A paid daily circulation of 388,000. A free daily circulation of 335,000. More than 3 million monthly web site visitors. 17 visitor reference, lifestyle and economic development publications. 181 penny saver editions. 97% of all this can be yours for $630 million.

Actually, it can’t anymore, because Cablevision has already bought Newsday in a $650 million zero-equity deal financed by Bank of America (money down is so last millennium). The seller, Tribune Company, will retain 3% stake of the newspaper valued at $20 million.

Cablevision is a so-called triple-play service provider that offers subscribers bundled cable television, telephone service, and Internet access. It has three million subscribers, mostly in the New York area. The company has a particularly strong position on its native Long Island. Cablevision also owns Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers, and the New York Knickerbockers, along with various media properties like IFC and AMC.

Cablevisions’s main owners - the Dolans - recently abandoned a stalled effort to take the company private. The company has a long history of rather pricey acquisitions. In 1988 it shelled out $550 million to purchase Viacom Inc.’s cable systems on Long Island and suburban Cleveland. One of Cablevision’s main competitors at that time was Times Mirror, which then owned Newsday (tribune acquired the newspaper as part of a merger in 2000). Earlier this month Cablevision agreed to acquire Sundance Channel for $496 million, almost one hundred million dollars more than the channel’s owners reportedly had expected to pull in.

According to a 10-K filing 78% of Tribune Co.’s publishing revenue came from advertising and 14% from subscriptions and sales. Those numbers are for all of the the company’s newspapers, not Newsday specifically (some of Tribune’s other newspapers are Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Hartford Courant).

According to the Wall Street Journal, one media analysts estimates that Cablevision could increase Newsday’s circulation by 100,000. That would mean some $25-30 million in subscription and sales revenue, plus a multiple in extra advertising revenue. So maybe $100-$120 million in extra revenue? Newsday’s revenue fell 13%, to $498 million, from 2005 to 2007, while circulation dropped by 10%. Cablevision needs to boost circulation by 44,000 just to bring it back to 2005 levels.

Here’s an odd reaction to Cablevision’s purchase of Newsday:

“Being owned by an Internet service provider company opens up a range of options for a newspaper to generate revenue from people accessing the Internet,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a think tank in Washington. “Revenue from the Internet service can go to underwrite the content.”

So, in Mr. Rosenstiel opinion, Cablesvision’s owner borrowed $650 million to provide Newsday’s news room with a revenue stream from cable subscribers. OK.

Finally, here’s a prescient quote from tribune’s 10-K mentioned previously in this post:

[C]ompetition for certain types of acquisitions is significant, particularly in the Interactive space. Even if successfully negotiated, closed and integrated, certain acquisitions or investments may prove not to advance our business strategy and may fall short of expected return on investment targets.

Selling in the dead-tree market space is a much better business proposition. Well done, Tribune, and good luck, Cablevision.

Three topics to ponder: CHB, John Tomase, and whether Pat Purcell should waste money on beefing up the Boston Herald’s sport section.

Mark In The Car is on the phone. What’s up, Mark?

Yo, Matt, listen, dude. All these people who rag on Shank are retards, figuratively speaking. Take this guy Boston Blood Sox who wrote a post on how stupid and irrelevant CHB is – and then he emailed the douchebag to let him know how irrelevant he is. And then he posted the douchemeister’s six word answer, which wasn’t “your post is the greatest ever,” just to underscore how irrelevant he is. Let me tell you, Matt, when it comes to covering Boston sports, you’re irrelevant, I’m irrelevant, but Shank is like the bleeping Pope. Everybody listens to him, if only to rip him. A Pope in a world of Ian Paisleys.

But I know you don’t care for Shank The Pope of Douche, either, Mark In The Car.

No, I stopped reading him years ago. The guy can’t write one sentence without alluding to the Red Sox. I’m a bleeping Patriots fan. I don’t to need to hear that Ellis Hobbs failing to cover a wide receiver is like Billy Buckner failing to pick up a ball in the World Series in 1986, or whatever. I’m not a homoSoxual. It’s not my bag, baby.

