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It's funny how Republicans keep talking amongst themselves about how they can get back ahead of Democrats -- usually by reverting to tactics (like the "Contract On For America") that worked twenty years ago but have nothing to do with the shape of America going forward.

Instead, they clutch vigorously to their old standbys even as America changes before them. The classic case of this is the GOP's ongoing affair with immigration-bashing nativists, even as the country demographically before their eyes.

Similarly, they insist on clinging to outdated policies like the "War on Drugs" and the hardline stance that we should basically criminalize drug users and keep relatively harmless drugs like marijuana illegal, even for proven medical use.

But the times, they are a-changin':

A poll by Zogby International released today found that 41% of Americans agree that “the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: it should regulate it, control it, tax it and only make it illegal for children.” This represents a striking increase from previous nationwide polls on making marijuana legal.

The Obama administration, at least, is edging slowly in the direction of sanity,having announced last month that it would cease prosecuting people for possession in states that allow medical marijuana.

This policy has the Republicans all a-dither, as you can see in the video above of the hysterical grilling Sen. Tom Coburn gave Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month about the issue.

Similarly, Republicans on the local level are working quietly to undermine this policy shift. In Washington state, as Lee Rosenberg recently reported for HorsesAss, the state's GOP attorney general, Rob McKenna, has been quietly attacking our medical-marijuana law on his own:

Here in Washington, our state law enforcement officials should be following the voter initiative passed in 1998 (and the follow-up legislation from 2007), not the Federal law. Unfortunately, our Attorney General doesn’t seem to agree. Rob McKenna’s office has been trying to undermine Washington State’s medical marijuana law, and thanks to a Public Disclosure Request, we’re finally able to shine some light on what they’ve been doing.

After the PDR was filed, nearly 800 pages of emails and other documents from the Department of Corrections were recently released to the Cannabis Defense Coalition. They’re broken up into eight 100-page PDF files. The documents are not in any order, so I created a chronological index for easy searching of specific events.

The reason that so much attention is focused on the DOC is because a number of qualified medical marijuana patients have been raided by police and arrested (the medical marijuana law does not provide an affirmative defense from arrest), pressured into accepting plea deals that would keep them out of a jail cell but still on probation, and then put under the supervision of the Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections would then claim the authority to deny those individuals the ability to use medical marijuana through internal rules that they’d made up after consulting with the AG’s office. They would then easily enforce those rules by administering drug tests. In the end, you had individuals who’d been authorized by their doctors to use medical marijuana having law enforcement interfere with that decision and either force them to stop using that medicine or to use a less effective alternative like Marinol.

This end-around of the voter-approved medical marijuana law worked on a number of medical marijuana patients. Pamela Olson was one victim before her husband Bruce fought his own case in Kitsap County court and won (sadly, they lost their home in the process). It’s not clear, even with the released documents, exactly how many people were affected by this (names are redacted throughout), but lawyers who defend authorized patients have been dealing with cases across the state for several years now and are still hoping to bring some kind of legal action against the Attorney General, the DOC, or both.

Go read the whole piece, which is an excellent example of citizen journalism at its finest. (None of the local media, incidentally, have picked up on the story.)

It's truly maddening that the state's chief law-enforcement officer has been working so hard to undermine a law duly passed (and reinforced) by the citizens of the state. But then, it seems to be part of the Republican condition these days: clinging to outdated ideas because doing so just seems conservative, you betcha.

Incidentally, Rosenberg also posted this graphic recently underscoring just what a waste of our national resources our pig-headed pot laws really are:

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The New Haven Independent has a complete report on the ugliness that emerged from last weekend's march by an immigrant-rights group marching in the suburb of East Haven, Conn.:

The clash happened during an event organized Saturday by New Haven immigrant advocacy organization Unidad Latina En Accion. More than 100 people marched through the streets of East Haven on Saturday, protesting alleged racial profiling on the part of East Haven police. They met groups of counter-protesters along the way, including a visiting band of white supremacists.

