I’ve got nothing, and it’s open thread time, so let’s talk about my Mother. She’s 74 years old, brown (US citizen from Mexican parents), and tough as nails. She spends her winters in a small town near Tucson, a few miles from where she grew up.
Since the Arizona immigration law passed, I’ve been thinking about what’s going to happen the first time she’s pulled over and asked for her papers. The results of my thought experiment aren’t pretty. To say that she’ll be unintimidated by the local cops is a gross understatement. My concern is for the officer who pulls her over, as well as the police department and town that she’ll sue. Life gets a little dull for the retired, and the family joke is that Mom has a titanium grudge carrier, so I expect she’ll do her part to bankrupt her local municipality, and enjoy doing it.
Mom’s a proud Goldwater Republican. She was happy with Reagan, voted for Bush II in 2000 (but not in ’04), and has long been active in the local Republican party. But I can say with absolute certainty that she will not vote for a Republican, for any office, ever again. She’s the proudest person I know–proud of her family, her achievements in life, and her Mexican heritage. And, whatever else this new law is, it is profoundly disrespectful. I don’t know if this law will kill the Republican party in Arizona, but I can assure you that they’re already dead to her.
asiangrrlMN
Just out of curiosity, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want, why was she a Republican in the first place?
And, I think the unintended consequences of this law are going to really hurt AZ.
Finally, what’s everybody up to today?
Mustang Bobby
I’m not in favor of states seceding from the union, but I am open to the idea of the rest of us voting some of them out.
Linda Featheringill
@asiangrrlMN:
Good morning. Are you up early or still up?
Mistermix: Go, Mama! Give ’em hell, girl! [yes, I am old enough to call her girl.]
Another day of work ahead. Saw newspaper article about the rising cost of VA health care. I do medical transcription, with one of the VA hospitals as a client. I think the increased cost is the direct result of back-to-back deployments in Iraq. Lots of wear and tear on mind and body.
debbie
Make sure a friend or relative rides along with your mom. It’d be great to have the video!
asiangrrlMN
@Linda Featheringill: Um, kinda both. Took a nap from 10 p.m. until 2:30 a.m., and I’ve been up since then. How you doing?
@debbie: I think we should have a bunch of people do this. Shine as much light on the craziness as possible.
@dmsilev: The fine print on your ticket gave me the giggles. Have fun!
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN:
Gonna be another fun-filled day of troubleshooting recalcitrant cryostats. Two of our systems decided to throw hissy-fits yesterday.
On the plus side, I have a ticket to the opera tonight. Baroque opera (Cavalli’s Jason), should be fun. Though the disclaimer at the bottom of the ticket form gave me a bit of pause: “Chicago Opera Theater reserves the right to change prices, productions, dates, times, casts, and locations.” So, I don’t really know for sure what I’m going to see, where it is, who is performing, or how much I’ve already paid…
dms
Linda Featheringill
@asiangrrlMN:
Goldwater Republicans:
I used to be one. Yes, I was young and impressionable. But Goldwater was sane, intelligent, and really believed what he said. He was pretty much of a libertarian. He did believe that we are our brother’s keeper, which today’s Repubs don’t. I don’t know how well that philosophy would have translated into governance, though.
My journey to the light [left] began when I read the poem “nexttogodofcourseamerica.” Reduced me to tears. Changed my life, instantly and permanently, like it was a religious experience.
I wonder if much the same thing happened to Jerry Garcia. He did name his band The Grateful Dead.
TomG
I’m a libertarian who has a good deal of respect for Barry Goldwater. He was the last decent Republican leader,IMHO.
brantl
I hope she reams them a new one. Selfishly, I wish the Republicans across the country were this open in their legislative bigotry; inside of a couple of weeks their members who part their hair on the right would be trying to excommunicate the members who part their hair on the left, cowlick or no.
superking
Your mom will be ok. The law is pretty horrible, but it does specify that persons with Arizona driver’s licenses are effectively immune.
Max Power
Those would be the God-fearin’, Breakfast-prayin’, Bible-waving Christian Conservatives, who couldn’t actually read it all the way to the fourth page of Genesis.
mistermix
@asiangrrlMN: When she was growing up, Goldwater was a big deal in Arizona, for the reasons the others mentioned (sane, reasonable). Remember that Hillary was a Goldwater Girl.
@superking: She has a driver’s license from another state, because she only spends the winters in AZ, so I expect fireworks.
Some Guy
And if your grandma, then so others. The hard kernel of white racism that motivates the Republican “base” is going to be the undoing of what is left of that party and it is about time. You sell your soul to racists, xenophobic conspiracy theorists, and Christian nationalists, this is what you get. Unconstitutional, inhumane laws and a lot of fearful anger directed at so many “enemies” you cannot keep them straight.
On a related note, I think the Norquist strategy of making government ineffective has created the impression that actually passing major legislation is bad. Since government is inherently tyrannical, the only safe government is one that passes no laws or no laws of consequence. Starting wars and regulating unwanted Others, good. Anything else? Totalitarianism on the rise.
Linda Featheringill
@Max Power: Cute. Not that they DIDN’T read all the way to the 4th page of Genesis, but COULDN’T.
Hee, hee.
Max Power
@superking:
Yes. And if find you did leave your license at home when the cop asks you for it, you can always have someone mail it to you in Mexico City later.
Honus
@TomG: then ypu weren’t around when he was, promising to nuke Vietnamese, and running on the Southern Strategy:
He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954… In 1961, Goldwater told an audience of Atlanta Republicans that “we’re not going to get the negro vote as a block in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are”.[12] In 1964, Goldwater ran a conservative campaign that emphasized “states’ rights… Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964[14]. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose.[15]
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of the Deep South states (Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) since Reconstruction. However, Goldwater’s vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (besides Dixie, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964.
Goldwater fought in 1971 to stop U.S. funding of the United Nations after the People’s Republic of China was admitted to the body. He said:
I suggested on the floor of the Senate today that we stop all funds for the United Nations. Now, what that’ll do to the United Nations, I don’t know. I have a hunch it would cause them to fold up, which would make me very happy at this particular point. I think if this happens, they can well move their headquarters to Peking or Moscow and get ’em out of this country.”
He did have some libertarian principles that put him outside the American Taliban, and acquired some sense in his dotage, but in his prime he was a big a winger as any of them.
madmommy
The world needs as many bad-assed moms as we can get! There is now a movement afoot to boycott Arizona Diamondback games, seems Colangelo is a big monetary supporter of the Arizona GOP. Wonder how he’ll feel if one of his players, to which he’s paid big bucks, gets pulled over and doesn’t have the proper documentation on his person. Arizona has already lost one convention behind this, a group of attorneys had scheduled a convention there and recently cancelled it due to this law.
If having a valid AZ drivers license lets one off the hook, are they saying that there’s no possible way that the AZ license can be forged?? And if the person pulled over is sufficiently “brown”, will the arresting officer then question the validity of the AZ license?
Norbrook
For a while, I was moderately worried about Republican gains in the polls and their potential impact on upcoming (and future) elections. Thankfully, they’ve managed to fumble badly and alienate an entire group which in some parts of the country constitutes a large part of their base.
Let’s see: The RNC can’t seem to get out of scandals; their Senators are road-blocking financial reform in a way that makes it clear they’re in Wall Street’s pocket; and now Arizona is screwing up with immigration law – and some of the Republicans in other states are saying it’s a “good thing.” Not exactly the way to make a case that Republicans are financially responsible, ethical, and aren’t racist.
asiangrrlMN
@mistermix: Huh. I don’t know enough about Goldwater, apparently. I’m a second-generation American, so my roots in this country are not very deep. Thanks to you and others for explaining it to me.
dmsilev
Oh, sweet Jesus. I open the morning paper, and I find a column written by Jonah Goldberg about the AZ immigration law entitled “An ugly but needed law”. It’s too early in the morning to start drinking heavily, so I think I’ll pass on reading it.
dms
stuckinred
@Linda Featheringill: Owsley happened to Jerry.
kay
@Honus:
Yup. And he got crushed at the polls. Rightfully.
I have to laugh at the states rights folks, in Arizona. I figure they’ll be turning to federal law, once they figure out their rights are violated. The Arizona law voids one of the most cherished property rights. They used “trespassing” to reach undocumented not just on public property, but on private property.
They had to invent a property crime, to reach private property, because they needed a predicate to come on the private ground and demand papers. There’s no such thing as “trespassing” when the property owner invites you on. Now there is.
Max Power
@TomG:
Perhaps you could say, TomG, how come so many ostensibly small-government Libertarians predictably vote for the Authoritarian party?
The party that finds it easy to pass intrusive laws like this – they’re now only one step from rounding up all the Hispanics onto trains for deportation – and yet finds the checks and balances of the Constitution (getting warrants, etc) so encumbering when applied to them.
I mean, if the Dems party could only get a little bit of that hypnotic vote-hold the Republicans have over Libertarians…
stuckinred
Will you live forever?
MattF
@dmsilev
And “A law Arizona can live with” according to George Will in this morning’s WaPo. I’m trying and failing to refrain from namecalling here (e.g., scumbag with a bowtie). No link from me.
asiangrrlMN
@dmsilev:
@MattF: Nice to see the decidedly white pasty men of the GOP weigh in on this subject. Really. Go fuck yourselves, Goldberg and Will. Here’s a rusty pitchfork with which to do it.
Keith G
@asiangrrlMN:
@Linda Featheringill:
In the early 60s, the GOP was still perfecting it’s trademarked simple answers to all questions. Times were confusing, their solutions were not.
Barry Goldwater was a charismatic, some would say dashing, figure. To many voters from many walks of life, he was a hero. My small town rust belt, but unionized, family was split 50-50 in 1964.
geg6
@Honus:
This.
Barry was no great libertarian. He had some libertarian viewpoints which he only talked about a lot when he had retired and had nothing to lose anymore, such as support for a woman’s right to choose and for gay rights. But he was no hero and was just as happy to suck up to the racists as any Republican today, was as thrilled to bomb brown/yellow people as any neocon today, and hated anything that helped working people as much as any paleocon today.
The only thing I’ll give Barry any credit for is being the one who went to Nixon and told him that the jig was up, leading to the resignation.