Well put, Mark In The Car.

You know how a platoon of sports writers has left the Globe recently?

Yes?

But no football writers.

Right.

You know why?

Tell me, Mark In The Car.

Because The Globe DOESN’T HAVE ANY FOOTBALL WRITERS. They’re all a bunch of seamheads who despise football.

Come on, they have Mark Reiss…

…who’s basically a blogger with a paycheck. Here’s the prototypical Mike Reiss question at a Bill Belichick press conference: Your team has an offense, can you talk about the qualities of it and what it brings to the team?

Mark In The Car, listen to me. He could ask Belichick anything and the answer would be the same. In the best interest of the team. It is what it is. We can all play better, coach better, prepare better. Blah, blah, blah.

He could bring something. Something off the wall. Like the guy who asked Bill about what his mom thinks about the way he dresses during games. The setup for that question was outstanding.

I know, I know, Mark In The Car. That was classic.

But it would never have happened had it not been for the Boston Herald. And now fans want to run poor John Tomase out of town for quoting an unnamed source.

Tomase. Speaking of bloggers with a paycheck…

Yeah, so the guy can’t tell football from soccer or soccer from synchronized swimming but at least he’s is trying to play journalist. You know, occasionally asking uncomfortable questions, writing articles that aren’t suck-up jobs to the team owners. Hey, if Belichick hadn’t misinterpreted the rrrrrules there would never have been an unnamed source. But fans are acting as if Tomase tripped Hobbs in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, it’s kind of sad. But it was a tough, tough loss for Patriots fans and they want to vent.

Yeah, if only the players had cared half as much as us fans…

They cared enough, they just didn’t believe they could possibly lose. They were almost right. Any one of four or five plays on the last Giants drive alone would have won the game for us. But it is what it is. We’re moving on. Kansas City. Hey, Mark In The Car, what do you think of Adam Riley’s idea that the Herald should go mano-a-mano against the Globe in sports coverage?

I saw that. Listen, man, the guy’s an idiot. What would the Herald get out of doing that, besides maybe winning a prize for best sports coverage in East Central New England? There’s no way a newspaper can recoup that kind of investment these days. Hiring seven people, how much is that? North of half a rock, I guarantee you that. How are they going to get that money back?

Not going to happen. I agree, it’s a hare-brained idea. But the guy’s a bust, anyway, so who cares?

He’s the Andy Katzenmoyer of media critics.

How very CHB of you, MITC.

I read the blogs. I’m jiggy with the haters. Rut ro. w00t, w00t. Air quotes.

Anything else, Mark In The Car?

Yeah, did you know that the median age of Massachusetts residents increased from 36.5 in 2000 to 38.5 in 2007, according to population estimates by the United Sta…

Bye, Mark, see you next Tuesday.

Massachusetts’s population grew 1.6% from 2000 to 2007 according to estimates by the United States Census Bureau. Last week the Bureau released estimates for population changes with-in the different races in the 50 states and the United States.

The demographic story for Massachusetts is the familiar one: A slow decline in the number of whites, while the black, Latino and Asian populations are growing rapidly

The table below shows how the different races that make up almost all of Massachusetts population changed from 2000 to 2007.

2007 is the estimate of the population in 2007. 2000 is the counted population in 2000 (the 2000 Census). The next population count will take place in 2010. The “Diff.” column shows the change in absolute numbers from 2000 to 2007. The “% change” column shows the change as a percent. The “% ‘07″ and “% ‘00″ columns show the shares of the overall population for each race.

The Latino population includes all Hispanics. The black population includes all non-Hispanic blacks, including blacks who also belong to another race (multi-racial blacks make up 8.2% of the overall non-Hispanic black population and is faster growing than the single-race black population (at least in Massachusetts and at least according to the Census Bureau’s estimates (the one-race non-Hispanic population grew by less than 10% from 2000 to 2007))). The white population includes all “Not Hispanic, One Race, White” persons and the Asian segment includes “”Not Hispanic, One Race, Asian” persons.

