Monday, February 18, 2013

Ammunition Shortages

There have been reports here and there of ammunition shortages since I reported on the Orange County gun show, "Long Lines, Ammunition Shortages at Orange County Gun Show."

But now here comes USA Today, "Gun dealers report shortages of ammunition" (via Memeorandum)":
Retailers say much of the demand is from gun owners who are stockpiling in case certain weapons are banned.

Gun shops are running low on ammunition from a run by customers fearful of potential gun-control legislation, according to gun retailers and customers.

Prices have more than doubled over past year in some shops, retailers are putting limits on the amount a customer can buy, and some common types of ammunition, such as .22-caliber long rifle shells, are hard to get.
More at the link.

And this gives me a chance to post my favorite photo from the show (here's the one showing the lines for ammunition):

Gun Show

The Myth of Climate Change Consensus

At IBD, "Global Warming Consensus Looking More Like a Myth."

The Minority Youth Unemployment Act

A must-read editorial, from the Wall Street Journal, "A higher minimum wage will hurt Obama's most loyal supporters."

Ashley Judd for Senate?

The actress is contemplating a run against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The New York Times reports, "Kentuckians Don’t Rule Out a Star as a Potential Senator":

Ashley Judd
ASHLAND, Ky. — It would seem like a Republican fantasy: a famous actress, who has been described by her own grandmother as a Hollywood liberal, is floated as a Senate candidate in one of the country’s most conservative states, where she does not even live.

That is how Republican operatives gleefully seized on reports that the movie star Ashley Judd, who campaigned for President Obama, might challenge Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in the United States Senate, when he is up for re-election next year.

“Ashley Judd — an Obama-following, radical Hollywood liberal” is how an attack ad put it, produced by a group led by the Republican strategist Karl Rove.

How serious could such a candidacy be? Plenty, it turns out.

“I would actually be surprised if she didn’t run right now,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky. “She’s done everything a serious candidate would do.”

But even as Ms. Judd moved this week from a Republican chew toy to an increasingly likely candidate, Democrats in Kentucky fought publicly over whether she would be a viable challenger in 2014 to Mr. McConnell, or a serious liability.

Some Democratic strategists said her views were too far left of Kentucky voters, warning that she would drag down other Democrats on the state ballot.

“I say we place in peril our control of the State Legislature,” said Dale Emmons, a strategist who advised the last unsuccessful Democratic challenger to Mr. McConnell, in 2008.

He added, “Her Siamese twin will immediately be Barack Obama,” who lost Kentucky by 23 percentage points in November.

Another Kentucky-based consultant, James Cauley, said he began hearing fears from Kentucky officials last month when Ms. Judd attended the Bluegrass Ball in Washington during the inauguration, where she confirmed she was “taking a close look” at a run.

“People started saying, ‘Oh my God, she is serious,’ ” said Mr. Cauley, who managed Mr. Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois. “One state legislator asked me to go to the White House and talk to Barack.”

Mr. Cauley demurred. He and the president are not close.
More at that top link.

And I wouldn't discount anything. Name recognition is a huge asset. Sure, Obama lost the state by double-digits, but we're in a strange era of celebrity politics. I just wouldn't discount this woman's chances.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Bill Whittle's Afterburner: 'The Shooters'

Via Theo Spark:

Katie Price Slams Kelly Brook as a 'Heffer'

Well, the last time I posted on Ms. Brook I mentioned that she'd gained weight.

It turns out I wasn't imagining it.

See London's Daily Mail, "'I'm FLABbergasted at how big she is!' Katie Price labels Kelly Brook a 'heffer' in astonishing attack."

But see, "Katie who? A defiant Kelly Brook dazzles in midnight blue at pre-BAFTA dinner in first appearance since Price's 'heffer' remark."

Sports Illustrated is Racist! ABC News Joins the Politically Correct Attack Mob

At NewsBusters, "ABC: Are Some Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Pictures Racist?"


