Matt Ortega

Jacksonville Jaguars tailback Maurice Jones-Drew, a product of the Bay Area high school powerhouse De La Salle, owned the blitzing San Diego Chargers linebacker (and known steroid user) Shawne Merriman.

Jones-Drew is 5′7 and weighs 217 pounds, whereas Merriman, who boasts the nickname of “Lights Out” on his MySpace page, stands 6′4 and 274 pounds.

Earlier this month, Jones-Drew showed his tackling ability to unlucky recipient, Jason Craft.

Southern Arizona blogger, Man Eegee, caught video of regular MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan advocating a return to President Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback in an appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Operation Wetback, as described by Wikipedia:

The operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of “Mexican-looking” people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.^[2] In some cases, illegal immigrants were deported along with their American-born children, who were by law U.S. citizens. The agents used a wide brush in their criteria for interrogating potential aliens. They adopted the practice of stopping “Mexican-looking” citizens on the street and asking for identification. 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Around 488,000 people fled the country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000-700,000 people had left Texas voluntarily. To discourage re-entry, buses and trains took many people deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) south. [emphasis added]

“Mexican-looking.” Their ignorance knows no bounds. Panamanians, Guatemalans, Colombians, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, etc. — all Mexicans as far as they were concerned.

Man Eegee suggests letting MSNBC know that talk of Operation Wetback 2.0 is not acceptable. I concur. Contact MSNBC via e-mail at letters@msnbc.com (check MSNBC.com for letters@msnbc.com (check MSNBC.com for tips on contacting the Editor).

Sean Taylor, the Washington Redskins safety that suffered a gunshot wound from a home intruder, died from his injuries. He was 24 years old — just a year older than me.

Jemele Hill, writing for ESPN’s Page 2, comments on “the statistic” — the leading cause of death for black men ages 15 to 24 is homicide — claiming another young life.

Class-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, the West Virginia Power, are marketing their home jerseys, which in baseball are traditionally white, as the “White Power Jersey.”

The online shop has the “Black Power Pull Over” on sale that sounds like cops sighting a DWB — driving while black.

The blog, Grand National Championships, notes that these unfortunate marketing names could easily have been avoided. Deadspin blogger Leitch argues that this is a marketing ploy aimed at catering the David Dukes of West Virginia.

Latino Pundit points to a proposal by to Latino groups that seek to establish a new domain suffix “.lat” for Latino-targeted websites.

If approved, .LAT will become one of the first TLDs based on an ethnic group instead of being limited by country. The first, according to Keenan, was .CAT for Catalonians (for those not familiar, Catalonia is an autonomous community within Spain). With a new TLD approval process coming in 2008, .LAT and .CAT could be just the beginning of a bigger wave of domains focused around culture and lifestyle. We may one day see TLDs like .GLBT or .BIKE for the gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans and cycling communities, for example.

I have to say that I am not exactly thrilled by this idea.