Please vote for Obama. Do it for the country -- and do it for revenge.

Revenge against who, you say? Well, just for starters, there's the always trite Byron York.

A seemingly offhand utterance from President Obama has turned into a major point of contention between the two campaigns, as Team Obama tries to explain what the president meant when he told a crowd of supporters that “Voting is the best revenge.” It happened in Springfield, Ohio Friday as Obama was discussing the economic policies of the 1990s. When Obama referred to “a Senate candidate by the name of Mitt Romney,” the crowd booed his opponent’s name — certainly not unusual reaction at political rallies of both parties.

Then Obama said, “No, no, no — don’t boo, vote. Vote. Voting is the best revenge.” It was an ugly and small-minded moment, especially for the end of a campaign when candidates usually try to stress larger, optimistic themes. Romney incorporated the “revenge” line in his speech in Ohio Friday night, saying that while Obama advises revenge, he, Romney, wants people to vote “for love of country.”

A vote for Obama is a vote for revenge against Byron York, whose meandering articles like the above excerpt makes any rational person's head hurt for a week. Vote for revenge against the Beltway villagers who are engaged in a process of stripping away benefits for working class Americans like Social Security and Medicare in their demands for a grand bargain. A bargain that will have no effect on them.

Vote for revenge against Leon Cooperman and the 1%ers, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Ron&Rand Paul, Rupert Murdoch, Koch Brothers, Roger Ailes, Mark Halperin, David Broder, Jonah&Bernie Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Todd Aiken, Pat Robertson, Karl Rove, WSJ, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.

Please add to the list in the comment section.

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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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Many right-wing pundits like Byron York have been defending Arizona's new immigration law by saying that there is a great deal of case law that deals with 'reasonable suspicion,' so what's all the fuss?

Anonymous Liberal writes a nice piece that strips their arguments to the bone.

Ramesh Ponnuru makes a similar point, arguing that critics "ignore the fact that the 'reasonable suspicion' standard already exists in case law and is not the invention of the Arizona statute." He writes that "[s]peeding and being Hispanic wouldn't be enough to do it."

This is true, but it ignores some important realities. I completely agree that a judge would interpret "reasonable suspicion" in this context very narrowly. A situation like the one described by York, where the circumstances strongly point toward human smuggling, is just about the only situation I can imagine that would survive judicial scrutiny. Certainly looking Mexican or speaking Spanish would not be enough.

The problem with this logic, however, is that it's hard to see how these decisions will be subjected to judicial review. The reason there is extensive case law interpreting what "reasonable suspicion" means is because defense attorneys routinely move to suppress any evidence procured by way of an illegal stop or frisk, at which point the police must articulate the basis of their reasonable suspicion. If they can't do so to the judge's satisfaction, the evidence is suppressed and the charges are often dismissed. Police quickly learn to follow the rules if they want their charges to stick.

In the immigration context, however, there is no evidence to suppress. Defense attorneys will not have an obvious mechanism for contesting the reasonability of the request for documentation. I can see an occasional civil rights complaint filed by the ACLU or a similar group, but I don't see what circumstances would lead to any kind of routine judicial review of these decisions. The police will largely be on the honor system.

And that's why this law is so problematic. It a recipe for police abuse, for unchecked racial profiling. And even if the police generally do a good job of controlling themselves, the mere spectre of such abuse will only drive the undocumented community farther underground. There will be no cooperation with the police. No reporting of crimes. More fleeing the scene of accidents. More children not getting medical care because their parents are afraid to take them to the hospital. It's just really bad policy.

it's tough to win when there's no evidence to suppress, I confess. (Bad rhyme) A judge is almost always going to side with a police officer except when there's insurmountable evidence to support your claim. In these situations that's never going to happen.

Have you ever been to court on a traffic ticket after you dispute it? You might be completely right and did stop at that red light or signaled before you made that right hand turn, but as long as the officer shows up to court---you're guilty as charged.

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As part of an event designed to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, former President Bill Clinton made some remarks yesterday [PDF file] that got right-wingers all upset again:

Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America in the early 1990s. First, it was a time, like now, of dramatic upheaval. A lot of old arrangements had changed. The things that anchored peoples’ lives and gave a certainty to them had been unraveling. Some of them, by then, for 20 years. ... And there were more and more people who had a hard time figuring out where they fit in. More and more people who had a very difficult time living with confidence and optimism in the face of change. It is true that we see some of that today.

... But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or reduce our passion from the positions we hold -- but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike. And I am not trying to muzzle anybody.

But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.

Look, I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else. Let them have at it. But I think all you have to do is read the paper everyday to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled. We know, now, that there are people involved in groups – these “hatriot” groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others – 99 percent of them will never do anything they shouldn’t do. But there are people who advocate violence and anticipate violence.

One of these guys the other day said that all politics is just a prelude to the ultimate and inevitable civil war. You know, I’m a southerner. I know what happened. We were still paying for that 100 years later when I was a kid growing up, in ways large and small. It doesn’t take many people to take something like that seriously. So I don’t want the whole story of this retrospective just to be about this, and trying to turn everything into politics.

