Sheesh. I can't hardly get through one misleading SWAC Blogger post before another misleading SWAC Blogger post shows up in my reader: Political Correctness Will Kill Us ... Part 8. I can't keep up!

SWAC Girl writes, "Did you know 12 Americans are killed every day by illegal aliens?" Indeed I did not, and boy did that number get my attention. I anxiously looked to see where she got that figure, because, well, you can't ever trust a partisan blogger. :) But once again, not only were no source links provided, but no source was even mentioned, so we must either trust them or dig up some evidence ourselves. I'm betting they hope readers do the former.

A simple Google search reveals this World Net Daily article: Illegal aliens murder 12 Americans daily.

"Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research."

A link is provided to another World Net Daily article, Cop murder spotlights crisis of killer aliens, where we are led to believe we will find the "number" of groups making these estimates.

"While no government agencies specifically track crimes by illegal aliens, there have been some efforts to quantify the loss. Last December, Mac Johnson set out to investigate the number of homicides perpetrated by illegal aliens."

The "number of groups" is apparently one person, a mysterious man named Mac Johnson for whom no background information is given. The article continues:

"Since the federal government would not provide any useful information, he [Mac Johnson] contacted all 50 statehouses. Three months later, he had fewer than a dozen responses. Only one state, Vermont, provided any useful information."

Because we know we can't trust the media to report information correctly, I sought to find Mac Johnson's findings written in his own words. First, I found Mac Johnson's web page to learn a little bit about him. A casual review reveals that he writes conservative-themed articles and appears on radio shows and FOX News now and then. For money, one would assume.

Mac Johnson's web page finally led me to the source article I sought, Illegal Alien Invasion Deadlier Than Iraq, where we learn that Mac is "a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, MA."

Mac writes, after receiving no acceptable data from any state (ahem, including Vermont), because nobody keeps track of the statistics he wants:

"No one knows the cost in lives of illegal immigration. This seems unacceptable to me. After some thought, I have arrived at my own approximation of the number. The estimate is crude, but is based on real numbers and as few assumptions as I could manage."

"While the murder rate among illegal aliens in America is unknown, we do have fair estimates of how many illegal migrants are here, and what countries they came from. The murder rates in most of these countries are known and published by the United Nations (which means the figures must be correct). If one then simply assumes that each nationality of alien commits murder at the same rate in America as it would in its homeland, it is then possible to arrive at an estimate of the probable rate of murder by illegal aliens in America."

I noted that Mac did not provide the sources for any of the crime or population statistics used in his calculations, so we have no way of judging their credibility, or the time period evaluated.

So there you have it. That's how the paid conservative writer figured out there are 12 murders a day by illegal immigrants without any statistics on illegal immigrant crime in America. You should now be able to draw a much more informed conclusion about whether we're about to be killed or not.

(Sorry about all the blockquotes; I hate doing that, but it seemed best for telling the story.)

Thomas Krehbiel writes The Krehbiel Strikes Back, a generally centrist commentary on news, media, politics, and culture.