posted May 28, 2010 08:21 AM         

With one lawmaker citing President Lincoln's respect for the rule of law, the Massachusetts Senate passed a far-reaching crackdown this afternoon on illegal immigrants and those who would hire them, going further, senators said, than any immigration bill proposed over the past five years....
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/mass_senate_pas.html

posted May 29, 2010 12:10 PM         

California also has a law dealing with illegal aliens AND that law is more stringent than the Arizona law which Californians...including some California cities are protesting...and over which they are threatening to boycott Arizona.

Is there no limit to leftist hypocrisy. Nope!

California has an immigration law too
Michael Harlin
May 29, 2010

The media, local California governments and liberal groups are absolutely a hoot. Their ignorance is breath taking.

Arizona's new immigration law is said to be racist according to reports in the media from a variety of liberal groups; it's not if you actually read it. Local California cities want to boycott Arizona which is questionable under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, but it is also incredible hypocrisy.

For my non-lawyer friends, you probably didn't know that California also has a law pertaining to illegal aliens. Yep. It's been on the books since 1994! Good ole Prop 187. The law provides that law enforcement shall [note -- not "may"] cooperate with US Immigration and Naturalization Service, [now known as ICE], regarding any person suspected of being in the US illegally to include verifying that person's status, advise the person that they must seek legal status to reside in the US, notify the federal government of that person's illegal status and prohibits local governments from not enforcing this law. Most notable is the absence of any reference in the statute to the ability of law enforcement to use race as a basis for inquiry of the person's status! Only an arrest is required to trigger the inquiry into that person's status.

In other words, California's law is racist while Arizona's is not, to use liberal logic, because race may not be used to trigger the inquiry into status in Arizona after an arrest. In California, no problem! Racial profile all you want!

But it gets better!

The Democratic party controlled Assembly and Senate in California could amend this statute to prohibit the use of race as a basis to determine immigration status of the arrestee by law enforcement in California. They haven't in 16 years! And even though they have the votes to over-ride a govenor's veto! [Not that Arnold would veto it you understand].

So the question is my friends, who is the pot and who is the kettle? I simply love this stuff!

"Show me your papers!!!"

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/california_has_an_immigration.html

posted May 29, 2010 04:05 PM         

your american thinker does not appear to be able to read with comprehension. it says here that the statute does NOT confer the ability to use race as a basis, which is the OPPOSITE of his interpretation.

an ARREST is a basis for checking a person's legal status as citizen here. i have seen people caught in this net and it is not a pretty picture when someone is taken by the INS ON SUSPICION of being illegal and kept in prison until they can prove otherwise, a difficult proposition and a generally guaranteed period of YEARS in prison - guilty until proven innocent.

the fact that most arrests are of coloured races does make this racist in FACT but not in LAW. it is not a pretty situation for a lot of people whose situation is not completely cut and dried. my daughter and i spent 18 months working to get someone out of custody because though his naturalized father brought him here from haiti at 10 years of age he had not done the necessary paperwork on turning 18 and was in a grey area as far as citizenship papers went.

this kid was, by the way, finally released after spending over 2 years in INS custody being shipped from one nasty prison to another, far from family and friends: the lawyer spent countless hours in court on his case and finally the INS decided his case was not decisive enough to keep him in. the reason for this amnesty (several hundred others were released at the same time) was the overcrowding of california's penal system.

posted May 29, 2010 07:09 PM         

That also means they can question anyone about their immigration status once they have them stopped for a legitimate reason. They do not need to form an opinion about immigration status based on the absence of a drivers license, absence of a green card or absence of a passport before they can question immigration status.

That said, I would have worded that section of the article more clearly.

So, as I said, the California statute is more stringent than the Arizona statute because in Arizona...a reasonable suspicion is necessary to question about immigration status...but not in California.

Perhaps we should boycott California.

posted May 30, 2010 07:55 AM         

Watching TV this week, at first I thought Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul had flown a commercial jet into the World Trade Center. But then it turned out that he had only said there ought to be discussion about whether federal civil rights laws should be applied to private businesses.

This allowed the mainstream media to accuse Paul of being a racist. Twisting a conservative's words in order to accuse him of racism was evidently more urgent news than the fact that the attorney general of the United States admitted last week -- under oath in a congressional hearing -- that he had not read the 10-page Arizona law on illegal immigration, the very law he was noisily threatening to overturn.

And really, how could the U.S. attorney general have time to read a 10-page law when he's busy doing all the Sunday morning TV shows condemning it?

Eric Holder's astonishing admission was completely ignored by ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, Time or Newsweek, according to Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.

I just want to say: I think it's fantastic that the Democrats have finally come out against race discrimination. Any day now, maybe they'll come out for fighting the Cold War. Perhaps 100 years from now, they'll be ready to fight the war on terrorism or champion the rights of the unborn.