Other than that, Goldwater was just as nuts as any wingnut you can point to today.
JGabriel
Remember when Arizona was planning to sell its House and Senate buildings?
I wish they had. The results couldn’t possibly have been worse than the reality.
.
Barry
@Honus: I would add that Goldwater became oh-so-libertarian when he had no political ambitions which could be aided by being a right-wing b*stard. He’s like somebody who killed a lot of people to become rich, and then gave it away, but only after becoming terminally ill, with no heirs. Hardly altruistic.
JGabriel
@Mustang Bobby:
I’d point out how some of the states would play to lose, but much of the South is already doing that.
.
Barry
@asiangrrlMN: don’t be dismayed; people have spent a lot of time and effort to burnish Goldwater’s very undeserved reputation.
Bob
I adopted my son from Ethiopia. He is not obviously African, but clearly looks different from his white dad.
Kids don’t normally need to carry ID, but would I need to carry his permanent resident card in Arizona? When he becomes a citizen, would I need to glue a proof of citizenship to him? Are minors included?
Glad I have no plans to visit Arizona.
Bnut
@dmsilev:
To paraphrase Airplane: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
BobS.
@Honus: Thank you for that. Goldwater has become a mythical hero of an imaginary Republican past-when the party was characterized by hate/fear/& greed as opposed to HATE/FEAR/& GREED.
I think it makes otherwise sane people like John Dean and Kevin Phillips feel better about some of the poor choices they made in the their own lives.
greennotGreen
There are a tons of Hispanic people in the Southwest and California who are citizens not because of naturalization or because their parent or grandparents were naturalized citizens, but because their families lived in those areas at the time they became states – even when in the east the colonies *became* the United States. It is beyond an affront to those individuals with ancient American roots that they might be singled out to prove they’re here legally.
I live in Tennessee, and my goddess we have our problems (largely with the Pharisees on the street corners); nevertheless, we don’t need other states acting like buffoons to make us look better.
Gregory
@dmsilev:
He also says words to the effect of “sure as an alleged conservative I have to worry this massive government power grab could be abused, but one has to balance that possibility with necessity.”
What a jackass.
New Yorker
I’ve been thinking about possible vacations out west this year, and I had whittled it down to a trip through NorCal, Oregon, and Washington or one (in the fall) through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. I think this law ends the debate, since I don’t want one cent of my money spent in Arizona so long as this law is on the books.
I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, and while I want to see it again, I’ll wait until civilized people have taken back that state.
Also, apologies to New Mexico. I know you guys voted for Gore in 2000 and Obama in 2008. I’ll get down there some time.
Paul in KY
@Max Power: ‘Libertarians’ are just Republicans who are too chicken-shit to self-identify as Republicans.
Little Dreamer
I stated this on another thread, but it was almost dead and I thought I should repost:
__
Unfortunately, these people leaving is showing those who support the law that their tactic is working exactly how Republicans wanted it to.
TomG
I can’t defend everything Goldwater did, so perhaps my respect for him is higher than he deserves. That’s fair enough. I am NOT a republican-turned-libertarian, I have been libertarian for over twenty years (I’m 45), and admire many people who are pretty further left than Goldwater. Karl Hess, Samuel E. Konkin III, Frank Chodorov among others.
Goldberg’s column at NRO is vile.
Let me offer up a couple of posts written by a libertarian who I tend to agree with, who lives in Arizona, and who disagrees with the recently passed law – as do I:
an immigration proposal
we have adopted a socialist definition of property
The Moar You Know
Hey, looks like the GOP wants to lose Texas as well.
Please, please let them do this. Texas has a lot more Hispanics than Arizona does. The results, for the GOP, would be disastrous.
Maude
@Little Dreamer:
McCain never did an honest day’s work in his life.
New Yorker
@The Moar You Know:
Yup. When you think of the big states, in terms of electoral votes, it’s gotten to where California and New York are gimmes for the Democrats, and most of the others (Florida, Ohio) are toss-ups. Texas was always the gimme for the GOP, but if you look at the 2008 election, it might not be that way much longer. First, McCain’s margin of victory there was much smaller than Obama’s in New York, for example. Also, the large, rapidly growing urban areas all went for Obama.
The demographic trends in this country, and in southern and western states especially, are just going to destroy the GOP in its current incarnation. Bush and Rove knew this and tried to counteract the anti-immigrant backlash in their party, but the howling teabagger Frankenstein monster is too powerful now.
Evinfuilt
@JGabriel:
Holy Crap, the quote in this article kills me.
Really?? People moved to Phoenix to be away from Big Government? The city couldn’t support a single person without government, the entire city only exists because people in Western Colorado allow them to. I think the farmers of Grand Junction should turn off the tap to Phoenix. See how all those limited government folks feel then.
Redshift
@Gregory:
As someone (Jon Stewart, maybe?) said of conservative reaction to some other outrage in the past few years, principles are something you follow when it’s hard. Otherwise they’re just preferences.
Of course, this just reveals what we already knew — conservatives aren’t opposed to massive government power grabs on principle, they’re just opposed to massive government power grabs by other people for reasons of political expediency.
Little Dreamer
@Evinfuilt:
__
Umm, so what you are saying is that you want a city of over three million people to not be able to quench their thirst in a desert.
There are a lot of people here who don’t own a car. I deliver newspapers to whole apartment complexes (small complexes, 5 to 10 units on a property) where not a single care sits in the parking lot. I have a lot of units like that where I deliver. So, how do you suggest those people get to water?
I understand you want to see the “tap” (as you call it) turned off, I just can ‘t agree with that. You do realize that people need water to survive and you are suggesting that the idea of purposely killing three million people is acceptable because you are concerned about a new law? Did I get that straight? Or would yo like to amend that to something that makes more sense and is much less murderous?
Hitler might do something like that, I would hope a Democrat would know that it’s wrong.
slippy
@greennotGreen: And there are tons of inbred mumblef*ck rednecks in the entire Untied States who don’t even know their own country’s history deeply enough to understand that the overwhelming majority of the Southwest’s Hispanic population are natives because their ancestors were on the wrong side of the border when the Mexican-American war ended.
slippy
@Little Dreamer: Jesus. I leave the States for a week and come back to find the outrage drama queens haven’t been taking their medication. Still.
JGabriel
Little Dreamer:
Arizona : Brown :: Alabama : Black
.
celticdragonchick
@geg6:
I seem to recall that by the 80’s, he was in favor of gay people serving openly in the military, his wife was involved with planned parenthood and he was already warning of the impending fundamentalist takeover of the party.
His views had changed (as many of ours do), and it would be safe to say that he would be derided as a librul RINO today and chased out of the party.
Note that social conservatives never ever use the term ‘Goldwater conservative’. There is a reason for that.
JGabriel
@New Yorker:
Only since 1980. From 1848 to 1968, Texas voted only once for a Republican presidential candidate – Hoover in 1928.
.
Little Dreamer
@slippy:
I would hope you would agree it’s wrong to deny water to three million people in a desert.
I think you are saying that you can’t believe what was stated in that quote I quoted, but, being that your post is a bit cryptic, I could take it as you referring to me.
Somehow I think you’d agree with me on this though. I’m just asking for you to clarify so the OP of that quote can’t come back and claim you defended their murderous intent.
If I’m wrong, please say so. I can take it.
JGabriel
@Correction:
.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Evinfuilt:
I am reposting this from yesterday’s States Rights thread. This subject has now descended into really disturbing farce. I am going to avoid the subject of the SB1070 law for now, since the hyena snark factory is still in high gear here, and I am pretty sure, based on what I see, that nobody has even taken the time to read the law itself and compare what it says to the hyped and hysterical nonsense being written about it. It’s a pretty dumb and useless law AFAIC, and ideally would never have been signed, as I said on the first day it showed up on the radar here last week. But that’s another and long story.
Let’s talk about water. You sir, are dead nuts 180 degrees wrong about Arizona water. If you don’t believe me you can start by looking up the compact that assigned Colorado river water out here back in the 1920’s or so, and do some research. But a short take on it is this, from yesterday:
Water rights go with the land, and with historical use. There is no “federal” water out here. Most Arizona water comes directly from Arizona watersheds, and that includes Colorado River water. Arizona has, if I am not mistaken, the second largest watershed complex feeding the Colorado, after the state of Colorado itself. Most of the water used in Phoenix comes from the mountain watershed north and east of Phoenix, right here in Arizona.
SRP water is entirely from water originating on Arizona watersheds. Always has been.
Phoenix owes nothing to Colorado for its water, period. Further, Arizona pretty much buys back its own water (the portion that comes from its own watershed) from the Colorado river, and at rates considerably higher than it pays for water that comes from more southerly watersheds. That water is paid for dearly, nobody is getting it for free. The revenue, among other things, pays for the aqueduct that brings the water down from the Colorado River valley.
You would do well to do some research on the water situation out here before you shoot your mouth off about it.
Bhall35
@Little Dreamer: Lighten up, Francis! That sounded to me like a use of exaggerated rhetoric for comic effect. And thanks for the Hitler reference, we wouldn’t want to get through a thread without one of those.
YellowJournalism
I flipped to O’Reilly last night. Laura Ingrahm was guest hosting again. She’s the definitely of the mind that talking louder and more sarcastically than the people she’s interviewing makes her right. She and two other conservative lawyers (fair and balanced, right?) were talking about how wonderfully the Arizona law is written and how the evil ACLU isn’t going to be able to fight this loophole-less law. It’s just like the federal laws!
Finally, Ingrahm brought the stupid out and said something along the lines of how people shouldn’t be offended by the law and shouldn’t be going on and on about having to “show your papers” because the people the law is targeted at are supposed to carry their green cards and visas with them at all times anyway. I don’t know why she didn’t just come out and say that all brown people are immigrants and should either show their stuff or head back South. And, of course, the two bobbleheads she was discussing this with said absolutely nothing about the fact that some of the people who would be targeted by this law are actually US citizens.
CS Lewis Jr.
I would be seriously concerned that she would be Tasered. I’m expecting Tasering incidents related to this law to begin any day now. I believe it’s inevitable and there is nothing I have seen to suggest that age, infirmity or any other factor would dissuade the police from enforcing compliance via electric torture. It’s the new hotness in law enforcement. Not snarking here, completely serious.
