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Hey, I was wondering the other day how the Republicans' outreach efforts to Latinos were going. So who should pop back up in the news but our old nativist guru, the author of SB1070 himself, Kris Kobach. Seems he's having an outsize role on the shape of the Republican platform -- and not only is he reliably nativist, but he's also anti-black and a paleo-wingnut on abortion, too. A perfect Republican.

Most of all, he's pushing the Republican immigration platform as far to the right as possible (without hitting Joe the Dumber Plumber territory). As Elise Foley reports:

During a meeting of the GOP platform committee in Tampa, Fla., Kobach called for the party to officially back increased border fencing and the E-Verify employment verification system, and to go after two immigrant-friendly initiatives: in-state tuition for some undocumented young people and so-called sanctuary cities. Those measures were in the 2008 Republican platform but had been dropped from the draft this year, Politico reported.

"These positions are consistent with the Romney campaign," Kobach said. "As you all remember, one of the primary reasons that Governor Romney rose past Governor Perry when Mr. Perry was achieving first place in the polls was because of his opposition to in-state tuition for illegal aliens."

Now, why exactly would the GOP be taking Kobach's advice? Especially considering that he just lost another big round in the federal courts regarding the SB1070 clones he had successfully promoted in Georgia and Alabama:

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Meet Kris Kobach, author of the horrible Arizona immigration law and xenophobe, extraordinaire. Kobach is currently the Secretary of State in Kansas, and has a long history of extreme views with regard to immigration.

In this segment, he expands those views, explaining that the purpose of draconian anti-immigration laws like SB 1070 and the Alabama immigration law which is currently killing their economy is really simply a way to force illegal immigrants to "self-deport." If they have family here legally, well, so what?

Kobach comes across as being a reasonable person, but he's really one of the most extreme right-wingers in public life today. While his bios mention his time in South Africa, they don't really expand on what he did while he was there.

Here's an excerpt from the Southern Poverty Law Center on Kobach's stint in South Africa:

He served as president of the Harvard Republican Club and found a mentor in the late Samuel Huntington, an influential political science professor who came to see Latino immigrants as a scourge on American culture.

With Huntington as his advisor, Kobach earned the Harvard prize for the best student thesis in 1989. He analyzed how the South African business community functioned within apartheid and took the unpopular position that investors should not divest their holdings in that country but rather remain as agents of change. A year later, he published the thesis as a book.

On Monday, Kobach will be appearing with Mitt Romney, who he has endorsed for President. In classic Romney-esque fashion, it's difficult to tell where Mitt Romney stands on illegal immigration, since he is running ads in South Carolina which are anti-immigrant, anti-Latino ads, while running Spanish-language ads in Florida talking up his Latino endorsements there. He's flipping at the very same time he's flopping.

With a public appearance in South Carolina with Kobach, I'm sure Mittens plans to sew up the xenophobe vote there, but it's hard for me to believe this will play well with Latino voters nationwide.

Never underestimate the conservative cynicism. It seems they're closing ranks around a candidate who is, as usual, inconsistent about what he believes on immigration. At least, in public. All indications are that Mr. Romney is at least as extreme in his views as his friend Mr. Kobach.

I wonder if Mitt Romney will try and use his Mexican cousins as a bridge to the Latino community. It's hard to imagine that working, since his debate gaffe more or less exposes his utter lack of regard for anyone besides Mitt Romney.

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Well, we've known for some time that Kris Kobach -- one of the co-authors of Arizona's Nativist immigration law, SB1070, and a frequent guest on Fox News whenever they need a reliably right-wing talking point on various immigration issues -- is something of a crook and a liar, since he rarely appears on TV without misleading the audience and presenting one fake "fact" or another that turns out to be utterly false.

Now the Southern Poverty Law Center has revealed that -- prior to his recent election as Kansas' Secretary of State -- Kobach basically made a living by scamming various municipalities into adopting outrageously unconstitutional anti-immigration statutes, and then leaving them holding the very large, expensive, dripping and fetid-smelling bag:

When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town

[snip]

The towns that passed nativist laws in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and Nebraska, along with the state of Arizona, have spent millions of dollars to defend them in court, and almost every judicial decision so far has gone against them. One community, faced with skyrocketing legal costs, had to raise property taxes, and another was forced to cut personnel and special events and even outsource its library.

