[posted by Justin Levine]

I maintain that the difference between this kind of thinking and Holocaust denial is merely one of scale – not moral substance.  Astonishing.

Here is the podcast archive of “unbiased” reporting. (I don’t know if the site will keep it up permanantly, so try and watch it soon if you can stomach it.)

[posted by Justin Levine]

[posted by Justin Levine]

Sounds like a real barn burner to me. It will no doubt inspire several other future defendents to hire Dr. Lee in order to give their cases much needed credibility.

Last night at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena I went to a book signing for Vincent Bugliosi’s book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

It was a very enjoyable evening. I had never heard Bugliosi speak before, but watching him argue the case for Oswald’s lone guilt in the assassination, I experienced something of what his jurors must have experienced as they watched him argue one of the 106 felony jury trials he tried (105 of which he won). He is a very effective and persuasive oral advocate — the result of preparation, total mastery of his facts, and a forceful and articulate presentation.

Bugliosi did a televised mock trial of Oswald in London in 1986. Gerry Spence defended Oswald. Bugliosi won a conviction. The entire televised mock trial (which I believe was shown in its entirety on BBC) lasted 21 hours; a 5-hour distillation appeared on Showtime.

I have been searching for a copy of this mock trial ever since I first heard about it eight years ago or so. What criminal lawyer wouldn’t drool at the chance to see (arguably) the best prosecutor of the century square off against (arguably) the best defense attorney of the last several decades? I wrote Bugliosi a handwritten letter back then to ask if it was available for sale anywhere. He wrote me back and said that he would lend me his copy, except that he was in the middle of writing a book about the assassination, and needed to hold onto it. (It had never occurred to me that he would lend it to me anyway.)

I asked him again last night whether the DVD of the trial was available anywhere. Apparently it isn’t. He has sent his copy to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza . . . which, by the way, is the absolute most interesting place to go in the Dallas/Fort Worth area — and that’s coming from a Fort Worth native.

If any reader knows where I can get a copy, I will be eternally indebted.

In any event, I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to finish this 1600-page tome, but it looks fascinating. I’m already in sympathy with the conclusion; I firmly believe that anyone who thinks Oswald was part of a conspiracy is simply ignorant of the facts. But Bugliosi claims to take on all conspiracy theories and demolish them — in (he claims) the first book to do so with thoroughness.

I’m looking forward to it.

The L.A. Times has an article titled Illegal-immigrant crackdown looms. The negative spin starts with the deck headline: “A plan to make employers fire workers with discrepancies in their records could snare many citizens and legal residents, critics say.”

The article itself wastes no time in spinning the negative aspects of a crackdown:

With the failure of immigration legislation in Congress this year, federal officials are planning a new crackdown on illegal immigrants that would force businesses to fire them or face stiff penalties. But the effort also could cause serious headaches for millions of U.S. citizens.

The article continues:

[T]he planned crackdown has provoked concern because many of the errors are benign: misspellings or incorrect birthdates in records of citizens or legal immigrants. There are errors in the records of an estimated 12.7 million U.S. citizens alone, and workers rushing to correct these discrepancies could swamp Social Security offices, much as new travel regulations have paralyzed government passport facilities this year.

By the way, the passport backlog is not primarily due to new regulations — even if that would bolster the storyline. Yes, there was an increase due to new regulations. But as Joel Mowbray has argued, the primary responsibility for the backlog was a boneheaded misestimate made by the consular chief responsible for making such projections. (While taking into account estimates of new passport applications to deal with the regulations, she ignored the traditional 18 percent increase per year in new applications.)

But never mind that. Look at the bigger picture.

How is the government is supposed to prevent employers from employing illegals without creating potential problems like this? Answer: it’s impossible.

So this article is simply designed to sound the alarm about the natural consequences of enforcing our immigration laws against employers. Which, by the way, is going to bother employers — so excuse me if I don’t cry too hard when I read this:

And businesses are complaining about bearing the burden of enforcing a flawed immigration system.

Who’da thunk it? You make businesses police whether they have illegals, and they complain?

Now that’s news!