Little Dreamer
@Bhall35:
I see, suggesting that 3 million people have water cut off so they die of thirst is acceptable rhetoric on BJ these days.
I get it now.
Fuck off!
Bhall35
@Little Dreamer: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hyperbole
Also, too.
LD50
@Little Dreamer: Lord. You’re not going to start going on about Juarez again, ARE you?
ChockFullO'Nuts
A little unfinished business from yesterday, for those who might have seen a certain exchange on another thread.
Barry
@Little Dreamer: I thought that you had threatened to leave this blog. Or rather, had promised to leave.
Barry
@Little Dreamer:
Wassa matter? It’d be small guvmint and libertarianism.
gravie
Arizona has been down this road before — or at least a parallel one in many ways, IIRC — when they were shut out of Super Bowl hosting for a number of years because they refused to recognize the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Just curious … and no peeking! How many have read the law being discussed here?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@New Yorker:
If you reconsider your travel plans, FYI you can visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (the nicer side IMHO) while mostly travelling across US Federal and Navajo Nation lands. Think of it as like visiting West Berlin without contributing to the economy of East Germany, back in the day. Alternatively, if you haven’t already made a visit to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in southern CO, it is just about as awe inspiring as the GC (only in a very different way – the BCG is very narrow compared with the GC despite being almost as deep) and much, much less crowded, and you can then travel through the San Juan Mountains (either on the western side by way of the million dollar highway thru Ouray, Silverton and Durango, or on the eastern side by way of Creede and the headwaters of the Rio Grande) and down into northern New Mexico by way of Pagosa Springs, CO, Chama, NM and Taos. That’s a heck of a trip right there, and if you want to camp along the way there are spots almost worth dying for along that route.
LD50
@ChockFullO’Nuts: West Virginia!
ChockFullO'Nuts
@LD50:
So, not you, then.
Anyone else read the law?
Little Dreamer
@Barry:
Barry (whoever the fuck you are, I don’t know you, you aren’t a name that is known around here), why the fuck do you care?
I have been on this site for five years, and I have enjoyed my time here very much, but, you’re just throwing oil on a fire that started yesterday and you (and the lot of you) are on this thread acting like complete and utter jerks and DEFENDING a post that said that the water to three million people in Phoenix should be shut down.
I just want you all the grasp the severity of that situation, because you are all just a bunch of nasty fucks, and this site has been taken over by a force that I can no longer even try to converse with.
Fuck you all very much, I’m completely done.
I stated yesterday I was going to give it one more shot, but, when I see people ridiculing a person who calls out someone fantasizing about three million people having no water, I realize my thoughts of leaving yesterday were more sane and sensible.
You all enjoy your fantasies of killing people. I’m not going to take part in it. You who defended that post should be ashamed of yourselves.
No good democrat would do such a thing.
Note to John Cole: I think your site (which was taken over by lefties after Terri Schiavo, when you were still a Republican) has now been taken over by folks who belong in an insane asylum. I wish you luck in trying to keep this place relevant. It was a great five years, but it’s over. I’m not coming back. This place is only filled with insanity now. Good luck and thanks for all the fish!
Fergus Wooster
The water’s not laughing!
de stijl
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Have you read the Fourth Amendment?
New Yorker
@JGabriel:
I’m talking about since the Reagan revolution. New York and California (both Democratic strongholds these days) both have gone red more recently than Texas has gone blue.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@de stijl:
So that’s another no.
Anyone else read the law out there?
New Yorker
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I’ve been to the North Rim (drove through Utah from Zion NP to get there). It was amazing, and you’re right, the better side. The crowds were smaller and the heavy forests at that altitude made it harder to see the canyon until you were almost literally at its edge, which made my first glimpse of it all the more breathtaking.
As for Black Canyon of the Gunnison, I’ve got to make a trip out to western Colorado some day (to see Mesa Verde too). The only part of CO I’ve been in is Rocky Mountain NP (which was breathtaking, of course).
I’m only 30. I’ve still got time to hit it all up. Side note: I’d better get to Glacier NP while it still has glaciers. My global warming-denying wingnut uncle never answers me when I ask him why glaciers are receding everywhere on earth….
de stijl
Of course I didn’t read it.
I don’t read any laws.
Have you ever read the complete text of any law except this one? Ever? Has anyone?
The only people who ever read the complete text of a law are the staffers (or lobbyists) who drafted it.
Legislators don’t even read the vast majority laws the vote on; they rely on summaries prepared by staff.
Have you read Arizona SB 9 or SB 11?
I have read the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and started in on the Federalist Papers until I got incredibly bored.
I didn’t read ARRA and HCA and DOMA and I have opinions about all of them. Are they invalid because of that? Do I have to read every piece of legislation or proposed legislation to vote or opine or comment on a dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia?
Have you read the Koran? Because if you haven’t you cannot have an opinion on Islam.
Have you read every word of the Bible? Of the Apocrypha?
I don’t have to read the latest Dean Koontz book to know that it’s poorly written crap.
Joe Buck
To the people asking why she was a Republican in the first place: I don’t know her, but I do know that many Arizona Latinos vote(d) Republican, something like 40%. Many are social conservatives, traditional, religious people, receptive to Republican messages. Now that’s over.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@de stijl:
Of course, and, of course. People read laws all the time.
They’re online, and pretty interesting. I really appreciate it when I see that my lawyer reads the law, and can discuss it with me. That makes me feel better about paying him all that money to work for me. Makes him feel better, too.
I once compared a whole bunch of laws on the same subject between two different states. Affected a case I was involved in. Very interesting. Then I looked at some other states too, even more interesting.
Well, how silly. Anyone can have an opinion on anything. Whether the opinion is of value or not, another story of course. Hahahaha. Amirite?
I am not that interested in Islam, really. The only opinion I have is that it seems pretty structured and I tend to avoid structured religion stuff. Catechism class took that right out of me when I was a kid. Ugh.
No, I am more of a Flying Spaghetti Monster devotee, really.
Your response is sort of weird. I haven’t read the whole thing, for that reason.
Mike Kay
“in your gutz, you know he nutz” ~ LBJ
Glen Tomkins
They don’t care
They really don’t care if they’re dead to your Mom, just like they didn’t, and still don’t, care that taking up the segregationist cause in 1964 that the Dems had thrown away by passing the Civil Rights Act, has made them dead to black voters.
They have calculated that there are more nativist votes to be had by being the anti-Mexican party, than there are to be had by treating people of Mexican descent with any respect or decency. A similar calculation worked for them in the case of blacks for a very long time, perhaps even today, though the dog whistle is increasingly broken.
It remains to be seen whether that calculation will work for them this time.
de stijl
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Okay, I answered you question, but you never answered mine.
Have you read the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution?
How about the 14th?
Have you read 28 U.S.C. § 1251 and understood what that means about federal and state jurisdictions on immigration matters?
MattR
@Little Dreamer: I may be misremembering things, but I am almost positive that I have seen plenty of people comment about the teabaggers and their “keep your government hands off my healthcare” comments. I don’t think that anyone thought that people were really suggesting that the teabaggers should be kicked off Medicare and be left to die.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@de stijl:
Actually, you asked me a bunch, and I answered three. Then I got tired.
Yes.
Yes
No
That’s six of yours I have answered. I have out answered you six to one. What do I get?
Andrey
@ChockFullO’Nuts: Yes, I’ve read the law in question.
Your turn: Which of the insinuations possible in your statement are you making? Are you suggesting that people who haven’t read the full text of the law can’t have a valid evaluation of its substance? (Laughable.) Are you suggesting that no one who has read the full text of the law can disagree with you? (Empirically wrong.) Are you trying to score points in your own mind against the people who are trying to show you why this is a stupid and terrible law? (Seems likely.)
The questioning of whether your opponent has done a particular, specific piece of research is an effective rhetorical tactic to distract from the actual discussion of content and policy and to put people on the defensive as you bring accusations about their actions. As such, it is frequently employed by politicians – even unconsciously – to emotionally sway the audience to their debate or argument. Use of it to actually try to prove a point about the content of the policy shows only that you have nothing else to go on – especially when the realization strikes that the specific piece of research is not, in fact, a particularly good one to analyze the policy. Reading the bill is much less useful than reading a trained professional’s summary of the bill and its consequences. And there are many among your opponents who have done both, and continue to oppose your position.
In short: you bring ill-defined anger about being a border state and about how IT MUST BE FIXED! and how the rest of the states should go fuck themselves, and with nothing to back it up but your feelings and dire warnings about how people are scared and how Arizona will apparently rise up against the rest of the nation; you now resort to questioning who’s read what instead of talking about actual policy. Why should we take you seriously?
Nethead Jay
@Little Dreamer: Said as a mostly lurking, relative old-timer : Please don’t stay away.
@Cole: Could you please crack a few heads and tell them harassing commenters is not okay. There’s a whiff of misogyny to the “drama queen” language. Too much hostility is not good for a community
ChockFullO'Nuts
Wow. Fascinating. You wrote all that, without even a hint of why I might be asking, or what I was looking for? Alright, well, life is full of surprises.
Actually, I was just curious. I was hoping to run into others who have taken a look and see what they think. I ran into something yesterday that made me want to read it and see what it said, and I started reading it, and now I have even more questions.
The thing is not what I expected at all, and I need to do some more research to understand fully what it all means. It has a lot of provisions, and so I got a little bogged down. I am particularly interested in a couple of things in the law, but I suppose I am going to have to tackle the whole list.
ChockFullO'Nuts
I don’t know, maybe I’ll pay you, or do something nice for you, like send you a carwash coupon. Or some cookies. I am very congenial when you get to know me. Just ask LD.
Lizzy L
I have to visit Arizona: my brother lives there, and I have to go to him if I want to see him, for medical reasons. (NOYB.)
I’m thinking of getting a T-shirt made with the legend “Proud granddaughter of immigrants,” and wearing it when I travel to Phoenix. Since I have a CA driver’s license, I figure I’d better carry a copy of my birth certificate with me. No, I don’t look Hispanic — but why should that stop them?
