† The Definition of Chutzpah: Part VII (second item): An AZ judge and jury said “No way, José!” when illegal immigration activists Mexican American Legal Defense helped 16 illegals sue rancher Roger Barnett for $2 million each for allegedly violating their civil rights when he detained them on his ranch at gunpoint and called border patrol agents to pick them up, reports The Washington Times:  

U.S. District Judge John M. Roll, for starters, dismissed the claims of 10 of the illegals because they did not testify at trial. He then tossed related conspiracy complaints against Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, and his brother Donald, saying illegal immigrants had no constitutionally protected right to travel in the United States.

Judge Roll said the Barnetts, who live in close proximity to the border, could reasonably assume that large groups of people they encountered hiding or trespassing on their property were doing so with the aid of smugglers.

He said entering the United States illegally was a federal felony, for which a citizen's arrest was authorized under Arizona law.

Ultimately, the jury of four men and four women decided that Mr. Barnett did not violate the civil rights of the remaining six plaintiffs and was not guilty of false imprisonment, battery and conspiracy as charged in the suit. …

The jury awarded $17,802 to the six remaining illegal immigrants on their claims of assault and the infliction of emotional distress - $7,500 each to two, $1,400 each to two others and $1 each to the remaining pair. It also ordered Mr. Barnett to pay $60,000 in punitive damages.

Barnett’s attorneys plan to appeal the $77,802 award, contending the jury received flawed instructions and that the state constitution bars awards of punitive damages to illegals.

BTW: The New York Times reports that state and federal officials testified at a legislative hearing that  “the raging drug war among cartels in Mexico and their push to expand operations in the United States has led to a wave of kidnappings, shootings and home invasions” in AZ:

The drug trade has long brought violence to the state, which serves as a hub as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants are smuggled to the rest of the nation.

Over all, in this city and surrounding Maricopa County, homicides and violent crime decreased last year. But the authorities are sounding an alarm over what they consider changing tactics in border-related crime that bear the marks of the violence in Mexico.

A home invasion here last year was carried out by attackers wielding military-style rifles and dressed in uniforms similar to a Phoenix police tactical unit. The discovery of grenades and other military-style weaponry bound for Mexico is becoming more routine, as is hostage-taking and kidnapping for ransom, law enforcement officials said. …

Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern of beheadings and mutilations [contextual link added by The Stiletto] of victims and the regular killings of law enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has arrived in the United States.

† What’s The Matter With IA?: Officials with IA's Department of Human Services admitted the agency was aware as early as the 1970s that 21 mentally disabled men from TX were underpaid by their employer, a turkey processing plant in Atalissa, and living in city-owned housing that was in extreme disrepair, reports The Associated Press:

Social workers … looked into the workers' housing situation twice before without taking action: once in the 1970s and again in 1997, according to a 38-page file discovered about two weeks ago at the Human Services Department's Muscatine County office. …

The men lived at a 106-year-old house that locals called the bunkhouse. The city of Atalissa owned the home, and city officials recently acknowledged that some of its doors were padlocked, windows were boarded up and the heating system was broken, leaving only space heaters.

The men worked for Henry's Turkey Service, a Texas company that provided labor for a meatpacker near Atalissa in West Liberty. Recent inquiries showed the company diverted much of the mentally disabled men's paychecks and government payments to living expenses, leaving them about $65 a month in wages. …

The state file includes a Dec. 4, 1974, memo from social worker Ed George, who tells district manager James Strickland that the mentally disabled men lack adequate housing and are deprived of their families, among other problems.

George wrote that once a man becomes an employee of Henry's Turkey Service "he for all practical purposes loses most basic human rights."

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The New York Times writes about a “little-known corner of the art business” – companies like NY’s Art Capital Group and Art Finance Partners, and ArtLoan, located in San Francisco, which convert art collections into cash in the hand:

Art Capital’s headquarters in the former Sotheby’s building on Madison Avenue looks at first glance like an art gallery. Two Warhols, a pair of Rubens portraits of Roman emperors and a pink nude by the contemporary Mexican painter Victor Rodriguez hang on the cool white walls. A sculpture of a faun by Rembrandt Bugatti sits on a windowsill in a conference room where transactions are discussed.

But it would be more accurate to describe the airy space as something far less genteel: a pawnshop.

Art Capital issues loans of $500,000 or more at interest rates from 6 percent to 16 percent. Fail to pay and you lose your Rubens; several of the works on display in Art Capital’s office on Madison became subject to sale after their owners defaulted. …

The company expects to make about $120 million in art-related loans in 2009, up from $80 million in 2008. At a Manhattan-based competitor, Art Finance Partners, “we are up 40 percent in originations in the last six months,” said Meghan Carleton, a partner.

Clients include photographer Annie Leibovitz, artist Julian Schnabel, art collector Veronica Hearst and art galleries. 

† Let Them Eat Steak!: Barack Obama sure loves him his Wagyu beef! He served it at a cocktail reception earlier this month, and again at a black tie White House dinner (the menu also included Chesapeake crab agnolottis, Nantucket scallops and huckleberry cobbler).