The columns don’t add up to 100% of the state totals since several thousand people fall outside of the four races included in this table.

Had Massachusetts’s white population remained the same in numbers from 2000 to 2007, the state’s population would now be 6,564,861, whites would have made up 80.1% of the population and the state’s population growth would have been 3.4% from 2000 to 2007 instead of 1.6%.

What the estimates don’t reflect are changes within the races. For example, it may be that the state’s African-American population has dwindled or remained stagnant but Haitian and African immigrants have expanded the size of the overall black population. We can’t tell which Asian ethnicities have grown the most. The Hispanic black population is estimated to have grown a lot slower than non-black Hispanic population, perhaps because of more immigration from non-Caribbean Latin America. It’s hard to tell, though, because black Hispanics make up less than 1.5% of the state’s population (the Census Bureau has it that 82% of Hispanics are white, but that’s mostly because of administrative fiat. Almost half of U.S. Hispanics self-reported as Some Other Race in the 2000 Census, but later the Bush Administration simply decided to count members of Some Other Race as Hispanic whites, which is a complete travesty and surely an insult to mestizo and indigenous Hispanics. Since more than 90% of the Some Other Race people are also Hispanic the change didn’t impact the numbers for the white population.).

Update 05/04/2008:

Birth data for Massachusetts suggests rather strongly that the stat’es black population growth is driven entirely by immigration from Africa and non-Hispanic Caribbean nations (eg. Jamaica and Haiti).

The table below shows the 2006 “[b]irth Characteristics by Maternal Race and Hispanic Ethnicity” for Massachusetts (it doesn’t distinguish between uni- and multi-racial mothers, but as I noted above, uni-racial persons are much more frequent than multiracial):

Please note that the race in question is that of the mother and not the child. For example, a child with a black father and a white mother would likely self-report as either black or black and white. So, the the number and share of white babies are actually lower than the table suggests.

47.9% of the black mothers were immigrants. Corresponding share for whites, Asians, and Latinos: 12.3%, 87.5%, and 49.3%, respectively (another 18.5% of Hispanic mothers were born in Puerto Rico).

Hispanics made up 35.8% of all teenage moms.

The table below shows the racial distribution of immigrant mothers who gave birth in Massachusetts in 2006 (mothers born in Puerto Rico are not included):

I’m guessing that the white immigrants are mostly Canadians, Russians, Middle Easterners, Bosnians, Albanians, perhaps some Irish and British, and then a sprinkling of other Europeans.

Since Puerto Ricans are immigrants in all but legal name, it makes sense to include them in the tally of births by immigrant mothers (and also because a non-trivial number of women who claim to be Puerto Ricans probably aren’t):

The next table shows the racial distribution of U.S. born women who gave birth in Massachusetts in 2006.

NFL.com columnist Thomas George does some serious heavy lifting to come up with an angle for a draft-analysis article:

Tom Brady was drafted eight years ago at pick No. 199.

Andre Woodson went to the Giants on Sunday afternoon at pick No. 198.

Similarities exist in these sixth-round picks. Both are quarterbacks with big arms. Both possess superior football intelligence. Both found their college production relatively ignored.

And the major common element: Too many teams passed on these two snappy passers.

I am not saying that Woodson is Brady.

But I am saying George is a hack.

Brady does not have a big arm. Woodson does not “possess superior football intelligence.” And to suggest that “both found their college production relatively ignored” is to severely distort the issue: Brady competed for his starting job in college on a day-to-day, half-to-half basis. Woodson has been a celebrated starter since his sophomore year. The reason he was picked number 198 isn’t because he has been ignored but because he is well known. He’s a good college quarterback and that’s all he is, as Kentucky’s defensive coordinator Steve Brown seems to understand and probably tried to tell George:

“This is a very, very sharp, smart quarterback,” Brown said. “He has excellent touch. He reads coverages extremely well. He can get you into the right play. He is one of the better quarterbacks I’ve seen in the college game in the last couple of years. He compares in style to Jason Campbell of the Redskins. But Andre is going to make his own mark in that league.”