ChockFullO'Nuts
Really. Name them. Maybe they can answer a few questions for me.
But I have only encountered one person who struck me as having actually read the thing, and that was the sheriff who talked to Chris Matthews yesterday. He discussed the law from the standpoint of a law enforcement officer, which I thought was very interesting. Nobody here wants to confess to having read it.
I was thinking of having lunch with Lawyer Bob and talking to him about it.
MattR
@ChockFullO’Nuts: How about Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik? But you can probably say that you don’t know if he has read the law or not because you never bothered to follow up and read KRK’s link last night since Sheriff Dupnik was refuting your theories.
Andrey admitted that he read the law but I do not notice you asking him any questions about the law? Another way to get information might be to mention that you were reading the law and have questions that you hoppe someone else can answer, rather than questioning if anyone has actually rad the law in an accusatory tone.
silentbeep
@mistermix
Here is my Arizona story as a brown person:
Seriously though, I will absolutely not be going to Arizona because I really do look Mexican because, well, I am of Mexican heritage. I hate to say this but: I am rather light skinned compared my sister who I would be honestly scared for, if i knew she was visiting AZ anytime soon. It pains me to say this, but I think she would be at greater risk for getting stopped due to the skin color thing. But then again who knows ? People stop me here in L.A. all the time trying to speak Spanish to me on the street so, maybe my Mexican-ness is way more obvious than I thought ;)
In any case, I am staying clear of Arizona (it would’ve been nice to visit the Grand Canyon but not while this law is in place). I am not safe there, nor is any of my family who are all American citizens by the way – I only have distantly related cousins (whom I don’t even know) that are living in Mexico at this point.
Also it’s too bad because we have family roots in Arizona, my great-grandmother’s family first immigrated there before they moved to Texas (where my maternal grandmother was eventually born). Also, my paternal grandmother’s older siblings were all born and mostly raised in AZ before the fam moved to L.A., where my paternal grandma was eventually born as the youngest (her parents were originally from Mexico). It would’ve been cool to visit where everyone initially grew up. Oh well – don’t know when or if I’ll ever take that “roots trip” now.
I detest the thought of visiting AZ and having to carry my birth certificate with me at all times when I’m out in public, just in case.
JGabriel
New Yorker:
Well, then, say that. It’s kind of silly to use the word “always” for a period of a mere 30 years, and disingenuous to act like others are nitpickers (nitdiddlers?) for pointing out the error.
.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@MattR:
Well, I was out for a good bit of last night and missed many posts. I do not know the one you refer to.
I did not ask in an accusatory tone. I just asked if anyone had read it. You supplied the accusatory tone.
I’m looking for some conversation about the text.
I don’t know who KRK is, sorry, it was a long night and I haven’t slept.
Andrey seems to have jumped to the same conclusion you did, that I had some dark motive for asking about the law.
That threw me off, I wasn’t expecting that. If she wants to discuss it without the several pages of preamble, I am certainly up for it, but she would have to suggest it without all the baggage.
Odd bunch. I ask a simple yes or no question, I get back a long list of odd questions from one guy, and a dissertation from another person who assumes I am making some sort of accusation.
The first thing I am looking for is the language in the law that prompts people to suggest that it permits law enforcement to basically snatch people off the sidewalk for being Mexican, which is a phrase I actually heard on tv last night. I don’t see that language, but I do see this:
Sorry for the hideous clip, that’s the way it came over.
Now I take this to mean that the law does not itself authorize any lawful contact with a subject, but that the protocol which follows this passage is intended to be applied to a subject only when lawful contact has already been established. Let’s say, we’ve stopped the car and we are talking to the driver, and the contact is lawful because ….. we had some reason to pull them over which is not spelled out in this law.
Do I have that right? Because that is the only passage I can find which defines a scenario in which we begin this process.
The reason I am asking is that the sheriff deputy interviewed yesterday on Hardball seemed to be saying that his reading of the law indicated that he would just add development of a probable cause line of questioning surrounding immigration status to whatever else was relevant during the contact, IF alien status was indicated. Not that he would initiate contact based on something to do with alien status. The transcript of that interview is on the MSNBC site if you want to read it all, and the video is up on the site too the last time I looked about an hour ago. So if you haven’t seen that, take a look.
I want to know whether the language of the law actually authorizes initiating the “lawful contact” or if it presupposes that the steps outlined in the law will follow the establishment of the lawful contact already made on some other grounds.
If I understand the deputy correctly, which is certainly open to question, then the law doesn’t suggest making (establishing) the contact on the basis of some vague suspicion of alien status. Did I understand him correctly? And if I did, is he right?
ksmiami
Delurking for a moment, but a) I do not think that minority outreach to the GOP means what they think it means and to quote TNC’s brilliance about the current devil incarnate clusterf*** that is today’s GOP, “They are who we thought they were.”
Barry
Little Dreamer
“@Barry:
Barry (whoever the fuck you are, I don’t know you, you aren’t a name that is known around here), why the fuck do you care?”
That’s really rich – “I don’t know you”? You’re not actually posting under a traceable name.
“…you aren’t a name that is known around here”.
I’ve been a regular commenter here since John Cole was just beginning to figure out that something was wrong with the GOP.
“…why the fuck do you care?”
Ah, yes – on of the old, classical tricks of somebody losing an argument on the internet. Suddenly start yawning, and pretend not to care about the argument, and wanders off pretending that they didn’t get their b*tt kicked.
And again – didn’t you promise to leave in an earlier thread?
Jody
See guys, so long as the police officer makes prior lawful contact, it’s okay to demand to see the birth certificate of Hispanic citizens, and should the offending brown person fail to produce said documentation, detain and handcuff them.
And this law certainly wouldn’t be abused. Lord knows the police have never overstepped their bounds before, let alone in Arizona.
Yeup. Perfectly acceptable to require certain citizens to carry around that kind of essential documents on them at all times or risk deportation. Yessir. That certainly doesn’t violate anyone’s civil rights or anything.
Jason
Police may make lawful contact with any person they see on the street at any time, for any reason, or for no reason, just like anyone else can. The “lawful contact” requirement in the current law is no restriction at all.
KRK
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Sheriff’s Dupnik’s remarks were raised six times in the thread between 9:43 p.m. and 12:43 a.m. Five times by me and once by Midnight Marauder: #167 (link to article), #200, #204, #302, #329, #353.
You talked a lot about the local law enforcement and public safety perspective and wanted everyone to watch a sheriff on Chris Matthews. Well, what about this sheriff? He is an elected Democrat in law enforcement on the Arizona-Mexico border whose take on the law is line with the majority of the commenters in last night’s thread and is not in line with you and LD. As I said last night, I’m open to learning from people who know the local scene that Dupnik has ulterior motives or faults that would explain his stance, but the crickets were kind of deafening.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
This is a really key question. The interpretations of this law in the anti- news stories seem to be assuming a worst case scenario. On the other hand, given the past behavior of Sheriff Joe A., can you blame them?
I’m wondering about this section (all quotes below taken from here):
This language sounds to me like a closed loop of justification – if the person “looks like” (whatever that means in practice) they may be here illegally, then that establishes probable cause. No need for anything else to justify lawful contact.
If that isn’t enough, then private citizens can provide the context for intiating lawful contact, courtesy of:
In other words, LEOs may have to initiate contact either on their own or in response to a private complaint, under the guise of protecting the local city, county, etc. from the threat of a lawsuit, even if the target has not done anything to justify a lawful contact.
IndyLib
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Ahh, damn you to the greatest depths of FSM noodlehell, you just made me incredibely homesick.
I second the notion of trading a trip to the Grand Canyon for one to S. Colorado/N. New Mexico. I grew up in that area of Colorado and spent many a winter Sunday snowmobiling back and forth across the border with New Mexico. I also lived in Arizona for 10 years. They aren’t the same kind of scenery, but if you’ve already seen the Grand Canyon, try something new. Go to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, drive over the continental divide on Cumbres/La Manga pass, see the Anasazi ruins in Bandelier.
MikeBoyScout
God Bless your Mom.
The post inspires me.
MattR
@ChockFullO’Nuts: You caught me right as work actually wanted me to work :( I agree with your interpretation of what the deputy said. But I am not sure if the deputy was correct in his statements. One scenario that pops into my head that I think falls under lawful contact is people who are passengers in a car. The other concern that a lot of people have is that the police can generally come up with a lawful reason to stop and question someone if they really want to (especially those driving a car)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@IndyLib:
Sorry ’bout that. If you ever make it back to FSM’s country, give me a shout and I’ll buy you a drink.
twiffer
@ChockFullO’Nuts: the “lawful contact” was introduced as “legitimate”. regardless, it is lawful contact with not only cops, but also “agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision” and of course, the nebulous “reasonable suspicion” that someone might be an illegal alien. that is open to some serious interpretation. for instance, pulling a building permit would be lawful contact with a town agency. would, then, the town clerk be able to ask a contractor to prove immigration status?
not to mention that no one knows how to determine what constitutes “reasonable suspicion” about immigration status. the law states it cannot be based “solely on race, color or national origin”. noble intentions, though it does not preclude those as factors. still, no one knows what such “reasonable suspicion” would be based on. hell, when the gov. was asked point blank about it, she said she didn’t know how one could tell. would an out of state DL fit the criteria? would being nervous when you got pulled over satisfy? no one knows. that is dangerous.
i will say, at least they got rid of this:
though it looks like it took getting to the house to remove that.
also problematic is allowing any legal state resident to sue if they think any agency adopts a somewhat lax policy in regards to checking immigration status. i’m not going to c&p, cause legislative language makes my teeth hurt.
simply put, too much in this is left up to interpretation and discretion. whether people will be picked up off the street and asked to show their papers would, i suppose, depend on what is considered jaywalking or loitering. it’s open to a lot of potential abuse to, basically, everyone who doesn’t have an AZ driver’s license.
Jrod
I find it funny that certain regulars think that posting here for years should earn them a lifetime pass to spout bullshit without any pushback at all, and if any posters disagree with them in the standard BJ fashion the whole site has suddenly gone psychotic.
