The $PLC and its allies have announced a telephone press conference today to celebrate a "new report" on

"the racist roots of the three organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform. These organizations - the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA - are all part of a single network of organizations conceived and founded by the architect of the anti-immigrant movement, John Tanton."

This appears to be based on Tanton's personal papers which, in a characteristically innocent act, he donated to the University of Michigan. There's nothing in them, as I pointed out here. I look forward to similar defenses of Tanton, who is a great man, from FAIR's Dan Stein, CIS's Mark Krikorian, and NumbersUSA's Roy Beck.

Still, the paranoid world of the left is populated by imaginary ghouls and golems and the shrieking will no doubt intimidate some. One of the benefits of the New York Time's attacks on us is that they are credulous enough to make clear their dependence on the $PLC, just as we always suspected.

This press conference is a fine opportunity for some enterprising journalist to ask the $PLC questions we raised in our earlier look at the $SPLC's finances. For example, why does the SPLC raise so much more than it spends each year? ($44.7 million vs, $29.9 million in 2006). Why does it raise money at all when it showed $193.5 million in cash and securities on hand in 2007? Who is living in the "residential rental property" it showed $4.5 million in rental income from?

Not just inquiring immigration reform patriots, but also vast numbers of other competing Madoff-massacred left-wing and Jewish philanthropies [PDF], want to know.