This guy had the balls to say the following last night on the News Hour:
As a practical matter, if Representative Grijalva is pulled over for driving through a red light, and the officer stops him and says, “Sir, what is your immigration status?” and Mr. Grijalva says, I’m a United States citizen and proud of it, that’s the end of — that’s the end of the inquiry in this situation, unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion that Mr. Grijalva is making a false claim to U.S. citizens — so, U.S. citizens and legal residents are very well protected in this bill.
Is it too much to ask that the supporters of the Driving While Brown Act of 2010 find someone who doesn’t glow in the dark to trot out their bullshit? I’m sure they can find a “Miguel Acero” to take the edge off alienating the fastest-growing voting bloc in Arizona, a state that will be majority minority by 2015. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to conclude that they aren’t even trying.
TR
Sweet Jesus.
I just saw an ad for the new Jack Kervorkian movie. Maybe the Arizona GOP is committing suicide in a cross promotion.
russell
Other than Johnny Winter, that is the whitest man I’ve ever seen in my life.
MMonides
Obviously these death threats directed at Grijalva’s AZ offices are the work of liberal plants http://bit.ly/c9ubpT
As much as I want a climate bill, I can’t see much downside (politically) for Dems in courting the Latin vote while simultaneously further enraging the Teabigot masses to even greater shows of frothing rage and petulant selfishness.
MMonides
@russell: He reminds me of H.G. Wells Invisible Man; he was described as being already so pale as and fair as to be nearly colorless before he used the concoction.
asiangrrlMN
He is very very shiny. Very. He hurts my eyes. Ouch. Yeah, whatever. I’m too worn out to even be vocally indignant any longer. We’re just riding the wave of batshitcraziness, and I hope it drowns the entire Republican Party as it self-destructs.
Man, looking at that self-satisfied smirk makes me want to slap the white off of him.
The Grand Panjandrum
What could possibly go wrong with allowing law enforcement officers great discretion in determining the citizenship of anyone. This law will be struck down pretty quickly. But, yeah, it really does appear they are mailing it in right now.
Scott
I expect some cop to demand Representative Grijalva’s papers about 20 minutes after the law goes into effect and that he’ll be sitting in the hoosegow soon afterwards, regardless of whether or not he has his Official Papers on him.
The Arizona law is all about criminalizing non-gringos. Joe Arpaio dreaming of an all-white Maricopa County already…
DougJ
You knew I’d ask…what did Bobo think of the bill? He was on the Snooze Hour last night too, wasn’t he?
MMonides
@DougJ: Well crap, I should have scrolled down for yesterday’s posts before posting the link and comment above.
scav
That hair’s not doing him any favors either. I’m thinking tallow candlestick. Nah, whiter than tallow, therefore quality. Wax candle. OOOOOOOo-oooooooo.
I think about the fifth or sixth or leventy-leventh time you get pulled over, the whole “I’m a Proud American” thing begins to pall. All sorts of ways to pull a Work to Rules strike though. Pulling out official ID for every single interaction, Human and Business might begin to get the point across.
mistermix
@DougJ: Profiling is bad but we’re never going to get immigration reform out of this Congress.
In other words, the usual compassionate conservatism.
demo woman
Southern Poverty Law Center designated Federation for American Immigration Reform a hate group. Since Hethmon is affiliated with this group, what the hell was he doing on NewsHour. Maybe Erick Erickson wasn’t available.
Booger
Why should we care what Ben Linus thinks?
Linda Featheringill
Okay guys. You are picking on this guy because he is melanin challenged. [You should see how pale I am!]
:-)
Seriously. Looking like this guy does is not sufficient reason to criticize him.
He may be a real jerk.
And his argument won’t hold water. It is fine as far as it goes, up to the point where the questioned person promises he is a US citizen. But what happens if the Public Safety Person does not believe that declaration? Then what?
It is stupid to stop his argument there. Everybody knows that claiming innocence is not enough to block accusations.
So feel free to criticize this guy because he is a stupid jerk. But lay off the ridicule because you don’t like the color of his skin.
chopper
actually, according to the bill it’s supposed to be said “ihre papiere, bitte.” that’s the law.
asiangrrlMN
@Linda Featheringill: Part of my issue with him is that he gets to speak on this issue when he looks so very very prototypically Aryan. It reeks of privilege. I think pale skin can be beautiful, but not when it’s covering such an ugly soul.
aimai
Well, of course, you could be not an American citizen and also a legal immigrant. You could be an American citizen, older, and not speak very good english. You could be an American citizen recently repatriated from another country.