That was just the beginning. The four towns and one state examined in this report all saw a crisis in race relations as conflicts between Latino immigrants and mostly white natives escalated. Latinos reported being threatened, shot at, subjected to racial taunts and more. Police are having trouble getting cooperation from any in their Latino communities. Pro-immigrant activists have been threatened with notes that promise to “shed blood” to “take back” communities. The mayor of one town had his house vandalized after opposing a proposed law and was warned by federal agents to be careful; he ended up retiring after four terms in office. Angry protests and counter-protests, along with dangerously rising tensions, have rocked one town after another. In some communities, business districts have largely collapsed.

Behind all of this stands one man: Kris Kobach, a former Kansas City law professor who was just elected Kansas secretary of state. For the better part of the last six years, Kobach has been chief legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He helped to write and defend in court the laws in Hazleton, Valley Park, Farmers Branch, Fremont and Arizona, and he is seeking to do even more.

The report is quite complete, including a timeline for each of the four municipalities Kobach has "helped".

And in an important way, he's done the same thing for Arizona, where he convinced the electorate that a scapegoating strategy and installation of a police state for Latinos was the way to solve their immigration issues. The state is already suffering badly economically, and it's been made much worse by the economic boycott that resulted from SB1070 and the mass departure of Hispanics from the state. Kobach, of course, has had plenty of help in damaging Arizona's economy, including the state's governor. Meanwhile, as the state crumbles, the Arizona Senate president thinks the real imperative is to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants.

Of course, now that he's been elected Secretary of State in Kansas, Kobach can just walk away and smile. Meantime, as the SPLC observes, he gets to continue doing his work scamming communities eager to walk the bigot's path.

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Greta Van Susteren hosted the execrable Kris Kobach, co-author of Arizona's police-state immigration law, earlier this week to explain some of its deeper nuances -- for instance, what new powers does the law give to Arizona police?

Kobach, as is his wont, prevaricated:

Kobach: Well, this law is actually quite narrow in scope. The law basically says that police officers, when they are making a stop for some other violation of law, and they, in the course of that traffic stop would be typical, they develop a reasonable suspicion -- and that's a well-defined concept in the courts, as you know -- they develop reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien, then they have to act on that suspicion and contact ICE, which has a hotline that's been in place for fifteen years, and they have to determine if the person is actually lawfully present in the country.

It also requires -- it makes it an Arizona misdemeanor to fail to carry the documents that a person is required to carry by federal law if the person is an alien. For the last seventy years, it's been a requirement of federal law that aliens in the United States register and carry certain documents with them. The Arizona law just says, if you're breaking this federal law, you're also committing a misdemeanor in Arizona.

But that leaves begging, of course, what happens when legal citizens are asked to produce proof of citizenship. Already, we have an ongoing problem with ICE accidentally (or otherwise) deporting American citizens -- and that's the agency where people are supposed to be specially trained to avoid such cases. When you have every rural deputy in Arizona enforcing federal immigration, well, it will be only a matter of time before the Kafkaesque qualities of this law become manifest.

But Van Susteren still wanted to know:

Van Susteren: I guess that's what's sort of curious -- what I don't quite get about the law is what authority that anyone gets from this law. In some ways it just seems like a way for the state of Arizona to engage the feds to finally come down and do something about their national immigration policy.

Kobach: Well, what it does is it requires officers not to turn a blind eye to that reasonable suspicion. It says, look, if you discover a situation where you've got a packed minivan, like they are alien smuggling --

Van Susteren: But yeah, that's like if you stop someone for speeding, and you go up to the car and you get a driver's license, you run the driver's license and you find out that the person is driving after revocation. You may not give a ticket for the driving -- the speeding, because it might have been a warning, but you're going to arrest the person for driving after revocation.

Kobach: Right. And in the example you gave, the person acted on the additional crime he found. Here, for example, the same as if he discovered drugs -- you wouldn't tell the officer, 'Turn a blind eye, pay no attention to the bag of marijuana on the passenger seat.'

Actually, there's a very simple and direct answer to Van Susteren's question: SB1070 puts local and state police officers in charge of enforcing civil violations of federal law. This is a clear usurpation of federal immigration authority, and one of the key reasons why the ACLU and other civil liberties organizations have sued to overturn the law -- namely, it "violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by interfering with the federal government's authority to regulate and enforce immigration."

As this National Immigration Forum backgrounder [PDF file] explains, local police have traditionally stayed away from enforcing federal immigration for a number of reasons -- not the least of which is that it's an unneeded burden that frequently dilutes and interferes with their ability to combat real crime.

As to the enforcement of immigration laws, it has historically been the case that state and local police do not have the authority to enforce federal civil immigration laws. While state and local police have often worked with federal agents on criminal matters, they have generally steered clear of the enforcement of administrative/civil immigration laws.

