Part 1 of this series will discuss the article "Police see possible hate crime in California" by Justin Pritchard of AP. It concerns a brutal double murder in Northern California:

FREMONT, Calif. - Maria Esperanza Hernandez usually got a ride to her 5 a.m. shift at a nursing home, but this time, she had to walk the four miles through the night. Her daughter was so concerned, she joined her.

They never made it.

Hernandez and her 19-year-old daughter, Maria del Carmen Castillo Hernandez, were bludgeoned to death with a 30-inch-long tree branch Sunday as they walked down a suburban street.

It sounds horrible. But, where could this AgitProp be? Let's read on:

Police searching for a suspect have not ruled out the possibility that the killings were a hate crime because the attacker was described as white and the victims were from Mexico.

That's certainly an interesting paragraph. I'm sure there are many things the police haven't ruled out. According to other reports, it could have been a botched robbery, a botched sexual assault, or many other things. There are no doubt an infinite number of possible motives that the police have not ruled out.

Why would the author of this article - and the person who wrote the headline - focus on it being a hate crime? And, should we assume that all white-on-Mexican crimes are hate crimes, as the author seems to be implying?

You might wonder why this paragraph would appear in a crime blotter report, but the reason shall soon become clear. Let's read on:

Because the victims were illegal immigrants, they could not have obtained driver's licenses even if they could afford to buy a car. That has become a flashpoint in the case among Hispanics because a law to allow undocumented immigrants apply for licenses was repealed after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office.

"It's a very difficult political situation," said Fily Cuellar, Maria Esperanza Hernandez's nephew and the girl's cousin. "She was not able to get a license, so then they had to walk. And this happened."

Holy Moses! Here I thought this was a story about a crime, and it's suddenly been morphed into a heart-wrenching story designed to encourage us to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Should we blame Schwarzenegger for their deaths? Even if they'd had a license, they couldn't afford a car; should California now pass out automobiles to anyone who can make it over our border in order to prevent 1-in-a-million crimes like this from occurring in the future? How many similar cases have occurred in, say, the past decade? A dozen, two dozen? This is the Sally Struthers approach to policy: if it would prevent just one extremely rare tragedy like this, let's give driver's licenses to illegal aliens despite all the millions of people it would negatively impact. When is AP going to publish a story about them?

And, isn't it a bit unseemly to tie the deaths of these two people to the issue of driver's licenses for illegal aliens? I'd just like to discuss the issue without having obvious attempts to emotionalize the issue in the way.

Shouldn't the AP reporter be raising some of these same points, rather than basically serving as a spokesman for the movement?

Compare and contrast the AP report with a few articles written by Lisa Fernandez which appeared in various Northern California newspapers.

In the article "Fremont slayings present mystery" from Feb. 3 it just says: "Relatives at the Newark home, which was overflowing Monday with visitors, said Hernandez didn't have a driver's license." It doesn't go into Schwarzenegger, or Gil Cedillo's bill, or anything else like it.

However, on Feb. 5, the same author has this to say in "Cops ask help in double slayings": "The family... are frustrated that the mother had to walk four miles in the dark to work at a nursing home -- the result of California laws that prevent undocumented Mexican immigrants from getting driver's licenses."

Then, on Feb. 8 the same author breaks out a standard poor-illegal-immigrants-struggling-for-better-life story in "Slain mother, daughter struggled as immigrants" and "Slayings put spotlight on life in shadows" (same story, different title). It again goes into the driver's licenses:

``We came here to progress and be better,'' said Filberto ``Fily'' Cuellar of Hayward, one of the many relatives who followed the Hernandezes from Mexico to California. ``Why did this happen? Because she didn't have a license.''

However, it also contains a rather shocking statement about motives in the case, given the statements in the AP report:

Fremont police do not consider the boyfriend a suspect. They have no evidence the crimes were racially motivated, or a sexual assault, or a robbery.

It's not really a contradiction; the statement from AP and the above statement are consistent. However, what's different is the emphasis.

That last paragraph is also less presumptive than other reports. See "Mourners recall mother, daughter" and "Mom, daughter remembered" (same story, different title) by Robert Airoldi and Jennifer Kho:

Investigators have said the killings -- which occurred in Fremont -- do not appear to be the result of a robbery, sexual assault or domestic violence, but have not ruled out anything. They also have not determined if it was a hate crime, since the killer was described as white, Fremont Detective Bill Veteran said.

Is it the Det. Veteran who's leading the hate crimes charge, or is it the reporters? Is this part of the last report based on the statements made in the AP report?

Whatever the status of the hate crime portion of the various reports, the fact remains that the AP and other reports are obvious attempts to influence the debate over driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

The AP report has appeared in over 60 newspapers nationwide. If you want to do a good deed, contact a newspaper near you, and suggest they stop spreading AP's AgitProp. You can contact AP at info@ap.org and Justin Pritchard at jdpritchard@ap.org.