I can’t believe anyone would sign this law into existence. But then I’m still gagging over the Oklahoma laws that now insist that any woman wanting an abortion be given an unnecessary, invasive, vaginal probe before being permitted to go ahead with a lawful medical procedure. Even the rape victims. Even anyone. I simply can’t believe that no one in these legislatures grasps the notion that disparate treatment to different kinds of human beings under the law is probably a truly bad idea.
aimai
Brian J
Is it possible that we’ve found the issue that will save the Democrats in 2010 in the House? I don’t know the breakdown of the seats where there’s enough of a Hispanic population for this issue to make a difference, but man oh man, I could see this backfiring in a big way. And oddly enough, I don’t see any back pedaling from the right, but instead a full embrace of what those in Arizona are trying to do. (Maybe this has changed, but I don’t expect it to.)
Perhaps they’ve concluded that for this election cycle, it’s the best way to try to seal the deal and tack back the House, because at this point, there are still too many white guys spread out in such a way to make it effective. Yet even if that’s the case, it will still win the title for Most Shortsighted Strategy Ever.
c u n d gulag
@russell:
Don’t forget Edgar. He’s a great musician, too!
MMonides
@Linda Featheringill: It’s called “optics” and right now the optics are “Aryan Arizonan hates brown people”.
Also, as a fellow melanin-challenged person I find his haircut and smirk hilariously, stereotypically 2nd tier Bond villain.
Anya
@MMonides:
Great idea. “Teabigot” is the best moniker for that group. You win the internets just with that.
MattF
FWIW, Hethmon is from Maryland, and was apparently a Republican candidate for congress in 2008. He’s currently on Wingnut Welfare (click the ‘Current Litigation’ button for the awful truth). One can only wonder where the $$$ come from.
Linda Featheringill
In case I forgot to say it:
The bill [now the law in AZ?] is divisive, basically racist, and works against the very idea of a peaceful society.
It is mean, it is cruel, it is unconstitutional, and it is politically very very very stupid.
[Sometimes things should not go without saying them.]
kay
See what he did there? He dodged the whole thing. In his scenario, the Representative was breaking the law, the red light. That’s the justification for the stop.
That isn’t what the law is about.
In an honest hypothetical, the representative would be pulled over on reasonable suspicion of being here illegally. No “red light” about it. That’s the whole reason the law is controversial.
Nice. Turn him into him a lawbreaker in the first sentence. Then we get to the “paper’s please” issue. Just one more question after an ordinary and legal stop!
They’re completely dishonest people. There’s no debating them, because they lie all the time.
ksmiami
It is my sincere hope that this works out as well for the Rep party as prop 187 in CA and that the Republicans in AZ reap the whirlwind that is about to hit them. The thing I just don’t get is why are these bluehairs in AZ so friggin ANGRY? Hell I live in Miami and the Latin culture is much more dominant than anywhere else and it’s fine, really, they are pretty nice all the way round. I am stunned that the Governor of AZ signed this into law. And what’s worse is the border violence (that was used as the bogeyman) is directly caused by decades of our stoopid drug war policies that have escalated the fighting over lucrative trade routes; nothing more, nothing less.
To get a sense of how upset I am, I am a white mama with kids and ready to sign up and work for La Raza. Grew up in CA, lived in Hong Kong and now FL and I really can’t get over the intolerance. I hope the GOP dries up and “withers away.”
Brian J
@kay:
Yes.
Mr. Prosser
The law is terrible and I’m pretty sure it will be repealed. Anyway, I’m really old and remember listening to Cheech and Chong skits on vinyl. This guy looks exactly like my mental image of Officer Stedenko (Pre-Keach), “Hey, man, who cuts your hair?”
RSA
Is it fair of me to wonder whether this guy has partly shaved his head to enhance his male pattern baldness and show off his whiteness?
On the substance of his remarks, I’m glad to know that a U.S. Congressman is in little danger of being falsely arrested in the state he represents. That’s a good benchmark for whether a law might be abused.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Um. No. Because anyone could claim to be a U.S. citizen so the cop will demand some sort of I.D.