(Emphasis added)

It doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to believe that a college coach who goes on record about one of his school’s former players is going to lay it on thick. In other words, Woodson is not only not a Brady, he’s not even a Campbell.

Garda Inspector Kathleen O’Toole is recommending the deployment of “less than lethal weapons.”

Uniformed gardai could be using pepper spray devices within the next two months, and highly controversial “less than lethal” weapons… The recommendations for these weapons, which are widely used by other police forces, were made in the report by Garda Inspector Kathleen O’Toole last year.

Why do the gardai need these weapons?

the decision some years ago to remove height restrictions for entry into the Garda has meant there are a considerable number of gardai who just don’t have the physical capability to restrain many violent young men.

Couldn’t they just put the height restrictions back in place? I’m guessing Brussels would come down like a ton of bricks on Dublin for discriminating against members of a sex who tend to be shorter than members of another sex.

In my lifetime, upping the arsenal of police officers have been a total red herring, seemingly (and perhaps actually) necessary only because of failed policies in other areas. Arming gardai with pepper spray isn’t going to roll back Ireland’s growing gang culture or deter street thugs. A quarter century ago Swedish police officers carried pitiful little 7.65 mm handguns and in extreme situations they could turn to an out dated Swedish-made submachinegun. Nowadays they have 9 mm pistols, pepper spray, telescopic nightsticks, MP5 guns and high grade body armor. But the more heavily armed cops haven’t made much of a dent on the many more or less foreign gangs that have put down roots in the country over the past couple of decades, nor on free agent criminals like bank robbers.

The Patriots primary personnel needs entering the 2008 NFL draft were linebacker, cornerback, tight end, fullback, and backup quarterback (current back up Matt Cassel isn’t likely to be around for the 2008 season and I don’t think the Patriots are ready yet to bank on Matt Gutierrez as the number two, and even if they are they would still need a number three). Patriots drafted three linebackers, two cornerbacks, one quarterback and one kick returner.

New England Patriots had the following picks at their disposal in the 2008 draft (overall draft pick order in parenthesis):

Round 1, Pick 7 (7) Traded to Saints for overall picks 10 and 78.
Round 1, Pick 10 (10) Linebacker Jerod Mayo from Tennessee
Round 2, Pick 31 (62) Cornerback Terrence Wheatley from Colorado
Round 3, Pick 6 (69) Traded to Chargers for 160 in 08′ and 2nd round ‘09
Round 3, Pick 15 (78) Linebacker Shawn Crable from Michigan
Round 3, Pick 31 (94) Quarterback Kevin O’Connell from San Diego State
Round 4, Pick 30 (129) Cornerback Jonathan Wilhite from Auburn
Round 5, Pick 18 (153) Matt Slater from UCLA
Round 5, Pick 25 (160) Traded to Tampa Bay for 153
Round 5, Pick 29 (164) Traded to Saints
Round 6, Pick 31 (197) Linebacker Bo Ruud from Nebraska
Round 7, Pick 31 (238) Traded to Tampa Bay for 153

First Round: Linebacker Jerod Mayo

NFLDraftScout.com pegs Mayo as outside linebacker because of his lack of strength while other analysts see him as inside linebacker because of his lack of speed. I assume Patriots will try to play him inside first, since the team is a bit weaker there. Of course, the draft isn’t over yet. Patriots might get an inside linebacker later in the draft and bump Mayo outside.

I’ve watched a Mayo highlight reel and it looked like it could have been Volunteers defensive end Robert Ayers’. I hope Mayo paved the way for Ayers and not the other way around.