Of course, since I only post sporadically, this is where those certain regulars can safely disregard my writing, since time spent on a site posting regularly is what determines rightness, not the actual content of the posted words.
Oh, wait, a rancher was killed, and it might have been illegals. THAT CHANGES FUCKING EVERYTHING. Set up the camps, we’re hunting spics! No, wait, its not that we like the law, it’s just that something had to be done, therefore any criticism of that something is wrongheaded unless the federal government uses up its supply of fairy dust to create a thirty foot concrete wall across the entire border. No need to consider the effects of such a thing on the billions of dollars of perfectly legal commerce crossing that border, because worrying about a massive chunk of the economy in the face of people speeding and an unsolved murder is just nutty. It’s also silly to worry about any civil rights issues pertaining to this law, which by the way we don’t support and the only reason you think we do is because you’re an unhinged loon, because golly, nobody has been locked up yet under the law that’s not in effect yet. Sure, people are already being harassed for existing while brown without this law, but that’s no reason to assume that it’ll ever happen again once the law makes it not just easier, but mandated to do so to avoid lawsuits.
It’s not all bad news. Dreamer is on the fast track to a world record for most times quitting a site in a huff within one week. Somebody alert Guinness!
Pinko Lanterne
Okay, reading laws makes my head hurt but I’ve read through it yet again today and if I’m reading it correctly SB1070 says that complaints based solely on race, etc. won’t be pursued. (Furthermore I only see it mentioned in the sections covering complaint about someone employing illegal workers)
Which, even if it does extend to the ‘papers please’ stops by police officers still doesn’t seem to me to do anything at all to prevent racial profiling during enforcement, only during prosecution.
So part ‘C‘ (the deportation and so on) would not be implemented (in theory) but the arrest (part ‘E‘) would be legit?
Am I missing something?
Andrey
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Well, let’s see, what were the previous day’s comments we got from you on this very same topic? What would someone’s first impression of you be for someone encountering your first comments on this law?
If you’re seriously wondering about how someone could possibly misconstrue an innocent yes-or-no question as an attack or insinuation, perhaps you should consider your previous statements and whether they might lend themselves to supporting such an interpretation.
Maybe in real life you’re a lot more reasonable than you appear to have been on this topic on this particular blog, but so far you haven’t given a particular image of reasonability, so why would an observer assume that suddenly you were asking a reasonable question with no undertones or implications? If your intent is to present a reasonable demeanor for a calm conversation, then you would likely have had more success without the initial inflammatory comments.
Hob
I’ve stayed out of these LD/ChockNuts threads because they’re just making me sad and there seems to be zero chance of anything getting through… but I have to say, I wish Jrod’s summary were really exaggerated and unfair, but I honestly can’t see what those two are saying any other way. And I know they’re not the craziest people on the Internet, and it’s sadly easy for me to imagine that lots of Arizona voters think like that, including plenty of people who identify as liberal Democrats.
Little Dreamer’s screeds particularly bothered me because her argument isn’t just “you should trust me because you’ve seen me here before”… it’s “you’ve seen me here before so you should know what I’m about.” And yeah, LD, I’ve been here for years and I’ve seen you say plenty of nice things that I agree with (as opposed to Chock/TZ, who usually seems like a decent guy but has such a unique writing style that it’s often kind of hard to tell what he’s saying). But that doesn’t mean I knew “what you’re about.” I know plenty of people who have nice liberal opinions about a lot of stuff, and then you get to the thing that sets them off, and yikes. Like RedShift said above, principles are the things you stick to when it’s hard – and what I’m seeing from you and Chock/TZ is that you’re all about civil liberties until you hear some scary stories on the news. You’re going down the “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged” path, fast. If you really can’t understand why people here think that the things you’re saying are incompatible with your progressive ideals (and with ostensibly “not supporting this law”), then we’re just not speaking the same language and probably never were.
Yeah, some people here have been rude to you, but plenty of people have been trying to argue with you in good faith too (many of whom then got ruder after you kept giving the same 2 answers to everything: “it’s a federal border!” and “you’re not from here, you don’t understand!”)… and all I see in response is more manning of the barricades, you two versus the world, why did all these Juicers suddenly become crazy fools, etc. TZ keeps saying things like “odd bunch!”, as if intelligent people all over the country aren’t currently having exactly the same reaction to this hideous law. Maybe you need to take a break here and read other blogs. But the way you’re writing here now, I suspect you may just decide that they’ve all become crazy fools too if they tell you you’re full of shit. I wish I saw any sign that you’re half as concerned about the human cost of this law as you are about your wounded pride, and about sticking it to the feds and all the other people who don’t understand you.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@KRK:
You may be right, but I didn’t see your posts last night. We were getting ready to head out and do the all night work thing.
Assuming that you were talking about the States Rights thread, there were eventually over 500 posts and I certainly didn’t read more than 100 of them.
I’ll go back and take a look at that material later today. Other than that I can’t comment because I don’t know what was said.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Andrey:
Well, you stumbled onto a BJ flame war, and those can get pretty nasty. I was referred to as human garbage living in a state full of human garbage. The rhetoric was over the top at times. Beyond that, I don’t care to relive that thread today.
In any event, my questions today are related to figuring out what the bill actually says, and what it means in practical terms.
I can’t find the language that spells out the “snatch people off the street for being Mexican” directive. My first impression after reading the thing was that its true nature was being misrepresented by people who were exaggerating its intent and its specifics, and this was reinforced by what the Hardball sheriff was saying to Matthews. I want to find out whether the law actually has that sort of thing built into it, and where that language is. If it does, then I would say the law is sure to fail the simplest tests of constitutionality. If it doesn’t, then I have other questions. I’m not drawing any conclusions about the law itself at this point, I’m just interested in understanding it from a technical viewpoint, WRT good or bad points. I’d characterize the churn from yesterday as being about the political context of the thing, as opposed to the legal and practical aspects of the law itself.
So whatever your opinion is on this aspect of the law, I’m interested in hearing about it.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Yes, but the reaction isn’t uniform, which doesn’t necessarily prove anything, and also, I am seeing what looks to me like a disconnect between what people are saying the law will do and what the law itself says. I don’t know where that disconnect is coming from, and I will stipulate that the disconnects can be drawn between the law and both “sides” of the question of whether the law is technically valid, constitutional, useful, or any other attribute. It looked to me as if a lot of people were talking about this law and nobody was referring to its specific provisions …. good or bad …. and connecting those to the complaints or to the approval.
My overall opinion of the law, the one I had before I read it, hasn’t changed much. I thought it sounded like a bad idea as law last week the first time I heard about it and stated that I hoped the governor didn’t sign it. After reading it, my first impression was that it seemed sort of redundant and useless.
As political theater, I think the law or something like it was predictable and understandable. People along the border out here are up in arms over the things going at the border. Whether that concern is well founded and well informed is arguable, but declaring all those people to be just crazy and evil is just ridiculous and gratuitous. We’re talking about the part of the country where, for example, Sandra Day O’Connor grew up, on a ranch in Southern Arizona. Give me a break, does anyone really think that the whole state is just populated with lunatics and satan worshippers? These are pretty practical and level headed people. They aren’t crazy. This is not a state full of “human garbage” as described last night.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Against my better judgment, I will agree with you for the sake of discussion that my position on this is difficult to reconcile with my former positions on the subjects of immigration and civil liberties. Difficult for others to reconcile, it’s not difficult for me. I can make a distinction between the technical attributes of a law, and the political theater surrounding the law, and that distinction is pretty clear to me. I don’t find the law particularly useful or even that it will have much of an effect on law enforcement around here — good old Sheriff Joe has been doing what the law provides, for a long time, without much effect other than getting himself a lot of attention and playing to his base.
As political theater, I think the law was inevitable. People here are not only fed up with the border situation, whether rightly or wrongly fed up, another question — and they think the Fed is hapless, and unable to do anything about it. On the latter point, I think they are right. I urgently want the government to take ownership of this issue, reform immigration law, and act like it is in control of the border, whatever that has to mean to make it work. Some here seem bent on convincing me that the latter view is foolish and ill informed but I find their arguments not persuasive at all. The actual arguments appear to be based on proof by assertion, calling me names and Shut Up That’s Why, which are not really very convincing to me. If managing a 2000 mile border with a second rate country is indeed an experiment, then it is one that we better start performing better because it could spell disaster for our party, to say nothing of disaster for millions of people in the country whose fates rest on what we do.
In any case, my quest right now is to try and figure out what this law really says and why there seems to be such a disconnect between its text and what people are saying about it. So far I can name exactly two people who seem to have read the thing besides me, a sheriff on tv and one poster here. The poster here isn’t speaking to me at the moment and the sheriff is not available. So I am on my own for the time being.
Hob
Chock:
At least two other posters have stated that they read the law, and quite a few have commented on excerpts of specific language from the law even if they hadn’t read the whole thing. You recently admitted that you only read 25% of that thread, which is understandable since it was very long, but then it’s a bit rich for you to make pronouncements about being “on your own”.
Anyway, I have also read the law, and I think you’re bending over backwards to put the most innocent possible construction on every phrase. “Lawful contact” for instance. I’ve been unable to find any actual definition of this phrase in Arizona law, and every legal commentator I’ve found on Google so far seems to agree that it has no specific meaning. There is no reason to think that it’s limited to an arrest, or suspicion of a particular crime, as you keep insisting. If a police officer walks up to me and says hello, that’s not an unlawful contact, so based on this curiously written thing called SB1070, it appears that he can then demand my papers. And the statute is not limited to law enforcement officers; it includes any public agency. You clearly disagree with this interpretation, but I can’t see why, except that you just can’t believe they would do that.
I also haven’t seen you address the part about giving random private citizens automatic standing to sue the government if they think it’s not being draconian enough. The law appears to guarantee victory and recovery of court costs for any such complainant if the state’s enforcement is anything less than “the full extent permitted by federal law.” In other words, unless some method of hunting down undocumented workers is specifically outlawed by federal statute, the state is required to do it or be subject to civil action by literally anyone. This isn’t even bad law so much as anti-law; it basically offers a choice between a police state and a government rendered non-functional by litigation. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a bill that was written by racist lunatics with no interest in governance.