Yeah, great way to blow the fuck out of your own argument.
These people are beyond the pale.
Linda Featheringill
I can also see a generational problem developing. But the younger folks are not at fault. Old folks are acting like real asses. What gives?
I understand that some of these elderly jerks are even older than I am [imagine that!] but that doesn’t excuse their behavior.
What is the cause of this behavior? I don’t understand it.
SGEW
As far as I can tell, this law is also intended to fight its way to the SCOTUS and overturn the current precedents on the Supremacy Clause trumping state immigration regulation (Kennedy writes majority, concurrence by Thomas, dissent by Sotomayor?).
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
asiangrrlMN
@Linda Featheringill: I would say fear. Racial fear, to be more precise. Many of the older older generation grew up unconsciously being fed the dictum that white makes right. They were in the majority, and they lived large (even those who were poor lived relatively large in comparison to minorities). Now, they see the world as they know it turned upside down, and they are skeered.
As for idiots such as this one (who looks to be about my age. Damn. I am wrong. He’s in his fifties), I have no idea what his excuse is.
kay
@Brian J:
Slippery.
He knows full well the rep is worried about the other scenario. Where he’s stopped on reasonable suspicion of being here illegally and can’t produce papers.
This way, he doesn’t have to explain what the factors might be that would amount to “reasonable suspicion”, because he added the red light.
I’m loving this marketplace of ideas thing, I’ll tell you. These weasels dodge and lie, and their opponents have to spend every minute of every day calling them out on that, so we never get around to debating the issue.
Linda Featheringill
@asiangrrlMN: Good point.
Maybe they are working on the Freudian principle [projection?] that is based on the assumption that your enemy wants to do to you what you want to do to him. In other words, I may be afraid that the Other will treat me and mine the way I treated him and his for decades.
Maybe they are afraid of payback, which can be a bitch.
I wonder if these folks have lived their lives without mercy. They believe in the death penalty, used frequently. They hate defense lawyers. They hate the ACLU. They want everybody else to go straight to hell.
And now they can see a time when somebody might do all of that to them, and are frightened.
Since they have never given any mercy, they assume they will not get any.
[Did I use too many pronouns? Did I make my point clear?]
kay
@SGEW:
I don’t know. It feels much more chaotic and accidental than that. The governor didn’t want to sign it. Pure political pressure.
I read yesterday that Arizona has a disinterested electorate on local and state issues. Low turn-out, etc., because they have a huge population of people who moved there from somewhere else, and don’t feel any real ties to or interest in, state government. That acts to radicalize their state legislature, in the wingnut direction, because the “base”pays attention to state politics, and the disinterested middle does not.
Maybe they’re just getting railroaded by the fringe, and there’s no larger plan at all.
WereBear
Linda is right; the fact that he’s a smirking asshole has nothing to do with the color of his skin.
I haven’t heard anyone, anywhere, speak on the most obvious law enforcement aspect; that the businesses who hire illegal immigrants so they can pay them spit and give them no benefits or job protections are the real problem.
They are the ones enabling the situation, while it depresses wages and creates messes for other people to deal with.
Some kind of “crackdown” on that practice is definitely in order.
El Cid
Why are we waiting to arrest Rep. Grijalva when he’s driving?
We aren’t we arresting him now? At any moment he could potentially be an illegal alien.
You never know. Better to apologize than ask permission, except not apologize, because that’s only what Obama does to our enemies.
ericblair
@Linda Featheringill:
You can rarely go wrong assuming projection with these assholes. They’re authoritarians: they have a great deal of difficulty empathizing with others, so can’t imagine that other people may have different motivations or character. They’re invested in a black-and-white worldview, so the Other is doing what they themselves do except for the other team.
They believe that the Other is doing to them what they have done or want to do to the Other, and that’s what scares them.
SGEW
@kay: I agree, politically speaking; but someone wrote the actual legislative language, and I would bet that they had the standing precedents in mind.
kay
@El Cid:
Because he ran a red light. See? Reasonable. The guy ran a red light!
I fully expect them to just take that all the way out. By Monday, Rush Limbaugh will be saying liberals don’t want Hispanics stopped for violation of traffic ordinances. That they want ‘special treatment”.
kay
@SGEW:
I have no idea. I’m just going by how sheepish and cowed that governor looked. She sounded like a hostage reading a prepared statement. Maybe now the wingnuts will release her.
