An illegal immigrant who twice had been deported from the United States was convicted Tuesday of the brutal beating death of an employee of a historic restaurant near the White House. A D.C. Superior Court jury found Hernan Melendez, 17, guilty of second-degree murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon.

Melendez, of Honduras, faces more than 50 years in prison but will likely be sentenced to between 13 1/2 years and 29 years under sentencing guidelines.

At about 2 a.m. Jan. 28, 2007, Melendez and two friends got into an argument with Andres Benitez near the Old Ebbitt Grill where Benitez worked as a dishwasher, prosecutors said.

Benitez retrieved a baseball bat and swung at the group, but the three men rushed him to the ground and started kicking him.

As Benitez lay on the ground, Melendez grabbed the bat and hit Benitez as many as 10 times until a bystander tried to break things up, authorities said.

Melendez struck the Good Samaritan in the head and resumed his attack on Benitez, pounding him five more times, authorities said.

Two security guards who witnessed the attack chased Melendez and caught up to him at a nearby apartment building. Melendez still had the bat in his hand, court documents said.

Benitez died at the scene. His skull was crushed.

They know how the game is played:

After initially telling authorities that he was 21, Melendez then asserted that he was 16 and challenged the propriety of being charged with murder as an adult. The challenges were eventually rejected by the court.

But don’t you dare think about criticizing lax immigration enforcement if you happen to be a person of color.

The Spitter will call you an “Uncle Tom.”

Actually, you’ll have no problem guessing his identity.

It’s the spit-speckled clown himself! Watch as he indignantly turns the story — about a convict who intentionally tried to infect police officers with AIDS and posed a public-safety menace — into a red-herring sermon about discrimination against law-abiding AIDS patients:

The bottom line in the case is not how likely transmission of the AIDS virus through saliva is. It’s about the HIV-infected criminal’s malicious intent.

Is 35 years excessive? I think so.

But the jury took into account the man’s history of assaulting law enforcement officers (and other prisoners). They considered his intent. They followed the laws on the books governing habitual offenders. And there is ample legal precedent for prosecuting spitting as a crime:

In a 2007 decision by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeal, intentionally spitting on someone is “an offensive touching that rises to the level of simple assault,” that can be punished by up to six months in prison.

…at least nine HIV-positive individuals in the US have previously been sentenced to much longer prison terms for spitting. A 2003 analysis from the Yale University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS “found 24 instances of prosecutions for spitting…[and] convictions for HIV exposure in eight cases, in which there were two convictions for attempted murder, two for criminal exposure to HIV, one for assault with a deadly weapon, two for assault, and one for battery by body waste. The sentences imposed ranged from 90 days in jail to 25 years incarceration to life imprisonment.”

Lesson for drooling idiots: Keep your spit to yourself.

Last week, an illegal alien in the desert rescued a boy who was stranded after his mother died in a car crash. Yes, it was a touching story. No, it doesn’t mean we should hand over citizenship to every illegal alien who does a good deed. Left-wing e-mailers touted the open-borders AP story, demanding that I cover it and accusing me of being a heartless racist.

But why should I cover it? Open-borders sympathizers dominate the MSM. The AP story was carried far and wide. I cover stories that provide counterbalance–stories that do not fit the shamnesty-promoting narrative of the AP, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, etc., etc., etc. Hysterical opponents interpret my emphasis on the negative public safety and national security consequences of lax immigration enforcment as some sort of blanket indictment of all illegal aliens. No. It’s an indictment of immigration enforcement officials at all levels of government who refuse to do their jobs and Washington politicians who let them get away with it for fear of crossing Big Business and the multiculti mob.

Here’s a new story of an illegal alien drunk driver in Boone, NC, that I’m not supposed to mention:

An illegal immigrant is accused of driving drunk in Boone over the Thanksgiving holiday and plowing into a sport utility vehicle, killing a man inside.

Boone police said Juan Manuel Juarez Reyes slammed into the rear of a Lexus SUV that was about to turn from Highway 105 onto Poplar Hill Drive shortly before 11 p.m. Friday. The SUV was skidded 250 feet, hitting a Watauga County deputy’s patrol car. The occupants of the SUV were trapped inside their vehicle but the deputy was not hurt.

