Arizona’s new, police-state immigration law is so repressive and un-American, even hard-core rightwingers and anti-illegal-immigrant stalwarts like Karl Rove and Rep. Tom Tancredo are speaking out against it. Under the law, police in Arizona can stop anyone at any time and order him/her to produce proof that he/she is in the U.S. legally; all the police have to do is say they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was here illegally. If this kind of police action sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen war movies in which fascist or communist authorities stop people and ask them to “show us your papers.”
What this writer wants to know is where are all the folks from Fox/TeaParty World? You know – those who say they’re strongly opposed to tyrannical government intrusion into citizens’ lives? So far, we haven’t heard of even one Tea Party spokesperson or honcho speaking out against Arizona’s particular brand of homegrown fascism. In fact, the Arizona Tea Party website builders are really excited about and supportive of the law; one commenter there wrote about banning the “criminals from Mexico” who “rape our women, murder our men, and make our children drug addicts.” (Wow, those must be some super-powerful immigrants to do all that.)
I’d love to be able to say I’m surprised, but more often than not, Tea Partiers’ anti-government pose is based on either paranoid fantasies such as health care death panels, or personal grievances over having to pay taxes. Their silence about, or outright support of, this new Southwestern Reich exposes the shallowness of the Tea Parties’ “Don’t Tread On Me” sentiments and their rhetoric about personal liberty. If the Tea Partiers don’t have enough genuine belief in freedom (i.e., freedom for everyone, not just white conservatives) to condemn Arizona’s drift toward authoritarianism, they will confirm the opinion many Americans have already formed of them as ill-informed racists.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2010.
actually smart a**, grooms problem is with the ability to stop citizens for “reasonable suspiction” – not with the law regarding carrying the proper identification…perhaps you should read (duh) before spewing half-wit analysis.
I think your analysis of reasonable suspicion is a bit off the mark. Reasonable suspicion means that the officer has observed conditions and/or behavior to reasonable lead to the assumption that I crime has occurred or is occurring. In other words, reasonable suspicion must be embodied within articulable facts logically taking the officer from step A to step B to step C.
For example, you are driving in your car. An officer can’t go from you in your car to the DUI Field Test (alphabet, walk the line, etc.) by jumping from step A to step D. No, but once you cross the double yellow line, the officer can pull you over for that violation. During the course of the traffic stop, the officer smells alcohol, sees your eyes are glazed, and when he asks you for your driver’s license and documentation, you fumble for it and mumble incoherently.
At that point, the officer has “reasonable suspicion” to believe you are intoxicated and performs the sobriety test. Once you fail the test (assuming you don’t pass), the officer has probable cause to make the arrest. Then, the judge or the magistrate, or whoever, has to find you guilty of the crime.
So please don’t go thinking that this law allows officers to simply see a Mexican on the street and go ask for papers. There has to be articulable facts supporting the officer’s decision to ask for proof of citizenship or status (step A to step B to step C). Under the Arizona law requiring reasonable suspicion, any officer asking for citizenship short of establishing reasonable suspicion, would result in a violation of a person’s 4th Amendment Rights of protection from unreasonable search and seizure. As a Tea Party supporter, I would defend someone’s 4th Ammendment Right to the end. So, your analysis is flawed.
Keep in mind that officers can ask for identification from ANYBODY during the course of an arrest and issuance of a citation. In doing so, failure to provide valid identification (or providing false identification) could establish reasonable suspicion (in conjunction with other articulable facts) that the indifidual is in the US illegally. If you want to read the actual Arizona law, it is here http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/04/16/AzSB1070.pdf.
Matt’s analogies i.e. comparing suspicion of a driver being drunk to a cop’s suspicion that a person is an illegal alien ring hollow. The reason for such false analogies was made clear when the governor was asked but could not say what an illegal alien looks like which looks might generate that ‘reasonable suspicion.’
