They gave us a republic: They aren't toy soldiers. You can't just throw them away or stash them out of sight

distributorcap NY: The endless hours of chit chat on tee vee have been totally focused on Obama's reaction to the Gulf tragedy. Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power.

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All day yesterday on Fox, the talking/shrieking heads were all worked up about some comments from Rep. Linda Sanchez about Arizona's SB1070:

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

"There's a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups," said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. "It's been documented. It's not mainstream politics."

Oh my God! Somebody tossed a little Baby Ruth of Truth into the swimming pool!

Rick Folbaum told Jon Scott that Sanchez got her information from those notorious dispensers of inconvenient information, a left-wing blogger. (Hey, it coulda been C&L.) Megyn Kelly demanded of Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza that she denounce these horrendous words. And Sean Hannity didn't even bother to query into whether what Sanchez said might be accurate -- he just ran a quick segment sneering at her "Liberal Lie".

The problem they have is that it's in fact perfectly accurate. Sanchez may have gotten the information from a blogger, but it's more than likely the blog got its information from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League -- both of which have, as Sanchez suggested, fully documented that a number of the leading "respectable" anti-immigration organizations are in fact fronts created by white-supremacist ideologues.

You see, Fox and everyone else has been running commentary from Kris Kobach, a well-paid lackey for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Kobach has been boasting on Fox and elsewhere that he and his fellows at FAIR are helping to push the Arizona immigration law in other states as well.

Well, FAIR is exactly what Linda Sanchez described. And it's not exactly news, either. Here's the SPLC's rundown on the three main groups involved in promoting the Arizona law:

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 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 also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

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(This is a guest post for C&L, written by the NCLR's Clarissa Martínez.)

After a member station launched an incredibly insensitive radio promotion designed to tweak Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio for joining the national boycott of Arizona over its new anti-immigrant law, Clear Channel found itself in the center of a national controversy and the target of the ire of Latino communities across America.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, immediately demanded an apology from the station, and thousands of people nationwide, by phone or in writing, contacted Clear Channel General Manager Brian Dytko and President and CEO Mark Mays asking for the same.

Today at 5:00 p.m. Dytko will go on air to do just that.

It all started when Coleman made the decision to ban city employees from visiting Arizona on official business. He joins other cities and counties in making his decision to protest Arizona’s new law, SB 1070, which essentially sanctions racial profiling.

WTVN-AM’s response? “WTVN would like to send you where Americans are proud and illegals are scared—sunny Phoenix, Arizona! You’ll spend a weekend chasing aliens and spending cash in the desert. Just make sure you have your green card!”

NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía was not amused.

“The passage of SB 1070 has provoked a lot of reprehensible anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric,” stated Murguía, “but a radio station bankrolling someone to ‘hunt’ human beings for sport represents a new low. What is happening to Latinos—citizens, legal residents, and undocumented alike—in Arizona is no joke.”
Murguía reminded Dytko that “the American people own the airwaves over which WTVN broadcasts. As such, we will ask FCC commissioners to ensure that threats against American citizens—such as the one encouraged and promoted by WTVN—are not taken lightly and dealt with in an appropriate manner.”

Dytko admitted that his station has received hundreds of phone calls protesting the promotion, thanks to the efforts of several groups in Ohio and at the national level that mobilized their supporters to pressure him.

We can’t wait to hear what he’ll say at 5:00.

UPDATE: John Amato:

They finally did apologize for their egregious actions. You can hear the apology and see the transcript here.

This is Brian Dytko, Station Manager of WTVN with a message regarding our station’s recent “Win a Trip to Phoenix, Arizona” promotional contest. Our contest was meant as a humorous response to a City of Columbus ban on travel to Arizona by city employees. In fact, a key element of the promotion was that city employees were specifically invited to enter the contest. We regret that our promotional copy has been characterized as condoning violence. This was not our intent, and we do not condone violence of any kind. We apologize for our actions here. We are always striving to engage our community on important issues of the day and sometimes we do a better job than others, but we always take the input of our community seriously.

