Arizona Sheriffs: "Don't Sue Us, Help Us 'Plug the Hole' in the Border"

Good points in Don't Sue Us, Help Us 'Plug the Hole' in the Border:

But instead of trying to seal the border, the federal government is going after its own people to prevent us from doing our job. Even more outrageous is the American Civil Liberties Union stepping into the fray and naming individual sheriffs in its suit.

Moratoriums on offshore drilling? Sure, says the administration. Moratoriums on illegal immigration? Not even considered.

Well, I guess it depends on what view you hold of where the real danger to our country comes from. It seems the current administration's view is: "Oil company= 'criminal' activity. Illegal alien= 'future voter'..."

The ACLU is simply beyond the pale.

Arizona: Court Punts Decision Upstairs

Good analysis of the recent federal court decision concerning the Arizona immigration law by Andy McCarthy at Arizona Immigration Decision:

In essence, Judge Susan Bolton bought the Justice Department’s preemption argument — i.e., the claim that the federal government has broad and exclusive authority to regulate immigration, and therefore that any state measure that is inconsistent with federal law is invalid. The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. The judge, however, twisted to concept of federal law into federal enforcement practices (or, as it happens, lack thereof). In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can’t do it either because doing so would transgress the federal policy of non-enforcement … which is nuts.

The judge also employs a cute bit of sleight-of-hand. She repeatedly invokes a 1941 case, Hines v. Davidowitz, in which the Supreme Court struck down a state alien-registration statute. In Hines, the high court reasoned that the federal government had traditionally followed a policy of not treating aliens as “a thing apart,” and that Congress had therefore “manifested a purpose … to protect the liberties of law-abiding aliens through one uniform national system” that would not unduly subject them to “inquisitorial practices and police surveillance.” But the Arizona law is not directed at law-abiding aliens in order to identify them as foreigners and subject them, on that basis, to police attention. It is directed at arrested aliens who are in custody because they have violated the law. And it is not requiring them to register with the state; it is requiring proof that they have properly registered with the federal government — something a sensible federal government would want to encourage.

You know the judge knows that no matter how she decided, it was going up on appeal - and now it goes up with illegal aliens getting protection - until either the Supremes rule or the next amnesty act passes.

No word on how long legal residents have to suffer and pay for this illegal activity.

Monday Reading

Is the idea that North Korea might be a threat slowly dawning on you? You should be reading One Free Korea regularly. Parts 1, 2 and 3 of Joshua Stanton's four part series on "What to do about North Korea" are posted: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. UPDATE: Part 4.

Socialist political hackdom meets illegal immigration (from Investors Business Daily):

 I told you that it would be fun seeing the federal government trying to take on a state for attempting to enforce existing federal law that the feds have decided not to enforce. For a link to the Arizona law (read it before President Obama and Attorney General Holder do!) go here and for comments by the law professor who helped craft the bill, go here. Of course, it you were really thoughtful, you might contemplate what would happen to Mexico's ruling oligarchy if the U.S. border was controlled and all those unhappy souls who vote with their feet were sitting at home wondering why such a potentially wealthy country isn't doing better.

Defending Arizona

A defense of the Arizona immigration law by the law professor

who helped draft the law:

SB 1070 — that prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens and makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration crimes. It also requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government.

Predictably, groups that favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, insist the law is unconstitutional. Less predictably, President Obama declared it “misguided” and said the Justice Department would take a look.

Presumably, the government lawyers who do so will actually read the law, something its critics don’t seem to have done.

 Once again, Mr. Obama seems fuzzy on the law and whether or not a state has the right to act in the absence of federal action.

I'm beginning to wonder what sort of "Constitutional law professor" Mr. Obama was.

After a couple of these hip shot judgments of his, I think it might be he was of the "shoot, shoot, aim" school. He sure is judgmental about some things about which he has limited knowledge.

Of course, if you think it's a "living constitution" perhaps you don't have to worry about what it actually says. But then again, if it's a living document, perhaps the time has come to interpret it in light of the harm illegal immigration is doing to this country...

UPDATE:

UPDATE: Another defense (and much more) here:

So when the president hastily pronounced Arizona’s new immigration bill “misguided” and “irresponsible,” Arizona residents — whom the federal government has abandoned to the siege of Mexican warlords, narco-peddlers, and squatters — may be forgiven for snickering. Come to think of it, snickering has become the default reaction to pronouncements on the law by our ex-law-prof-in-chief , particularly those prefaced by his most grating verbal tic, “Let me be clear . . . .” 

Why “misguided” and “irresponsible”? The president elaborated that the Arizona law “threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” To be sure,  Obama has notions of fairness, but they are his own, marinated in doctrinaire leftism. As for the American ideal that he ceaselessly invokes but clearly doesn’t get, our Constitution’s framers thought fundamental fairness would be fatally undermined by two things: the inability of the governed to consent to legal arrangements because it had become impossible to know what the law is, and the failure of central government to tend to its first responsibility: the nation’s security.

***

Our elected officials and judicial officers don’t rule us. They are there to govern, to implement our will. When they resort to impenetrable legislative monstrosities to implement their own will without our consent — indeed, over our objection — that is not governing. It is dictating.

Maybe that’s the Obama administration’s problem with Arizona’s new law: It is too short (16 pages), too clear, and too reflective of the popular will. Unlike the social scientists in Nancy Pelosi’s federal laboratory, state lawmakers didn’t need to pass the law first in order to find out what was in it. Essentially, it criminalizes (as a state misdemeanor) something that is already illegal (namely, being present in the United States in violation of federal law), and it directs law-enforcement officers to, yes, enforce the law. Democrats and their media echo-chamber regard this as radical; for most of us, it is what’s known as common sense.

And here’s another commonsense proposition: A government that abdicates our national defense against outside forces is no longer a government worth having. 

***

Arizona is a sovereign state. Its citizens have a natural right to defend themselves, particularly when the federal government surrenders. The state’s new law does precisely that, in a measured way that comes nowhere close to invoking the necessary, draconian powers Leviathan has but refuses to use.

Which is kinda what I was saying here.

Arizona: The Actual Statute

Don't embarrass yourself, read the real Arizona Immigration Statute here.

Funny, they left out the part about "racial profiling" that I've heard about all day on the radio from callers in New York, North Carolina and people in Chicago.