I know they’re trying to change the definition of “person”, and I know they’d like to overturn the 14th, so maybe you’re right. No telling what they’re up to.
mai naem
Brewer is a bit of a wingnut. Not as wingnutty as JD Hayworth. The problem is Brewer’s reelection is this year and she’s getting challenged from the right. I actually think she would have vetoed it if her election was in 2012. The only good thing that may come from this is that more hispanics may come out and vote the Goddard, the Dem, in the general. Despite this current brouhaha AZ is not as bad as Oklahoma or Alabama and I think Obama may have won in 08 if it hadn’t been for McCain being his opponent.
R. Porrofatto
Being an American, I’m afraid the only proof of citizenship I carry with me at all times is my indignation at being asked for it.
My grandparents were born here, so I’m assuming the answer to the officer’s question regarding my “immigration status” is “none.” But I wonder if that would have to be “none, and proud of it!” in order to deflect suspicion that I might not be a teabagger, and therefore I have a functioning, un-American brain. But what if the officer then reasonably suspects that I’m not sufficiently proud about my lack of immigration status? I’m certainly glad this bill protects me from not being arrested in that case.
gbear
@DougJ: Bobo was on NPR with Melissa Block yesterday afternoon talking about Crist and far-right republican challenges (I’m skipping block quotes because I’ll just screw up the formatting. Bolds are mine):
BLOCK: It’s interesting when you look at Florida, David, because Charlie Crist was considered a potential vice presidential running mate two years ago with John McCain. Now, he seems to be floundering, doesn’t know if he’ll run as an independent. And you see this loyalty oath from the Republican Party. What do you make of all that?
Mr. BROOKS: Yeah, well, for people like me who’d like to see a more moderate Republican Party, this is why you just want to go suck on the gas pipe.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Don’t do it.
Mr. DIONNE: Don’t do it, David, yes. Better hold you down.
Mr. BROOKS: You got a guy like Charlie Crist who should be your moderate, responsible centrist, but he also does things that are completely unprincipled. You know, he vetoed a reform bill, an education reform bill, which was the exact sort of education reform that not only conservatives support, but the Obama administration supports. And he did it for pure political reasons.
BLOCK: It ties merit pay, I think, for teachers’ performance.
Mr. BROOKS: Right. And tenure and things like that. And then there’s the Social Security reform, which Marco Rubio is very honest about. We’ve got to raise the retirement age. Well, Crist does not. And so you want your centrist to have some principles. And so some of the problem with, for those of us who want to see that, is that Crist and people like him often don’t, and they lose for good reason, aside from everything else.
BLOCK: You’re saying not a good time to be a centrist.
Mr. BROOKS: Well, it’s a good time to be principled centrist. It’s not a it’s a very bad time to be a centrist, especially if you’re unprincipled.
BLOCK: Well, David, stay away from that gas pipe and have a good weekend, please.
Ash Can
I posted this in a similar thread yesterday and I’ll post it here again. Anyone in management of a professional baseball team that plays and/or trains in Arizona has got to be crapping bricks right now, worrying about the sizeable portions of their teams who aren’t pasty white. I’m waiting for the first middle reliever or star catcher or cleanup hitter to go missing, and turn up on the other side of the Mexican border, stuck in the middle of a drug gang war, after having been summarily deported by Arizona’s finest. Jan Brewer would learn a whole new, exciting definition of the term “clusterfuck” if (when?) that happened.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I wonder what would happen if Rep. Grijalva said:
I’m an American citizen though right now I’m not very proud of it.
I’m sure they would just let him go, right?
That dude needs Edgar Winter’s SPF 5,000 sunblock.
gbear
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Nice turn of phrase.
kay
@R. Porrofatto:
Just don’t be “evasive” about it, because that’s a factor.
We had a situation here where the state trooper pulled alongside a white women driving with a Hispanic man seated next to her in the passenger seat. When the officer pulled abreast she did not turn her head and look at him.
That was “reasonable suspicion” of something or other.
I think it’s reasonable suspicion of good driving. She keeps her eyes on the road.