... Two arrests were made following a brief fistfight between a female marcher, Jessica Maldonado of East Haven, and Chelsea Fiorentino, an 18 year-old New Haven woman who was standing with a counter protest made up of members of two white pride organizations. Maldonado’s father, Dimas Maldonado, said that his family has suffered from police harassment. (Click on the play arrow to watch the fight and arrests.)

The argument allegedly started after Chelsea Fiorentino yelled an insult at Maldonado, who then crossed the street and confronted her. East Haven police quickly separated the women, placed them under arrest, and kept the march moving. The women were charged with breach of peace and assault; Maldonado was also charged with interfering with an officer.

It appears, from watching the video compiled by the Independent, that there were other near-brawls along the way. That's not terribly surprising: White supremacists and other haters turn out to these things in the hopes of starting fights, and they often succeed.

But watching this tape, one can't help but feel a sense of foreboding about what's likely to occur when immigration reform comes up on the national plate this fall. These people are already organized and already inclined to violence. If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.

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We've been pointing out for a long time the powerful connection between right-wing hate talk directed at illegal immigrants -- generated by the whole spectrum of media pundits and nativist anti-immigration organizations -- and the predictable and powerful explosion of hate crimes directed toward Latinos in recent years.

Indeed, the now-infamous case of Luis Ramirez in upstate Pennsylvania is not just a classic illustration of the problem, but equally a demonstration of the real need for a federal bias-crime statute.

More pointedly, perhaps, the case of Shawna Forde and her gang of Aryan Minutemen -- who killed a 9-year-old girl in cold blood in a botched home-invasion robbery in Arizona -- makes abundantly clear how the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric being stirred up on the Right by "respectable" nativists like the Federation for Immigration reform is whipping extremists into their usually violent courses of action.

The Washington Post yesterday reported on the connection between the nativist immigrant-bashing that has been endemic to the immigration debate and these kinds of hate crimes:

U.S. civil rights leaders said yesterday that an increase in hate crimes committed in recent years against Hispanics and people perceived to be immigrants "correlates closely" to the nation's increasingly contentious debate over immigration.

Hate crimes targeting Hispanic Americans rose 40 percent from 2003 to 2007, the most recent year for which FBI statistics are available, from 426 to 595 incidents, marking the fourth consecutive year of increases.

As the report explains, the crimes are being whipped up by a combination of grotesquely irresponsible media figures like Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, and "respectable" nativist organizations such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies.

All of these folks have adamantly denied they have anything to do with these crimes. Dobbs and O'Reilly have been patently disingenuous in running away from their culpability. Meanwhile, FAIR, CIS, and the rest of the John Tanton Network have done likewise.

And as Eric Ward observes, they're doing likewise in trying to flee their connection to Shawna Forde. Their press release responding to reports of the connection mostly continued to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of their most persistent critics.

Well, as we reported, it's not entirely clear how Forde came to be identified as a "spokesperson for FAIR" at a 2006 immigration forum in Yakima. But what's more than abundantly clear is that the Minuteman Project organization which originally empowered Forde and with which she has extensive connections was heavily promoted by FAIR.

Forde has a particularly extensive background of connections to Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project. She appeared onstage with Gilchrist in 2007 in Everett, Wash., at an "Immigration Summit" organized by local right-wingers.

Michael Hood wrote up a riveting account of this affair for The Stranger:

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Those upstanding nativists and xenophobes employed by the John Tanton Network -- and particularly the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which was designated a hate group by the SPLC awhile back -- have been complaining vigorously about how unfairly they are being treated. Why, they have nothing to do with the manifest racism swirling around the immigration debate -- so they claim.

But the recent arrest of Minuteman offshoot leader Shawna Forde for the murder of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter -- part of a broader plan to rob drug dealers and use the money to finance their Minuteman operations -- has ripped the veneer off the fake walls these nativists use to pretend that they have nothing to do with the racists who seem to swell their ranks as though they belonged there naturally. (Funny thing, that.)

