Immigration
The bleeding heart of the Boston Globe is on vivid display in its editorial of this morning, Boa Vinda a Framingham! The focus is massive illegal Brazilian immigration that has tranformed the city of Framingham, MA. Annotated excerpts:
Man, does Rep. James Sensenbrenner rub the Times the wrong way. While the conservative Congressman does(lifetime ACU rating 88 out of a possible 100) have a prickly reputation, but so do liberal Democrats like Rep. Pete Stark. Yet Stark and others don’t have their personality traits analyzed on the front page.
Just when you thought the arguments of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd couldn't get any more preposterous . . . Now, the United States is being condemned for deporting illegal aliens who are violent, hardened criminals - members of homicidal street gangs.
The St. Petersburg Times ran an article about Hazleton, Pennsylvania where the mayor has proposed making English the official language and to fine those who employ illegal aliens. The Hispanic population in Hazleton has grown tenfold since 2000 and now makes up one-third of the town. They write:
It's about time, some longtime Hazleton residents are saying. About time someone did something to stop these people from acting so brazen, walking around like they own the place. Staring you down on the street, making you stop your car to let them cross.
Even some Hispanics who usually support the mayor are nervous, because who can tell just by looking whether a brown-skinned person is here legally or illegally? Your citizenship status doesn't matter to the guy in line at the doughnut place, who says: These people are everywhere. They're like cockroaches.
Notice anything missing? Quotation marks? Names?
One type of journalism is where the reporter talks to people in the town and when they say things the reporter quotes and attributes them to a person or maybe even keeps them anonymous if there is cause. The other type of journalism already knows what people must think and the reporter quotes the voices in his or her head. This goes past various levels of editors who also think it is a good idea. The Times could not deduce that one way to tell if "a brown-skinned person is here illegally" is whether or not they can speak English, a requirement of citizenship.
When Republicans thought about how they could rein in federal spending, one idea was to curb how much federal largesse gets handed out to illegal aliens through fraudulent means. If you are appalled at the thought of denying government money to illegal aliens, money from hard-working taxpayers who play by the rules, then you might fit inside the newsroom at The Washington Post. Their front-page headline today: "Medicaid Rule Called A Threat To Millions."
Representatives from Fox News, CNN, and the BBC were told that broadcasting opinion surveys about Mexico's upcoming election eight days before the voting was forbidden. They are also banned from analyzing the candidates' weaknesses and reporting on campaign activities.
CNN and BBC both have separate feeds from the one shown in America (No Lou Dobbs en Español), so they have no problem complying with the rules. Fox News has only one feed, and would have to alter its entire programming.
In theory, we're all pro-assimilation. And in theory, even the CEA agrees that Latino kids ought to be learning English. So naturally, the same education professionals who brought you "whole language" and the New Math oppose English immersion programs:
A proposal to immerse students who don't speak English into intense English-instruction classes for a year before they return to mainstream classrooms is not educationally sound and could be harmful to students, educators and critics say.
As Brit Hume put it, "Senator Specter, who gets worked up over anything, doesn't seem bothered by the NY Times disclosure of [the anti-terror banking program]. He's going to 'look into it'."
Indeed. Specter, who began his political career as a prosecutor, played defense lawyer for the Gray Lady on this morning's Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace asked the senior senator from PA "do you think the Times was wrong to publish this story as well as the NSA warrantless wiretap story, and does it rise to the level that they should be prosecuted?"
Specter:
"Well, we have seen the newspapers in this country act as effective watchdogs. You had Jefferson lay out the parameter saying if he had to choose a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, he'd choose newspapers without government . . . I don't think that the newspapers can have a totally free hand. But I think in the first instance, it is their judgment.
Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, who in March condescendingly charged on Inside Washington that opposition to the UAE ports deals was a “classic for talk radio" since "it's something simple idiots can understand,” on this weekend's edition of the panel show again ridiculed talk radio -- this time as a caldron of “anger” on illegal immigration.
O. Ricardo Pimentel, Editorial Page Editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writes at Poynter Online, the top site for journalists to debate their trade's issues, that reporters should refrain from using the word "illegal" to describe.... those who are here illegally.
Did you know that it's not criminal to be an undocumented immigrant? In fact, one of the burning issues in the recent and ongoing debate on immigration reform is whether to make such mere presence a felony.
In a chock-filled first half-hour of Today, the family of one the soldiers murdered in Iraq shared their grief and pride, Andrea Mitchell got it all wrong about conservative discontent, and White House spokesman Dan Bartlett declined to rise to Matt Lauer's bait.
New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter wrote a special frontpage Father's Day story on why illegal immigrants are just like the rest of us.
Pretend Pundit has the details.