The driver, Sallie Ellis Newell, and passenger Jacqueline Elizabeth Newell were taken to the Watauga County Medical Center where they were treated in released. But Brian Alan Newell and Andrew Russell Newell, who was in the back passenger-side seat, were flown to Johnson City Regional Medical Center.

Andrew Newell, 22, died at the hospital. His father remains in critical condition.

Family members said the Newells were returning from a Thanksgiving trip to South Carolina and were only a quarter-mile from home.

Authorities said Monday that Juarez Reyes was caught in the country by Border Patrol agents in 2002 and was sent back to Mexico. They aren’t sure when he re-entered the United States.

Police say he was speeding and drunk when the crash happened.

And here’s another from Oakland, Calif.:

An Oakland man charged Monday with murdering two children in a Thanksgiving night hit-and-run crash told his 17-year-old nephew moments before impact that he didn’t care if he or the teenager died as a result of his speeding, a prosecutor said.

Carmelo Salas, 28, was charged with murder in the deaths of Stephanie Cervantez, 14, and her 4-year-old cousin, Jacklin Munguia-Herrera, for allegedly running a stop sign in East Oakland and crashing his Ford Expedition sport utility vehicle into a Ford Mustang carrying the victims about 7:20 p.m. Thursday.

Salas fled after the crash at 89th Avenue and D Street but was arrested early the next morning, police said.

He was charged with murder under the theory of implied malice, which is defined as engaging in an unlawful act done in “conscious disregard” of the risk to human life, prosecutor Norbert Chu said.

Salas told his nephew, who was in the SUV with him, that he wasn’t afraid to die and that he would take his nephew with him, Chu said. Salas was going as fast as 80 mph in a 25-mph zone, and the nephew warned him seconds before impact that the Mustang was approaching, the prosecutor said…

…Salas is also the subject of a hold by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement because he is in the United States illegally from Mexico, authorities said.

But, hey, I’m just a heartless racist who deserves to be spat on.

***

It looks like it’s a new trend now: Fox News liberals threatening and wishing ill on Fox News conservatives.

And Fox News liberals getting away with it.

Left-wing hater Neal Gabler tries to do his best Geraldo Rivera imitation by joking about Bill Kristol getting killed in Iraq.

Watch the video. Watch everyone titter. Watch as no one comes to Kristol’s defense. Watch as no one immediately condemns Gabler’s crude, vulgar, hateful, ignorant rhetoric.

Partial transcript:

I love so many critics of the press in Iraq, you know, can criticize the press, can criticize Lara Logan, and Richard Engel, and others who actually have their boots on the ground there. But I would like to see some of them like Bill Kristol go there, without a bodyguard, walk down the street. If he does so, I will make him this promise: I will attend his funeral.

What a damned shame.

Again, I ask: Who’s coarsening the debate?

Who?

***

Here’s Kristol’s essay on his recent trip to Iraq.

Gee, I haven’t been able to find any pieces Neal Gabler has written about his time putting his boots on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan, with or without bodyguards. Looks like he’s been too busy sneering at embedded journalists and cheering Al Jazeera propaganda videos.

Oh, how they wish, wish, wish it were so!

The latest moonbat tempest in a teapot concerns an e-mail response I sent to readers over the weekend who have been asking about my absence from the O’Reilly Factor. I had received several hundred messages and it was wrong to keep ignoring long-time fans wondering what happened. I took the time to personally respond to each inquiry. It is an awkward situation, but I answered straightforwardly:

Thanks so much for your kind words. Much appreciated. I made the decision to quit appearing on the O’Reilly show in response to the poor handling of the Geraldo Rivera matter (in case you hadn’t heard, he threatened to spit on me because of my views about illegal immigration and his staged “apology” on The Factor was a complete farce). I won’t go into details, but please know that your support means a lot to me. You can catch me on other Fox News shows and read my daily blog posts and weekly columns at MichelleMalkin.com.

