Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are proud to announced that Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles Mayor and former member of MEChA, will offer the Spanish-language response to Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday Jan 31.

The former president of the UCLA chapter of the racial separatist group has previously admitted that his Spanish is a bit rusty. Seeing as he was born here and no doubt English was his first language and all. No doubt Villaraigosa will write the speech in English and have someone translate it, assuming he writes it himself at all. More likely someone else will write it for him and he's just been selected because of his race.

There's no word on whether Teddy Kennedy will be offering a response in Gaelic, or whether he speaks Gaelic at all.

There's also little reason for an American party to broadcast something like this in a language other than English because almost all native-born Americans know English and almost all new citizens are required to have some English fluency. The target audience for this speech would seem to be mostly recent immigrants, together with a large chunk of illegal aliens. None of those groups can vote, although the Dems are working on that.

According to the AP, Villaraigosa "has been seen as a rising Democratic star since his election in May as the first Hispanic in 133 years to lead Los Angeles". One of the reasons for his stardom in the Democratic Party is that he was once a leader of a group that wants to "liberate" "Aztlan", i.e., transform the U.S. southwest into a Chicano homeland.

The AP also includes this bit which I'm pretty sure has been discredited:

In the last presidential election, exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks found Bush winning 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, up from 35 percent in 2000. Democratic Sen. John Kerry won 53 percent, down from 62 percent four years earlier for Democrat Al Gore.