Mayor Louis Barletta of Hazelton, PA, burst onto the national scene last month when he testified before a special Senate “field hearing” in Philadelphia about the impact of illegal immigration on the quality of life in his tiny community (pop. 22,000 to 31,000, according to various estimates), a former coal-mining town just south of Wilkes-Barre:

“We've seen a dramatic increase in gang-style graffiti, some of which has included threats to kill police officers,” Mr. Barletta said of his small town in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania. …

Mr. Barletta said four men charged with murder in the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Derek Kichline were in the U.S. illegally, including one, who had been arrested in various other jurisdictions – and released without deportation – eight times.

The day after Mr. Kichline's death in May, he said, a 14-year-old fired shots in a crowded city playground. The teen – an illegal alien – had 10 bags of crack cocaine when he was arrested.

Barletta had a novel solution: an ordinance that denied licenses to businesses employing illegal aliens; fined landlords $1,000 for each tenant who is in this country illegally; required tenants to undergo a background check with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain documentation assuring landlords they are in the US legally; and required city documents to be in English only. His Illegal Immigration Relief Act passed in a 4-to-1 vote, and was signed into law a month ago.

Barletta says illegal immigration is “destroying small towns” that don't have the budget to deal with the influx, according to USA Today:

Barletta says that even though the law isn't in effect yet, it's having an impact: “People are leaving daily.”

Hazleton's requirements are strict, but other communities also are targeting landlords and employers. A similar law passed recently in Riverside, N.J., and others are being drafted or voted on in several other communities where leaders have complained for months about inaction by federal lawmakers.

“If a byproduct of this is to send out a message and embarrass the people out in D.C., then maybe that's good,” says Andy Anderson, a councilman in Palm Bay, Fla. The city of 93,000 is one reading away from adopting a law that would fine anyone who employs an illegal immigrant a minimum of $500.

Similar measures are scheduled for votes in the Pennsylvania towns of Allentown (population 107,000), Shenandoah (5,300) and Mount Pocono (3,000). Local legislators in Gadsden, Ala. (population 37,400), Kennewick, Wash. (61,000), and Escondido, Calif. (134,000), are considering proposing legislation. A bill was narrowly rejected in Avon Park, Fla. (8,900).

Opponents, however, are lining up for a fight in Hazleton.

“This is a test case that will serve as a model for challenges around the country,” says criminal defense lawyer David Vaida of Allentown, Pa. He has joined forces with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and says they are preparing a lawsuit.

Though eager to pass a similar ordinance, council members of nearby Forty Fort, PA, are nervously eyeing the legal challenge to Hazelton’s law, fearing that the borough will be bankrupted by a protracted court fight, reports The Times Tribune of Scranton:.

The ordinance, almost identical to the law passed recently in Hazleton, would ban illegal immigrants from renting property, punish businesses that hire them and make English the official language of the borough.

“When (Councilman) Dave Williams initially brought up this immigration bill there were a few people, including Joe Chacke and myself, that recommended we table this thing until Hazleton’s legal battles were done,” Councilman Jim McCabe said. …

Mr. McCabe said Forty Fort’s annual operating budget is just over $1 million.

How much could the legal bills total? “The Citizens’ Voice recently reported City Council in San Bernardino, Calif., determined it would cost at least $750,000 to defend a similar proposal in federal court,” according to The Times Tribune.

The Stiletto has spent some years in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazelton vicinity, and is also familiar with the towns of Forty Fort and Mount Pocono. These towns are largely populated by elderly coalmine pensioners and younger blue-collar workers. While many of the older, statelier homes throughout the area have been purchased as week-end homes by well-off New Yorkers, or converted into professional doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, overall the tax base is not particularly robust.

ACLU-financed lawsuits could force town fathers to give up police, fire and ambulance service to be able to fight for the right to pass laws that preserve their residents’ quality of life – not to mention the character of their towns. This is just plain wrong.

What A Difference Two Days Make … 48 Little Hours

One day you’re up, the next day you’re down. Tuesday, anti-Iraq war activists are doing victory dances over neophyte Ned Lamont’s defeat of seasoned senator Joe Lieberman in the CT primary. The next day (Thursday in London, as it happened) British authorities announce disruption of an imminent plot involving at least two dozen Muslims to blow up 10 or 12 planes en route to the US midair using liquid compounds mixed together on board.