And I guess that’s naïve, me being in Washington and all. I still have some memory of it. (Laughter.) But I think that the point I’m trying to make is, I like the debate. This “tea party” movement can be a healthy thing if they’re making us justify every penny of taxes we raised and every dollar of public money we spend. And they say they’re for limited government and a balanced budget; when I left office, we had the smallest workforce since Eisenhower and we had four surpluses for the first time in 70 years.

... Yes, the Boston tea party involved the seizure of tea in the ship because it was taxation without representation. This fight is about taxation by duly elected representatives that you don't happen to agree with and can vote out at the next election -- and two years after that, and two years after that, and two years after that. That's very different.

... By all means, keep fighting. By all means, keep arguing. But remember words have consequences as much as actions do. And what we advocate commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.

We owe it to keep on fighting, keep on arguing. They didn’t vote for me in Oklahoma in 1996. It was still a Republican state. But I loved them anyway, and I will till the day I die, because when this country was flat on its back mourning their loss, they rallied around the employees of the national government and they rallied around the human beings who had lost everything, and they rallied around the elemental principle that what we have in common is more important than our differences. And that’s why our Constitution makes our freedoms last – because of that bright line.

Naturally, such eminent reasonableness upset the talking heads at Fox News very much indeed:

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Charles Krauthammer: "I think it's disgusting. ... This is really disgraceful."

Stephen Hayes: "But to link it to Tea Parties, to suggest that there's some bridge, that there's some connection, I think is grossly irresponsible."

Chris Wallace: "Why is he bringing up the Tea Party and Oklahoma City in the same sentence or the same paragraph in the first place? And again, it seems to me to be an effort to marginalize these people."

Byron York: "I think this is more of an effort to sort of pre-tar the Tea Party movement with the label of being violent when, uh, nothing in fact has actually happened."

Gee, we wonder where Clinton could have gotten the idea that the Tea Parties were connected to the militia movement of the 1990s.

You don't suppose it could have had anything to do with the saturation of Tea Party events with Patriot movement ideas and agendas, as well as its many conspiracy theories, embodied in all those Patriot movement and militia leaders appearing at Tea Party events, do you?

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Teabaggers must really believe they are the majority in America and John McCain won the election, but Obama is just keeping the Oval office warm because McCain has to win his Senate race against JD Hayworth first before he can be sworn in. It's just a formality. That's teabagger logic.

Amanda's post rocks!.

Digby is amused/disgusted at conservatives who simply will not accept that having a majority in both houses of Congress and having the Presidency means that Democrats get to pass legislation.

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Well, it’s simple, really. They assume, if they don’t state it outright, that large numbers of American voters shouldn’t have the right to vote. That’s the implicit argument when Sarah Palin praises white rural voters as “Real Americans”, when Birthers obsess over the idea that the first black President simply can’t be eligible for office, when tea baggers yell racist and homophobic slurs at politicians, and when they insist that you eliminate black voters from the count if you want to find out how popular a politician “really” is. When Bart Stupak laughed out loud at the very idea that nuns have opinions worth listening to---and listed a bunch of men whose opinions were the ones that counted---you had a similar sentiment being expressed. Universal suffrage seems like a fundamental part of democracy to liberals, but it appears that conservatives think it de-legitimizes the results of elections. And that if you do something without Republicans on board, you’re eliminating those who represent the only people who count.

The irony here is that Republicans are already way overrepresented in Congress. Because of the constitutional rules that give every state two Senators, no matter how underpopulated the state, you see rural, white-dominated areas having way more representation than they deserve. For instance, South Dakota has a little over 800,000 residents, but New York has almost 20 million. New York City has over 8 million people alone, which means that if the Senate had a representational system like the House, just the city of New York would be owed 20 Senators to compete with South Dakota’s two. Think about how irrelevant the Republican party would be---at least the current wingnutty Republican party, since it’s obvious New York can elect Republicans---if representation was actually fair...read on

I've been meaning to post this for a few days.

He actually said that:

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

So you African-Americans? According to Byron York, you don't actually count. My buddy and former C&L contributer Steve Benen:

For crying out loud, what the hell does that mean, exactly? I read the rest of the piece, hoping to see York explain why the president's seemingly popular positions are exaggerated or inflated. Why, in other words, these positions "appear" more popular "than they actually are."

But all the piece tells me is that African Americans tend to support Obama in greater numbers than white Americans.

The problem, of course, is that damn phrase "than they actually are." York argues that we can see polls gauging public opinion, but if we want to really understand the popularity of the president's positions, and not be fooled by "appearances," then we have to exclude black people.

There's really no other credible way to read this. York effectively argues that black people shouldn't count. We can look at polls measuring the attitudes of Americans, but if we want to see the truth -- appreciate the numbers as "they actually are" -- then it's best if we focus our attention on white people, and only white people.

I swear the next thing York will suggest is calling for polling companies to consider African-Americans as only 3/5th a person to more accurately reflect reality. I'm sure you can find the historical precedence for it if you try really hard.