Jay C
Well, prior to
18651964, there were a considerable number of locales in the Republicans’ favorite polity (the Confederacy) which were “majority minority” – and which still had a certain, umm- imbalance in the ethnic makeup of their political representation. I can’t help but see AZ SB 1070 as an attempt to resurrect, zombie-like, the corpse of the old Jim Crow system (Jaime Crow?) to try to stave off the loss of white political power in-state. Though why the teabigots thought that instituting what amounts to a Stalinist system of “internal passports” aimed at brown people would be a good way to go about it baffles me.gbear
@mai naem:
What’s to keep the police from posting someone to ask for the status papers of everyone in line to vote? You know it’s going to happen somewhere. They could probably use the law to weed the DFH’s out of the line too.
Xopher
@Linda Featheringill: @Linda Featheringill:
I think the point was that he was the whitest guy imaginable defending a (for all practical purposes) “whites only” bill. I wonder if the police in Az would apply the same sanctions to a white person with a British accent? Furthermore, can states (as opposed to the Federal government) require that people carry not just identity but citizenship documents on their person at all times? “Your papers, please!”
ericblair
I’m sort of expecting a California-ish backfire to this legislation, since AZ isn’t getting any whiter and this sounds like a rear-guard battle. I’m pretty sure most AZ cops, Hispanic or not, don’t want anything to do with this legislation, but there will be enough to keep abuses on the evening news.
It’s not like there isn’t already a model for this in the state. When I lived there, any drive from the sticks of southern AZ, USA to Tucson, AZ, USA involved passing a border patrol stop. (This is apparently constitutional in some bizarre way.) I’m a pasty white guy with blue eyes and barely had to slow down. My wife isn’t Hispanic but has black hair and brown eyes so she had to slow right down and talk to them. Nobody is going to believe that pasty white guys aren’t going to get a pass on this and anybody who takes more than fifteen minutes to sunburn isn’t going to get hassled by the cops.
different church-lady
To paraphrase Bill Murray: “That guy’s not white — he’s clear.”
zoe kentucky
The GOP’s model of government is small, powerful and mean. They want to destroy the social safety net, do things like deny children health insurance (SCHIP), but they want to meddle in some of the most personal decisions like whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term or who you can marry.
I think the Arizona law is, well, criminal. It’s bizarre and awful and indefensible. However, I think it’s high time for the GOP to take the issue of immigration by the horns, splinter their party, and drive away every person who doesn’t have a knee-jerk hatred of immigrants. So many of the right-wing’s hot button social issues have gone luke warm– gay marriage, abortion– so we can only hope that their new galvanizing issue become immigration. I happen to think that if this were the happen the Dems would actually shine when talking about treating people with common decency, respect and dignity.
They’ve been so ham-fisted with this Arizona law, I really don’t understand how a cop is supposed to suspect that someone is an illegal immigrant, what the hell their “probable cause” would be other than brown skin and an accent. The potential for this to blow up in their faces is HUGE– think of the Henry Louis Gates arrest in Boston– only on a much bigger scale and without the beer summit on the White House lawn.
db
a state that will be majority minority by 2015.
aimai
I think the interesting question is how they *think* the thing is supposed to work. There was a lot of weird talk about arresting illegal workers who “cause cars to slow down” for the drivers to hire them. The “slowing down” of traffic was represented as a heinous offense and there was, apparently, no other way of dealing with it and the illegal employment issues other than *arresting the illegals* and not the white business owners who were slowing down and employing them.
Clearly the GOP thinks this is a winner with its white voting base–but its a really scary law for the white repbublican business owners and for the gated communities that rely on illegal workers to keep those lawns manicured, or the sand raked, or whatever the hell they have out there. A few dozen white managers pulled over so their illegal bracero labor can be arrested is going to make this law very unpopular among the retired people who have been relying on this form of cheap labor. But maybe the GOP thinks this is a win/win–if it goes all the way to the supreme court and it gets blasted as infringing on the rights of american citizens not to be stopped arbitrarily they can bitch about the ACLU and the immigrant loving democratic party without actually having to accidentally arrest and disturb their own voting base.
aimai
Little Dreamer
@Scott:
__
Umm, that’s sort of like Hitler (the child of a Jewish grandparent) wanting to wipe out all the Jews, right?
Oops, did I just Godwin there?
numbskull
@kay:
EXACTLY!