PREVIOUSLY: "New Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Attacked as Racist."

Who is David Bowie?

At the Guardian UK, "As a blockbuster exhibition, David Bowie is, gets under way at the V&A, Sean O'Hagan dissects the pop icon's influences – and reveals the ideas behind four of his key alter egos":
"From the very beginning, I always saw David as a star in the way that James Dean or Marilyn Monroe or Judy Garland were stars. He was an actor, essentially. He soaked up whatever was in the air to create his characters, then he became those characters in his songs and his performances, and even offstage. Sometimes, you'd have Ziggy Stardust in the taxi with you and you didn't know what to do with it and it was pretty powerful."
Mick "Woody" Woodmansey is recalling the heady and sometimes unsettling time when he had a brief supporting role in the making of pop history. From 1970 to 1973, he played drums in the Spiders for Mars, the band that helped David Bowie redefine what it was to be a pop star, what a pop song and a live performance could express. He was there behind his drum kit, dressed in a pink lamé top and matching trousers, when Bowie, in a multicoloured jumpsuit and red wrestling boots, sang Starman on Top of the Pops on a Thursday evening in July 1972. For a generation in waiting, the "starman" was David Bowie himself: alien, decadent and liberating.
The piece continues with a video from that performance.

Continue reading here.

I just love Bowie. He stopped touring for health reasons and I have no idea if he's planning any concerts. I can't help but thinking his new release is a swan song of some sort, although I hope not.

RELATED: At the Hollywood Reporter, "BBC to Screen Feature-Length David Bowie Doc."

Sequester

At the clip, the idiot freshman Congressman Joaquín Castro blames the pending budget cuts on GOP "hostage taking." What a little progressive parrot.

And see the fear-mongering at the New York Times, "The Real Cost of Shrinking Government" (via Memeorandum):

These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. Many Republicans say they would still prefer the sequester to replacing half the cuts with tax revenue increases. But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways.
The left refuses to look in the mirror. The clip begins with a moment from the 2012 debates where Mitt Romney firmly places the politics of sequestration at the administration's doorstep. The president then denies that these cuts will happen. The world will not end, in any case, but it's not like this had to happen in the first place. The administration played hard on the fiscal cliff talks. The Dems got tax increases but said that wasn't going to be enough. They still want more spending. We're pushing toward a national debt of $17 trillion. When the left starts taking the enormous bloat of the federal government seriously perhaps we'll finally get a handle on things. But I'm not holding my breath.

Also from Pejman Yousefzadeh, at Richochet, "Some Facts about Sequestration that the New York Times Fails to Understand."

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Jennifer Love Hewitt Gets in Shape!

This is the best she's looked in quite awhile, at Celebslam, "More of those 'Jennifer Love Hewitt' pics."

I love this shot.

Jordan Downs' Project Fatherhood

When I read Joseph Stiglitz's piece at the New York Times, "Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth," I thought, "Okay, I agree. We have these enormous problems. It might not be as bad as you say --- where's the comparative historical data for advancement, for example? --- but no doubt we have problems. But does more government expansion --- so much more --- always have to be the answer? What about helping to change the cultures of poverty that prevent social mobility?"

Then a later I read this piece at the Los Angeles Times, and thought, "Okay, if only we had more of this, a lot more?" See, "REMAKING JORDAN DOWNS: The father of all support groups":
It started in 2009 on a patch of grass outside the Jordan Downs gym. A group of ex-Crips gave haircuts and grilled hamburgers, hoping families and fathers would show up, relax and begin to talk.

"Growing up the way we did, during the time we did, a lot of the dads might as well have been in some other world," says Andre "Low Down" Christian, one of the leaders. "It's a big reason why things ended up as rough as they did here."

He tells of getting into a fight and tracking down his father for advice. His father gave him brass knuckles and a sawed-off shotgun.

"There had to be a better way of looking at being a dad," he says. "That's what we wanted people to think about."