It was a pretty pathetic contest and tepid apology if you ask me, but an apology none the less.

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Well, we already knew that Rand Paul's brand of "libertarian conservatism" was actually a front for the far-right beliefs he gets from his father -- even though he's done his best to scurry away from the consequences of having revealed that extremism inadvertently when Rachel Maddow put it in a context that mattered -- in this case, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.

But you know it's going to keep bubbling up, nearly every time he opens his mouth. For instance, in a recent interview with an English-language Russian news station recently, Paul held forth on immigration [via Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress]:

Paul: I recently have been talking more about satellite observation. They say you can sit in front of the store here and a satellite can read the headline on your newspaper. So I think you could also monitor your border with satellites, and then you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come in illegally. You could have helicopters stations positioned every couple of hundred miles.

I think you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come here illegally. You could have helicopter stations positioned every couple of hundred miles. And I think you could control your borders and control your borders within months if you had the willpower to do it. And I think neither party in our country has had the willpower to control our borders.

Q: Why not?

Paul: I don't know. Some of it may be labor force, things like that. But I'm not opposed to letting people come in and work and labor in our country, but what I think we should do is, we shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship.

A lot of this is about demographics. If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat. So the Democrat Party's for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote. I think we need to readdress that.

We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.

It's worth noting that Paul is not only opposed to providing a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, but he is apparently also opposed to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the one that reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This is a bit odd, don't you think, for someone who not only constantly cites the Constitution and calls himself a "constitutionalist," but also accuses his opponents of "violating the Constitution" at every turn? Indeed, only earlier in the segment he declared that President Obama's health-care reforms were "unconstitutional."

Note the words that people like Rand Paul never want to use when they talk about this, but which are what we're talking about here -- namely, birthright citizenship.

And contrary to Paul's assertion, there is a long list of nations [predominantly in the Americas] that practice jus soli. Moreover, it's not, as the Wikipedia entry explains, a particular innovation of American law, having its origins in British common law:

Birthright citizenship, as with much United States law, has its roots in English common law. Calvin’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (1608), was particularly important as it established that under English common law “a person's status was vested at birth, and based upon place of birth--a person born within the king's dominion owed allegiance to the sovereign, and in turn, was entitled to the king's protection." This same principle was adopted by the newly formed United States, as stated by Supreme Court Justice Noah Haynes Swayne: "All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural- born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country…since as before the Revolution."

That, of course, hasn't stopped the Nativists who want to either overturn or ignore the Constitution. Indeed, Paul is just echoing the latest efforts of Arizona's immigrant-bashing nativists. And as we noted then:

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This is good news at this point.

As Digby says:

I suppose that's not all that comforting considering how flaccid the White House been about these matters. But still, I'll take it. At least there are some lawyers in the Obama Justice department who have some concerns about this. I'll take what I can get.

ABC News:

A team of Justice Department attorneys has written a recommendation challenging the Arizona immigration law.

The draft recommendation, part of an ongoing Justice Department review, concludes the Arizona legislature exceeded its authority in crafting a law that could impede federal responsibility for enforcing immigration laws.

Some department lawyers are also concerned that the law could lead to abuses based on race.

The review, however, is not yet complete and there are some within the Justice Department who challenge the recommendation's legal analysis. Sources tell ABC News that the ongoing review may take weeks more and that no formal recommendation has been sent to the White House.

The White House will have to give its stamp of approval for the Justice Department to challenge the law because this is a civil case.

The Arizona immigration law passed in late April is set to be implemented on July 29, barring any legal challenges. The controversial law that has attracted international attention and sparked protests around the country essentially gives Arizona law enforcement greater authority to look for and arrest illegal immigrants.

The bill would allow the police to question and arrest people without warrant if there is "reasonable suspicion" about their immigration status, and to charge undocumented citizens with "trespassing."

