Out here in California, eMeg is spending up a storm -- over $100 million so far. That's before Jerry Brown cranks up his campaign machine.

Problem is, no one likes what she's saying. The more money she spends, the higher her unfavorable ratings go up, and not just with liberals and moderates.

According to SF Gate, the (euphemistically labeled) "conservative wing" of California's GOP plan to call her out on her mixed, muddled messaging around Arizona's AB 1070.

Whitman, who remains in a dead heat with Democrat Jerry Brown despite spending a record-busting $104 million of her own money, will face criticism from some of the 1,000 grassroots party members descending on the Manchester Grand Hyatt starting Friday.

Much of the blowback will come from members of the California Republican Assembly, a group of activists that former President Ronald Reagan called "the conscience of the Republican Party."

Conservatives want the state GOP to approve a resolution backing Arizona's law targeting illegal immigrants and a similar California law, Proposition 187, approved by voters in 1994 but later overturned by a federal judge. Whitman opposes both measures.

The debate could be toxic for Whitman. As far as I can tell, her campaign has been based on a few weird promises to increase state unemployment rates by terminating 40,000 state employees and a lot of vague promises to run the state like a corporation. As far as her views on immigration are concerned, it seems that Whitman adopts whatever position will garner her the most votes. On that score, the conservatives have it right:

Greig isn't worried that a high-profile conversation about the divisive issue will hurt the party's chances in November. "We are standing on principle here," she said. "I do not think pandering to the illegal alien community will help us. They don't vote."

That may be true. But Hispanics vote, and there are a lot of them here in California. Legal ones. With the legal right to vote, and they might not take kindly to the xenophobic attitudes that eMeg and her party espouse.

Bring it on.

::Headdesk:: Florida state house candidate Marg Baker has some not-so-new ideas for how to handle illegal immigrants:

“I was just a little girl in Miami, and they built camps for the people that snuck into the country because they were illegal,” Baker said. “They put them in the camps and they shipped them back. We can do that. We can do E-Verify. We must stop them.”

In an interview with Salon (where she might have had an opportunity to clarify in a good way)), she elaborated:

"We can ship them out to the middle of the country and put up high walls and leave them there," said Marg Baker, the middle-aged real estate broker vying for the Republican nomination in the state's 48th district, north of Tampa.

And she gets even more specific later on:

Asked if what she had in mind was more like the Japanese internment camps of the World War II era, Baker said, "something like that. But unfortunately in the Japanese camps they detaineed American citizens. The only ones I want to detain are the ones who are illegal."

She added, "You've gotta have places for them to eat and sleep and breathe fresh air. It can be a tent city ... You don't want to make them too comfortable or they'll want to come back."

Funny, I feel that way about teabaggers. Let's round 'em all up and drop them into the middle of Kansas, in tent cities, because we don't want them too comfortable or they'll want to multiply.

The acrid odor of hate oozes from her words onto my screen. Republicans -- teabaggers in particular -- are intentionally using immigration as a way to stoke up race hate in advance of the midterms, hoping that it will distract from the real issue, which is their systematic destruction of our economy when they had power, and their hope to be able to tear down what progress has been made in the last two years.

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her misbegotten immigration law, SB1070, may be popular with Arizonans looking for a handy scapegoat right now, but they may not be so popular a little down the road, after they've completely destroyed what's left of the state's economy.

KPHO-TV in Phoenix, for instance, found that her fearmongering about "headless corpses" was driving tourists away from the state in droves:

Veronica and Richard Schultz have owned the guest ranch for the past 14 years. The operation’s close proximity to the border used to be a selling point for guests. Now, it’s more of a repellent.

“We’ve definitely lost guests and we've had guests call us. We’ve had friends call us from all over the country and say, ‘Hey, are you safe?’” Richard Schultz said.

Between the economy and boycotts related to Arizona’s tough new immigration law, SB 1070, tourism in the state is down 10 percent.

The Shultzes said state politicians are not helping matters. Every day on cable news, anchors and reporters are discussing an invasion at the border, headless bodies in the desert or a rash of kidnappings.

During this election cycle, Arizona politicians are touting the potential dangers of illegal immigration. Gov. Jan Brewer is one of the loudest voices.

She has made several statements to the national media, the validity of which CBS 5 Investigates could not confirm. The governor told one media outlet that almost all illegal immigrants are bringing drugs across the border. U.S. Border Patrol officials said that statement is false.

Brewer also said law enforcement officials have found decapitated bodies in the desert. Calls to all of Arizona’s border county medical examiners revealed no decapitated bodies have been reported to them.

You've also gotta love how, when asked about her rhetoric in the segment above, Brewer simply fled. She must be getting her lessons in media relations from Sharron Angle.