Those initial weeks in front of the gym, five people came. The local fire station donated steaks and a barbecue. Time passed. Twenty arrived. Then 25.

John King, the Los Angeles Housing Authority official who oversees the community center, was already trying to change the culture in Jordan Downs as preparations were made to rebuild the 700-unit apartment complex. He offered his support and told the men to use his conference room.

By the summer of 2011, backed by a $50,000 grant from the nonprofit Children's Institute, the loose amalgamation of men became something more formal. Now they had a name, Project Fatherhood, and were part of a regional network of meetings the institute sponsored, focusing on men and their kids.

The Watts group has the feel of an urban barbershop: full of jokes and jealousy, grace and anger. Early on, two street toughs entered the room as the men spoke. Wearing trench coats, not saying a word, they walked around the oval of tables, suspiciously checking out the scene.

"They were wondering what exactly was going on with these older dudes," says the UCLA professor, Jorja Leap, who, assuming the toughs were carrying shotguns, followed the fathers' lead and didn't say a word. "They had to see for themselves what this meeting was about. Was it a threat to them? When they found out what we were doing, they gave their OK."

Project Fatherhood became part of the fabric of Jordan Downs. As the Wednesdays piled up, the men grew comfortable talking about their problems. They "were carrying deep troubles, questions and fears about being dads," Leap says. "Problem was, they didn't have many examples of good fathering, so they were coming up with answers from scratch."
RTWT.

But in the public community colleges, I see first hand the kind of investments the state is making in public education. I'm sure we could do more, but it all costs, and the economy can't support increasing "investment." On the other hand, when students are attending classes, they're not bringing anywhere near the needed social requisites for success in college education. And they come to us without those skills, from the K-12 system. More government spending isn't the solution to all of the problems Stiglitz identifies. But he's a big government progressive. Talking about the culture for people like that is "racist." In turn that consigns generations of Americans to poverty. Start changing the culture --- combined with making equal opportunity truly available --- and you'll see more upward mobility. We should be talking about it. From the president on down, we should be talking about it.

The New #CPAC Schedule is Here!

I'm not joking with "The Jerk" headline at top.

Rachel Maddow starts out her sensational report on CPAC 2013 with a Steve Martin clip. She then cherry picks a few of the more offbeat panels to highlight --- wait for it! --- just how filled with fringe freaks are the CPAC conferences.

Robert Stacy McCain had more on this propaganda earlier, "Another Controversial CPAC Scandal!™":
How long have I been covering the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)? Forever, it seems, and every year the liberal media find some reason to denounce CPAC as extreme, fringe, controversial.

From my perspective, the biggest CPAC controversy this year is that they moved it from the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in northwest D.C. — near the Adams-Morgan district and a short taxi ride from downtown — to the new Gaylord National Harbor resort, eight miles south of town in Prince George’s County, Md.

I could think of a dozen arguments against this move, and have heard only one argument in favor of it: They got a great rate.

Well, so much for my CPAC controversy. The really big controversy according to liberal Sarah Reese Jones is this:

CPAC: White Supremacists and Wayne LaPierre are Welcome, but GOProud is Banned

Students of propaganda techniques should ponder how Jones manages to suggest that Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association is somehow as controversial as “white supremacists.”

But wait a minute: Who are these “white supremacists” being welcomed at CPAC? Looking over the announced schedule, I don’t see any, unless Sarah Reese Jones is using the liberal definition of “white supremacist” as “someone who didn’t vote for Obama.”
Continue reading.

The real conspiracy is how the progressive collectivists have perverted the culture to fool a majority of Americans that the left's Marxist agenda is mainstream. But they thrive on propaganda and Maddow's show is one of the left's top propaganda outfits.

What is 'Natural Born'?

I'm not sure why it's important, but William Jacobson feels he must respond to attacks from "birther" conspiracy-mongers. I guess these are not infrequent, as William explains, "This will be dealt with."