Having watched an extended highlight reel I’m having some doubts about Mayo’s ability to play inside linebacker for the Patriots. He really does seem to lack the kind of upper body strength you need to shed blocks inside and most of the plays he makes seems to be either when he’s in a swarm or at or from the edge. On the other hand, Tedy Bruschi was a pass rushing defensive end in college who became an inside run stuffing linebacker in NFL. Perhaps the Patriots plan on getting an inside linebacker later in the draft and shuffle Mayo outside, as I speculate above.

Second Round: Cornerback Terrence Wheatley

Patriots selected Colorado cornerback Terrence Wheatley with their second round pick. NFLDraftScout.com calls him a “shutdown cornerback.” A highlight reel on YouTube suggests that he has good on-field speed (he ran a blazing 4.37 40 at the Combine) and that he can handle himself on the proverbial island against wide receivers. The boys at Patriots Football Weekly thought the Patriots would pick Reggie Smith from Oklahoma. Smith’s highlight tape is certainly more impressive than Wheatley’s, but I’m guessing the Patriots think Wheatley has more athletic ability and thus a better chance of sustained success in the league.

Third Round: Linebacker Shawn Crable

Shawn Crable’s highlight reel is pretty unspectacular but he has the size to play outside linebacker in the Patriots 3-4 scheme and he’ll have a couple of seasons as back-up before having to become starting-grade material. Seems like a good, need-based pick.

Third Round: Quarterback Kevin O’Connell

Quarterback Kevin O’Connell from San Diego State has nice size, arm strength, accuracy, speed and zip on the passes. The offense he directed at SDSU was a bit more complex and varied than the typical college scheme and he took snaps both in the shotgun and under the center. It will be fun to see how he does in training camp. Having watched some Aztecs highlight I have to say that O’Connell plays a bit like Cassel. A lot of running around. He needs to curtail that and develop a strong pocket presence.

Fourth Round: Cornerback Jonathan Wilhite

Cornerback Jonathan Wilhite from Auburn was one of the strongest cornerback at the Combine. Seems like a pretty marginal pick but adds to the competition and depth at cornerback.

Fifth Round: Kick returner Matt Slater

Matt Slater from UCLA is a strange pick. He’s a raw athlete with a reported 4.4 40. He was recruited as a wide receiver but switched to defensive back but is listed as wide receiver in the draft. Was reportedly mostly a special team’s gunner for the Bruins. And a good kick returner. And they traded up seven spots to get him. Odd. I’m speculating that the Patriots want to reduce or eliminate the kick-off return workload for Maroney and Willis. If Slater can handle kick-off returns he’ll probably get a shot at playing wide receiver, but that’s really looking way beyond the corner, I think.

Sixth Round: Linebacker Bo Ruud

Patriots picked Bo Ruud, an outside linebacker from Nebraska in the sixth round. I’m guessing his best chance to earn a roster spot is through special teams play. Ruud is tall (6′4″) but not particularly big (234 lbs).

The First Round: Countdown to trade down

Miami Dolphins used their first overall pick to snag offensive tackle from Michigan while Saint Louis Rams picked defensive lineman Chris Long from Virginia. Patriots is playing AFC Division East opponent Miami twice and the Rams once in the 2008 season, so it seems like a positive for the Patriots that neither team picked a runningback, wide receiver or other high-impact player. Long term, Jake Long could become an anchor for a steadily improving offensive line for Miami.

Who do you think will win the battle in the trenches between Long and Patriots’ left defensive end Ty Warren? My vote’s on Tiny. Anyway, Long v. Warren could be a heck of match-up over the next five years. I hope they develop a strong personal dislike for each other. I have it on no authority whatsoever that Warren refers to Long as Mandy, after spectacular draft bust Tony Mandarich. Spread the word.

Atlanta Falcons picked Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan with the third pick. Good move by the Falcons to get a franchise quarterback. Not that I think he is one.

Three white players were selected with the three first picks. That can’t have happened too many times over the past three decades.

