The big news from their respective sides of the Atlantic was the sentencing of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and the confidence vote in UK PM Theresa May. Neither party merited the final score.
I would find the standard operating procedure of US federal justice - squeeze till you squeal - utterly repugnant even if it were not so selectively applied. Me on October 19th 2016:
Comey's FBI is hopelessly corrupted - and certainly more corrupt than J Edgar Hoover's FBI...
That was months, and in some cases years, before the revelations about Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page et al. Michael Cohen is a sleazy shyster even by the standards of his grim trade, but the issue is the ability of the feds to get you on something once they decide it's in their interest to do so. Which is not the hallmark of any real justice system.
~In that respect, the more interesting federal prosecution in the news yesterday was an under-reported story out of New Jersey. Per The North Jersey Record:
Feds: NJ woman forced Sri Lankan woman to marry her, enslaved her for 9 years
"NJ woman"? One of those real-housewives-of-New-Jersey types? No, this is one of the real housewives of the new New Jersey:
A Secaucus woman has been accused of enslavement for allegedly forcing a Sri Lankan national to work for nine years without pay, federal prosecutors said.
Ah, a "Secaucus woman": That narrows it down. Any chance of a name?
Alia Imad Faleh Al Hunaity, 43, was arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Camden and charged with forced labor, alien harboring and marriage fraud...
What did "Sri Lankan nationals" do to deserve being enslaved by these crazy out-of-control "Secaucus women"?
America's newspapers would rather go out of business than tell you anything approximating to the reality of the situation - that this is a wealthy woman from Araby who would like to live as she does back in Saudi or the Emirates, which means importing the indentured servants she enjoys back in the old country. A third of the population of Saudi Arabia are "foreign workers", mostly laboring in agriculture or domestic service. Just shy of a million are Sri Lankan. Because Saudis are the laziest buggers on the planet, and, having been enriched by oil, have no desire to make so much as a cup of tea for themselves.
So Ms al-Hunaity brought over her servant, enslaved her, and, in order to evade US immigration law, entered into a fake lesbian marriage:
COUNT ONE (Marriage Fraud)
On or about April 11, 2018, in Hudson County, in the District of New Jersey and elsewhere, the defendant, ALIA AL HUNAITY, did knowingly and unlawfully enter into a marriage with Victim-1, an alien in the United States, for the purpose of evading a provision of the immigration laws of the United States.
I have written for years about the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition - Amsterdam's once famous "Homo Hotel" relaunching itself as a Muslim enterprise, the most fierce opposition to gay marriage in the Aussie referendum coming from the most Muslim constituencies, the orientational cleansing of London's East End...
But you have to hand it to the more enterprising Mohammedans: Secure in the knowledge that Allah will cut them some slack, they're willing to do whatever it takes - including tying the same-sex knot in order to import their slaves. One day the last elderly Episcopalian gays in San Francisco will notice that every other couple in the Castro District now seems to be a chap called Mohammed and the fetching young Bangladeshi houseboy who never leaves the house.
If you find the vibrancy of multiculturalism totally vibrant, stories like the above are far more interesting than whatever used to be in the paper before Secaucus women started pretending to be hot under the hijab for Tamil totty willing to do the jobs Americans won't do, like being same-sex Sharia slaves for immigration fraudsters. As Steve Sailer adds:
See, immigrants are too assimilating rapidly to modern America's highest values, such as gay marriage, creating more social progress than you thought imaginable. Did boring old white 1950s white men like Dwight Eisenhower engage in lesbian marriage slavery?
I don't think so!
Progress!
~Are the US midterm elections over yet? I think so, just about. The last GOP state senator from Orange County, California has thrown in the towel. Orange County used to be typical of solidly Republican Nixon-Reagan-Pete Wilson California. Then it became a Republican redoubt in solidly Democrat California. Now it's just a slightly less solidly Democrat fiefdom in otherwise solidly one-party-state California. Yet most exhaustive analyses of "five ways Democrats pulled down the Orange curtain" talk about everything except the only thing that matters - the demographic transformation of the Golden State by untrammeled mass unskilled immigration.
Are similar trends discernible elsewhere in supposedly red and purple states? Why, yes: Florida, Arizona, the mid-Atlantic, and even Texas, without which Republicans are dead as a national party. By 2010, 74 per cent of babies delivered at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas were to non-citizens, the overwhelming majority in the country illegally. Those newborns are now approaching their ninth birthdays. In another nine years they'll be voting. By 2010, sixteen per cent of all births in the state were "anchor babies". What do you reckon it is now?
What's the T-shirt slogan? "Don't mess with Texas!" But somebody has messed with Texas - and Republicans, as with almost anything else that matters, do nothing about it.
~We have some special events planned for 2019 in The Mark Steyn Club, including the second annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise, sailing from Vancouver through Alaska's beautiful Inside Passage to Skagway and Glacier Bay. (Those Steyn cruise cabins are selling fast, and pricing is better the earlier you book.) Club members also enjoy special member pricing on over forty products at the Steyn store, including this year's Steynamite Christmas Specials. So, if you've been thinking about signing up, you can find more details about the Club here - and, if you've a chum who'd enjoy our audio fiction, video poetry and much more, don't forget our limited-time Christmas Gift Membership, which includes a special presentation set of three of our most popular Tales for Our Time.
See you on the telly with Tucker tonight at 8pm Eastern - and tomorrow evening right here with the second of our Christmas Tales.