Back in 2006, you see, Forde appeared at a public "town hall" forum on immigration in Yakima, Wash., a central-Washington city whose main economy is agricultural, particularly apple orchards. As Jackie Mahendra at America's Voice notes, she was presented as a "spokesperson for FAIR" as well as the Minutemen.

As you can see from the video above, Forde was outrageously incendiary, accusing immigrants of bringing crime and disease to the state and costing taxpayers in health-care costs, particularly for their "anchor babies."

At one point, host Enrique Cerna asked Forde:

Cerna: Shawna, let me ask you about the issue of economics. You've heard constraints from growers, you know, that the apple harvest is very important in this state, particularly in this region. What do you say to the growers?

Forde: We've got a prison system. Let's utilize it.

She later wrapped up with this:

Forde: I'd like to see two things on there. Not just about the people who came here legally, and are here legally, but how about the Americans who have been affected and died because of the illegal invasion in our country? How about our sovereignty?

And securing our borders and protecting our nation is extremely important. And I know the Minutemen and many organizations will not stop -- we will start at the local level and work our way up -- we will not stop until we get the results that we need to have.

However, it was unclear to me if Forde really was a FAIR representative or whether she had just lied about that, as seems to be her pattern in many instances.

But in untangling the puzzle, what emerged was a clear portrait of FAIR officials commingling freely with Minutemen and the many seedy characters who occupy their ranks -- so much so that what they become is a "respectable" front organization for a ragtag bunch of thuggish nativists.

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With a reeking pile of misery as his legacy already, George W. Bush gave a last finger to the rule of law and immigrant-rights groups -- and tossed a big bone to the mouth-foaming, immigrant-bashing nativists who have taken over the GOP -- on his way out the door today:

In his final acts of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the prison sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration.

Bush's decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were too harsh.

Apparently "just doing your job" is now the handy Conservative Get Out of Jail Free card. Certainly that's been Bush's justification for his own lawbreaking, and so it makes a certain sense that he would apply it now.

But there was never any excuse for these Border Patrol agents' behavior. They not only clearly abused their police powers, but committed even further crimes in trying to cover it up.

The most thorough evisceration of the Ramos/Compean martyr myth was Alex Koppelman's superb Salon piece of last year:

At trial in the federal courthouse in El Paso, Border Patrol agents from the Fabens station took the stand to testify against Ramos and Compean. Fellow agents, including one who had observed the shooting, contradicted Compean's story about where he was and how he was positioned when he fired his weapon. The agent who had helped Compean hide shell casings admitted it under oath. Prosecutors showed that Compean had repeatedly changed his story about the shooting and that it didn't match Ramos' account. They were also able to show that although Compean had discussed the shooting with other agents after it happened, it wasn't until his arrest that he began claiming that Aldrete-Davila had had a gun.

The prosecution's version of events was convincing enough for the jury, in March 2006, to find Ramos and Compean guilty of all but assault with intent to commit murder. Most media coverage of the case was local, and it comported with the jury's verdict: a bad shooting, a coverup and damning testimony from fellow agents that led to an uncontroversial conviction. Seven months later, a judge sentenced Ramos and Compean to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.

But by the time of their sentencing, the right wing had discovered the agents and begun constructing a new narrative. Ramos and Compean's newfound supporters soon settled on a radically different version of the shooting, cobbled together from speculation, rumors, misstatements of fact and various unproven assertions cherry-picked from the case the defense presented at trial.

As with nearly every myth emerging from the mists of Greater Wingnuttia, this one involved a familiar cast of media characters. Jerome Corsi of Swiftboating and "Obama Nation" infamy -- you know, the guy who never met a fact he couldn't falsify -- and Lou Dobbs played key roles in mainstreaming the Ramos/Compean story as a case of the Bush administration kowtowing to Mexican interests.

Then, of course, you had guys like Glenn Beck promoting the story as evidence of the return of the New World Order -- not to mention an opportunity to promote membership in the John Birch Society.