Here’s Michael Barone’s pithy analysis of the cognitive whiplash suffered by the hard left between Tuesday and Thursday of last week:

Tuesday was a victory for the angry antiwar Left that set the tone in the Democrats' 2003-04 presidential cycle and seems likely to set the tone again in 2007-08. Thursday was a reminder that there are, as George W. Bush has finally taken to calling them, Islamic fascist terrorists who want to kill us and destroy our way of life.

Thursday's lesson was not one Tuesday's victors wanted to learn. Left-wing bloggers played an important part in Lamont's victory. Here's the reaction of one of them, John Aravosis, to the red alert ordered here in response to the British arrests: “Do I sound as if I don't believe this alert? Why, yes, that would be correct. I just don't believe it. Read the article. They say the plot had an 'Al Qaeda footprint.' Ooh, are you scared yet?”

What we are looking at here is cognitive dissonance. The mindset of the Left blogosphere is that there's no real terrorist threat out there. We wouldn't have any serious problem if we'd just do something different - raise the minimum wage or reduce the number without health insurance (the first issue Lamont mentioned on election night), withdraw from Iraq or (as some Left bloggers suggest) sell out Israel. …

Our Left criticized George W. Bush when The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency was surveilling telephone calls from al-Qaida suspects overseas to the United States. Now it appears that the United States surveilled the British terrorists, and that they made phone calls to the United States. The Left cried foul when The New York Times revealed that the United States was monitoring money transfers at the SWIFT bank clearinghouse in Brussels. Now it appears that there was monitoring of money transfers by the British terrorists in Pakistan. On Tuesday, the Left was gleeful that it was scoring political points against George W. Bush. On Thursday, it seemed that the supposedly controversial NSA surveillance contributed to savings thousands of lives.

Joseph Lieberman is being criticized for saying, “I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us - more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War. We cannot deceive ourselves that we live in safety today and the war is over, and it's why we have to stay strong and vigilant.”

That view didn't prevail on Tuesday. But it sure made sense on Thursday.

And the coup de grace, courtesy of Bob Novak:

Old-line Connecticut Democrats who backed insurgent candidate Ned Lamont against Sen. Joseph Lieberman were appalled to see their candidate flanked at his Tuesday night primary election celebration in Meriden, Conn., by two contentious African-American political activists from out of state.

On either side of Lamont during his victory speech were the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York and the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Chicago. Each nodded affirmatively as Lamont spoke, giving the impression that they were his close advisers.

Faithful Democrats urged Lamont's managers to get the two former left-wing presidential candidates away from the Connecticut campaign. The danger is that they might drive Republican, independent and even some Democratic voters into support of Lieberman's independent candidacy.

Update:

The Pardoner’s Tale

Italians are aghast that 12,000 jailbirds have flown the coop, courtesy of a “national pardon” granted by parliament. Reuters’ August 2 account suggested that the pardon was offered only to nonviolent felons. Now, a follow-up article contradicts the earlier report: “Justice Minister Clemente Mastella says the July 29 pardon, which cuts three years off sentences including for convicted murderers and thieves, was an overdue act of clemency in a jail system cramming 62,000 inmates into prisons meant for 42,000.” Reuters reports:

In the first few days after the amnesty came into effect, at least 18 pardoned detainees were re-arrested within hours of their release because they were found committing new crimes.

In the northern city of Udine, a man convicted for abusing his family went straight home and tried to strangle his wife.

A 32-year-old drug addict was found dead shortly after being freed in Milan, killed by an overdose. …

Local authorities play down the risks and say that Mafiosi, terrorists, rapists, paedophiles [sic], armed gangsters and those who prostitute minors are excluded from the pardon, which will be revoked for those committing any new offence within five years.

But the SPQR are taking steps to protect themselves from a post-pardon crime wave – with the blessings of the police, it would appear:

The far-right Northern League has distributed leaflets with advice on how to apply for a gun licence [sic].

"We are not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands. But if honest citizens feel in danger, they have a right to know how to lawfully get a gun," said Senator Massimo Polledri.

A police trade union, which complains of understaffing, advised Romans to cancel their holidays and guard their homes.