed me enough, the op-ed disheartened me even more.
Black liberals have serious personal problems with me and my blogging. I write too much about negative things going on in the black community and too little that’s positive, they say.
My typical response was, “Start your own blog and write about positive things,” or “Stop reading my blog if it upsets you so much.” I’d already explained here and there why I blog the way I do, but I decided to confront the question head on.
A post called Do You Hate Black People may give the most straightforward answer to why I focus on certain topics.
Some have argued that as a high-profile and “educated” black blogger, I should do something to uplift blacks instead of always condemning them. I approach the controversy from a totally different perspective. I’m not condemning anyone; my sin is airing dirty laundry in front of a mostly white readership. There are plenty of black bloggers, writers, politicians, educators, etc., writing and talking about positive things going on in the black community. But too many for my taste gloss over what ails us.
Too many avoid the harsh truth. “Racism” is a cop-out and too absurdly childish for serious discussion. That’s why I skip it. You’ll never hear me say or write that racism doesn’t exist; I choose to focus on what we bring on ourselves.
Filed under: Cultural Decline , Faith , Pop Culture
OK. This is very cool. I want to do it, too!
Check out Michelle’s latest “Vent” video segment. On tap: media bias, Mary McCarthy, John Kerry, Sandy Berger, the recent (and phony) immigration raids, and other topics.
Previous post (with comments open): Hot Air: World’s First Full-Service Conservative Internet Broadcast Network
Filed under: Bloggers
Update III (4/27): The Duke rape accuser has cried rape before. Ten years ago she claimed three men had raped her three years earlier. (Source)
The girl’s got an active, though not terribly original, imagination. I wonder if the alleged rapists were white…
Remember, readers — as more info like this seeps out — the vapid, asinine, hypocritical, and race-mongering news stories, op-eds, speeches, and talking heads we’ve endured for the past couple of weeks. I’m on the edge of my chair waiting to hear/read what they’ve got to say about this.
Update II (4/26): One more comment on this post, and I’m done…unless something big happens today. I ran across a few articles about the “lack of diversity” in baseball and the lone black player on Duke’s former lacrosse team (let’s face it, it’s over).
Do you notice that very few people complain or write about the “lack of diversity” of football and basketball teams? Both sports are overwhelmingly dominate by blacks, yet not a peep. Not a serious peep, at any rate.
Interesting…
Update (4/25): Nifong the lyncher?
If/when the rape charges fail, Nifong will have a few misdemeanor cases to keep him busy. Go get ‘em, Mike!
A commenter says: “Sounds like Mr. Nifong is trolling for cooperating witnesses…”
Newsday quoting Steve “I don’t care what you say about him he’s got a point” Sailer:
“The Times, he says, loves a story in which blacks might have been criminally victimized by whites, because it reverses the all-too familiar pattern. So the Times jumps at the chance to show whites acting badly, thus elevating the paper’s self-appointed status as the arbiter of social and racial justice. As Sailer puts it, ‘The Duke lacrosse team, a bunch of rich preppie jerks, makes a wonderful target for other whites wishing to parade their moral superiority.”
I don’t know how she does it.
Michelle Malkin — wife, mother of two, author of three books, syndicated columnist, speaker, FOX News guest host, and prolific blogger extraordinaire — has started a new venture called Hot Air, a conservative Internet broadcast network.
From the site:
Continue reading Hot Air: World’s First Full-Service Conservative Internet Broadcast Network
Tuesday, April 25: Check out a BBC article about the conference.
Gunn Nutt has posted lots of photos and a wrap-up.
Captain Argghh! has a wrap-up, as does Blackfive.
Also see Instapinch, Sgt. Hook, Beltway Blogroll…
OPFOR: “Met LaShawn Barber on the elevator first thing in the morning. What a classy broad. ”
————————————————————–
(Pictures here. Join the video/audio feed and chat here. )
I’m here!