Your dismissals so far of everyone else’s concerns seem to amount to “They probably don’t mean that… or they won’t really do it… or if they do do it, it won’t be that much of a problem.” It reminds me of nothing so much as that “Point-Counterpoint” piece in The Onion where one guy lays out all the predictable consequences of invading Iraq, and the other guy says things like “None of those things will happen” and “Sorry, I disagree.” You’ve even got the same attitude of “Maybe this isn’t the right thing to do but at least we’re doing something” that we heard so much of in 2003. And you wonder why people are confusing you with a wingnut.
But feel free to tell me how I don’t understand what’s at stake, because I’ve only lived in places like California and New York, where immigrants and crime are unknown.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Can you point me to the language in the law that directs law enforcement to do “papers please” stops?
My read is that the protocols in the law apply only to “lawful contacts” already in progress. In other words, contact that would be created under some other law.
Paraphrasing the sheriff from Hardball on Tuesday, what the law appears to say is that during, say, a traffic stop, if the subject can’t produce an ID or driver’s license, it is appropriate to ask what his immigration status is. If he says he is an alien, the officer can then ask to see a green card. The green card law requires that the holder carry the card on his person at all times. That can be for no other purpose than to show the card when requested to do so by an appropriate authority. Otherwise, what would be the point of requiring the card be carried?
Doing this sort of progressive questioning is pretty much what law enforcement officers are trained to do all the time. They are doing what our sheriff referred to as “developing a line of probable cause” or words to that effect, a standard technique in a lawful stop.
Again paraphrasing the sheriff, if the subject cannot produce ID, or a green card, then the next step is to hand him over to federal authorities to let them sort it out.
That’s pretty much it, and pretty much what has already been going on here for quite a while. I don’t see the “show me your papers” snatch off the sidewalk in the language of the law, as described by pundits on tv. Where is this coming from?
On a similar theme, I hear on tv that Tom Ridge is saying that the law lets officers question immigration status without probable cause. This is in direct contradiction to what Hardball’s sheriff said yesterday, namely, that the law only provides a path to development of proper probable cause in the course of the contact, which is, again, a standard procedure in such contacts. That is to say, the incremental question/answer process is intended to discover and then develop probable cause, in a standard manner practiced by virtually all law enforcement officers.
Where is the language in the law that makes it deviate from what is essentially standard methodology? Even the president, with whom I very (very) seldom disagree, seems to be saying that the law empowers officers to “stop people” to question their immigration status. I don’t see the language in the law that directs this.
The other Arizona sheriff, referenced by poster KRK, is on Countdown now saying the same thing I have been saying, which is that the law spells out doing things that these officers are already doing and have been doing for a long time. He also points to a “key phrase that lets us stop them on reasonable suspicion” of being in immigration law violation. I can’t find that key phrase.
Jonathan Turley says that the first challenge to constitutionality will be based on the jurisdiction (state, versus federal) question. The second ground is the “reasonable suspicion” provision. Where is that provision?
I’m looking at the law now in another window, and I don’t see any such provision, and Turley did not reference any section of the law in his assertion. I’ve blockquoted the portion here that I think he is referring to, but my read, which seems to coincide with that of yesterday’s Hardball sheriff, is that the suspicion is pursued only when a lawful contact has already been made with the subject, not as a basis for making the contact in the first place. Isn’t that why the “for any lawful contact” language is there?
What are we missing? Is the concern that the language of the law is too vague here on some critical legal point? If one reads it the way my amateur reading takes it, then one comes away thinking that the law only spells out exactly what Sheriff Dupnik said early on, namely, that law enforcement is basically already doing everything the law asks them to do.
So I am left with the issue of how the “lawful contact” is made in the first place, which some of you have addressed in posts above. My read on your posts is that the law fails because it is too vague in this area, leaving the discretion up to the officer on the ground. This is what I take from Twiffer at:
Jason at:
and MattR at:
These are good points, but I am still stuck on the notion that nothing in the law changes the reality of what goes on in these situations (contact situations) now. It seems to me to simply underline the pursuit of probable cause related to immigration status.
Putting aside the rhetoric and the hype we have seen and heard in the last few days, are you all in basically a consensus agreement that the wording of the law creates new risk to the citizen that does not currently exist? Or is it more a matter of a potential acceleration of that risk just because the law is codifying what is now just police procedure? I may be asking an impossible question, requiring us to deconstruct the whole body of law surrounding the way these contacts are initiated and pursued. But …. it must be possible to understand this, since police officers already have to understand it in order to do their most basic job tasks.
I’m trying to parse out the real threat represented by this law, as distinct from the hype and the hysteria being pimped in the media about it.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@Hob:
No, actually, I don’t. I am looking specifically for what that phrase means and what it can be taken to mean on the ground in real time in real contact situations.
And I am also looking for how a police officer would read that and what differences he would see between what he is already doing, and what the law proposes that he do.
Finally, I am looking for the various views on this of posters here. Now that these are coming in, I am starting to get an idea what the trend of thought is here.
Hob
Well, it’s certainly nice that you’re starting to get an idea now, after everyone’s been telling you their views very forcefully for the last 600 comments.
Seriously, it’s amazing how long you were able to stay on a thread to tell us about murders and speeding and “closing the border”, and berate us for not having any better ideas, while completely ignoring the substance of the responses except to take offense at the insulting ones. I mean, it’s not really surprising to me after having read you in your various guises for several years, but it’s still impressive.
As for your remarks in 114, I’m still not seeing any basis at all for your assumption that “lawful contact” means a traffic stop or suspicion of a crime. There is actually one slight improvement in the House version of the bill which was signed, as opposed to the Senate version that I described above, in that it says “law enforcement agency” where the previous version just said “agency”, so at least they’re not dragging the water department into this, but there’s still absolutely nothing to restrict the meaning of “lawful contact.” I think you’re confusing that section with the later section that is specifically about traffic stops.
And if you are serious in asking whether I think that “the wording of the law creates new risk to the citizen that does not currently exist”, my answer is NO SHIT SHERLOCK, YES IT CERTAINLY DOES. Does that help you to get an idea of the trend of thought?
ChockFullO'Nuts
I want to address this particular point. First of all, WRT to the language you cite in the latter part of this blurb, that does not represent my view. I think what I have said is two things, namely (a) the Hardball sheriff and Sheriff Dupnik — not to mention our own crazy Joe Arpaio — have all stated that the law basically describes what they are already doing, and (b) I can’t find language in the law that directs or authorizes the “snatch em off the sidewalk for being Mexican” version of the putative scenario. That latter horror seems to be based on a worst case scenario outcome that would rest on the (poor) discretion of an officer on the scene … but, and here’s where my opinion really kicks in …. not much more or less than that would already be true under existing law and police procedure.
Is it possible, then, that the shock value here is the (new) juxaposition of the immigration issue and the development of probable cause issue, codified in a way that makes people fearful that the law will be abused and civil rights violated? In other words, it’s one thing for Joe Arpaio to tell his men to go out and do this in a closed door briefing, and another to write it into the law and put it into the minds of every cop in the state?
Just thinking out loud at this point.
ChockFullO'Nuts
My basis for it was the interview on Hardball with the deputy sheriff. His description of a likely actual scenario was essentially a description of an everyday routine stop such as a traffic stop, at least that was the way I took it.
Obviously there is something of a Catch 22 here. If a cop sees something that he takes to be a crime, or possible crime, he makes a contact. At that point, the door is open to development of probable cause in whatever direction he chooses to take. A lot rests on the discretion of the cop.
If I listen to the two cops I have heard talk about this law, I hear an undertone of “Hey, I already know how to do this, I don’t need this law to hold my hand.” We give great discretion to cops already. This law doesn’t seem to change that materially. Again just thinking out loud.
If you listen to Governor Brewer and people who support this thing, they seem to be saying, relax, we already give cops a lot of leeway, they are not going to abuse it, we already trust them not to abuse it.
If you listen to the posts here, the theme seems to be, we don’t trust the cops to do the right thing. Believe me when I tell you, I don’t generally have a history of trusting cops to always use the best judgment. But my issue here is not with cops, it’s with this particular law, and its real risks.
As for …
It’s a little hard to trust the sincerity of people who come out of the box calling you a racist, and human garbage living in a state full of human garbage, and maintain perspective under those conditions. I don’t really trust the motives, at this point, of people on either side of this issue.
Of all people, the infuriating Tom Tancredo said something really interesting on Hardball today (and again I was in the car so if I get any of this wrong, we can go the transcript later and straighten it out, so don’t jump on my case over it) …. He said, the Democrats want Hispanic votes and tilt their views in that direction, and the Republicans want the money and votes of the people who hire illegal workers, and tilt their views in that direction, and neither side really wants to properly fix this whole mess. And I can’t find that I disagree with him, or that I have any reason to trust the judgment of either side on these issues today.
A distrustful view that meshes with the views of the people who live out there in the border zone, and who think they are under seige and that nobody is going to really give a damn about them.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Yes, but I wasn’t looking for restriction. I was looking for expansion. The hyped rhetoric suggests that the law opens the door to rampant abuse of what can constitute that lawful contact.
You seem to be saying that the law just mentions the contact but does not limit it. I am paraphrasing the Hardball cop who seemed to be saying the law mentions the contact but does not expand it.
If the law neither limits, nor expands, the meaning of what constitutes the lawful contact, then …….. and I am asking you, particularly, and in good faith, not rhetorically …. where does the fear and outrage come from?
Not a rhetorical question, I am interested in your view on this. How much of this reaction, on either side (say, the Governor Brewer view versus the Keith Olberman view, just to make it colorful) would you say is just gut reaction, as opposed to diligent analysis?
I just heard Rachel Maddow, my favorite pundit, describe the thing as opening the door to “stopping people for looking like illegal immigrants.” Isn’t that already a risk all the time for all cops on the street? To paraphrase the hated George Will, if we don’t trust the cops to do this well, why do we trust them at all? Okay, that’s a stretched paraphrase, but it’s a doable stretch.
Jrod
You’re awefully hung up on the fact that there’s no specific wording like “officers shall harass the darkies.” You are aware that no Jim Crow laws actually stated that black people couldn’t vote, right?