It would be a big help, though, if Democrats could support good causes when it mattered.

But as long as the media are so fascinated with the question of why anyone would want to "discuss" certain aspects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, maybe they should ask Al Gore why his father was one of the leading opponents of the bill.

Or they could ask Bill Clinton, whose mentor, Sen. William Fulbright, actively supported segregation and also voted against the bill. Or they could talk to the only current member of the Senate to vote against it, Democrat Bob Byrd.

As with the 1957 and 1960 civil rights acts, it was Republicans who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act by huge majorities. A distinctly smaller majority of Democrats voted for it.

In the Senate, for example, 82 percent of Republicans voted for the act, compared with only 66 percent of Democrats. In the House, 80 percent of Republicans supported the law, compared with only 63 percent of Democrats.

With even all Democrats coming aboard on opposition to race discrimination (and it only took them 45 years!) I think we can stipulate that everyone in America is opposed to discrimination against blacks.

Now let's talk about the "civil rights" lawsuits that are actually brought in modern America. Today's "civil rights" lawsuits have nothing to do with black Americans. Worse, blacks are used as props to benefit the Democrats' favored constituencies: feminists and trial lawyers.

Democratic political consultant Bob Shrum pioneered the technique, running ads against Republican Ellen Sauerbrey in the 1998 Maryland gubernatorial race, accusing her of having "a civil rights record to be ashamed of." To really drive the point home, Shrum's ads showed sad-looking black people in front of a mural of Africa.

Of course, if I were forced to appear in political ads for Bob Shrum, I'd be sad, too.

But the only "civil rights" bill that Sauerbrey opposed had nothing to do with blacks. It was a sexual harassment bill that was so silly that Democrats in the Maryland legislature helped kill it.

Similarly, the vast bulk of "civil rights" lawsuits today have nothing to do with race. Although plaintiffs will jam every possible allegation of discrimination in their complaints, in 2009, according to the website of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, 65 percent of all civil rights claims brought had absolutely nothing to do with race discrimination.

These days, a typical federal "civil rights" case is the one brought this year by the Game Fowl Breeders Association in New Mexico claiming their "civil rights" have been violated by a state law banning cockfighting.

Another modern "civil rights" lawsuit charged that a McDonald's restaurant violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by hanging a bathroom mirror two inches too high for people in wheelchairs. The error was made when employees replaced the original mirror, which had been destroyed by vandals, with a shorter one.

The restaurant owner, Ron Piazza, corrected the problem as soon as it was brought to his attention, but he got sued anyway. Curiously, the plaintiffs had retained their McDonalds' receipts, allowing them to claim damages for 27 separate visits to the restaurant.

And of course there are all the lesbians shutting down high school proms across the country because they can't take their girlfriends to the dance as the Founding Fathers intended.

This year's graduating class at Itawamba Agricultural High School in rural Mississippi will never have a school senior prom because the ACLU brought a lawsuit on behalf of Constance McMillen demanding that she be allowed to bring her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

With cockfighting bans and heterosexual proms, Martin Luther King's work remains unfinished!

Half a century ago, Democrats beat up the Freedom Riders. Today the Democrats insult the Freedom Riders by comparing them to irritating lesbians, lawsuit-happy disabled persons and cockfighters.

posted May 30, 2010 12:30 PM         

your own reference says that "only an ARREST is required" not that any person who waves in the street or is stopped for a traffic ticket can be scrutinized. to be honest, when i see a mexican standing by the road in a certain neighbourhood, with other mexicans none of whom i know from adam, and he waves at me like i was his long lost best friend, i suspect he is an immigrant. whether legal or illegal, i wouldn't know since i don't hire strange men and have no cause to hire labourers in the first place.

however using the GESTURE as an indication of illegal status' probability means ANYONE who waves on the street can be questioned. unless they have altered that part of the arizona law.

i am not boycotting arizona though i really have no desire to go there at this point in time. i suspect things there will get much worse before they get better, with banditos shooting before they can be questioned (not that they don't already do that as at least one officer discovered) and brown people being set on the defensive whenever whites are around...

posted May 30, 2010 12:42 PM         

The "Open Borders" George Soros crowd and their attempt to dissolve borders and herd humanity into one big Marxist Socialist gulag not-withstanding, it's sheer utter nonsense to attempt to connect the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens to a "human right".

posted May 30, 2010 01:06 PM         

the fact that it is harder to arrive by boat or plane without talking to an immigration official does not mean people don't get through from other countries as well.

but hypocrisy is everywhere these days. and the new arizona law seems a little superfluous in the light of the already existing framework.

oh and the indian nations are considering demanding id of any non-native entering THEIR territory. i just don't see the point of MORE divisiveness which sets up more divisiveness ad infinitum.

do you think the southern border should be sealed off with a berlin-style wall and a corridor created like the one that used to lead through eastern germany to that island city?

shall we imitate our soviet brethren and create that kind of security? i went through the corridor and it was pretty scary. but STILL people got through.

posted May 30, 2010 03:15 PM         

Immigration is not unsolvable...illegal or otherwise. There would be a few illegals getting in under most any conditions but the invasion could be, should be and must be stopped.