Read it all at the link above. The email William posts in pretty fascinating:
JACOBSON: First you display your inexcusable contempt for the law by keeping the fact of Obama’s ineligibility from your readers, for whatever discreditable reasons. Now you double down and defend and promote the candidacies of two more ineligibles, Rubio and Jindal. (The reason the Democrats have to paint Rubio and Jindal as crazies is because they know that thanks to people like you, the Republicans would actually put up an ineligible candidate.) What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any respect for the Constitution? Or for a government of laws? You enable, aid and abet lawbreakers. You are a Professor of Law and your conduct is so egregious you are an indelible stain on the profession.

Debate me, defend your conduct in any public setting. Or defend in writing your enablement of Obama and promotion of other ineligible candidates. You can’t, can you? There is no honorable defense, is there? No. You and your ilk are largely responsible for Obama’s tremendously destructive foreign and domestic policies of the past four years. Had you and your colleagues in the Conservative MSM spoken up four years ago, the Federal Courts would have removed Obama and avoided so much damage done and so much damage yet to be done.

Such lawlessness. Such dishonesty. Such cowardice.
I can't comment on Jindal et al.'s eligibility just yet, but if folks are making a natural born case against Obama then they're accepting as fact that he was born in Hawaii (which would confer automatic eligibility under the 14th Amendment) but that it takes two American parents for a child to be considered natural born (and that's apparently regardless of the same birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment). I always thought the question of Obama's birth certification by the State of Hawaii a bit fishy, and Obama hasn't helped matters by refusing to release his full authenticated birth certificate (with vital medical information, witnesses, etc.) rather than the cheap-ass computer print-out claiming "certification of live birth." (Obama is all about hiding who is he, on his academic transcripts, as another example; the left fears the truth, while the right has obsessed over it.) No matter. The courts ruled against challenges to Obama's eligibility and after awhile it gets to be a bit like Captain Ahab. In any case, William must be facing a lot of hostility because he's researching it and will post his findings for the record. A quick search turned up some information, which is interesting, no matter how you view the issues: "Birther Claims Debunked: Two Citizen Parents." What's also interesting is that this president has engendered so much hatred, so much conspiracy theorizing, that no matter how deranged it is, there's some kind of weird legitimacy to the movement in the sense that Obama really is "post-American" in his ideological outlook and Marxist orientation to the state and political culture. It's definitely a unique manifestation. It's what drives most of our polarization. The question is centrally about the meaning of being an American and living under the law and according to a traditional set of values that are exceptional. The left has abandoned that exceptionalism. The president is the standard bearer for the destruction of that decency and history. All of this was inevitable when the Democrat Party ended up nominating Obama and when the American people bought the lies and elected him. We'll be digging out from this monstrosity for decades, if we ever fully recover.

As for the citizenship thing, at this point it's moot, in any case. Barack Hussein ain't going anywhere. So I'll be interested to see what happens with Jindal and the others. Stay tuned as far as that goes.

'Take It Easy'

My wife and I caught Showtime's "History of the Eagles" last night. It's worth your time if you get the chance. And it was even more fun since my wife just got an invitation from the MGM Grand to see the Eagles live in Las Vegas on March 23rd. We saw the Eagles at the Honda Center in Anaheim in 2010 and Don Henley at Harrah's Rincon in 2011. But this time we'll be talking our two sons to the show.

In any case, when Travis Tritt made this video for his cover of the Eagles' "Taking It Easy," he asked the original band members to appear, and it turns out that they enjoyed being together again and decided to make their comeback. The Showtime documentary covers all of that and more. A great American band.



Rand Paul on Fox News Sunday: Can Obama Kill Americans on American Soil With Drone Strikes?

A great segment with Senator Paul:


As always, it's more about the left's hypocrisy with me, although I just can't reconcile killing Awlaki's 16-year-old kid.

Also at Fox News, "Graham, Paul split on U.S. drone strikes, impact of upcoming $85B spending cuts." And more video here, "Sen. Rand Paul : I'll Decide in 2014 on a Presidential Run." Plus, at Reason, "Rand Paul: Not Running for President Except to Win, America Ready for Libertarian Republican."