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race): On company time and using company equipment, WBAL-TV correspondent John Sanders re-edited a clip from “The John Gibson Show” to make it appear that the FOX News commentator had likened Attorney General Eric Holder to a monkey that had escaped from its pen at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle by making a reference to his “bright blue scrotum” and posted his creation on YouTube, where it was picked up by several blogs, including The Huffington Post. Learning that the clip is a fake, HuffPo issued a half-hearted correction:

The video was doctored to include Trace Gallagher's voice saying, "bright blue scrotum" where Gibson played Holder's 'nation of cowards' remark. The Huffington Post does not know the source of the video's doctoring - it was picked up off TVNewser ...The Huffington Post regrets the error.

But as several HuffPo readers pointed out, the “apology” includes the doctored video so it can continue to be disseminated virally. Also, if HuffPo sincerely regretted its error, the hundreds of vituperative comments condemning Gibson for something he never said should have been removed. 

For its part, WBAL-TV management made it clear that “[t]his video was not approved by, used, or sanctioned in any way by WBAL-TV or Hearst-Argyle Television and we do not condone such behavior. Further, this video does not represent the views of WBAL-TV or Hearst-Argyle Television.” Sanders has been fired.

Here is Gibson’s take on the incident – which he is convinced was meant to get him fired because he does talk frankly about race and other issues:

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wants to know, “what justifies Holder's belief that the only way to surmount them is to have ‘frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us?’,” adding that Holder “has it exactly backward”:

Harping on old grievances, constantly revisiting past resentments, relentlessly picking at scabs - those are a recipe not for social harmony but for never-ending antagonism. To be sure, there are those who have made it their life's work to keep racial umbrage at a constant boil: men like Louis Farrakhan, David Duke, Al Sharpton. Is theirs the sort of "frank conversation" Holder thinks we need more of?

Maybe after all the race-baiters shut up, the rest of us will open up. Until then, who in his right mind wants to risk career suicide to have a “frank” conversation about race when people have been excoriated and fired for imagined (the infamous “niggardly” and “black hole” brouhahas, for instance) or manufactured (Gibson being but one example) racial slights? No thanks, Mr. Holder.

Editorial Note: News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch - who owns both the New York Post and FOX News, among numerous media properties worldwide – penned his own apology about the monkey cartoon:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

The Post cartoon is maladroit, and insensitive to the savaged victim and her family. But what is especially unfortunate is that - while not racist, per se – the cartoon seems to have awakened latent racist impulses in liberals, who then became horrified to find they associate blacks and simians. Rather than examine their own twisted hearts, they projected their subconscious racism onto the cartoonist because, after all, if a well-meaning, do-gooding liberal sees a cartoon monkey and immediately thinks “Barack Obama” then surely everyone must – especially those vile, racist conservatives at The Post!

Correction: In the original version of this post, The Stiletto erroneously reported that the monkey with "the bright blue scrotum" was the CT chimpanzee that nearly killed his owner's neighbor. Different monkey; the post has been corrected. 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Obama’s Judgment On Judges): Three weeks after surgery to remove a cancerous growth on her pancreas, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was back on the Supreme Court bench “asking crisp and vigorous questions in the two arguments heard by the court,” reports The New York Times:

Justice Ginsburg seemed to take particular interest in a case brought by the Navajo Nation claiming that the federal government had been complicit in a scheme to allow a private company to underpay for coal on tribal lands.

The case, United States v. Navajo Nation, No. 07-1410, was making its second appearance before the court. Justice Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion ruling [.pdf] against the tribe in 2003, and she asked forceful questions suggesting that she saw no reason to revisit her conclusions. …

Justice Ginsburg also asked the first question in the second argument of the day. That case, Rivera v. Illinois, No. 07-9995, concerned what should follow from a judge’s erroneous denial of a criminal defendant’s attempt to exclude a potential juror by using a peremptory strike - the kind that does not ordinarily require giving a reason. …

Justice Ginsburg and several other justices appeared skeptical of the defendant’s argument that the judge’s mistake should require automatic reversal.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too): Attorneys for Sholom Rubashkin owner of kosher meatpacking plant Agriprocessors Inc. filed motion to dismiss the charges against their client and his company or to move the trial out of state, reports The Associated Press:

Rubashkin … faces 97 charges, including immigration-related counts and bank fraud. Rubashkin, three other defendants and the company were indicted months after 389 people were arrested in a May 12 immigration raid at the Postville plant, at the time the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse.

Rubashkin is accused of helping illegal immigrants get fake documents so they could work at the plant.

His attorney, Guy Cook, and Agriprocessors attorney Jim Clarity asked U.S. District Court Judge Linda Reade to dismiss the charges against Rubashkin and the company because they claim the grand jury developed prejudices based on Jewish stereotypes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Berry insists, “This indictment was not based on the defendant's religion. It was based on evidence."