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One of the claims being made by defenders of Arizona's police-state immigration law is that Latino citizens won't have to carry their birth certificate or other proof of citizenship in order to avoid arrest should they have contact with police -- all they need to carry is their driver's license.

Among others making this claim is the bill's co-author, State Sen. Russell Pearce, last week on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show:

Pearce: Citizens aren't required to carry any documentation they weren't required to carry yesterday. In Arizona, if you have a driver's license, a state ID, an identity card, that's presumption that you're in the state legally.

Pearce is far from alone in claiming this. In his NYT op-ed on the law, Kris Kobach -- another key player in the bill's authorship -- wrote the same thing:

Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.

Roy Beck's nativist outfit, NumbersUSA, made a similar claim on its fact sheet:

The majority requests for documentation will take place during the course of other police business such as traffic stops. Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.

And Byron York, in his much-quoted (by conservatives) defense of SB 1070, writes similarly:

But what if the driver of the car had shown the officer his driver's license? The law clearly says that if someone produces a valid Arizona driver's license, or other state-issued identification, they are presumed to be here legally. There's no reasonable suspicion.

Here's what the text of SB 1070 says:

A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.

2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.

3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.

4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.

But as Stephen Lemon points out, this language is actually pretty startling: You will be presumed to be an illegal alien in Arizona unless you can produce one of these four kinds of ID.

Now, I haven't been able to find anything in Arizona code requiring citizens to carry one of these forms of ID with them at all times. But SB1070 certainly does create that requirement. As Lemons says:

If during any police investigation, a cop has "reasonable suspicion" to think you're in the country illegally, he or she can presume you're an undocumented alien unless you provide one of several forms of ID.

... Subsequently, even U.S. citizens could be held until someone from Immigration and Customs Enforcement is called to sort them out.

Keep in mind that a cop can stop someone and begin the process during the "enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state." That's so broad as to include weed abatement and barking dogs.

But this also raises a huge question: What if you're from another state? What if you're only carrying an out-of-state driver's license?

Many states refuse to require proof of citizenship when issuing driver's licenses: they wisely understand that it's more important to have people driving their roads with licenses and documentation than not, and requiring citizenship papers is a good way to discourage it.

So if someone -- say, a fourth-generation Latino citizen with an accent -- traveling through Arizona with a California or a Washington driver's license has the misfortune to be pulled over in a traffic stop -- or maybe just one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's roadblocks -- and has the similar misfortune to arouse an officer's "reasonable suspicion" (say, he has a heavy accent or looks nervous), he could be hauled in and arrested under SB 1070, until someone back home can fax the birth certificate.

Finally, as much as the law's apologists might make this claim, the reality is that Latino drivers in Arizona are already being arrested for failing to carry a birth certificate of proof of citizenship. Remember this fellow?

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He first showed the officers who arrested him his driver's license.

All this would explain why ConsumerTraveler.com issued the following advisory:

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Think twice if you're in Arizona and decide you want to call the cops on the loud party down the street at midnight. The language in the new Arizona Gestapo racial profiling immigration law now on the books allows police to use city ordinance violations as a reason to request documents from residents while in their homes.

Via Wonkroom:

As part of the amended bill, a police officer responding to city ordinance violations would also be required to determine the immigration status of an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant.

The email Kris Kobach sent to Russell Pearce is truly hair-raising. You can read all of it here. An excerpt:

...we need to add "or any county or municipal ordinance." This will allow police to use violations of property code (ie, cars on blocks in the yard) or rental codes (too many occupants of a rental accommodation) to initiate queries as well.

Evidently Mr. Kris Kobach thinks cars on blocks and overcrowded rental units are the exclusive province of undocumented workers. Because nothing screams "SEARCH ME" like a few cars on blocks in the front yard, right?

Here's an excerpt from Kobach's 2005 paper entitled "The Quintessential Force Multiplier" (PDF):

The assistance of state and local law enforcement agencies can also mean the difference between success and failure in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws generally. The nearly 800,000 police officers nationwide represent a massive force multiplier.9 This assistance need only be occasional, passive, voluntary, and pursued during the course of normal law enforcement activity. The net that is cast daily by local law enforcement during routine encounters with members of the public is so immense that it is inevitable illegal aliens will be identified.

Kobach makes an argument for the empowerment of local law enforcement as de facto assistants for rooting out and deporting illegal immigrants. In his examples, he cites "violent gang members", "9/11 suspects", "Muslim extremists" and more. The most striking feature of his argument is the complete absence of any argument for white-collar criminals like Jack Abramoff or Tom Delay or the shadow governors who fund smear campaigns against the left. They've done more harm to this country and our government than any illegal immigrant has.