I did not plan on blogging it and making a big to-do. It is what it is. But some blabbermouth apparently forwarded the e-mail to a cable TV gossip blog. The left-o-sphere picked it up from there (interesting how all of these same blogs ignored the spitting threat in the first place), now spreading wild rumors that I’ve been fired, concocting imaginary scenarios of tearful resignations, tinfoil-rattling in hopes that there’s some other conspiratorial reason behind my decision, falsely asserting that it was somehow related to my coverage of the S-CHIP debate, etc., etc., etc.

The funniest comment by far comes from far Left zealots who couldn’t possibly believe that I would walk away from more airtime since I am, of course, such a media whore.

Two words: Stop projecting.

Continue to knock yourselves out, loons! Always glad to provide therapeutic benefits. Indeed, for many, it’s just another golden opportunity to wish out loud for my death or rape. See, for example: Digg.

Maybe you will get your wish and I will get hit by a truck someday. Until then, I’ll keep writing. You keep hatin’.

Yup, more chutzpit from the Rosie O’Donnell of Fox News.

Fresh off of condemning others for “coarsening the debate,” Geraldo insists that Rush should listen to Geraldo, king of sincere apologies.

Ooookay.

Listen to Geraldo complain about having to apologize for things he thinks he shouldn’t have apologized for, like exposing US troop movements and threatening to spit on fellow Fox News colleagues.

Listen as he whines about having to “throw himself on Bill O’Reilly’s sword.”

For the record, Geraldo Rivera was not man enough to apologize personally and directly to me for his unhinged threat.

And his forced non-apology “apology” on The O’Reilly Factor was a whiny, effeminate, blame-the-victim bleat.

Be a man?

What would Geraldo know about that?

***

Allahpundit to Geraldo:

Hey champ, since we’re giving out advice about contrition, let me offer some back: prefacing your apology with an ominous aside like “I won’t say what I think about Michelle Malkin,” as if to suggest that your honest opinion is so vile that it’s unfit for public discourse, tends to dilute the moral content of the subsequent “I’m sorry.” It’s like sending flowers in a vase filled with piss. At best, the message is, shall we say, a tad ambiguous.

***

Here’s the Stand with Rush petition in case you haven’t seen/signed it yet.

“Coarsening the debate.”

Un. Freaking. Believable.

Geraldo Rivera: The Rosie O’Donnell of Fox News.

Nor am I surprised by the drooling pile-on by the Left. If you tolerate a bully, you beget more bullying. Last night, it was MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann frothing at the mouth–citing Geraldo approvingly as he handed out a “Worst Person in the World” award to…me. Really:

Now, can you imagine the uproar if any other female journalist/commentator had been on the receiving end of Geraldo’s rhetorical spittle? This wasn’t an off-the-record comment at a cocktail party or a private remark in a green room. It was on-the-record smear to a Boston Globe reporter.

And the message over the past week has been: This smear/attack/threat is acceptable.

Another little anecdote that reveals what a Bizarro World we live in: To ensure that Geraldo’s spit slam didn’t go quietly into the night, I bought a few ads through Google Adsense and Quigo. I believe in holding people accountable for their words. If you Google “Geraldo Rivera,” you may spot the ad in the sponsored links:

The ad also appeared on the FoxNews.com website…

…until I received an e-mail this morning from ad company Quigo notifying me that the ad had been pulled and my account revoked:

Unfortunately, we had to disable your ad due to offensive content. If you have another ad copy that you would like to use, we would be more than happy to switch it out. Until that time, however, your account will be blocked.

Rich. Just rich.

A 3-year-old girl was found abused and bleeding Thursday night, and officials have arrested her uncle, an illegal alien, for child molestation.

Salvador Luna, 29, who was previously deported, was arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse of a child and was taken to the Victorville sheriff’s station where he underwent a physical examination, said Detective Ryan Collins.

The victim was originally admitted to Victor Valley Community Hospital around 7 p.m. after her mother found the girl bleeding inside their home on Rockrose Street, said Detective Sgt. Bob Hughes.

“Her injuries were significant enough that she had to be admitted,” Hughes said.

Around 6:30 p.m. the mother, father, the 3-year-old and her siblings were watching television in the parent’s room, a few doors down from where Luna was staying, Hughes said.

The girl went to Luna’s room for a piece of candy, and when she returned, a sibling took the candy from her, authorities explained. The girl again went into Luna’s room, hoping to replace the stolen sweets.

“She is in the uncle’s room for a while this time, long enough for mom to wonder where she was,” Hughes said. “When mom found the child she could see that she was visibly upset. Mom picks her up and when she put her down, now there’s blood all over mom’s shirt.”

The woman took the child to a neighboring home where the resident was a nurse to have the girl checked out. The nurse immediately dialed 911 and advised the family to stay away from the home until authorities arrived, said Karen Hunt, spokeswoman for the Victorville station.

But of course immigration status and open borders have nooooothing to do with anything. Totally “irrelevant.”

More:

In 2000, Luna was arrested in Ventura County on suspicion of annoying or molesting a child and sexual assault, said Detective John Wickum. It is unknown whether Luna was convicted, but the family said he was deported shortly after, officials confirmed.

“His criminal history drops off in 2001,and he re-surfaces again in 2006 with a DUI arrest in Victorville,” Wickum said.

Additional information came in that there could be as many as four other family members who have been past victims, but that remained under investigation on Friday, officials said.

Anyone who may have information about Luna is asked to contact the Detective Bureau at the Victorville station at 241-2911.

***

Related: Is your city a sanctuary city? Check here.

Related: Elvira Arellano won’t go away.

Update 9/6: Liberal logic. Rivera threatens to spit on me. Ergo, I am the Worst Person in the World.

The Boston Globe has a fawning Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-ish profile of Fox News Channel’s Geraldo Rivera. In between musing about his favorite pair of soft Uggs (“I’ve worn these in Tora Bora and Somalia,” he says, admiring the suede slip-ons with the sheepskin lining. “They’re so comfortable. I love them.”), his “36-foot Hinckley powerboat,” and his massive estates (including “Seagate, the spectacular, 10-bedroom estate he bought several years ago with his fourth wife” and another “Kennedy-esque compound” with his current wife), he spews this:

Rivera, who as a fledgling lawyer in the ’70s counseled the Puerto Rican nationalist group the Young Lords, says he can’t stomach the politicians and pundits who are stoking “anti-immigrant hysteria,” and his antipathy extends to some of his colleagues at Fox.

“Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.

“It’s good she’s in D.C. and I’m in New York,” Rivera sneers. “I’d spit on her if I saw her.”

Ewwww!

Well, I suppose I should be grateful for the warning. Next time I’m up in New York, I’ll be sure to wear one of these:

***

Who’s the hater? Allah holds up the mirror for the Geraldo-ists.

Flashback: Geraldo “cringes” every time I’m on Fox.

Flashback: Geraldo attacks again.

Geraldo says he “cringes” whenever I’m on Fox. I’ll tell you exactly why. It’s not because of any principled objection he has to the arguments I’ve made in my books (which he hasn’t read), columns, blog posts, and tee-vee appearances. It’s because the mere existence of conservative-thinking minorities who reject his tired old brand of identity politics threatens his race/ethnic-card-playing schtick. He can no longer dismiss all immigration enforcement proponents as racists without looking like a fool or tool, because there are countless, vocal numbers of them like me who have skin as brown as his. He cringes because he knows I’m not alone. He cringes because I’ll call out his bullcrap to his face without feeling any need to soften the blow or suck up in a collegial manner. He’s a know-it-all who knows nothing about the deportation abyss–and he masks his fundamental ignorance with incoherent indignance.

Here is why he cringes: It isn’t just white people who are disgusted when he dismisses Jose Carranza’s illegal status as “irrelevant.” Listen to the father of Newark murder victim Dashon Harvey:

“This is one that slipped through the cracks. He’s an illegal alien,” said outraged dad James Harvey, whose son Dashon was murdered last Saturday, along with Terrance Aeriel and Iofemi Hightower.

While 28-year-old day laborer Jose Lachira Carranza was behind bars yesterday, prosecutors arrested a third suspect, who is 15 years old, in Morristown, and charged him with felony murder.

Another 15-year-old has also been charged.

Harvey said that Carranza, the alleged ringleader, “should never have been out in the first place.”

“He’s got child abuse charges. He’s got a weapon. It’s an outrage to the justice system and the community that he’s out.”

So, is Mr. Harvey guilty of “inflammatory” rhetoric, too?

In order to distract from the issue at hand–criminal alien violence and the systemic failures of the deportation system–Geraldo has been forced to ratchet up his cringe-inducing hysteria and accuse immigration enforcement proponents of causing an imaginary epidemic of violence by the “KKK” and “neo-Nazis.”

Yes, his response to critics who point out that illegal aliens of colors with mile-long rap sheets are getting away with 100 percent preventable crimes–including the execution-style murders of three young black students in Newark–is to sputter about the KKK.

Shark-jump much?

***

Bryan at HA weighs in.

***

If you want ignorant ranting about immigration and the Zina Linnik case, go watch Geraldo Rivera (thanks to readers for e-mailing me about it over the weekend and AP for clipping the vid). Utterly shameless. Geraldo teased his Saturday night segment on the case by claiming that Zina’s uncle, Anatoly Kalchik, would argue that Zina’s accused murderer should be called a “monster” instead of an “immigrant:”

GERALDO: The tragic story was twisted to aggravate the immigration debate… A little girl snatched and brutally murdered. Tonight her family speaks out on why his “immigrant” label should be replaced by “monster.”

The only thing twisted, though, was Geraldo’s big tease. Mr. Kalchick did not say what Geraldo said he would say. Geraldo didn’t even ask him about the immigration angle in the interview that aired.

Why not?

Perhaps because Mr. Kalchick would have told Geraldo what he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (noted in my post yesterday):

…Zina’s uncle was angry that the suspect had not been deported after being convicted in a sex crime.

“We are all immigrants, but we come legally,” Kalchik said of his family. He added that the adults all cleared a criminal background check.

“If someone is a sex offender, or any kind of offender, he has no business being in America,” he said.

After failing to deliver on his breathless tease, Geraldo instead directed his vitriol at…me:

GERALDO: At this point, I have to point out how in my view, this awful case was distorted by anti-immigrant radicals like Michelle Malkin to make a cheap point. Michelle said that this tragedy was the result of our open borders policy, that allows creeps like this guy to sneak in. In fact, it has nothing to do with our borders, open or otherwise. This alleged perpetrator, as far as I know, is a US Army veteran, the stepson of another Army veteran, and he’s not being–he’s being held by INS, but that’s only pending other charges filed against him–charges like failing to register as a sex offender. You know, I wonder how long we’re going to have to wait for an apology on this one.

How about an apology for exploiting and misrepresenting Zina’s uncle? How about an apology for putting words in his mouth and the mouths of the Linnik family? How about an apology for erroneously claiming that Terapon Adhahn was a naturalized American citizen? How about an apology for misleading Fox News viewers about Adhahn’s immigration detention and withholding vital information about the systemic, long-standing failures of the government at all levels to deport criminal aliens?

This case and its ramifications have everything to do with open borders. Clue: “Open borders” is a metaphor for the willful, malign neglect of the entire immigration and entrance system–not just at the physical borders, but on the interior, at our consular offices abroad, on the immigration services side, throughout the investigations and enforcement bureaucracies, and in the detention and deportation offices.

But with clueless Geraldo, the immigration debate is always and only about one border–the southern border. It’s only about one kind of immigrant: Hispanic illegal aliens. And it’s all about one cheap set of talking points: All illegal aliens are hard-working angels, all ICE agents are jack-booted thugs, and everyone who believes in enforcing immigration laws is an “anti-immigrant radical.”

Remember: Geraldo’s so over the cliff, his answer to whether any criminal aliens should ever be deported was a blubbering digression about John Lennon.

Geraldo is worse than worthless. So I won’t waste another word. There’s too much work to do.

As they say on TV: Stay tuned.