Meanwhile, back to Sanityville, ten police chiefs from around the country went to see AG Holder:

Ten police chiefs from cities across the country, including three from Arizona, traveled to Washington, DC today to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and reiterate what they’ve been saying for weeks: Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law will make their jobs harder, erode working relationships built on mutual trust and cooperation between law enforcement and immigrants, and make communities less safe. The federal government should step in to prevent more states from following suit.
--

That message came through loud and clear during a news conference the chiefs held today. One after another they spoke of the challenges immigration enforcement laws such as Arizona’s present to police departments, including three police departments in Arizona – Phoenix, Tucson and Sahuarita – that are most likely to feel the effects first if the law goes into effect, as expected, on July 29.

“The primary job of local law enforcement is not immigration enforcement,” said Charlie Beck, Los Angeles’ police chief. “It is to protect the community from crime. The Arizona legislation does not do this. We now very well how to do our job and legislation like this inhibits us from doing our job.”

Like other city residents, he said, “Undocumented immigrants are witnesses to all kinds of crime. If people don’t come forward to report crimes, regardless of their immigration status, it really inhibits our jobs and threatens the work that we have done” establishing good working relationships with immigrant communities...read on

Opinion polls are always skewed when it comes to race, so it's no shock that there's more support for SB 1070 via the polls than are against.

This is a moral issue, first and foremost. But it's also a practical issue: After all, the ultimate outcome of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's obsessive enforcement of immigration laws in Maricopa County -- Arpaio provided the role model for SB1070 -- has been exactly what these police chiefs fear for their jurisdictions:

Although MCSO is adept at self-promotion and is an unquestionably “tough” law-enforcement agency, under its watch violent crime rates recently have soared, both in absolute terms and relative to other jurisdictions. It has diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration and in reducing crime generally, and to extensive trips by MCSO officials to Honduras for purposes that are nebulous at best. Profligate spending on those diversions helped produce a financial crisis in late 2007 that forced MCSO to curtail or reduce important law-enforcement functions.

In terms of support services, MCSO has allowed a huge backlog of outstanding warrants to accumulate, and has seriously disadvantaged local police departments by closing satellite booking facilities.

At some point, when they're inundated with a wave of crime unlike anything they saw before SB 1070, Arizonans will also realize they've cut off their noses to spite their faces.

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Republican demagogues like Newt Gingrich are always faced with the dilemma of how to deal with reality, which as Stephen Colbert suggests, has that nasty liberal bias. Their favorite trick in recent years has been simply to invert reality on its head -- turn victimizers and predators into victims, and vice versa, make up into down, wrong into right.

So last night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox show, Gingrich -- confronted with the cold reality that Latino voters are fleeing the GOP in droves, thanks to the Republicans' championing of racist laws the just-passed police-state-inducing SB1070 in Arizona -- decided it was all President Obama's fault:

Gingrich: Well, look, I assume that somewhere after he [Obama] attacked Arizona, engaged in what I think was a racist dialogue to try to frighten Latinos away from the Republican Party, stood next to the president of Mexico and said borders don't matter because we have strong bonds, had the president of Mexico get a standing ovation from Democrats for attacking an American state, and has his own State Department apologize to the Chinese for the Arizona law -- somewhere in that process his pollster came in and said, 'You know, maybe you're positioned a little bad on this issue.'

No doubt Gingrich had a look at the grim numbers:

For the Republican Party, politically, there's good news and bad news in our new NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo poll on the subject of immigration. Let's start with the good news: The Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, passed by a GOP-led legislature and signed by a GOP governor, has been a short-term political winner. The poll shows that 61% of the public supports the law, and a Republican congressional candidate who backs the law beats a Democratic candidate who opposes it, 40%-26%. But here's the bad news: Latinos, once a semi-swing group of voters, now have swung overwhelmingly for President Obama and the Democratic Party, and younger Hispanics are moving to the Democrats in even greater numbers."