Of course, Kobach has an interesting past, one certainly worth looking at a bit closer. He was a former aide to John Ashcroft, has ties back to the John Tanton white supremacy dynasty, is a voter suppression caging braggart, and author of a book entitled "Political Capital: The Motives, Tactics, and Goals of Politicized Businesses in South Africa". Interesting title, that.

A wide net indeed, cast by a man who aspires to be the next Kansas Secretary of State, where, if elected, he will set about suppressing any vote in Kansas not cast by someone who sunburns easily.

Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that a right winger and teabagger who's running for secretary of state in Kansas is claiming responsibility for "helping" Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce write the state's controversial new immigration law. (He has since removed the claim from his website.) Wingnut lawyer Kris Kobach, a constitutional law professor, is counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and he says the reason he's running for secretary of state is to keep "criminal enterprise" ACORN from stealing elections. (He refers to Al Franken's "pseudo-election".)

Even though in 2007, as chair of the Kansas GOP, he openly bragged about the party "caging" voters - an illegal practice. Hey, it's okay if you're a Republican!

From Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times:

As disturbing as the prospect is of a nativist extremist lawyer like Kris Kobach training all 881 of Sheriff Joe's beigeshirts in immigration law, I have to wonder if it's a sign that Arpaio's throwing in the towel on the big Melendres vs. Arpaio racial-profiling lawsuit now underway in federal court.

What, was Stormfront's Don Black not available? Maybe Tom Metzger could take a break from running his white nationalist Web site The Insurgent to come down and offer some words of supremacist wisdom to Joe's benighted deputy dawgs. And don't forget David Duke, that cat's always lookin' for a gig.

I kid, of course. Being an attorney, Kobach's ties to anti-immigrant and extremist nativist organizations are far more white collar, with the emphasis on white. The controversial University of Missouri law prof acts as counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of FAIR, the notorious Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has tagged FAIR as a hate organization, and FAIR's earned the title. Last April, when Kobach was announced as a minority witness before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee during the committee's hearing into the 287(g) program and Joe Arpaio, the SPLC hit the committee with a letter objecting to Kobach's presence because of his ties to FAIR.

Regarding FAIR, the SPLC's Mark Potok had this to say:

FAIR is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes annual listings of such organizations. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who write regularly for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latino immigrants. It has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

And John Tanton, the man who founded the group in 1979, has a long personal history of associating with white nationalists. In a 1993 letter to Garret Hardin, a committed eugenicist who promoted pseudo-scientific ideas of racial purity, Tanton wrote candidly: "I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that."

The committee ultimately allowed Kobach to speak, but the stigma Kobach carries with him both precedes and hounds him. In 2004, he ran as a Republican against Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore, and was spanked hard, losing by 11 percent to Moore in Kansas' largely Republican 3rd District. One reason he lost, according to The Road to Congress 2004 was because, "in general, Kobach was accused of taking money from a white supremacist organization, and the charge stuck." Currently, Kobach is vying to be Kansas' Secretary of State.

Kobach also served under Attorney General John Ashcroft during the Bush administration. There he developed a controversial program to profile Muslim men from certain countries and track them while in the U.S.

Kobach is also the proponent of a near-mystical nativist legal concept: that local cops have the inherent authority to enforce all federal statutes. Most legal scholars find this idea laughable, but folks like Arpaio and Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce cling to it like a life preserver in choppy waters.

Oh, this is gonna be interesting. Here's something I found about Kobach's congressional run:

Kris Kobach ran an absolutely vicious primary campaign, worse than any of the previous primary campaigns, and remarkably one-sided. He called Adam Taff "ultra-liberal", he had Kansans for Life send out a letter saying that people who vote for Taff have the bloody water of abortionists on their hands, even though Taff supported restrictions on abortion. Kobach called the President's immigration plan a "liberal amnesty plan", Kobach sent out a letter from his wife that said Adam Taff made her think of her miscarried baby when he criticized Kobach, Kobach basically insulted everyone who was even a little less conservative than he was. That made a lot of people angry. I don't think most Republicans expect to be compared to Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, or told that their views are ultra-liberal, they tend to take offense to that kind of thing and they don't tend to forget it.

He's a soldier of God, and don't you ever forget it.

(photo by darkblack)

A few weeks back we brought you news that the Chairman of the Kansas GOP, Kris Kobach, had sent out a Party email boasting of voter caging. That post made a bit of a splash, getting picked up by many blogs including the Huffington Post & DailyKos and was mentioned several times on Air America (Thank you, Thom Hartmann!) before it made it into the KC Star political blog, the Lawrence Journal, and even the AP. As Blue Tide Rising, the KS oriented political blog that first caught the now-infamous email, points out: "Kris Kobach is famous"

Well, I'm proud to announce that all the time spent exposing this partisan hack has paid off. The Wichita Eagle editorial board has awarded Kris Kobach with the "Hannibal Lecter 50-State Strategy" Award for "extraordinary achievement in the area of public fiascoes, flops and foolishness."