You Might Be a Democrat

More cartoons, via The Looking Spoon on Twitter:


Also, from Trevor Loudon, "“On the Current Marxist Revolution”."

Sunday Cartoons

Via Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Econocide."

Branco Cartoon

Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."

And at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies 2-17-13."

Raphael Golb Created 82 Sock Puppets, Harassed Scholars Who Ignored His Father's Work, and Was Charged With 51 Counts of Identity Theft, Aggravated Harassment, Criminal Impersonation, Forgery and Unauthorized Computer Use at NYU

This is an amazing story, and especially relevant, consider the left's depraved war of lawfare and intimidation against conservatives. The dude was pissed off that scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls --- the Dead Sea Scrolls! --- were ignoring his dad's scholarly contributions so he waged a criminally-obsessed online jihad against them. Sounds familiar, I know.

See the New York Times, "Online Battle Over Sacred Scrolls, Real-World Consequences":
Between 2006 and 2009, he created more than 80 online aliases to advance his father’s views about the Dead Sea Scrolls against what he saw as a concerted effort to exclude them. Along the way, according to a jury and a panel of appellate court judges, he crossed from engaging in academic debate to committing a crime.

What he accomplished through this manner of intellectual warfare is, like the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, a topic on which opinion is passionately diverse, with no shortage of bad blood.

“This has nothing to do with scholarly debate,” said Lawrence H. Schiffman, vice provost of Yeshiva University and a widely published authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, who became the prime target of Mr. Golb’s online activities. “It has to do with criminal activity.

“Fraud, impersonation and harassment are criminal matters,” he continued. “This was actually designed to literally end my career.”

Mr. Golb’s father, Norman Golb, 85, a professor of Jewish History and Civilization at the University of Chicago, placed the wrong squarely on the other side. “The D.A. took a scholarly quarrel and makes a case against Raphael Golb and not against what those other people are doing, which was worse,” he said. “The vindictiveness, the anger, the ugliness, that’s O.K. because it comes from the other side.” ...

*****

In 2006 and 2007, when several American museums announced exhibits of the scrolls, Raphael Golb was incensed that his father’s theory had not been acknowledged in the shows. “They teach scorn for my father,” Mr. Golb said, accusing rival academics of “indoctrinating students in a culture of hatred.”

“This is a system where they suppress people by excluding them,” he added.

At the time, the younger Mr. Golb was researching a book about French secularism and working just enough as a real estate lawyer to pay his bills. He also received money from his parents. The Internet offered ways for him to argue his father’s case. He wouldn’t have to use his real name, which others “would simply use to smear my father,” he said. Instead, he could post under an alias — or four, five or six. He began posting comments on the museums’ Web sites, complaining that the exhibits were one-sided.

He started a blog; then another and another, each under a different name. The aliases begot other aliases, known on the Internet as sock puppets: 20, 40, 60, 80. The sock puppets debated with other posters, each time linking to other sock puppets to support their arguments, creating the impression of an army of engaged scholars espousing Norman Golb’s ideas. Using the alias Charles Gadda (from the Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda), Raphael Golb published articles on the citizen news Web site NowPublic and linked to them in comments and blog posts written under other aliases. The writings all championed Norman Golb as an honest scholar bucking a well-financed, self-serving conspiracy.

He acted as an online troll, stirring up controversy. “Was it appropriate for a scientific institution to allow a group of Christian academics to impose their agenda on an exhibit of ancient documents taking place under its auspices?” he asked of an exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum, in an Oct. 6, 2007, article. That article, he said, drew 16,000 views.

“They saw this happening and they were furious, because I was sabotaging their Internet campaign,” Raphael Golb said of the museums. His father’s rivals, he suspected, used sock puppets to answer his comments.