*** Latinos aren’t swing voters anymore: For example, 68% of Latinos approve of Obama’s job (compared with 48% of overall respondents and 38% of whites), and they view the Democratic Party favorably by a 54%-21% score (versus 41%-40% among all adults and 34%-48% among whites). And their views of the Republican Party? In the poll, the GOP fav/unfav among Latinos is 22%-44%. What’s more, Latinos think Democrats would do a better job than Republicans in protecting the interests of minorities (by 58%-11%), in representing the opportunity to move up the economic ladder (46%-20%), in dealing with immigration (37%-12%), and in promoting strong moral values (33%-23%). The only advantage they gave Republicans was in enforcing security along the border (31%-20%). And Latinos remain a sleeping -- yet growing -- political giant: 23% of them aren’t registered voters (compared with 12% of whites and 16% of blacks), and

*** Dropping like a rock: It didn't use to be this way. In 2004, George W. Bush, the former governor of Texas, won some 40% of the Latino vote. But in 2006, that percentage for Republicans dropped to 30%, and it was 31% in '08. And check out these party identification averages among Latinos that our Hart (D)/McInturff (R) pollsters put together from our past NBC/WSJ polls; this chart puts together the YEARLY average of all Hispanics surveyed for each year (approximately 900 respondents are included in each yearly sample):

-- In 2004, Dems held a 22-point edge in party identification among Latinos (49%-27%)
-- In 2005, it was 24 points (48%-24%)
-- In 2006, it was 26 points (50%-22%)
-- In 2007, it was 30 points (52%-22%)
-- In 2008, it was 35 points (57%-22%)
-- In 2009, it was 31 points (50%-19%)
-- And so far in 2010, it has been 36 points (58%-22%).

See, Gingrich's problem is a real-world one: Every Latino voter in the country -- which is to, every Latino citizen -- who does not live in Arizona, and particularly anyone with an accent, knows full well that if they travel to Arizona, they'll need to bring their citizenship papers or birth certificate or some other certificate proving their citizenship -- otherwise they risk being caught up in a Kafkaesque law-enforcement and potentially deported.

Gingrich and the other defenders of SB1070 keep pointing to the fig leaf of the law's wording prohibiting racial profiling -- they don't want to cop to the realities of how police go about their work, which inevitably will mean that they will catch up Latino citizens in their snares.

These defenders keep claiming that only non-citizens are affected, because only they are required to carry their papers. But Latino citizens will constantly come under suspicion for being non-citizens, and their papers demanded of them too.

Latinos are perfectly cognizant of this reality. Which is why they're fleeing Gingrich's little up-is-down Bizarro World in droves.

See, in that Bizarro World, it's only "racist" when a Democrat decries racism. Otherwise, actual racism doesn't exist.

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I'm not sure what irritated me more about this segment of Fox News Sunday: Chris Wallace being a complete jerk to Kirsten Powers or William Kristol arguing for respect for the rule of law.

Would that be the same Kristol who thinks reading Miranda rights to suspected terrorists is wrong because they can get "lawyered up"? Or maybe it's the same Bill Kristol who was totally ok with warrantless wiretaps? Or maybe it's the guy who was outraged -- OUTRAGED -- that lawbreaker Scooter Libby did not receive a full pardon and pass for his breakage of that hallowed rule?

Of course, even the New York Times said he lacked a talent for solid opinion journalism. I'd argue that solid opinion journalism requires, at its core, intellectual honesty, something we shouldn't expect from a man who sold Sarah Palin to the Republican Party.

But in Bill Kristol's mind, the rule of law applies to immigrants, but not citizens. Got it.

Everyone is speaking out against Arizona's SB 1070, but Baseball Commissioner Selig and MLB have been mum, like decaying carcasses stuffed away in the Tomb of Bud.

Janet Murguia is the President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza and she wrote an op-ed which appeared on ESPN. She's calling out Bud Selig to take a meaningful stand against racial profiling in Arizona.

When a host of individuals and organizations called for Major League Baseball's 2011 All-Star Game to be moved from Phoenix in protest of Arizona's new racial profiling law, MLB commissioner Bud Selig flubbed his response.

Petitioned by a United States senator, a member of the House of Representatives, and dozens of civil rights, labor, pro-immigrant, and Latino groups, including my organization, the National Council of La Raza, Selig sidestepped the issue and instead talked about baseball's record on diversity. Whether he was being overly defensive, tried to change the subject, didn't understand the question, or was just plain nonresponsive, Selig's refusal to answer a direct question on the issue is a deep disappointment to Latino baseball fans and the Latino community throughout the nation.