All kidding aside, what has become of Kobach's admission to caging "more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years"? The blogs and even the media seem to have done their part. So, what happens next? Did it go unnoticed because the story broke during the holidays? We've yet to hear from Kansas Governor Sebelius or any of the Democrats running in '08 who could be most affected by any GOP election trickery, Rep. Nancy Boyda or Senate challenger Greg Orman (who is going up against Bush lackey Sen, Pat Roberts), what they think or whether anyone is going to dig deeper to find out just what the Kansas GOP's voter caging scheme is all about.

Despite artful protestations otherwise that raise even more questions, there seems to be even more an indication of wrongdoing now as Kobach has since tried to pass the blame for the email onto his subordinate, Kansas Republican Party Executive Director Christian Morgan. If there really wasn't any wrongdoing then why the questionable (non-denial?) denial and the setup for a fall-guy hot potato with the blame? Inquiring minds want deserve to know.

Let's hope that Kris Kobach will be explaining that email to a Grand Jury in the near future. Let's also hope that the Democrats will be diligently working to fight these illegal tactics......before November 2008.

Kris Kobach, a former counsel to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft who is currently the chairman of the Kansas GOP, sent out an email on Thur entitled "Kansas Republican Party Year in Review" in which he brags of voter caging. Blue Tide Rising has the goods:

... Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas GOP, sent out a self-congratulatory litany of accomplishments. Among them was one particularly eye-catching item:

"To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!" [...]

Slate.com has the best comprehensive write-up on how the Republican Party employs caging techniques to suppress the votes of the poor, the deployed, and college students. (You know, likely Democratic voters.)

Did we mention it's illegal? And that Kris Kobach is proud to be doing it?

Since Kris Kobach can't expand his own party or force his own Party's members to support his candidates he's shamelessly trying to keep Democrats from voting instead. This is the stratagem of a desperate and shrinking party.

Someone needs to ask Kris Kobach which voters he's caging and how he's doing it. Someone like a newspaper editor or perhaps a Grand Jury. ... (more)

More on Kris Kobach here and here (He apparently suffers from an advanced case of Lou Dobbs disease). Depending on what methods are being used in Kobach's admitted voter caging scheme, it may very well be illegal, but hardly surprising. Voter suppression through caging lists has become a standard part of the Republican playbook to steal elections for some time now. In Sept McClatchy detailed current Republican voter caging efforts underway in Florida and Ohio to "impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008," and back in July PBS NOW took a look at the Republican Party's voter caging plan "designed to keep Democrats from voting, allegedly by targeting people based on their race and ethnicity." Watch that video here.

Via TalkingPointsMemo:

Kobach is part of the State Objections Board along with Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, all Republicans. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that on Thursday the board agreed to consider whether to take Obama off the ballot because they said they lacked sufficient evidence about his birth certificate.

“I don’t think it’s a frivolous objection,” Kobach said, according to the Capital-Journal. “I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”

The board is looking at a complaint filed by Joe Montgomery, of Manhattan, Kan., who claimed the Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen and so is ineligible to be president. The man appears to be part of a group of conspiracy theorists known as “birthers,” who deny Obama’s birth certificate is real.

Since the birther conspiracists can't seem to make up their minds about whether they think Barack Obama was born in Kenya or Hawaii, it would appear that they've simply decided to play both sides of that coin to pander to the low-information, fearful and frankly stupid base. It's telling to me that Romney has to have his informal "advisors" play the birther card to keep that base solid for November. That's how weak he is.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp pushed back on Kobach today, saying that Mr. Obama will be on the ballot regardless of the board's "review." It seems that birther views aren't entirely popular in Kansas since Huelskamp was able to win his primary by defeating a birther type earlier this year.

The extreme right of the Republican party isn't driven by any love for Mitt Romney. They think Romney isn't conservative enough and will sell them out. Kobach understands this, and with Romney sinking lower in the polls with every day that passes, they're just working as hard as they can to consolidate the haters into one unified lump in order to try and get him elected.

In other words, Kobach is just using the race card as trump to pick up his own suit. It's pathetic, but not surprising.

Update: Well, I guess Kansas isn't completely insane. Yet. Seems the guy who submitted the complaint got so much grief for it that he withdrew it. I'm sure Kobach was disappointed.