Silent Night, Holy Night

Merry Christmas! The Castillo Chronicles is taking a holiday break. Blogging will resume on Monday, 12/28.

For spiritual reading, on the eve of Christmas, don't forget Luke, Chapter 2.

For holiday music, here's my friend Carol MacDonald, blessed with a VOICE (and a delightful personality), performing in Handel's Messiah:



Amazing, no?

A Family Remembers Their Slain Son

From Bob and Bonnie Eggles' holiday newsletter:

"As we approach the 8th Christmas (8-9-02) without Kristopher, memories take us back to when he and Jennifer were little and all the beautiful moments we shared. Our loneliness is still evident, and the 'hole in our hearts' will never be healed, but days are easier now. There is more joy in our lives as we look forward and upward. Someday soon, we will be reunited with our beloved Kris and then life for us will be complete once again."

How sweet. How sad. The Eggles are the parents of the late Kris Eggle, the U.S. Park Ranger who was murdered, in the line of duty, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument by an AK-47-toting drug cartel member. Kris was from Cadillac, Michigan and all of 29-years-old when he died in southern Arizona.

In the photo: Kris, as a little boy, with his sister, Jennifer.

How the West is Being Lost

A Providence College student named Tim Dionisopoulos (in the photo) wanted to start a chapter of Youth for Western Civilization on his campus. YWC's mission is to revive the West (as opposed to seeing it go the way of the dodo).

The Rhode Island-based school, operated by Dominican Friars, already requires students to take a two-semester course on Western Civ, so you'd figure this would be a perfect fit, right? Nah. The Administration and Student Congress gave Tim's idea a thumbs down.

He writes, "The first sign of trouble was when our group's request to bring former Congressman Tom Tancredo to campus for a speech on the topic of illegal immigration was rejected by the college without any legitimate reason. Congressman Tancredo defiantly decided to come anyways and gave a speech at the gates of Providence College which resulted in great deal of media coverage."

To think an undergrad arranged a visit from Tom T. - I'm impressed. But what's really odd is that there are cultural clubs of all stripes on this campus - the African American Society, Asian American Society, Middle Eastern Association, Circolo Italiano, Gaelic Society, Fete Francaise - but they are all affiliated with a Board of Multicultural Student Affairs.

It's complicated at these schools where the management promotes the Western tradition in their curriculum but is opposed to it as an extracurricular activity, isn't it?

Update: Brenda Walker asks a pertinent question (Hint: It has to do with Muslim attitudes toward the West and Christianity).

Social Security and Mass Immigration

The late John Attarian, who earned his Ph.D. in economics from Michigan, had this to say about immigration, social security costs, and guest worker visas:

" ... immigration actually weakens social security. Some skilled foreign H1-B 'guest workers' are recruited and supplied under contract to American firms. As employees of foreign firms, no social security taxes are withheld. Moreover, displacing Americans with cheaper immigrant labor means revenue losses for social security."

More here.

Allan Wall: Mexico in Christmas

Mi amigo, Allan, writes about two intriguing holiday attractions in Mexico City: The world's largest artificial Christmas tree and the bionacimiento, a unique Nativity scene.

Reports Allan, "The bionacimiento has life-size human figures, plants and live animals. What kinds of live animals? Well, there are sheep (after all, there are shepherds so it’s logical to have sheep) and goats, but also rabbits, canaries, parrots, fish, and an iguana."

The article includes links to the photos of these displays (but I couldn't see this iguana).

Update: Mexico City has just become the first Latin American city to legitimize gay marriage. President Calderon promises to mount a legal challenge.

Podcast: In Their Best Interest

Text of podcast is available here.

Holiday Witch Hunt Against Homeschoolers

My newsfeed about the incredibly biased Detroit News article, against Michigan homeschoolers, is up.

Go here.

A poll accompanies that nasty piece of fishwrap: "Michigan's laws on home schooling include no instruction-time requirements, no curriculum standards, no minimum education level for the teachers and no testing. Should the state toughen its laws on home schooling?” Note the results.

Hilarious, huh?

Update (another example of home educators being unfairly treated:)

Rep Jason Murphey (R-OK) asked his constituents about the property tax ...

"One of the respondents to last week's update told me that she lives in
a house which she built with her dad. The house took them several
years to build but they built it without going into debt. She is now
paying hundreds of dollars each year in property taxes, so that she
does not want to make improvements to the site for fear of increased
property tax premiums. But she does not want to move out of the house
for sentimental reasons.

This person is a homeschooler and because she wants to focus on her
children's education, she chooses not to work outside the home. She
states that the property tax is a killer on their one-income budget.
For each child that is being homeschooled, taxpayers are probably
being saved about $10K per year.

Her story demonstrates the need for true reform."

'Nother Update: Just came across this article which appeared earlier this month in the Detroit News. It's about how angry Motor City parents want public school officials to serve jailtime for low test score results. LOL.

Meanwhile, teachers are threatening to strike if their contract demands aren't met. One parent - Sharlonda Buckman - responded to that threat with this threat: "If they strike, I hope we start a homeschool movement." Yay, Sharlonda!

Gaming the System, Exploiting the Worker

Former INS Senior Special Agent Michael Cutler passed along an article, from yesterday's Kansas City Star, which is an exposé of the flawed H2-B guest worker program.

Read the opening and weep: "The largest suspected human trafficking ring ever uncovered by U.S. law enforcement brought its victims into the country on commercial airliners, using completely legal documents, records show.

For almost a decade, three companies and 12 accused human traffickers charged in a landmark Kansas City human trafficking case allegedly took advantage of a guest worker visa program that is easy to defraud.