Patriots also play Oakland Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets, who draft fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively, in the first round.

Raiders chose Darren McFadden, a runningback from Arkansas. Patriots play the Raiders in week 15 and by that time the Raiders will have quit on the season and McFadden will be busy fathering babies out of wedlock.

Kansas City selected Glenn Dorsey from LSU. Very good pick by the Chiefs, but he shouldn’t be much of factor in the opening regular-season game against the Patriots.

New York Jets snagged Vernon Gholston, a speedy defensive end pass rusher who could very well create problems for Patriots’ tackles Matt Light and Nick Kaczur. However, he will have to have more than just outside speed because if he doesn’t have inside moves they’ll just ride him out. Interesting match-ups ahead. Also: Gholston v. Long when Jets meet Dolphins. Good stuff.

Patriots traded down to ten. Saints used the seventh pick to take defensive tackle Sedrick Ellis. Good move by both teams. Pats got 10 and 78. That leaves New England with three picks in the third round in a pretty deep draft.

Jacksonville Jaguars traded up to pick defensive end Derrick Harvey at eight and Cincinnati Bengals took USC linebacker Keith Rivers at nine.

Finally, the New England Patriots picked inside linebacker Jerod Mayo from Tennessee. I know just about nothing about Mayo, but the team is in dire need of fresh blood at inside linebacker, so the pick addresses that need.

Draft Punditry

ESPN pencil neck John Clayton rates the Patriots as first day losers because they ended up with a linebacker whom they could have had at 21. Clayton says the Patriots “hated” their original seventh spot since they are big on team, not on stars (you’d think ESPN analysts would know better than speaking of Patriots and hate, but apparently they don’t), yet rumors had it that the Patriots tried to trade up, presumably to get Gholston or Dorsey at five.

I heard Scott Zolak lament on a show on WEEI that the Patriots didn’t draft an offensive lineman in the fist four rounds. I really don’t understand what that would have done for the Patriots. His reasoning was the offensive line’s breakdown in Super Bowl against the New York Giants, but since it was a collective failure for the line the rational response would have been to get five new linemen, if one were to follow Zolak’s thought process. The offensive line is simply not an area the Patriots need to worry about this year.

Besides, Patriots drafted three offensive linemen last year, all three were let go and all three were picked up by other teams, which tells me that they were pretty promising players but not better than any of linemen already on the roster. In hindsight, perhaps they should have kept Clint Oldenburg of the three, but there is no way he would have done better against the Giants pass rush than guards Logan Mankins, Stephen Neal, Russ Hochstein did.

Seattle Seahawks picked Notre Dame tight end John Carlson with the 7th pick in the second round (38). I had hoped the Patriots would pick him but there are other tight ends on the board. No worries. Jets taking Jordy Nelson with the 36th overall pick seems like a serious reach. Picking tight end Fred Davis from USC at 48 strikes me as a good move by Washington Redskins. Very odd draft by the Chicago Bears. They could have snagged runningback Rashard Mendenhall (Illinois) and either of quarterbacks Chad Henne (Michigan) or Brian Brohm (Louisville) (I think the latter is vastly better), but they went with offensive tackle Chris Williams and runningback Matt Forte instead.

The 2008 NFL draft is this weekend.

New England Patriots needs are, in order: Linebacker, cornerback, tight end, fullback, and quarterback (backup quarterback, to be specific).

Ideally, the Patriots would send their first-round pick (the seventh overall) and a 2009 second-round pick to Cincinnati Bengals for malcontent wide receiver Chad Johnson. Then they would use their second round pick this year to draft tight end John Carlson from Notre Dame. You might ask how getting a wide receiver and a tight end addresses the need at linebacker and cornerback? It doesn’t, but it would make the offense even more potent than it was last year and it hopefully add punch to the run blocking (and to avoid breakdowns like this one against Indianapolis Colts last year).

