Sorry to keep posting teasers; I'm trying to do this in between chores and errands here, and my brain's still a little scattered, smothered, covered, topped and diced from the proceedings...

Last night's immigration town hall meeting was a very, um, educational experience. It was the first right-wing sanctioned event I'd ever been to that I actually sort-of attended, rather than standing outside with a sign.

If the estimated crowd of about three hundred is a fair, representative cross-section of Henderson County, then all I can say is that Henderson County really, REALLY doesn't like brown people.

Sadly, due to "security concerns" there were prominently displayed signs near the entrance informing attendees that no audio or video equipment was allowed into the building. However, pencils and pens were not forbidden - Screwy took some copious notes, and my pocket-sized Sony MiniDisc and stealth microphone were undetectable to their security (which consisted of what seemed like half of the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, who I'm pretty sure didn't bother us because we were white), and I ended up getting the first 40 minutes or so captured (only because I didn't set the damn thing to LP2 mode. oops). You may not be able to hear Tancredo or Taylor very well during bits of this - the entire time Debra Potter and her merry band of Congressional staffers were busy throughout the entire event, running up and down the halls like hall monitors, especially keeping an eye on the row full of Hispanic men and women about twenty feet in front of us, and there were a few instances when I had to hide the microphone - but you'll certainly hear the audience's mostly positive reactions to the xenophobic rhetoric.

The buzzword of the evening seemed to be "anchor babies." (shudder)

I'm having a little trouble transferring the audio from MiniDisc to computer (my converter box's batteries ran out in the middle of the first attempt), but it will be available sometime today. In the meantime, here are a few soundclips courtesy of the Asheville Citizen-Times.

UPDATE: I finally got the audio on my laptop, but a lot of it is unusable, unfortunately. There are some choice bits here and there, but it's going to require a lot of cleanup. Stay tuned...