An investigation by The Kansas City Star found it’s a loophole-ridden system that permits traffickers to file transparently bogus paperwork that goes virtually unchecked by at least three federal agencies."

The article writer goes on explain how companies, in the Midwest and the South, cruelly exploited thousands of foreign workers that were brought to the U.S. through this program.

An aside: Rob Sanchez has created a petition calling on Congress to end the job-destroying (mostly in the engineering and science fields) H1-B guest worker program - the one that Bill Gates (and other tech industry giants) want to see expanded. If you're interested in signing it, please go here.

Update: Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration, opines: "The H visas for workers should be eliminated entirely - any foreign worker actually worth letting in is worth admitting as a permanent immigrant rather than what amounts to an indentured servant."

Immigration Raids Affecting the Beat

Guess what? Like everything else, sales of Latino music are sluggish in this economy. One L.A.-based music executive offers a novel reason for the downturn: "More than the economy, raids aimed at illegal immigrants have been 'fatal' for business ... " Hmm.

That statement sounds like something that would have been concocted by The Onion, the satirical news outfit, except that the story originated with Reuters.

I guess, this dirty dozen won't be buying any Latin digital albums anytime soon.

In the photo: Aventura, a Dominican boy band, which managed to snag a legit. invite to the White House, unlike these people.

Young Men Who Need Work

Phyllis Schlafly's latest column, about the unemployed and underemployed, includes this observation:

"Obama's promise to allow 20 million illegal aliens to stay in the United States is another broadside attack on the job prospects of young American men. Obama's immigration policy betrays our own black and white high school dropouts who desperately need entry-level and other minimum-wage jobs to start building a life."

BTW: Would you believe Phyllis is now 85 years young? She's been writing her syndicated column since 1976.

Aside: One of my co-workers told me, yesterday, that 100 people applied for the entry-level job (involving rental properties) her twenty-something son now holds. What an honor for him, but what an awful job market.

Not Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is concerned about the goings on at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' College of Education. "A Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group" proposes that future education students submit to a type of "idelogical screeing," before they can be deemed worthy to study edukashun.

Those with the "wrong views" have to undergo remedial re-education training or, possibly, be denied admission to this dumb program.

What are the 'right' views? Wannabe public school teachers need to be taught that minority students are at a disadvantage due to "white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression."
(Heteronormawhatever is another way of saying gay-unfriendly.)

There's more.

Potential college of ed. students have to determine their "own privilege, oppression, or marginalization." (And this has what to do with teaching reading to 2nd graders?)

There's more.

Candidates have to “recognize that schools are socially constructed systems that are susceptible to racism … but are also critical sites for social and cultural transformation.” (Yawn.)

I'm glad FIRE is fired up about this, sticking up for civil rights and all that jazz, but colleges of education, long considered intellectual ghettos, are a waste of time and money especially for moral traditionalists, political conservatives, patriotic Americans, proponents of academic excellence, and opponents of teachers' unions. Opportunistic globalists are firmly entrenched in ed. schools, and they aren't about to give up their turf. These pinheads are also encouraged with money. The Bush Foundation, for instance, gave $4.5 million to the UM/Twin Cities' burgeoning cultural competence program.

Sham diversity pays!



Update: FIRE has good news. U/Minnesota/Twin Cities is "backing away" from imposing a litmus test for potential education majors.

The Funny Pessimist

John Derbyshire, of National Review, succeeds in making the topic of an immigration time-out (a concept he enthusiastically supports) a really fun read.

Note this personal anecdote: "I grew up listening to my dad rhapsodize about New Zealand, where he had spent the happiest days of his life. Thus enthused, after graduating college and working a couple of years, I decided to give New Zealand a try. I went to New Zealand House in London. There was a guy at a desk in the lobby. I approached him and stated my purpose. He pushed a printed sheet of paper at me. It was a list of occupations, most of them skilled manual trades — carpenters, electricians, and an astonishing number of things to do with sheep. You in any of those occupations?' asked the Kiwi. Me: 'No. I’m a computer programmer.' He took back the sheet and scrutinized it. 'Nope. Don’t see it. I guess we’ve got all we need. Sorry!'

I never did get to see New Zealand. I did, though, walk out of New Zealand House with a grudging respect for the clarity and rationality of their immigration procedures. (Forty years on, they maintain those high standards. They recently denied a settlement visa to a British woman on the grounds that she was too fat.)"

LOL.

Cártel de Tijuana

Last night the National Geographic Channel did a show on the Arellano-Félix Organization, a drug cartel which operates in Tijuana, Mexico. The Arellano-Felix family took over the Tijuana Cartel in the 1980s. In their heyday, they established themselves as the planet's biggest and baddest cocaine dealers.

The show graphically revealed gruesome crime after gruesome crime that these monsters committed, and got away with, in a country where the police were either too corrupt or too intimidated to stop them. The Tijuana cartel's MO was to dissolve the bodies of their victims in acid. Shudder.

The cartel brought their illegal goods into the U.S. via a 'network of tunnels (Tijuana practically abuts San Diego), cars, boats, and airplanes.' Nowadays, they wouldn't have to go to that much effort. They could just phone Artivist Dominguez for tips on how to avoid the Border Patrol.

PBS has also done shows on the AFO. Go here.

Update: An important victory in the drug wars for President Calderon. I applaud Mexico's use of the military to get the job done. It is a war, after all.

Hint, hint, U.S. How about putting the National Guard at the southern border?

Honey, I Shrunk the White People

This news will make some people mad and some people glad:

"The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years — to 2050 — because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S."

Read the rest here.