All week I’m working at home, sun streaming through the window. This morning I awake to a chilly, nasty, drizzly day. Yuck. But here I am at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning live-blogging for my country! MilBlog Conference 2006 will be the first of many, God willing.
Other live bloggers: Gunn Nutt, Euphoric Reality, Soldiers’ Angels, and Two Babes and a Brain.
Military wife Andi of Andi’s World (met at BlogNashville) spearheaded this conference. I just met Matt of Blackfive. Don’t expect many pictures. Most of these guys blog under their first names and want to remain unidentified. I forgot my camera anyway.
Milblogs: Past, Present and Future
8:48 a.m.: Austin Bay is opening the first MilBlog Conference. Panelists are Buzz Patterson, Matt of Blackfive, CJ of A Soldier’s Perspective, Citizen Smash (”Lt. Smash”) of Indepundit, Steve of Threadwatch (met at BlogNashville), John Noonan of OPFOR…
This is why it’s important to keep journals. CJ (who says his blogging is therapeutic) is talking about reading his grandfather’s journals as a kid. His grandfather fought in WWII. Think of the memories and recorded events found in those pages. I’ve kept a “journal of life” (16 black-and-white composition notebooks) since I was 16 years old, over 20 years ago. It’s tough to read some of that stuff. Young, stupid, learning, growing. But it’s a chronicle of my life and my physical, mental, and spiritual development. It’s a record of events that are important to me. If I wanted to write a memoir one day, those journals will come in handy.
Smash is talking about how he started milblogging back in 2002 just to chronicle events. He’s talking about his quick rise in the blogosphere as the go-to soldier blogger when the war first started, although he wasn’t in Iraq at the time.
One of Matt’s friends was killed in an ambush in Iraq. One of the people his friend saved was a Newsweek reporter, who didn’t mention the man when he wrote about the story. That made Matt angry, understandably, and this prompted him to start Blackfive.
Monday, April 24: Comments closed on this post. A defense lawyer wants to see the evidence. Read and discuss the latest news.
Update (4/23): Read Newsweek’s latest story about this case. It’s long and detailed enough to cover almost everything we know so far.
The emerging images pop right out at you: two strippers start dancing, the players get rowdy, the strippers get angry and start to leave, the players get angry and call them names as they head out, one of the strippers returns the taunts, the drunk accuser-stripper goes back in to retrieve her shoe (but may not have found it), second stripper is angry at the players and the drunk stripper, calls 911 to report name-calling, has someone else call 911 to report drunk woman in her car, cop arrives and sees drunk woman passed out, drunk woman is taken to a “substance abuse” center, realizes she may be in big trouble because of her past drunken criminal behavior (leading police on a car chase and trying to run down an officer), claims rape, is sent to hospital where exam reveals injuries “consistent” with rape, points the finger at three men at the party, media and black “leaders” go crazy and play up race angle, DA - in a fight for political survival - takes the race bait and vilifies 46 men, some of whom weren’t at the party, tests all but the black player, and despite no evidence charges two men with rape.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
And this is highly unlikely to have happened: “She [the stripper] identified Reade Seligmann, 20, with 100-percent certainty as the man who forced her to perform oral sex on him.”
Yet no DNA connected Seligmann or Finnerty to the accuser; no DNA under her nails from trying to fight them off. No connection also means their DNA wasn’t found on her, either. Don’t mean to be graphic, but if someone had forced me to…let’s just say the lab techs would have a sufficent sample of blood evidence to work with.
Also see this must-read comment.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Update (5:05 p.m.): This case is burning up the search engines, too. In the last hour, I’ve had over 800 unique visitors looking for information about this case. To give you some perspective, an “Insta-lanche” may generate about 500 visits per hour, depending on the time of day and how Glenn describes the post.
By the way, the wonderful e-mail I’m getting greatly outweighs the troll droppings and hate e-mail. Thank you.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Continue reading Duke Rape Case: Vulgarity, Hypocrisy, Double Standards, Myths, Money, Etc.