Since that isn’t likely to happen, I hope the Patriots draft USC linebacker Keith Rivers at seventh. If LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey is available at that spot, which is highly unlikely, they should get him. If Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan is available they should take him. Since neither of those three players likely to be available, the Patriots should pick the highest rated linebacker available. Some people have more or less fallen in love with Vernon Gholston, but he strikes me as a one-note player, a poor man’s Dwight Freeney, if you will (here’s a Gholston highlight reel). It is true that the Patriots could use a speed-rusher to complement the plodding Adalius Thomas and Mike Vrabel, but I think the defense overall would gain more from getting a versatile linebacker, preferably a versatile inside linebacker.

The one pick that would be somewhat disappointing would be drafting a cornerback with the first round pick.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is very strongly in favor of expanded immigration and a full and complete amnesty for all illegal aliens. In fact, the board is in favor of open borders, that is, unlimited and unrestricted immigration.

In a column in Thursday’s paper editorial board member Mr. Jason Riley argues that

Immigrants help keep our labor markets flexible. And flexible labor markets – the kind that minimize the costs to a business of hiring and firing employees – enable workers and employers alike to find the employment situation that suits them best. Flexible labor markets make it easier for an employee who doesn’t like his job to find another position somewhere else. And flexible labor markets make it more likely that an employer will expand his workforce or take a chance on a less experienced job-seeker.

The idea that immigrants help keep labor markets flexible is nonsense. The number of immigrants in a labor market has nothing to do with that market’s flexibility. As Mr. Riley correctly points out, labor market flexibility is primarily about an employer’s right to hire and fire workers. One can have very flexible labor markets and no immigration whatsoever, and vice versa. Most European countries have plenty of immigrants and relatively rigid labor markets. What immigration policy can change is the size of the labor pool, but even then only in terms of raw numbers. There is certainly no guarantee that the share of emplyed immigrants will be higher than the share of employed natives.

Absurdly, Mr. Riley writes:

Social conservatives fret that too many immigrants will have America slouching toward Guatemala. The bigger concern is that too few immigrants will have us slouching toward France.

How would having “too few” immigrants make America slouch towards France? How can one even have too few immigrants? Assuming that having too few immigrants somehow would make Americans slouch towards France, how would that be a bigger concern than America slouching towards Guatemala? Say what you will about France, America’s first ally, it is a very affluent country that many foreigners are willing to risk their lives to reach. Guatemala is a spectacularly poor country that many Guatemalans are willing to risk their lives to leave. Also, according to right-wing think-tank Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, France’s economy is more free than Guatemala’s. So why exactly would America’s slouching toward France be a bigger concern?

Are we still far away enough from the presidential election to be allowed to criticize a politician without violating McCain-Feingold? Probably not, so let me say this: I hope Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States of America.

The other day I watched a rerun of Baltimore Colts at Buffalo Bills from last season on the NFL Network. The sight of two mediocre teams trying to find a way a to win served as a harsh reminder of the fact that the New England Patriots one day will return to mediocrity. It’s unavoidable. Here’s how it could happen:

1) Quarterback Tom Brady retires after the end of the 2010 season, his right shoulder shot, tired of chasing that elusive fourth Super Bowl victory.

2) Head Coach Bill Belichick decides to follow suit when he realizes his personnel cupboard is empty, his roster stocked with aging veterans and young players with little promise, and his budgets ever stingier because of unexpectedly weak profits generated by the Patriots Place shopping center. “Belicheat Beliquits!” blares NY Post’s front page.

3) The Krafts realize the gravity of the situation but fail to re-staff the football and personnel operations with adequately competent leaders. Instead of coveting a chance to play for the Patriots, veteran free agents shun the franchise for being cheap and in disarray. In 2013, the Patriots go 5-11. The Revolution’s 2014 home opener draws a bigger crowd than the Patriots’ 2013 season finale.

Well, such a development would still be better than those dreadful pre-Kraft years, that’s for sure, but I really hope the franchise finds a way to rejuvenate once the Belichick/Brady era comes to an end.