And it pisses me off to no end that no “news” coverage is admitting this. The MSM is simply NOT reporting what this law says. They’re projecting onto it some weird, watered-down version that is a total fantasy. Just report the damned legislation as written.
gbear
@aimai:
That’s a good take on the new law except for the notion that the supreme court will be concerned about the rights of american citizens. If we’re lucky, they’ll strike the law down because of the damage it does to white businessmen.
Little Dreamer
@different church-lady:
__
I’m sure Scientologists, if given the chance, would find something that needs correcting (and payment to fix).
zoe kentucky
In CNN coverage of the protests in Arizona of the law they interviewed a white, Jewish guy who was wearing a yellow Star of David armband who said, “I don’t wear this lightly.”
This show-us-your-papers law is ripe for political fiasco. For some reason the GOP doesn’t seem to realize or care that in the long run this law is political suicide. But they need someone to demonize to galvanize their base and if they’ve chosen immigrants, let them do it.
Bad Horse's Filly
These idiots need to watch Casablanca – you know the movie where the evil, bad, Nazi guys stop real patriots® and ask them for their papers and shoot them when they don’t have them. Maybe then they’ll see the error of their ways.
Little Dreamer
@mai naem:
Slight correction, Brewer isn’t up for “reelection”, she’s up for election, she was not elected into the office of the governorship previously, she assumed office as governor when Janet Napolitano became a member of the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security head.
Ash Can
Wait till the Arizona cops find out that there are blond, blue-eyed Mexicans whose forebears emigrated from Germany to escape the Nazis and WWII.
…Now that I think of it, has anyone checked Jan Brewer’s papers, hmmm?
MMonides
@Bad Horse’s Filly: I was just saying on Twitter that we Jews have some history with being asked for our papers. SPOILER ALERT: does not turn out well.
russell
I have no problem with the color of his skin. I have no problem with the color of anybody’s skin.
It’s just skin.
It’s also, however, naive not to notice that, when it comes to f**king with other people based on the color of their skin, that white folks have it covered, hands down.
If I say “dude’s awfully white”, I’m not saying “white skin sucks”. I’m saying “imagine that, another white man who can’t abide brown people in his precious country”.
There are a hell of a lot just like him.
gwangung
On the other hand, he’s making brain-dead remarks on a subject he’ll never, never, never, never, EVER have to worry about because of how he looks.
Damages his credibility more than a tad.
Not that it’ll penetrate his thick head.
Roger Moore
@aimai:
IIRC, those white managers aren’t supposed to be pulled over. They’re supposed to be arrested and prosecuted for transporting illegal immigrants, and anybody can sue the police department if they fail to enforce the law vigorously enough.
If I were going to make a guess, I’d say that the law isn’t unpopular among the indirectly illegal immigrant hiring set (yet) because they just haven’t thought about it much. It’s startling how many people fail to consider how much of the unpleasant but necessary work in their lives is done by illegal immigrants. It’s as though gardeners, busboys, hotel maids, and meat packers are so far beneath them that they don’t even notice their existence.
ksmiami
The more I think about it – I must admit I was getting a little nervous for the mid-term elections, but you can always count on Republicans to go fo broke – over reach and play that asshole card and with the economy improving, I think it will turn out a lot different than the pundits think.
chuck
@Linda Featheringill:
We’re not picking on him because he’s white, we’re picking on the Republicans because this is the kind of spokesperson they’re trotting out to say “see, the new law’s not so bad”.
And the response hot off most everyone’s lips is “Well sure Caspar, not for you”, especially if you’re one of Those People who might, yunno, actually be affected by the new law.
Citizen Alan
@Little Dreamer:
I think we’re past Godwin. When I first saw the picture, I literally thought it was Goebbels, and mistermix was making a Nazi joke and then I realized that, no, the Republicans actually think an albino skinhead with wire-rim glasses would be a good spokesman. Have any Teabaggers started wearing uniforms yet?
Citizen Alan
And to repeat, a little more forcefully the question I asked last night, why the fuck are there no top-tier Democrats running for Senate?!? The AZ Repukes have just passed perhaps the most overtly racist, overtly fascistic law of my entire lifetime, both McCain and Hayworth are on board with it, and the Democratic frontrunner is the ex-vice-mayor of Tucson apparently best known for writing a children’s book about environmentalism.
Uloborus
@SGEW:
Goodness, no. That’s the LAST thing I’m worried about.
