Jose from Brooklyn stunned me with his call to the radio show. "Puerto Ricans are citizens, what do we care about immigration," he asked disdainfully?

I had been on one of my broadcast rants about the need to have compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform when I took his call. Expecting a Kumbaya moment from a supportive brother calling the show from the hood, instead his remarks stopped me short. I stuttered something about all Latinos being brothers.

But he cut me off saying, "not out here in Bushwick," referring to the heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican Brooklyn neighborhood, which has experienced an influx of Mexican and South American immigrants in recent years, many of them undocumented.

Having run aground literally scores of times in dozens of countries over the last half century, I know that mistakes happen at sea. But aside from the old days, before electronic navigation made sailing safely a no brainer, every time I’ve hit bottom since has been because I wasn’t paying attention to where my vessel was at the time; or, importantly, I was in a state of altered consciousness (i.e., drunk or recklessly showboating).

Justice was delayed, but not denied and Joran Van der Sloot will spend a 28-year hunk of his remaining adult life in a harsh prison in the high Andes Mountains of Peru. Able to evade justice for the murder of 18-year old Natalee Holloway during the Alabama teen's senior high school trip to Aruba in 2005, the hulking, degenerate, pimp and gambler, will instead go to prison for murdering a 21-year old Peruvian woman in 2010.

Having befriended Natalee's family shortly after they arrived on the Dutch-owned Caribbean island of Aruba to begin the desperate, agonizing, ultimately fruitless search for their missing teenager, I share their belief that the arrogant Van der Sloot murdered her. In the years since, I chronicled the ebb and flow of their frustration and disappointment as Joran slipped out of one legal jam after another.

Who Knew?

Mitt Romney's father, former Michigan governor George Romney was born in Mexico. That's shocking right? Even though the story has apparently been out there for months, I never heard it. What is even more shocking is that the admission came from the virulently anti-illegal immigration presidential candidate himself. Perhaps in an effort to beat to the punch an investigative report by the excellent Mike Taibbi on Brian Williams' "30 Rock" program Monday night, on Sunday afternoon Mitt Romney suddenly mentioned Latino immigrants in a context other than 'Round them up. Sort them out. And send the illegal ones back where they came from. He admitted in passing that his dad was born there.

Sitting at the bar in Paolo's Restaurant at 92nd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan Saturday afternoon, December 10th, I was shocked by the tone the conversation with my old ABC News colleague Lowell Bergman had taken. He was heading to London and had urgently requested that we get together before his afternoon flight from JFK. 

 I remembered Lowell as a brave, competent, but hugely self-righteous old school investigative reporter, who famously produced the Mike Wallace expose of the major tobacco companies for '60 Minutes.' Al Pacino played him in the movie version of the saga, 'The Insider.'

Although I hadn't seen the now 60-year old veteran reporter since he parted ways with ABC back in 1982, I recognized him immediately.  Like most out-of-town, old-timers, who persistently request an unscheduled meeting to "talk about some projects I'm working on," I assumed Lowell had fallen on hard times and wanted a job. 

I was stunned, therefore, when after some small talk about our children (five each) and now dead fellow colleagues, his eyes narrowed, his smile turned into a grimace, and he began interrogating me about News Corporation's hacking scandal.