You know, for someone who claims not to support the law, you’re spending a lot of time defending it.
I also find it funny that you only read 100 of that thread’s posts. You made about 100 yourself. Only now are you getting around top addressing any actual points made, but you lost no time respopnding to quixote’s obvious trolling. Guess you just wenjoy being offended.
KRK
You admit to dismissing what you heard Sheriff Dupnik say about the law giving LEOs power to stop anyone on suspicion of being in violation of immigration law and decide that he agrees with you. Pretty convenient interpretation of his position given that the man called the law “unnecessary,” “disgusting,” and “racist” and said he won’t enforce it in Pima County. I see also that yesterday’s law enforcement authority has been demoted to deputy.
This.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Well, the point is that there is no specific wording that creates the “Arrest people for being Mexican” risk that is being charged. After all, that is the basis of the outrage, is it not?
If there is no specific wording for this in the law, is it unreasonable to ask people to explain all that outrage? I’m going back over the conversation above and still concluding that the law mentions “lawful contact” but neither expands, nor limits, what “lawful contact” can be. Even Sheriff Dupnik began his remarks on Countdown today by saying that the law just calls for what he is already doing and has been doing. That’s the same thing the Hardball deputy said yesterday.
As for your Coyote mention, that person and I have been involved in what could be described as a feud for quite a long time. It really isn’t related to this topic. I wouldn’t draw any particular conclusions from it.
He stated his opinion that this is the case, but I don’t see that in the language of the law. And the support for that view here seems to be based on the fact that the law mentions “lawful contact:” but does not spell out limitations on what that means. Which is essentially the same situation that police officers are laboring under now, unless I am missing something.
I would say that I am questioning Dupnik’s conclusion, which around here is tantamount to rejecting it and asking him to die in a fire. I am a little puzzled by the leap between mentioning “lawful contact” and then finding authorization for “arresting people for looking Mexican.”
Isn’t the protection we take for granted really grounded in the judgment of cops on the street, most of the time? Suppose, for example, you passed a law that said “Police officers may not arrest people for being black.” How would you enforce that? Wouldn’t the officers just find some excuse for arresting people … and don’t some bad officers do that now? I wouldn’t carry an ACLU card if I didn’t think the answer was “yes” or at least potentially “yes.”
So, how does a law that mentions contact, but neither expands nor limits contact, create a new risk of unlawful contact? Maybe another way to ask this is, how would you rewrite the bill to abate the risk? Would you strike out the mention of contact? Suggest limits to the contact? List the exact types of allowable contact? How does law of this type generally deal with this issue? How is this law different from typical law in this regard? Where is the trigger that launches language like “disgusting law” and “Arizona is a state full of human garbage?”
I’m leaving out the jurisdiction (federal v state) issue for the moment. Even Turley today said that this challenge would be tricky. I am not sure I even want to open that worm can.
I don’t think that there was much substance, but a lot of rhetoric on both sides.
Jrod
There are a couple reasons the new law creates a new hazard. One, there are the ambiguities regarding lawful stops and suspicion of being illegal. Come on, everyone darker than Dubya knows how easily a cop can gin up a reason to stop a person. They smell marijuana, or the person seems erratic, or they looked like a wanted person, or 1000 other ways.
Two, and more vitally, police are made subject to lawsuits if they’re percieved as not arresting enough illegals. In other words, they can expect legal trouble if they aren’t satisfying your states obviously large racist contingient.
Now, pretend that you wanted to make racial profiling defacto legal. If you’re not a total buffoon, you know better than to explicitly state that in your legislation. Even the unreconstructed south knew better. You’d instead write something like, well, what passed in Arizona.
You keep saying that the law doesn’t change anything. If that’s true, then why was it passed? Is your legislature in the habit of passing redundent laws? Or was there maybe some goal in mind that wasn’t made explicit?
I’m sorry your state is full of reactionary loons, but if you don’t fit that shoe, you don’t have to wear it.
KRK
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
Your effort to appear the reasonable and disinterested seeker of knowledge and understanding is a day late (literally – that’s for you, Mr. Vice-President!) and weak sauce.
Problem #1. The post was about Arizona asking for federal money to enforce it’s new state law and John’s editorial response, i.e., “Fuck No.” You and LD freaked out for hours about West Virginia and border security and water and having lovely trips to the Grand Canyon with a Muslim friend and who knows what all before eventually each agreeing that, yeah, the feds shouldn’t provide funding to the state for that purpose. OMG the dilettante blogger from West Virginia was right.
Problem #2: You spent hours exhorting everyone to defer to the local knowledge of people in border states, particularly Arizona, about the law enforcement and public safety “shitstorm” created by our current federal immigration policy, which this law purportedly reacts to. You refer over and over to the interpretation of the law as stated by the sheriff (now deputy) on last night’s Hardball as authority for why the detractors are getting it wrong. But when you today finally get around to recognizing that the main law enforcement guy in the biggest county on the border says the law is crap, suddenly you’re parsing statutory language and demanding everyone else do the same? Sheriff Dupnik and Congressman Grijalva are elected Democrats in border jurisdictions whose interpretation of the law is that it’s really, really bad. Based on your own arguments, that’s a sound basis for anyone on this blog to feel the same.
Problem #3: You ask where the outrage comes from. Any “papers, please” law sounds bad on its face. On top of that there are Democrats in elective office on the border saying that the law is outrageous. “Disgusting” is Dupnik’s term. You have to ask him why he thinks that language is warranted. All I see is that this is a man with several decades of experience interpreting and implementing Arizona criminal statutes. What possible reason is there to assume he’s overreacting and being overly soft about civil liberties, especially with a the crime situation in his jurisdiction as you describe?
Problem #4: You and LD did nothing but nutpick and respond to a few isolated comments all night long, tearing off into side issues and objecting when others tried to point out what the post was actually about, with LD making lovely ad hominem swipes at some new or infrequent commenters whose remarks were awfully mild in BJ terms. Water was mentioned TWICE using run-of-the-mill Balloon Juice hyperbole in a 500+ comment thread, but the takeaway message for LD is the whole commenting community literally (Hi, Joe!) wants to murder a few million Phoenecians. Your last comment singles out Dupnik’s “disgusting” and Wile E. Quixote’s “human garbage” comments as stand-ins for the rhetoric of the whole thread as you shake your head and ask why such language is necessary. Dupnik isn’t even here, but he’s a guy who, according to you, should know what he’s talking about. As for WEQ, (1) s/he said it in comment #457 after lots of well meaning people had given up and/or gone to bed, (2) s/he is notoriously over-the-top and foul-mouthed, and (3) you acknowledge that there’s a side-feud there. Way to really encapsulate and capture the spirit of the thread.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@KRK:
Re Problem 1: I’ve already addressed that point. I’ll concede the impropriety of Brewer’s request for funds.
Re Problem 2: You are cherrypicking reactions to the law. Law enforcement in Arizona is not uniformly behind, or opposed to, the measure. Dupnik’s position is well argued, but he is not seen as the final authority on the matter around here, and I am not convinced that he should be. It’s an arguable point either way.
Re Problem 3: Again you cite Dupnik, but we have well explored the “papers please” aka “lawful contact” aspects of the law and I can’t find that the law is either as bad as the BJ opponents and Dupnik and others say it is, nor as harmless as proponents say it is. I’d probably be more inclined to side with opponents if their opposition was a little more reasonably advanced — the law is vague and potentially open to abusive interpretation, rather than the law is the product of Satan and clearly directs cops to arrest people for being Mexican. The latter type of rhetoric is not convincing to me, especially since the law’s text doesn’t seem to support that view. This is not a defense of the law, it’s a rejection of the over-the-top rhetoric against it.
Re Problem 4: LD and I don’t see the water thing the same way. I saw the water wisecrack as snark, and she took it more literally, and personally. I don’t think that anyone actually wants to cause Arizonans to die of thirst, but I also don’t think it would have hurt anyone to mention that to her during that exchange. I didn’t really scan the exchange that closely so I don’t know who said exactly what to whom. I think she is very capable of working it out with the other parties and will resolve it in her own way in time. I have taken a whole different approach to the topic and I have my hands full with that. As for coyote and his rhetoric, he and Ijust piss each other off, as near as I can tell, and I have to admit that it’s unseemly. That’s all I can say about it. I don’t really enjoy that kind of off the chart flaming any more, I’m getting too old for it.
Last but not least, I am not sure that I want to engage on the subject “the spirit of the thread.” The thread was a nasty attack on a whole state full of people most of whom have no bad intent or evil agenda, and don’t deserve the kind of crap being dished out gratuitously in response to something a few politicians cooked up down at the statehouse. We have to live with this shitty state government, and we Dems who live here have fought long and hard against it. And will continue to do so.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Actually, WRT to the enforcement on the ground, Sheriff Dupnik, everybody’s favorite spokesman against the bill, has said that repeatedly, and I tend to agree with him. I also agree with both cops I heard in the last couple days that good police officers don’t need this law to tell them how to handle these situations, and bad officers won’t be made into good ones by this poorly written law. No disagreement from me on those points whatever.
ChockFullO'Nuts
By the way, KRK, if you want to “appear” to be a reasonable arbiter of what is going on here, you might spend less time lecturing me on the details of how I go about my business here and address the questions I raised and the concerns I have expressed. Your focus on my style and choice of words and timing tells me that you are more interested in winning points against me than you are in contributing anything toward doing something better with this issue. If I am wrong, feel free to demonstrate that.
And your insistence on the idea that Sheriff Dupnik be seen as some great authority on this matter and be placed on some kind of pedestal with regard to his opinions on this are not very persuasive to me. I have 60 years’ experience with Arizona law enforcement officials, to an extent that would probably surprise you, and my gut reaction to Dupnik is that he is politicking this thing right now. Maybe I’m wrong but I know a little about Arizona politicians and their bullshit, I’ve pretty much heard it all.
Dupnik is an elected official in a county with 34 percent Hispanic population, and a blue county in a red state.
Little Dreamer
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
I’m sorry, the idea that withholding water from 3 million Phoenix residents (some of whom are hispanic Democrats, some of whom are non-hispanic Democrats, some of whom are not in any way shape or form even involved in politics at all, is CRUDE and does not fall under the term “snark” to me.
