Those who read the ostensibly straight news coverage of the New York Times will be told this about the place of immigration in the 2008 elections: New immigration and the political reaction against it are nearly as old as the United States itself. Yet the immigration surge of the last decade has awakened tensions of unexpected intensity that have pervaded the presidential campaigns of both parties and stirred voter anger

Via Pablo, Gleen defends his interpretation of Noonan’s use of the verb “to poof” as a reference to “poofter”: mredge My mother used that term 30 years ago to describe lifting an area of hair to give it a look of more body. I’ve heard the word from hairdressers many times since then. You are the immature person for jumping to the conclusion that the term is somehow used to

Al-Qaeda cleverly use sun roof to assassinate Pakistani ex-PM.  Could Popemobility have saved Bhutto? Would she be alive if Benedict had been willing to share his technology with Muslims? With that, I’m off to NJ to visit friends, and then to NYC to spend New Year’s Eve with Mike Hendrix and his band, so I don’t expect I’ll be doing much (if any) blogging till late on New Year’s Day.  I

h/t Reynolds: The votes by the MLA’s largest governing council came in an at-times-surreal five-hour meeting. Cary Nelson, author of Manifesto of a Tenured Radical, was in the position of being the leading moderate, offering alternative language to defeat Radical Caucus proposals. Critics of Israel repeatedly talked about “facts on the ground” to refer to the treatment of Israel’s critics on campuses today, and it was unclear whether the term

The year Adam Geller didn’t get any. Video: Street Race Crash and Burn on Sunset Blvd (excessive affluence involved)  Woman Held Against Her Will in Chicago (I don’t think Chicago’s so bad)