Who else differs with Matt’s blissful ignorance of how police will use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to stop any of us and say those magic words we’ve seen in every WWII film…. LET ME SEE YOUR PAPERS! OK…THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND WHY THIS LAW IS AWFUL AND LIKELY UNCONSTITUTIONAL INCLUDE:
Sen.Lindsay Graham a Republican of no small experience, recalled to active duty as a Judge Advocate & his current service on the Judiciary Committees has said:“the Arizona law is likely unconstitutional.”
Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, the darling of the tea party, says: The arizona law “..unreasonably singles out people who are here legally, including many American citizens,”
Gov. Jeb Bush, another favorite of yours has said about the law: “…you have civil liberties issues that are significant as well.”
Karl Rove told a crowd of 500 at a senior community center in Florida. “I think there is going to be some constitutional problems with the bill..”
Conservative Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter, called the law “dreadful” “This law creates a suspect class, based in part on ethnicity, considered guilty until they prove themselves innocent,”
Matt, I do not have to call you out as being wrong. This law is so draconian that even these hard core Republicans see it for exactly what it is. But then again, Matt, Sarah Palin agrees with you.
Interesting Steve that you quote a former Bush advisor, a former bush speech writer and Bush 42nd’s brother…when all along, the Bush administration did NOTHING to secure the boarder. NOTHING! Every time I wrote a letter to the White House about the issue, the response came back “Thank you for your concern, this is a very sensitive and problematic issue…yada yada” but in eight years, Bush did NOTHING to close the borders or simply to enforce the laws we already had! NOTHING. You see, the GOP propper (what I like to call RINOs), they see illegal immigration as cheap labor for their corporations. This is one of the many reasons why the Tea Party has splintered from the GOP, for the most part. The GOP has become very pragmatic in dealing with politics, and as a whole, it is willing to concede some, if not most, of it’s principals in order to get big money, get elected, and appease whoever. That’s what Bush did. Either that, or he was just too inept to fix the problem.
Rubio, while I support his efforts against the moderate (now an Independent Crist), he’s running for senate in FLORIDA, Steve….FLORIDA. You think he is going to speak out in support of this immigration law while running for office in Florida with a last name like Rubio? That would be like 2008 Obama running for president while supporting a moratorium on welfare. Pragmatism!
And Lindsey Graham…he may be in the Republican Party, but he is “barely” a conservative. Graham supported the 2006 McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill…which was essentially amnesty. Graham had been in Kennedy’s pocket up until the day Ted died…to the extent that there was a strong push to run an opponent against him in the SC primaries in 2008 (unsuccessful, obviously). There is even a strong push from within the Tea Party, right now, in opposition to Lindsay Graham for his support on Cap and Tax with John Kerry. So, please, please, please, don’t paint these people as being…how did you put it “favorites of yours” or “hard core Republicans,” because that just isn’t the case. They are only a tad more conservative than Nancy Pelosi. So when you think of Lindsay Graham, just think of Arlen Specter without the “D” after his name.
Back to substance, like New York vs. Belton and Terry vs. Ohio, this is probably going to be a 4th Amendment (if not a 10th Amendment) issue that will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court and not by me, or Steve, or Sarah Palin, or John Grooms, or a Jeb Bush, or some Republican candidate for Florida’s Senate seat. None of these people (including me) are qualified to determine if this law is constitutional. Even the Anointed one, a Constitutional Professor, had to defer to his AG.
I think there are lots of bad laws on the books. There are bad tax laws, bad affirmative action laws–they are riddled in the U.S. Code, in the Code of Federal Regulations and in state statutes abound. That doesn’t make them unconstitutional, it just means I don’t agree with them. So, while I may think they are unconstitutional, the courts have found that they are not.
So, people can decide to not like this new law (like I don’t like the fact I will HAVE to buy health insurance, or I don’t like the fact that I can’t carry a concealed weapon without a permit), but the simple fact that I disagree with these laws doesn’t make them unconstitutional.
As a result, we can argue from the left and from the right, but the courts will, eventually, decide.
Just don’t lump Graham or anybody from the Bush administration into the same group as Conservatives – especially not as Tea Party Conservatives. Are they in the Republican Party? I will concede to that point. Aligned with Tea Party conservative views and ideals? Not a chance.
Two questions for anybody in the forum though.
1) How would you solve the cross-border violence on the sourthern border.
2) If this were Montana and not Arizona and this were a northern border issue with Canada and not a souther border issue with Mexico, would we even be having this conversation?
Hypocrisy is the Right-wings middle name…
JEEZ! I see Karl Rove is making the rounds selling his book instead of in a crowded holding cell wearing chains, PROSECUTED for any number of serious felonies and seditious activity? WHO could POSSIBLY BE STUPID ENOUGH TO BUY the BS Rove is dishing out? Let’s seeeeeeeee……
I know it’s a stretch… but for arguments sake lets say Americans can conveniently forget about the 5000+ dead, 30,000+ wounded US soldiers and only GOD knows how many Iraqis. Forget that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove took the good will of the world after 9/11 and turned it to HATE and mistrust.
How these chicken hawks sent our troops into battle WITHOUT PROPER ARMOR or any clear cut plan beyond George W. declaring “Mission Accomplished”. Never mind military strategists didn’t think it was a good idea to get rid of the ONE dictator (Saddam Hussein) in the Middle East that had an IRON BOOT on the throat of fanatical Islam. Remember… the terrorist, Osama bin Lunatic, degenerates that caused 9/11?
The TRILLIONS of dollars wasted in Iraq or the 20 BILLION dollars missing or the 175,000 weapons misplaced or all the arms dealers and WAR profiteers that milked our national treasury. FORGET about all the Constitutional VIOLATIONS, domestic spying, bold lying, Justice Dept. bias, Walter Reed, Abu Ghraib, soldiers getting electrocuted in showers due to shoddy military contractor work…
YEAaaaaa… once again, imagine we live in a country where almost half the population is dumber than a tree full of monkeys. These citizens are so damn ignorant they allowed some of the worst criminals in history bend them over and #*~/ them in the *** for 8 years. Even worse these numbskulls LIKED IT so much they want MORE!
MORE of the waste, fraud, abuse, lies, incompetence, scandal, fear mongering, sexual deviancy, corruption, off-shore tax evasion, media consolidation, arms dealing, reckless economics, deregulation, war profiteering, Bush/Paulson corporate welfare, Constitutional violations and a Corporate Crime Wave of EPIC proportions.
IF THE READER CAN POSSIBLY FORGET ALL THAT… then the WORST thing the Bush Administration DID was NOT raise taxes to pay for the WARS, tax cuts for the rich and Medicare Part iDiot. You want to hear about Fiscal Irresponsibility GRANDE?
Instead, Bush/Cheney borrowed from COMMUNIST China and Saudi Arabia (at outrageous interest rates) AND put OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN under the thumb of MASSIVE FOREIGN DEBT!
If there’s ANYONE out there who can explain away Bush/Cheney Administration CRIMES please reply because I’m NOT GETTING IT! Funny how we never heard any complaints from the so-called Tea Party crowd while Bush/Cheney were spending our national wealth like a crack HO with a credit card.
And don’t give that ridicules argument about how the Democrats took over Congress in 2006 and ruined all the good Bush/Cheney was doing. Or that President Obama spent MORE in one year than Bush spent in his last term… Are you nuts? Obama/Biden is just getting started. Maybe you Conservative wackos forgot that the last Bush/Cheney budget ended in October of 2009… Oooohhhhhh!
SEE? Conservative repeat the same old talking points over & over… Progressives present the facts, statistics and content. PLEASE tell me how any patriotic American Citizen could possibly be so shameless, misinformed, irresponsible or hypocritical to blame Obama/Biden and Democrats for the HUGE MESS this great nation is facing? It’s the MOST UN-AMERICAN THING I’VE EVER WITNESSED!
consciousmc.blogspot.com
what an idiotic statement..I accessed this site because FALSELY advertised the actual law..like most liberals there is a real problem with TRUTH>>>