To clear things up for Mr. Selig, the call for moving the All-Star game is not an attack on Major League Baseball or some kind of threat. Proponents of the move are instead urging MLB to stand up for its players, its front office personnel and its fans who have been singled out and targeted for abuse and harassment by the state of Arizona thanks to its new law, SB 1070, which allows police to stop anyone they "reasonably suspect" of being undocumented. What is happening in Arizona is not a debate over how to best deal with a broken immigration system; it is a violation of our civil rights and our most fundamental values as Americans.

The Major League Baseball Players Association understands that. That's why it quickly issued a statement in opposition to SB 1070. Padres first baseman and perennial All-Star Adrian Gonzalez and White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen have already said they will not play in Phoenix next year.

This is neither unusual nor unprecedented. The NCAA does not allow postseason events -- such as the wildly popular Final Four -- in states that fly the Confederate flag. The NFL tangled with Arizona in the early 1990s over its refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day and pulled the 1993 Super Bowl from Tempe. Those organizations took such steps in defense of their players and all other African-Americans involved in the NCAA and NFL, showing what they stood for at their core despite the fact that there was no direct threat to their safety. SB 1070 is a direct threat, and that argues for Selig and MLB to take action both to protect their players and personnel and to preserve the integrity of the game.

Quibbles aside, Latinos in baseball are considerably better off today than when Selig took over as commissioner. But that is minor league ball compared to this decision. Make the right play, commissioner. Move the game.

City after city is taking LA's lead on boycotting Arizona because of their draconian immigration law, so it was time for the xenophobes to respond.

An Arizona utility commissioner said he's willing to pull the plug on Los Angeles if the city goes through with a boycott of his state. In a letter to the city of LA, a member of Arizona's power commission said he would ask Arizona utility companies to cut off the power supply to Los Angeles. LA gets about 25 percent of its power from Arizona. "That is one commissioner who has that idea -- whether he can do that or not is another idea," said LA Councilman Dennis Zine. "They are the ones who have to make the move, not us." The commissioner's power grid play is in response to the city's approval of a resolution directing city staff to consider which contracts with Arizona can be terminated.

Here's part Arizona Corporation Commission member Gary Pierce's letter to the mayor:

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.

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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in Washington D.C., meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, but his deputy chief of staff issued the following statement: "The mayor stands strongly behind the city council and he will not respond to threats from the state that has isolated itself from an America that values freedom, liberty and basic civil rights."

Councilmember Tom LaBonge said he'd like to talk with Pierce. LaBonge said the city needs to look into its long standing utility agreements with Arizona.

LaBonge met Wednesday morning with LA Department of Water and Power officials.

"We have right of ownership of the power plants," LaBonge told NBCLA. "We partially own them."

Other California cities, including Oakland and San Francisco, have passed similar measures.

On Tuesday, Berkeley became the latest California city to boycott Arizona. The City Council voted unanimously to restrict staff from traveling to the state on city business.

There is no "Power Play," really, because after reading the letter from Commissioner Pierce, he's talking about renegotiating power agreements and not just shutting off those electrons. The letter is a PR ploy. Does Arizona want to lose even more valuable revenue since they've lost so much business already because of SB 1070? And if they really could cut off the sales, and yet didn't have a buyer, it would fall into that old "who would they sell it to" mode. That's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Meanwhile, Gov. Brewer is in serious panic mode and transfered 250K from her Dept. of Commerce to Arizona's Office of Tourism to try and rebrand the state's image.

Acknowledging that Arizona has developed a serious image problem because of its tough new immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer and tourism-industry leaders said Thursday that they will launch a new effort to stanch the flow of lost trade and convention business in the state.

The legislation and firestorm of negative publicity that followed brought calls for boycotts, moved groups to back out of local conventions and led several cities to cut business ties with Arizona companies.

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