As Brendan makes his way through the southern border states and settles back in Arizona, he hasn’t kept up with the immigration debate. Luckily, we’re here to help. :)

Having listened to the President’s speech at the beginning of this week, the only thing that I could possibly object to was that the National Guard thing seems to be a PR ploy. Forgiving him this for the moment — I would expect the same from most politicians — the general idea of 1) having a guest worker program, and 2) allowing existing illegal immigrants pay a fine and (eventually) work toward citizenship seems reasonable. Not everyone agrees.

(On the second point, it’s important to note that some of them wouldn’t get citizenship for 15 or more years, since that’s the ‘line’ he spoke of when he said that “they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules[.]”)

The alternative is the “Lou Dobbs” solution, which would either be to deport them all or simply imprison them. While there are advocates of various strategies on both sides of the aisle, the strongest resistance to the President’s plan seems to be from Republicans. Some are predicting that there will be pushback from the President’s own party — that the unwritten “majority-of-the-majority” rule will cause problems — while others believe that with the leadership onboard that the rank-and-file will follow. There has been a flurry of activity on the Hill this past week as lawmakers jockey for position on who is more patriotic — note the ‘national language’ bill — and various amendments are debated back and forth.

Meanwhile, Mexico and four other Latin American nations (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica) have complained bitterly about a plan to build hundreds of miles of triple layer fencing along the southern border. Mexican President Vicente Fox has compared the plan to the Berlin Wall (forgetting, perhaps, that the Berlin Wall was built by Germany to keep residents inside the state). Also, Mexico is threatening to sue the United States in U.S. courts if Mexicans are harmed by the National Guard:

“If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people … we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates,” Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said[.]

(Perhaps with the recent border shooting we’ll see whether they follow through, but somehow I doubt much will come of it.)

On the conspiracy theory side of things, I’ve heard one rumor that this will cause a split in both parties: the big business group in the Republican party will ally with the “softie liberals” in the Democratic party, while the nativists and social conservatives in the Republican party will ally with the union types on the Democratic side, leading to total chaos in the upcoming electoral season. I’m not so sure, as this is one issue among many, but only time will tell.

Discuss.

There has been an explosion in a Kentucky coal mine, killing five miners. The mine is about 250 miles southeast of Louisville near a town called Holmes Mill. Details are scant at the moment, or at least not yet public, but the bodies of all five have been recovered.

The frequency of these blasts has been alarming. U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has called it an emergency within the mining industry:

“These five deaths bring the grim toll of coal miners killed on the job this year to 31, compared with 22 in all of 2005,” Miller said. “This is clearly an emergency. In light of this most recent tragedy, it would be criminal neglect for the U.S. Congress to continue to fail to pass mine safety reform legislation. The foot dragging has got to stop.”

A bill endorsed in committee last week made new requirements for air supplies, rescue teams, and communications equipment, and should be before the full Senate soon.

Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui begins his life sentence today at the Colorado “Supermax” facility sometimes called the “Alcatraz in the Rockies.” His neighbors will include Eric Rudolph, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, and Ramzi Yousef — although he will likely never see them.

“It is a place of extraordinary security, 23 hours a day in cells, one hour of recreation,” CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said at the time of Moussaoui’s sentencing earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

“It is as close to permanent solitary confinement as exists in our prison system,” Toobin said.

His new home was described in a Washington Post article, seems rather bleak: “In the most tightly monitored part of the facility, known as the ‘control unit,’ inmates are kept in segregation at all times — living, sleeping and eating in individual cells poured from concrete that measure approximately 7 feet by 11 feet.” An approximate rendering is here.

It will certainly be a slow way to die.

CNN is publishing the English translation of the letter from Iranian president Ahmadinejad. It’s more than a bit rambling; I have not read it completely through, but as Secretary Rice said, it seems aimed to annoy rather than to actually engage Bush or the United States in dialogue.

Translation here.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: James Lileks has a rather different translation. Heh.

In a quirky story likely to bring up bad memories of 2004, an electoral mess in a small town in northern Ohio could have been resolved merely by the candidate’s two (voting-age) sons — who didn’t show up at the polls.

William Crawford, trying to retain his seat on the central committee of the Erie County Democratic Party, and challenger Jean Miller each received 43 votes in the primary balloting.

Officials plan to conduct a recount, but the race may have to be settled by coin flip, said David Giese, the county’s Democratic Party chairman and an elections board member.

(Both sons were registered Democrats.)

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Michael Manor, an inmate of a Houston area prison, has been given a 40 year sentence (in addition to his existing 32) for possession of a cell phone. Authorities “caught Manor with the phone when it fell from his bunk bed. He told investigators that he paid another inmate $10 in commissary items for unlimited use of the phone.” Prosecutors offered him a deal where he would only get an additional 25, but he turned it down. (Apparently there are no pay phones in Texas prisons.)

More here and here.

According to a CNN article (and elsewhere), all the TVs in the White House, Air Force One, etc. are tuned to one station: Fox News. This is hardly surprising, but it seems it’s been getting a little old for the White House press corps:

During a briefing led by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as President Bush was traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana, the Washington Post’s Jim VandeHei asked why the White House televisions always seemed to be tuned to Fox News and if it was possible to have them tuned instead to CNN.