From a court’s standpoint, the fact that this bill is discriminatory is the least important thing about it. Questions of enforcement, whether the law is ‘vague’, and that bit about suing the cops are going to get it overturned so fast the governor’s fingers will blister.
It’s kind of like the HCR bill. Invalidating THAT according to the arguments being put forward would annihilate the entire tax code. The SCOTUS are assholes, but they’re still lawyers. Citizen’s United was a cherry case where all the ramifications went their way.
Robert
Officer #1: Where are your papers?
Me: These aren’t the illegal aliens you’re looking for.
Officer #2: These aren’t the illegals we’re looking for. Move along…
West of the Cascades
“Miguel Acero”
Heh. heh heh. Que buen chiste. Basta solamente poner un sombrero y un serape sobre Michael Steele.
kay
@numbskull:
Why would the officer ask the representative about immigration status in the course of a stop for running a red light?
The rep has already given the officer his driver’s license in that scenario, if he hasn’t, he’s got other problems, and the law says an Arizona driver’s license is proof of citizenship.
Brachiator
@Brian J:
No.
I don’t know why people keep thinking that the Democrats don’t actually have to put forth any workable ideas, but just sit back and hope that some demographic shift will magically rescue them.
As odious as this crap is, the economy is the biggest priority for most people. I think that the Democrats should find a way to respond to this, but they are going to have to use some skill, and not simply sit back and assume that any voter is going to flock to their side.
John
No. Hitler was not the child of a Jewish grandparent. This is nonsense with nothing to back it up. It’s not completely clear who Hitler’s paternal grandfather was, but it was most likely Johann Georg Hiedler, the man his paternal grandmother later married (alternately, it might have been Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Johann Georg’s brother, who raised Hitler’s father). There is absolutely no evidence whatever that it was a Jew, and the most recent biographers of Hitler all say that the claim was nonsense without any basis.
Brachiator
@Linda Featheringill:
I tried, I really tried, but I just can’t. He is one pasty, smirky mofo.
Mockery is not genteel. But it’s really not that I don’t like the color of his skin. It’s that I don’t particularly like him.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Cities that are serious about stopping prostitution do it by sending female cops out in disguise to arrest the customers when they offer them money for sex. I always wonder why these people who claim to want to stop illegal workers from coming here are unwilling to have the police, say, set up a sting operation at the local Home Depot with a Latino cop in disguise and arrest anyone who offers to hire him for day labor.
It’s almost like they don’t actually want to stop the flow of illegal labor at all and just want to keep the illegal workers afraid enough to not complain about any bad treatment, isn’t it?
russell
If Mike Hethmon is pulled over for driving through a red light, and the officer stops him and says, “Sir, do you have a fertilizer bomb, or a cache of methamphetamine, or illegal automatic weapons in your trunk?”, and Mr Hethmon says, “No, none of those things”, that’s the end of — that’s the end of the inquiry in this situation.
Any problem with that? Because lots of folks who look kinda like Mike Hethmon are cooking meth, or stashing illegal automatic weapons, or building bombs to stick it to the man when Obamanism finally takes over for real.
Absent other information, how does anyone know that Hethmon is a solid citizen, and not a violent white supremacist bomb-making tweaker freak?
Better safe than sorry, I say.
BeccaM
What an ass. He leaves off the latter half of the interaction:
Officer says, “I need you to prove you are not in this country illegally sir.”
Rep Grijalva shows his driver’s license and Congressional ID card. The Arizona Smokey says, “These aren’t proof. I need a passport, raised seal birth certificate, or legal residency papers.”
When unable to produce these documents because 99.9% of U.S. citizens do not carry them on their person all the time (heck, only 22% of Americans even have a passport), Grijalva is arrested and held until someone outside the deportation facility / jail brings a passport or raised seal birth certificate.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Agreed.
It would be wrong to infer or state this guy is an ass or anything else because of his color. Until he stood up and defended the worse piece of legal trash I’ve ever heard of. And then mocking him is open season. As well as anyone else who supports this crap. The color, or lack of color, of his skin is not the problem. It’s the open ignorance of not only fairness but what the hell this country is supposed to stand for that should get him mocked for anything and everything. And the fact that he will probably never have to be subject to this because of his color.
Little Dreamer
@John:
Thank you for the correction. It was considered common knowledge back 20 years ago or so that Hitler had Jewish roots, and I was not aware that the information had been dispelled/updated.