Incidentally, the White House is saying that these are the last pardons or commutations that Bush is planning. I guess this means that Politico list of 10 pardons to watch for -- which does include Ramos/Compean at No. 7 -- is probably defunct.

UPDATE: As one might guess, the Greater Wingnuttia is ecstatic. Check out the report from Neil Cavuto on Fox News:

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This is especially precious for the exchange he has with the head of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, who not only shares with us a paranoiac tale about how a burglary at Mrs. Ramos' home was actually a "hit" attempt, but seems to have managed to hang onto one of those bridesmaids outfits from the '70s, which is a rare feat.

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Crazy Nativist Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona was on Conan O'Brien's late-nite show last night, touting his dubious new reality-TV show on Fox. They showed a clip of it, and it looks like an entertainment straight out of Brazil.

What resulted was the usual travesty when entertainment talkers host newsmaking figures -- the underlying issues were distorted and falsified, and an ugly authoritarian was presented as a mainstream "good guy."

O'Brien couldn't evade the fact that Arpaio is a controversial figure (in fact, NBC had been inundated with phone calls protesting his appearance), and brought it up:

O'Brien: OK, let's cut to the chase. You are quite a controversial, polarizing figure. You'll admit that, that is true. You've done some things in your state that have a lot of people upset. We actually had a group distributing leaflets downstairs for a group protesting your appearance on the show. That has not happened since Howie Mandel was here several years ago.

[Laughter]

O'Brien then starts to enumerate the supposed reasons people are "upset" with Arpaio -- and names Arpaio's use of pink underwear for his inmates in Maricopa County's jails. From there the interview devolves into a cute depiction of Arpaio as a get-tough kinda guy who just wants to put bad guys in jail.

The pink underwear, however, is just a minor indication of the bigger problem Arpaio represents: a toxic mix of Nativist racism and thuggish authoritarianism in a police authority.

The people downstairs don't care that much about the pink underwear. What they care about is the naked racial profiling Arpaio has indulged in harassing Latinos in his county. They care about the horrendous law-enforcement record that Arpaio's fetish about illegal immigrants has produced. They care about the expensive lawsuits taxpayers will have to ante up for that Arpaio has wrought, mostly from the horrendous jail conditions he has permitted.

O'Brien, for some reason, didn't mention any of that. Instead, one of the country's ugliest authoritarians was packaged for the public as a stand-up guy. What a joke. And it's not a funny one.

Zvika Krieger at TNR has a solid report on the demise and dissolution of the Minuteman movement:

In this environment, Gilchrist's movement is falling apart, overtaken by new members whom he describes as "troublemakers with personality disorders and criminal propensities." In contrast, he insists that the group's original members were able to give voice to the immigration concerns of ordinary Americans because they demonstrated "a passionate allegiance to the United States of America and its priceless principles." There is no doubt that the Minutemen--aided by sympathizers in the media like Lou Dobbs--drove the national conversation in 2005. But whether the enormous wellspring of American anger over illegal immigration that they claim to have tapped into actually existed is another question.

However, it's not merely Gilchrist's organization (The Minuteman Project) that's falling apart; so is the other major "Minuteman" outfit, cofounder Chris Simcox's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

For what it's worth, I reported on this aspect of the story, as well as Gilchrist's, back in October for The American Prospect:

Today the Minuteman movement is beyond mere disarray; it is in the early stages of complete decay. The arc of the Minutemen's decline and fall happens to trace almost precisely that of previous right-wing populist movements, notably the Klan of the 1920s and the militias of the 1990s. The pattern goes like this: The group is beset by financial manipulators who seem naturally drawn to them. Then, following an initial wave of popularity, the group splinters under the pressure of competing egos into smaller, more virulent entities who then unleash acts of public ugliness and violence that eventually relegate them to the fringes.

The Minutemen haven't quite reached that final stage yet, but they are well on their way. And while that may be welcome news to those who oppose the Minutemen's nativist agenda, that last stage represents some natural and equally toxic consequences.