“It’s come to my attention that there’s been requests — this is a serious question — to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied,” VandeHei told McClellan, who is soon to be replaced by former Fox anchor and self-described conservative Tony Snow.

“My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?” VandeHei asked.

To McClellan’s credit, he honored the request, and at least some of the TVs will now show CNN. :)

Fox propagandist commentator Tony Snow will accept the position of White House press secretary, finally ending the era of the laughably ineffective Scott McClellan. Now the nation can be lied to in a less awkward and staccato voice. Other than the change of venue, this probably won’t seem like much of a change in job duties to Snow, however.

According to CNN, “before agreeing to take on the post, Snow had sought and received assurances from Bolten and other senior White House officials that he would be an active participant in major policy debates and would have a significant say in hiring in the press and communications operations.” While it may be understandable that he be involved in “press and communications operations”, it seems a bit bold for him to ask to be involved in major policy debates; is this a move by Fox News to set the agenda for the White House? :)

No real confirmation of this, but there is a video going about the Internet (pretty hard to fake unless someone took the trouble to repaint a 747?) seems to be of Air Force One being vandalized in a daring — perhaps stupid — late night raid. The admitted perpetrator is a man named Marc Ecko, whose stated reason for tagging the plane was to “open a dialogue” (although I think that if it hasn’t happened already, some Secret Service agents will be giving him ample opportunity for that soon). Not that I condone such behavior, but his act certainly took a brass pair to pull off.

Video available here, here, and for the time being at the original site StillFree.com.

Update: OK, so it’s a fake. Turns out they probably used the plane from the movie Air Force One (Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman). More from the Snopes.com page. Still pretty good though. Any bets on when some dumbass will get shot trying to have life imitate art?

Maybe there aren’t laser beams on their heads, but they’re kind of neat anyway: remote controlled sharks. The program, funded by DARPA, uses implants to manipulate the parts of the brain related to sense — thereby controlling where the shark believes is his next meal. Heh.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

The Washington Post is reporting that Christian mobs in Nigeria have lashed out at Muslims, resulting in dozens of deaths. The article cites long-standing ethnic tensions as the primary cause of years of fighting:

Deaths in other Nigerian cities totaled 50 from the five days of rioting, according to news reports, and many Nigerians braced for more retaliatory attacks. The violence has revealed again the deep ethnic, regional and religious differences in Africa’s most populous nation, split nearly evenly between a Muslim north and a Christian and animistic south. In the past decade, thousands of Nigerians have been killed in political, ethnic and religious violence.

However, lest any convenient reason go unnoticed, the issue of Muslim rioting over cartoons has been used as an excuse:

“We have to retaliate,” said Justin Ifeanyi, 24. “It is a shame to us if we don’t kill them.”

Ifeanyi expressed amazement that cartoons published in Europe could set off violence in Africa.

“This thing happened in Denmark,” Ifeanyi said. “How could that be causing havoc in another part of Nigeria?”

I think the answer is that, like Muslims burning embassies elsewhere, existing tensions are being manifested by the present violence. All it needed was a spark.

This morning the WaPo reported that death toll was updated to 127. I expect it to grow.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

Whilst meat workers in Nebraska collect millions from legalized gambling, thieves on the other side of the pond have stolen £25 million (~$43 million) from a security company in Kent, England. Men posing as police officers visited the company and lured the manager outside where he was taken captive. His family was also taken captive simultaneously:

At about the same time, the manager’s wife and young son were visited at their home by two men who said they were police officers and told them there had been an accident involving the manager. The wife and son were taken from their home, police said.

Police (the real police) are hoping members of the community can help them find the culprits of what is one of the largest heists in UK history (although not the largest, which occurred in late 2004).

In other news, Firewall starring Harrison Ford was #6 at the box office last weekend.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

The AP (through CNN) is reporting that David Irving, the oft-discredited ‘historian’ of the Third Reich, has been charged by a Austrian court for statements that assert that six million Jews were not systematically exterminated by the Nazis.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to charges of denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison after conceding he was wrong to say there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He could have faced 10 years in prison; it is not clear whether his backpedaling helped to reduce that, as he has admitted recently that his previous statements — in nearly 30 books, and many articles — were incorrect.

This is also interesting against the backdrop of the free speech issue raised by ‘cartoongate’ and subsequent protests. It remains to be seen how the Muslim world, and especially people like the president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, use this as propaganda material.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

Heavy rain and flash flooding has led to a disaster in the Philippines:

(CNN) — A mudslide buried hundreds of houses and an elementary school in an eastern Philippine village Friday, killing an estimated 300 people and leaving another 1,500 missing, a Red Cross official said.

The unfortunate part is that the villagers had returned because they thought the threat was over; when they got back, the mountain became liquid and covered over a square kilometer of land.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

Reuters (via CNN) is reporting that on Saturday night Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi said, “I am the Jesus Christ of politics,” to a crowd at a political dinner. Previously Berlusconi has compared himself to Napoleon, so this is just sort of a step up in his delusions of grandeur. (Next he’ll be saying he’s George Bush or something.)

Many Italian politicians were not impressed:

Giuseppe Giulietti, a leftist parliamentarian, joked that he was sure that “God the Father and the rest of Jesus’ family did not take this very well.”

I would imagine not.

Posted by Brian (Briandot)