VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow calls it “The Curse of Stein”—not that it’s really FAIR President Dan Stein’s fault. Back in the nineties, after Brimelow wrote the National Review cover story that evolved into Alien Nation, Stein asked him why he wanted to get involved in the immigration issue at all—it just gets everyone who writes about it in a lot of trouble.

Subsequent events convinced Brimelow that Stein was right. So he worried about columnist Michelle Malkin when she published her book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, And Other Foreign Menaces To Our Shores. And now we’re all worried about the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro.

Munro [Email him] (he's the fellow who dared to interrupt President Obama when he was making one of his innumerable immigration statements last summer) is very sound on immigration, especially by the appalling standards of the Main Stream Media. We've quoted him repeatedly. We were particularly impressed by his report last summer that immigrants were displacing native-born workers and Mitt Romney might actually win working class support by, you know, opposing it. [Analysis: In Obama’s economy, immigrants outpace native-born Americans, October 1, 2012]  Where else have you heard that? (Answer: here and here.)

Jamie Weinstein [email him] is a senior editor at the DC. And he's, well, not so sound.

Munro had a good story Monday:  Obama floats ambitious immigration bill, stops short of simple ‘amnesty’ promise.

But here's how Weinstein "promoted" it in a Daily Caller email bulletin (emphases added):

3.) Here comes immigration — President Obama is ready to propose an immigrations bill, reports The DC's Neil Munro:

"President Barack Obama will soon push for a massive change to U.S. immigration law that would provide conditional amnesty for roughly 11 million illegal immigrants, import more unskilled and skilled workers, and speed up visas for relatives of new arrivals. The ambitious bill was sketched out in a Jan. 12 leak to the New York Times, and it won immediate plaudits from the main Hispanic lobby group, La Raza. The bill does not include provisions favored by immigration reformers, such as NumbersUSA, that want to spur employment of American workers. Their legislative goals include cutbacks to the flow of low-skilled workers, and a cutback in the number of 'family reunification' green-cards offered to relatives of new immigrants."

Conservatives ought to get out front on this. We need to secure our borders, but also figure out a humane way to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants in the country. On this issue, Democrats and Republicans should be able to work together and get a deal done for the good of the country. As for President Obama, if he focused his energy on trying to build consensus on an issue like immigration instead of burning down the house with a nomination like Chuck Hagel, perhaps he would accomplish something good and lasting.

So Weinstein  has taken a story about Obama's push for amnesty, and is promoting it with...his own push for amnesty, including every single neoconservative "surrender on immigration" trope, and throwing in his own irrelevant hostility for Chuck Hagel as an extra. Furthermore, he doesn't even seem to realize that Munro's article contains a discussion of limits on  legal immigration.

For the uninitiated, Weinstein's highlighted phrases mean this:

• get out front=Peggy Noonan's crazy idea of getting to Obama's left on immigration
• humane way=no scary deportations
• millions of illegal immigrants=nothing can be done—there are just too many, even for  scary deportations
• work together, get a deal done, and build consensus=stupid and evil bipartisanship
• good and lasting=America will be better off with all those Mexicans

The Curse of Stein may partly be a special case of the American political class’ utter inability to handle anything remotely to do with race. It’s really easy to be called racist, especially since, as Peter Brimelow wrote in Alien Nation, the new definition of racism is “anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal. Or, too often, a libertarian. And, on the immigration issue, even some confused conservatives." Editors are terrified of it—and so are advertisers.

But, even apart from race, the issue of immigration seems to be peculiarly sensitive.

A few examples of the Curse of Stein in action:

The New York Post fired Scott McConnell for being insufficiently respectful of Puerto Rican statehood:

• How I Wrote About Puerto Rico and Lost My Job |PC Firing at the Post, By Scott McConnell on June 14, 2000

McConnell’s article was originally published in David Horowitz’s Heterodoxy. But later David Horowitz was sufficiently non-heterodox to expel View From The Right’s Lawrence Auster (this time over blacks, not immigration):

• “Horowitz expels me from FrontPage.”, View From The Right, May 04, 2007

Peter Brimelow and John O’Sullivan were both purged from National Review by William F. Buckley, at least in part because of their great work on the immigration issue.

• Getting Immigration Right By John O’Sullivan, The American Conservative,  July 30, 2007

And there are smaller versions of these all over the country:

• A reporter in Maine called Leif Parsell was fired for criticizing non-European immigration in a Facebook post.
• Reporter Paul Shirley was fired by ESPN for saying that aid shouldn’t be sent to Haiti, until the Haitians show some sign of responsibility.
• Immigration critic Michael Graham was fired for some comments on Islam. The fatalistic title of his column on the subject: Well, they got me..., Townhall.com, August 22, 2005.

And some bigger ones:

Lou Dobbs, whose nightly coverage of illegal immigration on CNN was making him nationally famous, until a Treason Lobby campaign resulted in his being abruptly disappeared in 2009:

• Treason Lobby Triumphant As Dobbs Goes Down—Internet Matters More Than Ever! by Brenda Walker, November 18 2009

Pat Buchanan was fired from MSNBC for publishing  " Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"

• The New Blacklist—Pat Buchanan On His MNSBC Firing By Patrick J. Buchanan on February 16, 2012

John Derbyshire was fired by National Review’s Rich Lowry for publishing  “The Talk: The Nonblack Version” , which suggested that black teenagers might be more dangerous than endangered.

• John Derbyshire: Who Are We?—The “Dissident Right”? By John Derbyshire on May 10, 2012

The Daily Caller is nominally conservative, but it behaved badly over John Derbyshire’s firing and over the Treason Lobby attack on Peter Brimelow’s 2012 CPAC appearance. It's one of the Conservatism Inc. mouthpieces that James Kirkpatrick skewered in Derbyshire, Weissberg, And Dog-Whistling: Conservatism Inc's Uneasy Balancing Act.

So given what Neil Munro writes and how Editor Jamie Weinstein obviously feels about it, I suggest that Munro watch his back—and keep his resume updated.

James Fulford [Email him] is a writer and editor at VDARE.com.