Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo of bawling children after a napalm attack in Vietnam:

Nick Ut / The Associated Press

But that photo really doesn’t match the pathos of a photo that the same photographer, Nick Ut, took today:

Nick Ut / The Associated Press

Yes, that’s our friend Paris Hilton.

Same photographer. No joke.

Amazing what passes for news nowadays.

Thanks to Hot Air commenter ganeshpuri89.

Michelle Malkin argues on Bill O’Reilly that we should deport the criminals first. Good for her.

Then Geraldo suggests that her argument is reminiscent of what the Nazis did. To call him a clown, or a boob, is being far too kind.

Speaking of conflicts, as I was this morning, what about the fact that L.A. Times sports writer Bill Plaschke has written a book about Tommy Lasorda? Did he disclose this in previous pieces about Lasorda? Somehow, I doubt it — but someone with access to Nexis might want to check that for me.

Mom! Mom! It’s not right that we should have to be subjected to endless coverage of this Paris Hilton nonsense!

Yes, yes, she’s back in jail. Whatever.

UPDATE: This is just pathetic:

But hey, it’s working for them.

UPDATE x2: Maybe Paris could have gotten a lighter sentence if she had murdered someone.

By the way, Perfect Sense had the line of the week yesterday:

Paris told ICE that she was an illegal alien and as standard policy, they arranged to have her immediately released from custody.

Good one.

UPDATE x3: Did contributions from Paris’s grandfather to Lee Baca have anything to do with this? Allah — who is as frustrated as I am about not getting any comments on his real posts — asks the question.

UPDATE x4: The “Paris Hilton diaries”? Man, the L.A. Times is milking this for all it’s worth.

If we could get them to cover crime by illegal immigrants with the same thoroughness, it would really change the immigration debate.

UPDATE x5: How thoroughly is the L.A. Times covering this “story”? This thoroughly:

[posted by Justin Levine] 

Remember the terrorist attack at LAX in 2002 when the Middle Eastern terrorist killed 2 people and injured 4 near the ticket counter at El Al Airlines?

What’s that you say? You don’t recall it being a “terrorist attack”?? Well I guess you could be forgiven. After all, CNN, the FBI, the Bush Administration and L.A. Mayor James Hahn said that there was “no indication of any terrorism” and that it was just an “isolated incident” that was nothing more than a “criminal act”.

In other words, in the face of so many “experts”, you could be forgiven for not using your own common sense and deliberately choosing to be ignorant.

At the time, media outlets (including the L.A. Times) deliberately chose to be ignorant as well – publishing stories with headline howlers such as “FBI Still Seeks Motive in LAX Shootings.”

Some observers, including Patterico guest-blogger Jack Dunphy called them on their B.S.

Apparently, the L.A. Times managed to grow a brain this week when

  (more…)

Kevin Roderick reports that Andres Martinez has found a job. Martinez, you will remember, resigned when the paper made a huge deal out of an alleged conflict of interest Martinez supposedly had with a guest editor for the Sunday opinion section. Many staff members went ballistic, because at the L.A. Times, they don’t tolerate conflicts of interest!

In unrelated news, L.A. Times reporter Chuck Philips has a story about Anthony Pellicano in yesterday’s paper. You may remember Philips as the guy who covered the Notorious B.I.G. civil trial, and wrote stories discrediting a witness who had previously accused Philips of a corrupt association with Suge Knight — without disclosing that the witness he was trying to discredit had accused him of corruption. This, you see, poses no conflict of interest.

So anyway, back to Chuck Philips covering Anthony Pellicano. He has an article touting a Pellicano defense tactic:

Attorneys for Anthony Pellicano are mounting a new legal attack to strip the prosecution of its most potent evidence, contending that an FBI agent concealed information and then lied about it to convince a judge to let him search the Hollywood private eye’s office.

For some reason, I was reminded of a Nikki Finke post from March which said:

I reported back on January 16th that indicted and imprisoned Hollywood P.I. Anthony Pellicano and ex-wife Kat Pellicano, who divorced in 2002 after an 18-year marriage, were going to re-marry. Well, they tied the knot on Friday. A source tells me that several journalists were at the magistrate’s court, including People magazine’s Frank Swertlow and the Los Angeles Times’ Chuck Phillips. “Phillips [who] is the guy Pellicano calls every time he sneezes was not only there but the ONLY journalist there not taking notes. Finally, Pellicano said hello only to two journalists there, Frank Swertlow and Chuck Phillips. In fact, Phillips and Pellicano saluted and smiled to each other.”

To recap:

Philips discrediting a witness who has accused him of corruption: no conflict.

Philips touting the defense arguments of Pellicano, whose wedding he attended, at which Philips and Pellicano saluted one another: no conflict.

Andres Martinez causing appearance problems for the L.A. Times by sleeping with a flack for a firm which represented a producer getting a one-time guest editor spot: CONFLICT! ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

I asked Robert MacLean — a former air marshal who has been quoted in the Washington Times and on this blog — what we need to do to improve air security. Here is his thoughtful response, which deserves your attention:

After 9/11, immediately putting thousands of air marshals on flights was the right decision. But now, the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) misuse of the air marshal program as a visual deterrent is one of the worst threats to aviation security right now.

With the current checkpoint bypass and pre-boarding policies that TSA and the airline companies insist on, an air marshal team is going to get ambushed and their weapons will be used to take another plane down. Air marshals right now are sitting ducks with the current strategy.

All flight decks should be bullet-proof and have a shotgun with buckshot ammo — not the current forty-caliber pistols that will over-penetrate and hit an innocent passenger or easily get wrested away by a terrorist. The shotguns can be mounted in solenoid-release brackets just like police patrol cars have in their front seats. If a terrorist tries to force himself into the flight deck, his arm will be blown off at close quarters, and birdshot will harmlessly scatter down the aisle.

It is a lot safer to permanently mount a shotgun in every locked flight deck than to have thousands of pilots with handguns roaming around airports with the possibility of the handguns being lost or stolen.

Every time a pilot unlocks the flight deck door to use the lavatory or get food and drink, the aircraft is in danger. The forward areas need to be protected with the same ingenious steel cable barriers United Airlines uses.

If you do this on all aircraft, you can then put air marshals on the ground, gathering intelligence and conducting investigations to prevent terrorists from boarding, or sneaking bombs onto aircraft.

Air Marshals should then only be deployed during high threat conditions.

These changes are likely to never happen for the following reasons:

1. The municipalities and airline industry will never allow the TSA to tell them how air marshals will bypass security checkpoints or board aircraft, respectively. The airline industry is more worried about liability and prefers that everyone on the plane (including the flight attendants) know who the air marshals are, and where they are sitting. As evident in the NW flight 327 incident, only the pilot in command should know who the air marshals are — and should have the final say as to when they should break cover. When all the flight attendants know who the air marshals are, air marshals are likely to be quickly outed in a hostage situation.

2. The pilots are very happy with their federally issued handguns and badges. It will be very difficult to get them to hand them back over without them screaming about the 2nd Amendment.

3. Other than United Airlines, other airlines do not want to install these steel cable gates because it “alarms the passengers” — or they do not want to spend the money to purchase them and have them installed.

4. Having more air marshals working on the ground in airports, trying to prevent dangerous people or weapons from getting on the plane, is going to take measures that minority groups will misconstrue as “profiling.” Unfortunately, our system of justice prevents well-trained and experienced law enforcement officers from using race and national origin along with behavior factors to interview or detain would-be terrorists.