“It became a kind of war,” he said. “It was very ugly. But I was glad it was happening. I was like, this is great. This draws more attention to my father’s work.” To a family member he wrote, “they are faced with a dedicated, in-the-know adversary who is out to get them, and there’s simply nothing they can do about it.”

One of Mr. Golb’s targets was a graduate student named Robert R. Cargill, who created a virtual tour of Qumran for the San Diego museum.

Norman Golb posted an article on the Web site of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago complaining that the film’s script ignored his theory.

Raphael Golb went further, sending pseudonymous e-mails to Mr. Cargill’s professors at U.C.L.A.

“I said this person should be compelled to answer the published criticisms of his work at his Ph.D. defense,” Raphael Golb said. Some of the e-mail messages suggested that Mr. Cargill, who describes himself as agnostic, was a fundamentalist Christian and an anti-Semite.

Mr. Cargill, who is now 39 and an assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, remembered Mr. Golb’s campaign as a frontal assault meant to thwart his career.

“Any time someone hears the name Robert Cargill, they hear, he’s anti-Semitic,” Mr. Cargill said. “Let’s say I’m applying for a job and I’m in a pool of 10 finalists. When they do background checking, they see this Cargill looks like he’s being criticized as anti-Semitic. We don’t know if it’s legitimate, but it’s safer to go with someone else.”

The e-mails kept coming. According to papers filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, from June 2007 to June 2009, Mr. Golb’s aliases Steve Frankel, Carlo Gadda, Don Matthews, David Kaplan, Emily Kaufman, Jesse Friedman and Robert Dworkin sent dozens of e-mails to hundreds of people at U.C.L.A., all attacking Mr. Cargill. “The volume of defendant’s alias creation,” the court papers read, “and his planning with others, speaks to the deliberate intent in conducting defendant’s operation.”

Mr. Cargill fought back. A typical e-mail message or blog post has an Internet protocol address that identifies the computer used to create it. Using simple software that identified the I.P. addresses, he traced the e-mails and blog posts of 82 aliases to the same few computers. Beneath one of Mr. Golb’s pseudonymous comments, he posted a message, using the pseudonym Raphael Joel, a combination of Mr. Golb’s first name and his brother’s. The message was: We know who you are....

*****

Raphael Golb was naked and asleep when police officers came to his apartment early on the morning of March 5, 2009, arresting him on 51 charges of identity theft, aggravated harassment, criminal impersonation, forgery and unauthorized use of the computers in an N.Y.U. library. He had been up all of the previous night writing comments or blog posts under his various aliases. The officers seized Mr. Golb’s computers and led him handcuffed from his building. Waiving his rights to a lawyer and to remain silent, Mr. Gold denied sending any bogus e-mail messages, telling the investigators that Dr. Schiffman had filed a false complaint “out of maliciousness toward my father.” He added, “I find the guy a bit nauseating, to tell the truth.”

Mr. Golb later rejected a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail.

At his trial in September 2010, Mr. Golb admitted to all of his writings, but defended his use of pseudonyms as a time-honored vehicle for criticism and debate — and a staple of Internet culture. He wasn’t trying to defraud anybody or gain anything, his lawyers argued; he just wanted his father’s views represented. If he was guilty of slander or libel, his victims could sue him in civil court.

“I’m not saying anybody here acted well,” Mr. Kuby said. “I just don’t think anybody acted criminally.”
This should be interesting to some of our friends on the right, especially Robert Stacy McCain, "Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Charged With Deranged Cyberstalking." And discussed there is Lee Stranahan, who's been quite busy of late. For example, "My Statement About Criminal Harassment Charges Against Bill Schmalfeldt." Also, "Bill Schmalfeldt’s Double Dip Harassment Part 1," and "Bill Schmalfeldt’s Creepy Obsession With Photos Of My Wife (NSFW)."

