Mickey Kaus asks, "Where does Obama get that 'hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year'--an alleged increase he blamed on 'people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up'?":

The latest FBI statistics I can find are from 2006, not last year. They show about a 14% increase from 2005, by my calculation. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center only claims:

According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available.

A 35% increase over four years is not "doubled last year." (Never mind why the SPLC may have picked 2003 as their base of comparison ).

Am I missing some Obama data source? Or is this an overly overlooked incident of Obama pulling convenient facts out of the air? ...

Suppose John McCain had said the same thing! ... Er, actually, McCain probably will say the same thing. And he'll probably get a pass too. Who'd attack him for it? Obama? The Dobbs-deriding MSM? This is not an area where you can rely on the normal adversarial political process to yield the truth, because Obama, McCain and the MSM essentially agree on immigration.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin notes that "Obama’s Electoral Problems Transcend Race", even as an MSNBC guest claims, "On the race issue, I wish Geraldine Ferraro would give it a rest. I don't think people were saying she was racist when she made her earlier remarks."

Well, other than an MSNBC host; two guesses as to his name.

And speaking of Ferraro, Ed Morrissey writes:

Geraldine Ferraro has not gone away, quietly or otherwise, since becoming a focal point of the charges of racism and sexism in the Democratic primary campaign. Today, she writes about healing the divide in the party, but not before the Barack Obama campaign acknowledges the hurt feelings it caused women and make amends. Since Obama’s advisers refuse to do so, Ferraro wants a study done to determine how much the two campaigns engaged in racism and sexism.

You can hear more from Jennifer Rubin, Capt. Ed, and Tammy Bruce, on the subject of identity politics amongst the left, on this week's edition of PJM Political.