Appreciate your contribution on keeping information real, had I known, I would not have posted that.
Awaiting my lashes for misbehavior. :(
Little Dreamer
I have to say, I was reading a DKos diary on the boycott folks are planning for AZ and I sat and wondered, just how could it happen that I would move to FL two years before the hanging chads 2010 election embarrassment, and then end up in AZ three years before this travesty of immigration legislation? I seem to be meant to reside in states that are embarrassing to reside in at certain times (at least I managed to miss being in OH in 2004).
ARGH!! ::hides face::
Wile E. Quixote
@Linda Featheringill:
Look, not only is this motherfucker extremely white but he’s also got a fucked up haircut. And it’s OK for us to make fun of his whiteness, it’s just like black people using the N word with each other. In fact if you had a white Chris Rock he could do a routine on the difference between white people and “white” people like Casper the Cracker. So therefore I’m going to criticize Casper the Cracker on the whiteness of his skin, his fucked up haircut (Dude, go see a real barber instead of that Aryan dickhead down in DelMarVa who cuts your hair with a Flowbee.) and his fucked up cracker beliefs which he has because of his extremely pale skin.
Anne Laurie
@aimai:
Your problem is thinking that these legislators consider brown folk and/or women to be human beings.
Wile E. Quixote
Yeah, we need laws like this because if we had them on the books then illegal aliens like Jonathan Rowan would have their asses deported because the police would be able to ask him about his immigration status and when he couldn’ t provide papers, ship his ass out of this country before he could stalk and kill his ex-girlfriend.
Sure, Rowan was a fat white guy. But the difference between Rowan and a fat American citizen, or Obeso-American is that he had bad teeth, body odor and was a rude drunk. Plus he probably talked funny like a Brit. Obviously a shady, crazy, ex-girlfriend stalking foreigner who should be put on a boat back to old Blighty. The police would be able to determine, from these factors alone, completely ignoring his skin color, that he was an illegal alien from Britain and deport his ass, because after all, that’s what they did to John Derbyshire.
Wile E. Quixote
@russell:
Hethmon should arouse suspicion based upon the haircut alone.
I don’t know, but Casper the Cracker looks pretty shifty to me. I’d not only want the officers to interrogate him about any potential meth cooking, bomb making, gun-stockpiling activities he was involved in, but I’d also want them to ask if he was a Catholic priest.
Wile E. Quixote
@RSA:
Ah, yes, the Heinrich Himmler high and tight.
Wile E. Quixote
@kay:
I’d want to see the long-form driver’s license to be sure.
Wile E. Quixote
@Citizen Alan:
In, or outside of their bedrooms?
Little Dreamer
@Anne Laurie:
__
It never ceases to amaze me that certain people can look at other beings who are living and breathing, who have the same body types (bipedals who wear clothing and speak common language, have homes and phone numbers, etc… not the furry four legged creatures) and question whether those others are actually human.
Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the obvious shouldn’t be allowed to vote or run for office (I question whether they shouldn’t also be in some sort of long-term inpatient psychiatric therapy).
Citizen Alan
@Little Dreamer:
Please. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get out of Mississippi for 40 years. Try four decades of humiliation at living in a state that takes pride in being a barbarous hellhole.
Catfish N. Cod
Hey, Citizen Alan, lighten up a little. I’m from Mississippi too. We have plenty of idiots but that’s insufficient reason to trash us.
Granted, I did leave ten years ago. But I’m planning to return. No matter how many idiots it has, it’s still my home.
YellowJournalism
So, if they arrest the chamber maid at the local Holiday Inn Express, does that mean everyone staying there gets arrested, since they’re all in the same building?
And how exactly does this work with people who are visiting the country? I guess they need to carry their passports around with them at all times to show that little stamp with the visitor visa on it.
Citizen Alan
@Catfish N. Cod:
It’s 2010. Last month, a federal district court had to order Walthall County to desegregate its school system. I’ve also read three newspaper editorials urging people to vote against Travis Childers in November even though he voted against HCR because he did not publicly announce his intention to vote no soon enough. Progressives are unelectable above the county level anywhere in the state, and state-wide candidates are unelectable unless they attend the annual BBQ for the Council of Concerned Citizens.
My greatest hope for the afterlife is that after I die, God will explain to me what vast karmic debt I’m paying off by being born in and living in North Mississippi.