Congress has already passed legislation authorizing a fence across the Southern border....and they authorized money to build it. So far, the executive branch under both Bush and O'Bomber have dragged their feet in getting it built.

Arizona had no framework to deal with illegal aliens. There is a sheriff in Arizona who is and has been dealing with those found in his county and just as you would expect...the feds are giving him grief.

Latinos who are in the country legally have nothing to fear from laws and enforcement of laws pertaining to illegal immigration.

There are Latino groups like La Raza...The Race, a racist organization which is in favor of handing the American Southwest back to Mexico. La Raza and others are behind most of the protests...along with some unions like SEIU.

posted June 02, 2010 10:17 AM         

America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill.

The political fallout from the oil spill will, indeed, spill across party and ideological lines. The environmentalists of America cannot take heart from a president so obviously ignorant about how to protect our shores and so obstinately arrogant that he refuses to inform himself and take any responsibility.

All of this explains why the oil spill is seeping into his ratings among Democrats, dragging him down to levels we have not seen since Bush during the pit of the Iraq war. Conservatives may dislike Obama because he is a leftist. But liberals are coming to dislike him because he is not a competent progressive.

Meanwhile, the nation watches nervously as the same policies Obama has brought to our nation are failing badly and publicly in Europe. When Moody’s announces that it is considering downgrading bonds issued by the government of the United States of America, we find ourselves, suddenly, in deep trouble. We have had deficits before. But never have they so freaked investors that a ratings agency considered lowering its opinion of our solvency. Not since Alexander Hamilton assumed the states’ Revolutionary War debt has America’s willingness and ability to meet its financial obligations been as seriously questioned.

And the truth begins to dawn on all of us: Obama has no more idea how to work his way out of the economic mess into which his policies have plunged us than he does about how to clean up the oil spill that is destroying our southern coastline.

Both the financial crisis and the oil come ever closer to our shores — one from the east and the other from the south — and, between them, they loom as a testament to the incompetence of our government and of its president.

And, oddly, to his passivity as well. After pursuing a remarkably activist, if misguided and foolhardy, agenda, Obama seems not to know what to do and finds himself consigned to the roles of observer and critic.

America is getting the point that its president doesn’t have a clue.

He doesn’t know how to stop the oil from spilling. He is bereft of ideas about how to create jobs in the aftermath of the recession. He has no idea how to keep the European financial crisis contained. He has no program for repaying the massive debt hole into which he has dug our nation without tax increases he must know will only deepen the pit.

Some presidents have failed because of their stubbornness (Johnson and Bush-43). Others because of their character flaws (Clinton and Nixon). Still others because of their insensitivity to domestic problems (Bush-41). But now we have a president who is failing because he is incompetent. It is Jimmy Carter all over again.

posted August 19, 2010 10:52 AM         

In this story, leftists feign concern for Republicans. They say the new Arizona law is causing a rush of Latino voters to demoscat party headquarters to change voter registrations to demoscat.

Not so fast leftist liars.

August 18, 2010
Some deluge
Clarice Feldman

Arizona's Espresso Pundit makes fun of the Arizona Republic's predictions about the political affect of the state's immigration law:

I especially enjoyed the commentary by Democrats who "worried" that SB 1070 was going to lead to the demise of the Republican Party. This "concern" was coupled with the "fact" that people were flocking to Democratic Party headquarters in order to register to vote. Here's a good example of the coverage.

I love the headline. "SB 1070 Backlash spurs Hispanics to Join Democrats."

Here's the lede.

"In the seven weeks since Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona's tough new immigration law, there has been a sharp increase in the number of Latinos registering to vote as Democrats, party officials say, jumping from about 100 a week before to 500 now."

Now that we've had some time to tabulate the numbers, how is that registration drive going? Here are the latest statistics.

The number of registered voters in Arizona has increased 1 percent over the last three months. Statewide figures showed Democratic registration decreased by 530 voters. Registration for Independents rose by more than 25,000 voters and increased by more than 10,000 voters for Republicans.

Wow, down 530. That's really embarrassing...and to think, the registration forms are written in Spanish and everything...

I don't know who should be more embarrassed, the Democratic Activists who thought their SB 1070 demagoguery would lead to increased voter participation...or the naive journalists who cheered them on.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/some_deluge.html