By the way, I asked Mr. MacLean about a concern I have expressed here before: the tendency of some flight patterns to come near skyscrapers. I said in this 2006 post:

As a downtown pedestrian, I have often noticed how absurdly close jet airliners seem to come to downtown’s skyscrapers. I once asked a friend who is an amateur pilot how long it would take for one of these airliners to divert from its flight pattern and crash into L.A.’s tallest skyscraper. He said twenty seconds.

To me, it looks like it would take only ten. But even twenty seconds seems like a very short time. Terrorists could take over a cockpit and crash the plane into the tower before most passengers even knew what was happening.

I asked Mr. MacLean: if a terrorist planned to take over a plane in Los Angeles at the point in its flight path when it came closest to skyscrapers, how long would it take? He said that for planes taking off from LAX headed eastbound, it would require less than a minute — but such flight patterns are very rare. Most planes take off headed over the ocean, which would require 5 minutes of control by the terrorists. What about planes circling downtown for a final approach to touchdown? I asked. He said that for a takeover during a final approach, “you would need at least 1 minute . . . depending on the vector for approach.”

So rest easy. No passengers would possibly allow terrorists to control a plane for a minute — right? (Yes, it’s sarcasm. In one minute most passengers probably would still be trying to process what was happening.)

But, Mr. MacLean pointed out, there are airplane terrorism scenarios that don’t require terrorists to board a regularly scheduled flight, present I.D., and take over the plane by force. But he suggested that I contact other experts about this alternate scenario. I have done so — so keep reading over the coming days.

More to come from other air marshals and other knowledgeable people on these and related issues. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: “Buck shot” has been changed to “birdshot” at Mr. MacLean’s request.

[“Deport the Criminals First” is a recurring feature on this blog, highlighting crimes committed by illegal immigrants — with a special focus on repeat offenders. I argue that, instead of arresting illegal immigrants who work hard for a living, we should use our limited immigration enforcement resources to target illegal immigrants who commit crimes in this country — especially violent crimes.]

On April 3, 2007, the Seattle Times reported:

Rebecca Griego called her ex-boyfriend Jonathan Rowan “a psycho from the past.” He wouldn’t stop calling her office at the University of Washington. When she no longer would answer the phone, he harassed her sister and threatened to kidnap her dogs.

Griego, 26, did what she could to avoid her 41-year-old stalker, whom she described as a suicidal alcoholic who had grown increasingly menacing. She obtained a domestic-violence protection order March 6, changed addresses and phone numbers and asked co-workers to watch out for him.

On Monday morning, Rowan found Griego alone in her fourth-floor office in Gould Hall and fatally shot her before killing himself.

Jonathan Rowan was an illegal immigrant — from Britain. That’s right: illegal immigrants don’t all come from Mexico (though don’t kid yourself; most do). And the illegal alien criminals from all countries should be deported.

But it didn’t happen to Jonathan Rowan — thanks to Seattle’s status as a “sanctuary city.” Absent that policy, which prevents law enforcement from inquiring into the immigration status of a criminal suspect, Rowan might well have been deported. A press release from the Citizens’ Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms explains:

Had it not been for a Seattle ordinance that forbids police officers from routinely ascertaining a suspect’s immigration status, Monday’s murder-suicide at the University of Washington might have been prevented because the perpetrator would have been deported months ago, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Seattle newspapers reported Thursday morning that gunman Jonathan Rowan had been living in this country illegally for more than ten years. Stopped for drunken driving last June 30 by Seattle police, his residency status could have been determined, were it not for Seattle’s ridiculous policy. Generically called “Sanctuary Laws,” they tie the hands of police and allow foreign nationals a free pass to stay here illegally.

See a map of U.S. cities that are sanctuary communities here. Take a look:

Thanks to Jim Miller for alerting me to this case. He comments on the Rebecca Griego case — and agrees with my crusade to deport the criminals first — in a post you can read here. See also his post on the Sound Politics blog, here, and Stefan Sharkansky’s post here.

Meet Rebecca Griego, another victim of our pro-illegal immigrant policies: