That plank reads: “We do not support citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal aliens, illegal residents or foreign visitors.”

Coverage of that vote has tended to condemn or seek to marginalize the position as racist (though one of its staunch supporters at the convention was GOP attorney general candidate and former District Judge Don Chairez, an immigration attorney and child of a Mexican immigrant who proudly declares he has helped legal immigrants of many races and nationalities get their green cards.)

So rabid are the Reconquista gang that they’ve characterized the state GOP as calling for mass deportations -- I haven’t heard them do so. Critics also scoff that the plank is out of step with the U.S. Constitution.

One hears bruited about such bald-faced assertions, reported as supposed statements of fact, as “The U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to any person born on U.S. soil.”

Actually, the 14th Amendment says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. ...”

What is the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” doing in there, if it has no limiting or restrictive function?

In fact, the phrase was added, back in 1868, so that black former slaves would be INCLUDED, while “Indians not taxed” would be EXCLUDED.

Is an illegal alien more like a black former slave who was born in one of the several states, or more like an American Indian who -- while living within the boundaries of the continental U.S. -- might have been considered (in 1868) “not subject to the jurisdiction thereof”?

Yes, the courts -- so far -- have generally deferred to an interpretation of the provision which holds that it means “The U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to any person born on U.S. soil.”

But saying the courts have so far interpreted the amendment that way, is quite different from pretending that’s what the amendment actually says.

Judges and juries and presidents and lawmakers could begin tomorrow, in good conscience, to rule that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means there is no automatic citizenship for a baby born to an illegal alien who willfully evaded the jurisdiction of American immigration laws. Whether they should do so is a legitimate subject for political debate -- informed, one hopes, with some thoughtful deliberation on what our society and economy might look like after a few more decades of such an unrestricted invasion. (How are the Islamic “guest worker” populations assimilating in Western Europe?)

Locally, the Nevada GOP has now launched this debate. So far as is known, the local Republicans have not urged that only Anglo illegals be granted amnesty. Nor do their critics care to note that if the illegals from south of the border are turned back, many of the legal, “wait-your-turn-and-play-by-the-rules” immigrants who take their place will be better-educated people from Africa, India, and the rest of Asia -- hardly a “racist’s” dream.

Those who imply that our GOP brethren have failed to read the U.S. Constitution, may want to acquire a copy of their own.

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I see where, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the first officially documented case of AIDS (June 5, 1981), The Associated Press is still parroting the dire promulgations of the U.N. agency known as UNAIDS that there are now 40 million people in the world suffering from “HIV/AIDS,” that the fastest growing victim group remains women, etc.

All involved seem to hope we won’t notice an April 6 article filed by Craig Timberg of The Washington Post Foreign Service, headlined: “How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated.”

Datelined Kigali, Rwanda, Mr. Timberg’s piece reported: “Researchers said nearly two decades ago that this tiny country was part of an AIDS Belt stretching across the midsection of Africa, a place so infected with a new, incurable disease that, in the hardest-hit places, one in three working-age adults were already doomed to die of it.

“But AIDS deaths on the predicted scale never arrived here, government health officials say. A new national study illustrates why: The rate of HIV infection among Rwandans ages 15 to 49 is 3 percent, according to the study, enough to qualify as a major health problem but not nearly the national catastrophe once predicted.

“The new data suggest the rate never reached the 30 percent estimated by some early researchers, nor the nearly 13 percent given by the United Nations in 1998.”

Goodness, what happened? The Postman’s explanation for the failure of AIDS deaths to sweep the dark continent is: “Years of HIV overestimates, researchers say, flowed from the long-held assumption that the extent of infection among pregnant women who attended prenatal clinics provided a rough proxy for the rate among all working-age adults in a country. ... Researchers now know that the HIV rate among these women tends to be higher than among the general population.”

Mind you, this is the quasi-official government line, adopted in desperation after it reached the point where earlier spin and nonsense could no longer be defended.

Still unmentionable in the mainstream press is the fact that renowned biochemist Dr. Peter Duesberg demonstrated in his 1996 book “Inventing the AIDS Virus” that the theory that AIDS is caused by a single “Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus” fails all four of Koch’s postulates, and is thus scientific nonsense.

(An easier read, making the same point from first-hand experience rather than scientific analysis, is Christine Maggiore’s life-affirming “What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?”)

Despite every “spin” that can be placed on statistics about “HIV positives” and “fastest-growing victim groups,” actual AIDS has remained what it was 25 years ago -- primarily a disease of those who have compromised their immune systems through intravenous drug use or repeated doses of antibiotics to deal with opportunistic infections following promiscuous anal intercourse.

And the best way for most people to survive after an “HIV positive” diagnosis -- as the cases of Ms. Maggiore and Magic Johnson demonstrate -- appears to be a healthy lifestyle and the avoidance of toxic “therapies.”

Independent reporters have been reporting from Africa for decades that the locals know they’ll get larger cash “health-care” infusions if they report high rates of “HIV/AIDS,” with the result that African medical professionals have long reported all manner of death and disease -- including traffic fatalities -- as “AIDS related.”

This on a continent, mind you, where “HIV/AIDS” is often diagnosed without benefit of an actual “HIV” antibody test, since tests are widely unreliable or unavailable.

(Can those who are spending billions to develop an “HIV vaccine” explain something to me? Since the purpose of a vaccine is to get the subject to develop antibodies against an infection as evidence of induced immunity, and since those who are found to be “HIV positive” because they show antibodies to the so-called “HIV” virus are generally told they’re going to die real soon, what are they going to tell people who test “HIV positive” as a result of being given their vaccine?)

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From the National Autism Association comes news that “Heavy metals may be implicated in autism.” www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19025535.400&feedId=online-news_rss20

"Urine samples from hundreds of French children have yielded evidence for a link between autism and exposure to heavy metals,” the New Scientist magazine reports. “If validated, the findings might mean some cases of autism could be treated with drugs that purge the body of heavy metals. ...

“Autism is thought to have a number of unknown genetic and environmental causes. Richard Lathe of Pieta Research in Edinburgh, UK, says he has found one of these factors. ‘It’s highly likely that heavy metals are responsible for childhood autistic disorder in a majority of cases,’ he claims. The study will appear in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology."