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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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Ann Coulter does her best job of cherry picking what she says were racial profiling hoaxes to basically insinuate that racial profiling never happens in the United States. She claims that "liberals" can never find a case that wasn't a hoax. I hate to tell you this Ann, but just because something isn't Al Sharpton's latest photo-op du jour or the media hasn't talked about it, it doesn't mean that it's not happening. Your argument is completely ridiculous. And Henry Gates never should have been arrested for disorderly conduct in his own home.

Ann I just don't know how all the bigots would get by without the likes of you and your other right wing hate mongers doing your best to make them feel better about themselves.

INGRAHAM: And now for the top story. What exactly is that teachable moment in all the recent racial banter? Joining us from us Florida with her provocative take as always is Ann Coulter, author of the huge bestseller "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America."

And Ann, I have to say I watched a competing cable channel. I had it DVR'd somewhere. I watched you last night with Sharpton. Okay? And just the look on his face when you came out and said well, what racial profiling? And I'm sure African-Americans across the country were saying what is this woman talking about? Explain.

ANN COULTER, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: It's not that it's never happened. I've just been watching, you know, the gusher of cliches on television about this. I mean, this -- clearly there was no racial profiling in this case in Boston unless you're talking about Professor Gates racially profiling an Irish cop and assuming he must be a racist. There was some racial profiling that way.

But you know, I write about this in "Guilty". And I only give an abbreviated list in "Guilty" although it goes on for pages and pages of all of the alleged acts of racism or racial profiling that turn out to be hoaxes.

And I mean, as far as back in our lifetime as the Tawana Brawley case there was the case with the Exeter kid. And at first, you have to read all the headlines at first. You know, why would this Exeter have mugged an undercover cop. And then, you know, all the facts come out. They got witnesses. They got - have the autopsy. Yeah actually, the Exeter honor student on his way to Stanford did mug an undercover cop and the grand jury acquitted.

You have the one with a black kid who was carrying a machete. The cop thought it was a gun. Again acquitted by the grand jury after hysterical headlines throughout "The New York Times." You got the Clermont and the kennel woman. A white woman. A lot of these times, these are whites who are.

INGRAHAM: Yeah.

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While watching this week's State of the Union with John King, I've got to tell you, I wondered what planet CNN's Bill Bennett and Alex Castellanos are living on. Bennett thinks arresting someone "cool(s) down" a situation. And Castellanos says if the police don't have our respect, all they have left is their gun. So Alex, deadly force is now alright if someone isn't respectful to a police officer, and in their own home to boot?

It's always amazing to hear these people who believe that the public should be heavily armed and able to shoot anyone who comes near their property now staunchly defend the right of the police to arrest you for having the nerve to smart off to them, in your own home. Sorry guys, but being stupid still isn't a crime in this country. It wasn't smart for Gates to mouth off to the officer, but it wasn't illegal either.

KING: Bill, you have been waiting patiently. Go ahead.

BENNETT: Yes, John, look, there was no racial profiling here, OK? They were called to this house. They went into the house because of a reported break in. But if you want to talk about the relationship between police and community, then I hope Professor Gates has -- examines his conscience, because the abusive and bigoted things that were said in this case, were said by Professor Gates to this police officer.

When you say, do you know who you're messing with, this is not the cry of a victim. When you say, go outside and see your mama, if the police officer had said something like that to Gates, the police officer would be hanging by his toes.

That kind of arrogant, class-based superiority is what needs to be examined here as well.

(CROSSTALK)

BENNETT: And they backed off -- the White House backed off completely on this because they were getting shelled. The opinion polls were coming in and they knew that they were on the wrong side of this.

CASTELLANOS: And wouldn't it have been better, John, if the president said first what he said second, which is, let's all have a beer together? Wouldn't it have been better if the president of the United States had said, you know, maybe there's a silver lining in this and that is that we may have come to the great day where someone can be arrested for being a jerk regardless of your race.

Maybe that's where we are. Now, maybe whether he should have or shouldn't have been...

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Near the end of last night's press conference, President Obama was asked to comment on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Gates, Jr.

President Obama: Well, I should say at the outset that Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts. What's been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys. He jimmied his way to get into the house. There was a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place. so far so good. Right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger in -- well, I guess this is my house now so it probably wouldn't happen. Let's say my old house in Chicago. here I'd get shot. But so far so good. They're reporting, the police are doing what they should. There's a call. They go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in. I'm sure there's some exchange of words but my understanding is that Professor Gates then shows his I.D. to show that this is his house. And at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which are later dropped. Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that's just a fact.

As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in this society. That doesn't lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that's been made. And yet, the fact of the matter is that, you know, this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause cast suspicion even when there is good cause, and that's why I think the more that we're working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody's going to be.

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Bill O'Reilly goes on a rampage against the ACLU and calls them the "most dangerous, anti-American organization in the country". Why? Because they support the release of the prison abuse photos and their complaint against the NYPD for racial profiling.

I swear watching this man makes my head hurt. First of all, I've watched the ACLU's Anthony Romero go on more than one show and say that the public being able to see those photos is not what matters to him. What matters to him is that there is some accountability for what's been done, and for those who ordered the torture, and to be able to prove that it was not just a few bad apples but systemic abuse that took place because it was the policy of our government to torture prisoners.

How O'Reilly makes the connection between that and the ACLU suing the NYPD for racial profiling is beyond me other than him finding any excuse to bash the ACLU and "left wing loons". Of course following this segment he brings on the hapless Marc Lamont who attempts to call out O'Reilly for saying it's alright for the police to target blacks and Latinos on the street when they've done nothing wrong but he's no match for O'Reilly's bullying and talking over him.

What's particularly disturbing here is O'Reilly's call for his viewers to "confront" the ACLU, the media, and anyone who supports the ACLU. Just what type of confrontation is O'Reilly calling for? O'Reilly seems to be continuing Fox News' shameless habit of not caring how much they rial up the fringe elements in our society and possibly incite some of the crazy ones out there to violence.

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I've been reporting for a long time on the many ways that the immigration debate has served as a critical nexus in the intersection between right-wing extremism and mainstream conservatism.

Last weekend, Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- the quasi-fascist chief law-enforcement officer of Arizona's Maricopa County, currently under DOJ investigation for his refusal to abide by court orders and his rampant racial profiling -- provided us with a crystalline example.

Because we got to see a classic case of someone in a position of real power lending the authority of his office to the empowerment of far-right radicals -- unintentionally, perhaps (though not likely), but with the same result regardless.

On Saturday, May 2, several thousand people came out to march in protest of Arpaio's increasingly thuggish tactics.

And as is often the case with such events, there was a little knot of neo-Nazis out there to counter-protest. This meant they were out there to support Arpaio.

The first part of the above video is taken from footage shot by one of these counter-protesters. A little ways in, you'll see a black Cadillac pull up containing none other than Sheriff Joe himself, who has decided to stop by and say hello to his supporters. He lets one of them pose for a picture.

As it happens, the young man posing for him is none other than Thomas Coletto, aka "Vito Lombardi" -- who, as Stephen Lemons reports, is not only the local leader of a neo-Nazi outfit, but was also busted for burglary in a supposed "Columbine"-type plot two years ago.

After posing with Arpaio, Coletto posted the shot on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.

And it's not as if Arpaio recoiled and hurried on when he figured out who he was talking to. You can see in the video he pulls over and shakes hands with someone in group standing with a Confederate flag.

The rest of the video is compiled from other footage available on YouTube, particularly the work of 287gGots2go, who let us see what this little clutch of white nationalists was like from the other side of the camera.

I think it tells everything we need to know about who Sheriff Arpaio counts on for his support. It also tells us everything we need to know about how these people feel empowered enough to come crawling out from under the rocks beneath which they usually hide.

Dan Weiss at Imagine 2050 has more.

Now, I know that Sheriff Joe told Glenn Beck he "welcomes" any investigation into his bordering-on-fascist rule in Arizona's Maricopa County. But I bet that nonetheless, he wasn't smiling yesterday:

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in "patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures."

An expert said it is the department's first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

... The Justice Department frequently receives racial-profiling complaints against police departments, but investigations are rare, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and racial-profiling expert.

"The fact that this has come to their attention and they have announced their intent to investigate is highly significant," Harris said. "It says there is enough there to be investigated. It's not an iffy case that (can be ignored)."

Harris said this is the first civil-rights investigation stemming from immigration enforcement. The probe could last several months.

You can read the notice here. [PDF file]

Maybe the DOJ can take inspiration from Arpaio's Brazil-esque reality-TV show on Fox, in which unsuspecting schlub criminals are duped into being busted on TV. They could build a reality show around investigating Arpaio, including footage of interviews with his victims.

Of course, in the past, Arpaio hasn't been very tolerant of people who criticize him. If you got caught applauding anti-Arpaio comments at county meetings, for instance, you might be arrested by Arpaio's deputies. But I suspect that won't work too well with DOJ investigators, especially the FBI.

This is a hopeful step forward in dealing with the mess Arpaio has made in Maricopa County, and will help make clear to the right-wing nativists out there that scapegoating Latinos is not the way to deal with whatever issues they have with immigration. It makes a mess not just in Arizona, but the whole country.

Eric Holder made a statement recently that has got the right wingers up in arms.

"Though the nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said.

"Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we average Americans simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

We heard after the election by the losers that racism is gone in America because a black man had been elected president. Tell that to the Tolan family. HBO ran this segment with Bryant Gumbel and it's on tonight.

Shortly before 2:00am on December 31 2008, Robbie Tolan, a twenty-three-year-old baseball prospect, was shot by police in front of his home in Bellaire, Texas. The shooting occurred after police mistook Robbie Tolan's vehicle for a stolen car. Robbie's parents, Bobby and Marian Tolan witnessed the shooting as they stood in their driveway wearing their pajamas. Robbie Tolan survived the shooting, and was recently released from the hospital. But he has a bullet lodged in his liver and his baseball future has been cast in serious doubt. Since the shooting, HBO Real Sports, has been investigating how such a tragic event came to pass.

In 2005, black drivers in Bellaire were almost 12 times more likely to be pulled over and asked for a consent search than whites. Compared with the rest of Houston, black drivers were four times more likely than whites to be searched, according to the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a non-profit organization that collects and compiles data on race and traffic stops.

Bellaire has a population of almost 16,000 and is less than one percent black. However, in 2007, 22 percent of the of the motorists given traffic tickets in Bellaire were black and 39 percent of the motorists who were stopped and searched were black, according to data collected by the Bellaire Police Department.
----

"And I said, 'this is my house my car, my son, my nephew. It's not stolen,'" said Bobby Tolan.

The Tolans then say that Sgt. Cotton pushed Mrs. Tolan against the garage door. At that point, Robbie reared up off the ground and said: "Get your fucking hands off my mom!" Sgt. Cotton then turned and fired his gun hitting Robbie Tolan in the chest.

"The guy never said a word," said Marian Tolan. "He never said, 'shut up,' he never said 'get down' or 'stay down.' He never said a word, he picked his gun, he took his gun and he just shot him."

The entire incident unfolded quickly. Two minutes past from when Robbie and Anthony exited their vehicle to when Robbie was shot, according to the Bellaire Police incident report.

read on...

After you watch this you will want to cry. The mayor of Bellaire looks like a fool. Jose Cruz, jr, a former baseball player had some profiling done to him several years ago in Bellaire also.

The Puerto Rican national said he was in his brand-new Mercedes with his pregnant wife and two kids when Bellaire police pulled him over. At the time, he said he had no idea what he had done wrong.

"They came out of nowhere," said Cruz. “The officer proceeded to arrest me. He told me that there were warrants out for my arrest. I told him that I didn’t have so much as a ticket, much less a warrant."

he Bellaire High School grad ended up spending the night in jail. But it was a mistake. Cruz said it turned out that those warrants weren't for him.

Paul Doyle is the ballplayer's attorney, and he said there is real problem in the area. He believes Cruz may have been a victim of racial profiling.

“It wasn't until we got involved that the police came up with the pretext that they pulled him over because he didn’t have a front license plate. That was the excuse they used,” said Doyle. “They're not going to say that they saw a Puerto Rican guy driving a nice car and stopped him.”

Doyle said that Cruz never wanted to come forward at the time, but the shooting of Robbie Tolan brought back too many bad memories.

When he isn't hosting Brazil-esque "reality" shows and having his deputies arrest people for applauding at county council meetings, Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been making Maricopa County's law enforcement a national disgrace.

Now, finally, the House Judiciary Committee is calling for the Justice and Homeland departments to investigate Arpaio's activities:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate allegations of misconduct by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling. On February 4, 2009, Arpaio invited the media to view the transfer of immigrant detainees to a segregated area of his "tent city" jail, subjecting the detainees to public display and "ritual humiliation." Persistent actions such as these have resulted in numerous lawsuits; while Arpaio spends time and energy on publicity and his reality television show, "Smile… You’re Under Arrest!", Maricopa County has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving dead or injured inmates.

"Racial profiling and segregation are simply not acceptable." said Conyers. "Media stunts and braggadocio are no substitute for fair and effective law enforcement."

As Frank Sharry observes:

The Judiciary Committee also asks the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to review the agreement that DHS has signed with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which Joe has so roundly abused. Report after report has shown that Sheriff Arpaio regularly engages in racial profiling in Latino neighborhoods. It's part of the reason he has 2,700 lawsuits filed against him.

For his latest publicity stunt, Arpaio paraded immigrant detainees through the streets of Phoenix in order to segregate and relocate them to a "Tent City" surrounded by electric fencing. The 287 (g) agreement gives the Sheriff authority to enforce federal immigration laws, but it does not provide permission to use racial profiling or other tactics that violate an individual's constitutional rights.

It does not give one the right to create mini-Gitmos.