And Lee tweeted some of Schmalfeldt's deranged ravings:


And I'll tell you, I'm eternally thankful that all the Internet harassment and stalking I beat back never escalated to this level. Either way, folks should know that if you're out here standing up for decency and right, the despicable left knows no depths of viciousness, deceit and dishonor. You will fight for your life because the left will attempt to destroy you. Recall that Stranahan had to move away at one point and relocate, to protect the safety of his family. And Robert Stacy McCain did the same. It's hard out there for a righteous mofo, but remember that this Rafael Golb dude --- whether you think he's right or wrong, and I think he went overboard --- is looking at an almost certain 6 months behind bars, so be assured that when lines get crossed on the Internet --- and they do get crossed --- people go to jail.

As California Goes, So Goes the Nation

On unchecked immigration, that is, from Mexico and lands beyond.

At the New York Times, "California Eases Tone as Latinos Make Gains":
LOS ANGELES — A generation ago, California voters approved a ballot initiative that was seen as the most anti-immigrant law in the nation. Immigrants who had come to the country illegally would be ineligible to receive prenatal care, and their children would be barred from public schools.

But the law, which was later declared unconstitutional by the federal courts, never achieved the goal of its backers: to turn back the tide of immigrants pouring into the state. Instead, since the law was approved in 1994, the political and social reality has changed drastically across the state. Now, more California residents than ever before say that immigrants are a benefit to the state, according to public opinion polls from the Public Policy Institute of California.

As Congress begins debating an overhaul of the immigration system, many in California sense that the country is just now beginning to go through the same evolution the state experienced over the last two decades. For a generation of Republicans, Gov. Pete Wilson’s barrages on the impact of immigration in the 1990s spoke to their uneasiness with the way the state was changing. Now many California Republicans point to that as the beginning of their downfall.

Today, party leaders from both sides, and from all over the state, are calling for a softer approach and a wholesale change in federal policies.

The state’s changing attitudes are driven, in large part, by demographics. In 1990, Latinos made up 30 percent of the state’s population; they will make up 40 percent — more than any other ethnic group — by the end of this year, and 48 percent by 2050, according to projections made by the state this month. This year, for the first time, Latinos were the largest ethnic group applying to the University of California system.

Towns that just a decade ago were largely white now have Latino majorities. Latinos make up an important power base not only in urban centers like Los Angeles, but also in places that were once hostile to outsiders. There are dozens of city councils with a majority of Latino members, a Mexican-American is the mayor of Los Angeles and another is the leader of the State Assembly. Nearly all of the 15 California Republicans in Congress represent districts where at least a quarter of the residents are Latino.

“The political calculus has changed dramatically,” said Manuel Pastor, a demographer and professor of American studies at the University of Southern California. “Immigrants are an accepted part of public life here. And California is America fast-forward. What happened to our demographics between 1980 and 2000 is almost exactly what will happen to the rest of the country over the next 30 years.””
They may or may not be accepted, but they're certainly not fully assimilated. There's a lot of Latinos who barely speak English, if they do at all, especially in the ethnic enclaves where folks don't have to interact with the outside world. Victor Davis Hanson continues to be the best on this, in his book, for example, Mexifornia.

More at that top link.

Catholics React to Pope Benedict's Resignation

From Peggy Noonan, at the Wall Street Journal, "A Faith Unshaken but Unsettled":

It is disquieting, the resignation of the pope. "We are in uncharted territory," said a historian of the church. An old pope is leaving but staying within the walls of the Vatican, and a new one, younger and less known, will come before Easter.

In a week's conversation with faithful and believing Catholics, I detected something I've never quite heard before, and that is a deep, unshaken, even cheerful faith accompanied by a certain anxiety, even foreboding. I heard acceptance of Pope Benedict's decision coupled with an intense sympathy for what is broadly understood to be his suffering, from health problems to the necessity that his decision was a lonely one, its deepest reasoning known only to him. There was a lot of speculation that attempting to run the Vatican in the new age of technology, of leaks and indiscretions and instant responses, would have been hard on him.

So here are some things Catholics have been telling me...
RTWT.