You stay classy, Byron.

Dave N: This is actually a not-uncommon species of eliminationist rhetoric, since these kinds of discussions are essentially exercises in imagining the world with a whole class of people effectively excised.

As Adam Serwer observes: "This is another example of a really bizarre genre of conservative writing, which I call 'If Only Those People Weren't Here.'"

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Anyone notice how right-wing behavior toward President Obama so far is mimicking, structurally speaking, their behavior toward President Clinton in the 1990s: encourage anti-government hysteria, freak out about incipient totalitarianism, accuse him of destroying the country and making it weaker, and then constantly attack his appointees and demand their firing? What's next, an investigation of his investments?

Does it surprise anyone, then, that the first object of Republicans' ire -- the first Cabinet appointment whose resignation they're demanding -- would be a woman named Janet?

Greta Van Susteren and Byron York last night on Fox were fairly representative (check out the Limbaugh rant at the beginning), though the fire-Napolitano talk has been bubbling up everywhere. As Amanda Terkel notes this morning, John McCain even went so far as to falsely claim that the person responsible for the report had been fired.

Still, as York says, the cold reality is that Napolitano is on perfectly solid ground and there is no likelihood, imminent or otherwise, that she'll be forced out. But the reason for that is that not only was what the report said in fact perfectly accurate, she only bears glancing responsibility for it: It had, after all, been commissioned by the Bush administration and authored by Bush administration hirees.

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Byron York attacked Scott McClellan on FNS Sunday by calling him a very naive man to think that Bush would be a unitier. Wasn't that what he campaigned on? These is are the type of attacks that are coming from the BushCo. supporters. A common criticism of McClellan is that he was incompetent and if he felt this way about bush then why didn't he leave sooner. Well, if Byron thought Scotty was so awful then why didn't he tell the White House to dump from the very beginning? You see , it works both ways.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

York: Yes it, yes it does. I mean he was not a terribly good spokesman. There was some really excruciating moments in the White House briefing room. You could look at the other people, I, another person I mentioned Alberto Gonzales was a guy who got in a job way over, over his head. But I think the thing that kind of distinguishes McClellan is he was amazingly naive and his belief that George W. Bush would kind of bring us all together which was why he comes to Washington. Uh, if you remember that conference where Bush is asked to name a mistake that he's made. And he gives an awful performance. He can't name a mistake and this is terrible. And, but Bush realizes, and he told McClellan, he said look if I name a mistake my enemies are just going to keep pushing for more and more and more. And McClellan doesn't see if that way. He actually writes in the book "I believe that by embracing openness and forthrightness, he could have, it could have redeemed him. It could have transcended partisanship and brought together leaders of both parties to try to consensus his way forward on Iraq. (crosstalk) That is a naive point of view.

From a Salon article in 1999:

Bush: I didn't try to take all the credit, I shared credit with the people, both Republicans and Democrats, who helped achieve these reforms. Second, I showed the people of Texas that I'm a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another.

Bush used the phrase I'm a uniter not a divider, over and over again.

I believe all laws and public policy should support strong families. I believe in individual responsibility, that all individuals are responsible for their actions and decisions. A responsible leader sets a clear agenda and brings people together to achieve it.

Responsible leadership sets a tone of civility and bipartisanship that gets things done. I am a uniter, not a divider and, as the governor of Texas, that is how I have led. It is how I will lead in the White House.

Finally, together we can give this nation a fresh start after a season of cynicism. In that spirit, I make this pledge to you, the American people: Next January, when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear not only to uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

You've heard about the new lies about Hillary, right? Let your eyes and ears tell you what happened in the above video. HotAir tried the same trick last year at TBA....Yet, York who tries to portray himself as a reasonable conservative---is rewarded by getting a seat next to Tim Russert. It pays to get that wingnut welfare from the NRO. I find it fascinating that C&L beats the NRO pretty handily in traffic via Alexa. Even with boatloads of cash and all the free media exposure---they still can't compete with the people-powered politics of you and I. Jane Hamsher:

Hillary Clinton’s speech from this morning is already causing a significant flap. Byron York sat through the same speech as the rest of us but was viewing it through his typical lens of such partisan distortion that his perceptions once again appear to be the product of bizarroworld.

Hillary was in no way booed for saying “the American military has done its job,” the boos came when she claimed that the Iraqi government was somehow to blame. Right wing mythology regularly demands that one believe their recklessly constructed fantasies over your own eyes and ears, but for those who still ascribe to some sort of consensus reality you can view the YouTube above. Fox News and Drudge are already running with bold-faced lie (which Bob Geiger deconstructs second-by-second here). The only thing that exceeds the audacity of their lies is the speed at which they propagate them...read on

FDL:

"I appears Judge Reggie Walton has had enough of the Barbara Comstock Show and has threatened to issue a gag order (per Jeralyn) It’s been clear for a while that Byron York is the outlet of choice for Comstock when she wants to urge a bunch of propaganda out into the discourse, but it was exceptionally evident the other day when he put Fitzgerald’s correction letter online before anyone else had seen it...read on"