Someone 60 years ago decided to single out an entire demographic of people and make them into an example and we refer to him as a monster.
No one said fucking word about that remark besides me, I don’t understand a single one of the people who posts here besides you TZ. I think it unfortunate that you can call it snark, but so be it. I want nothing to do with these pigs anymore.
ChockFullO'Nuts
@ChockFullO’Nuts:
One more thing for you KRK, and others:
I am of the opinion that the hysterical overreaction to the SB1070 bill is not particularly helpful to the Hispanic community that some of you want to appear so concerned about … on two fronts.
First, any boycott of Arizona is first, foremost, and hardest, hurt those very citizens that you think you are helping. Service workers, minorities, minimum wage earners …. will be the first to feel the pain of any successful economic sanctions against this state. That by itself should be enough reason to put down the pitchforks and seek to find constructive responses to this situation.
Second, the hyped reaction to the law is quite literally scaring the hell out of people here. Arizona is reported to have 400-500k illegal aliens on board. I don’t think it serves them well to act as though this new law is going to make them vulnerable to deportation every time they go to the grocery store. That isn’t likely to happen, and hyping the concern for political reasons — and I take it to be all for political reasons — just adds to their anxiety. I think it’s grossly dishonest to do that, especially in view of the fact that I can’t find any law enforcement people here who think that these terrible results are actually going to happen. The law may suck …. our discussion certainly is not refuting that assertion …. but the hyped fear thing is not necessary. Democrats might try talking to these people as if we can, and will, work in their interests and look out for them, rather than run around yelling scary slogans and beating garbage can lids together.
Jrod
@Little Dreamer:
Oh wow. You’re serious? I just… wow. Really.
You know, you and TZ, being the old-school BJ royalty that you are, did your part in making this blog a place for vicious and unrelenting snark. But now that you’re on the wrong side of the issue, now that the same snark, which had you laughing your ass off when it was aimed where you like, is directed toward you, it’s suddenly the same as fucking HITLER?!?!?
You know nobody here would seriously shut off Arizona’s water supply, whereas HITLER ACTUALLY MURDERED MILLIONS YOU GODDAM IDIOT.
Despicable.
Little Dreamer
@Jrod:
And if 3 million people have “the tap” shut off to Phoenix and have no water, they would be murdered too you fucking pig!
But, okay, you can agree with that, and they’re not even all Republicans.
ChockFullO'Nuts
You must be kidding. First of all, I am not anything like royalty. I am pretty sure I must be the least popular poster ever around here. I have been in more flame wars than FDNY. I don’t come here to make friends, influence people, do group therapy. I’ve been called racist, anti-semitic, human garbage, and a monster, most of that in the last 36 hours. I can dish it out and I can take it. All in a day’s work around here. And anybody who is sincerely interested in elevating the level of conversation here can start by elevating it themselves. Maybe somebody will follow your lead, and maybe not. And if you want my help with that, the first thing you have to do is ask for it, nicely.
Second, I am not taking any credit for turning this place into a snarkpit. It was that way when I got here and will be when I leave. I can get down in the mud with the best of them, but I didn’t invent the mud puddle, amigo. As I have said for five years, I have never used language here that John Cole didn’t use first. And on the day that he tells me to stop using it and tells me which words are forbidden, I will stop using them. I don’t own the blog, he does.
Third, don’t include me in your back and forth with LD. I had no part in the water dispute and there is nothing I can add or subtract from it that would help LD or anyone else. Not my dogfight. I have already stated my position on it at post 125, item 4. That’s it, that’s all I have to say on the matter.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Oh, missed that one. I am definitely not on the wrong side of this issue, pal. You can agree or disagree, I could care less.
First of all, this is an Arizona issue, and scarcely another poster here has any clue what goes on and what politics is about in this state. Eastern liberal pundits generally are just exactly the shits that righties say they are, not necessarily for the right reasons, but shits they are, and they know nothing of Arizona and its issues and concerns. News flash, you are not going to learn a lot about Arizona by listening to people on cable television and reading national blogs. You need to come down here and walk around with the gila monsters and sit on a cactus or two and catch a bus on a July afternoon when it is 118 degrees in the shade and get down with the people, to understand this state.
Arizona is not full of human garbage, it is full of pretty interesting and decent people and they don’t necessarily need Keith Olberman to tell them how to be. If you want to really understand this place, read Sandra Day O’Connor’s book and get back to me.
Jrod
@Little Dreamer: Yes, because I don’t think that who the fuck ever who said to shut off the tap can do it, or even would do it if they could, I’m actually cool with doing it.
Good fucking Christ, is it not possible for a person to disagree with you in even the slightest without becoming Hitler? Do you honestly believe that because I think you’re being a jackass here that I’d murder millions by thirst? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Oh! Oh shit, I’m getting trolled, right? Please say I’m being trolled, and you’re not really this callow.
And true, Nuts, its LD who’s been going on about how she deserves better treatment for being around for years. I’ll give you credit for not whining like a newborn babe over this.
ChockFullO'Nuts
This is the book I am referring to in my previous post.
Jrod
@ChockFullO’Nuts: I really don’t give a fuck how nice Arizonans are, that doesn’t excuse this stupid and vile law. Nevertheless, by wrong side I meant on the wrong side of the BJ commentors, not reality. I have no interest in arguing that with you any more, as reality will show us very, very soon who was right. It’s not going to turn my state upside-down. Hopefully, for you and your friend’s sakes, your confidence in the same is as warranted.
And for fuck’s sake, I never said Arizona was human garbage. Do I have to sign a waiver disagreeing with every stupid and obnoxious thing posted on these comments? Because that’d be a full time job.
Of course, just as you say this idiotic law is to be expected because of political realities, some hatred from the left should be expected for Arizona after the gigantic pile of horseshit your legislature passed last week. I mean, if that’s a valid excuse for passing terrible legislation that doesn’t solve the problem it purports to solve, it’s surely a good excuse for saying mean things.
ChockFullO'Nuts
Fair enough.
Well, it was passed by Republicans. The idea that they might not do government all that well is well established. This is an opportunity, really a mandate, for Dems to step up and do something really useful. Bashing Arizona and hyping fears over the law are not really useful AFAIC. Doing something that actually helps the people along the border and actually helps illegals become legal is where I want to start. If we can agree on something like that, we’re good to go.
ChockFullO'Nuts
My hunch is that the law will fail some legal test or another.
But the real action is going to be in the political arena. Arizona is a lost cause right now, unless we can really mobilize the Hispanic vote. But on a national level, immigration looms as a great opportunity, or time bomb, depending on how we handle it, I think.
Little Dreamer
@Jrod:
You’re actually cool with doing it. You’re actually cool with allowing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people (of all races, of all stripes of political ideology) to have absolutely no water to drink and have their bodies shut down and die because of a law that was passed, which, btw, the law doesn’t say that all citizens must show identity upon suspicion of being an illegal alien without first being involved in another crime, only the rhetoric regarding the law says that – but, you go ahead and kill a bunch of people for a law that doesn’t even read the way you think it does.
So, I see you have intent, how many people HAVE you already killed in your lifetime, Jrod? Was it in the line of duty? Perhaps you’d like to confess to your dastardly deeds now. You have motive, and it doesn’t seem like it takes much to set you off. I wouldn’t be surprised if you already have a few murders under your belt.
By the way, your statement that I expect special treatment because I’ve been here for five years? Wrong! I was stating that a different type of ideology has taken over here and it’s not democratic in nature at all. It’s far more violent and accepting of cruelty. It’s also a much louder echo chamber for information that isn’t even proven correct.
Do I like the bill? No, I don’t, but it isn’t a “papers please” law by any means. That Joe Arpaio would try to use it as such, I’m in agreement that he would, but that isn’t what the law itself states. If anything, this may finally be a way to get him into a courtroom in the defendant’s chair where he belongs.
That post is the last I will make to you. I don’t care what you come back with, you’re a reprobate, and I want nothing further to do with you. If you want to account for the unsolved murders in your past, I’ll be sure to call the FBI.
Just one last thought: Bush allowed NOLA to drown because he ignored the situation, he didn’t do it on purpose. He was an idiot in the way he handled the situation, but he didn’t have the intent. You have the intent (luckily, I think you don’t have the means). You are more cruel than Bush.
twiffer
@ChockFullO’Nuts: part of the problem is that the federal law sucks ass too and should be repealed as well. the AZ law is saying that, essentially, every state employee (not just cops) needs to enforce federal law to the fullest extant allowable by said law. well, the law they are referring to is awful. consider this:
mind you too, this extends to the entire US border. that means any coast. under this law, an ICE agent can stop anyone within 25 miles of any border and ask for papers. without a warrant. that is wrong. the AZ law can certainly be interpreted as extending that same power to local and state law enforcement, and as giving any AZ resident the right to sue if the cops don’t do this.
it’s wrong. the AZ law is just more visable right now, but both laws are wrong. the 4th ammendment grants itself as a right to “the people” not to “the citizens”. one might argue “the people” should be interpreted to mean only citizens, but i believe precedent is against that. i certainly wouldn’t, as it would imply that tourists, anyone with a work visa, students, etc. are not protected from any unreasonable searches.
also, if people are worried about drug activity on the border, the solution is not immigration policy. it is to finally admit that drug prohibition policies have had the same effect as alcohol prohibition did: an increase in organized crime, violent crime and property crime and no palpable effect on drug use or abuse.
Jrod
@Little Dreamer: You really are a sick piece of shit. Trolling or not.
Little Dreamer
@Jrod:
I’m not the one who wants to kill an entire city of people.
I want to see no deaths occur.
I’m the POS, eh? I think not!
I’m closing out this thread now, I’ve said what I need to say.
Jrod
I still hope this is just some poorly concieved trolling, because if not you truly are deranged. I never said anything about Phoenix’s water and you fucking know it.
Seriously, just because a person thinks you’re an idiot, that doesn’t make that person Hitler.
I look forward to you quoting the bit where I said I wanted to murder everyone in Phoenix. I realize you said you were quitting the thread, but at this point I assume that’s just your sig.