Then there was the LA Times piece reporting how Latinos are fleeing the state in droves -- and how it's killing businesses:

No one has measured the effect of SB 1070 on businesses, or the number of immigrants it has prompted to leave Arizona. But merchants say the repercussions are clear — not just in how it's prompted many families to leave the state, but scared others enough to curtail their regular activities.

"The economy's already bad, but on top of it [SB 1070] is like a bullet in the head to us," said Osameh Odeh, 35, whose Eden Wear clothing store was empty one recent afternoon. "People don't come out of their houses anymore."

Of course, we not only predicted this outcome, we reported on its early manifestations already awhile back. You know the political price for this may be a steep one -- considering that wrecking the economy is not usually a popular outcome. Even Judge Bolton's ruling, staving off the law's enactment, can't prevent these outcomes.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Well, we were hoping to hear this news -- and figuring it was likely -- but later this afternoon, it will become official:

Feds to file lawsuit over Arizona immigration law

The U.S. Justice Department is filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigrants, setting the stage for a clash between the federal government and state over the nation's toughest immigration crackdown.

The planned lawsuit was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Justice Department official with knowledge of the plans. The official didn't want to be identified before a public announcement planned for later Tuesday.

The lawsuit will argue that Arizona's new measure requiring state and local police to question and possibly arrest illegal immigrants during the enforcement of other laws, like traffic stops, usurps federal authority.

The Washington Post:

The lawsuit, which three sources said could be filed as early as Tuesday, will invoke for its main argument the legal doctrine of "preemption," which is based on the Constitution's supremacy clause and says that federal law trumps state statutes. Justice Department officials believe that enforcing immigration laws is a federal responsibility, the sources said.

But the filing is likely to have a civil rights component as well, arguing that the Arizona law would lead to police harassment of U.S. citizens and foreigners, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the government has not announced its plans. President Obama has warned that the law could violate citizens' civil rights, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has expressed concern that it could drive a wedge between police and immigrant communities.

The law is obviously unconstitutional. But then, if the latest poll numbers are right, a large majority of Arizonans don't care what the Constitution says.

At least, when it says things they don't like. Bet they all love watching those Glenn Beck shows on the Founding Fathers, though.

It's no surprise that MLB owners and Bud Selig would support -- or at least stick their heads in the sand when it comes to publicly responding -- the controversial and hateful Arizona immigration law, SB1070. It's also refreshing when a player or manager speak out about an issue too, no matter which side of the fence they come down on. Many people have said, "I don't like mixing politics with sports," and believe me I feel that way for the most part. But when a xenophobic law based on racial profiling -- profiling that will affect, among other people, hundreds of professional baseball players -- is passed with the help of a notorious Republican vote cager like Kris Kobach, then all bets are off.

Tony La Russa, who manages several Latino players on his team including the great Albert Pujols, is supportive of SB1070 and said so.

ESPN:

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says he supports Arizona legislation calling for tougher enforcement against illegal immigrants. Opponents of the law have called for Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of the state.

La Russa says Arizona has a problem that the national government has failed to remedy. The manager, who lives in northern California, spoke this week before a game in St. Louis between the Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks.

"I'm actually a supporter of what Arizona is doing," La Russa said. "If the national government doesn't fix your problem, you've got a problem. You've got to fix it yourself. That's just part of the American way." Gov. Jan Brewer signed a state law in April requiring police officers to question a person's immigration status if there's reasonable doubt he or she might be in the country illegally.

Dozens of St. Louis Tea Party members were at Busch Stadium to show their support of the Arizona immigration law, prompting La Russa to touch on the subject.

La Russa told reporters he encouraged the presence of different points of view, and said he believed the Tea Party's stances were "correct" on "a lot of things."

I wonder how Albert feels about that? But what was interesting to me almost as much is that La Russa then thinks the Tea Party's are correct on a lot of things. What things are they?

* Does La Russa believe just like the 'Birthers' do that President Obama is not an American citizen?

*Does La Russa believe that President Obama is a socialist-Marxist-Nazi-Facsist?

*Does La Russa believe that President Obama looks like The Joker?

*Does La Russa believe that there are FEMA camps imprisoning US citizens?

*Does La Russa believe that Obama is trying to make us part of a New World Order?

*Does La Russa believe that Social Security should be privatized?

*Does La Russa believe that Medicare and Medicaid should be privatized?

*Does La Russa believe in a woman's right to choose,
FinnReg, Glass Steagall act, extending unemployment benefits?

You see where I'm going here. I hope a reporter will ask Tony La Russa to clarify his position so that we know what he believes the Tea Party people are correct about. He could have just made his case supporting Gov. Brewer alone, but bringing the Tea Partiers into this opens up a whole other can of worms.

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The ACLU raised all kinds of hackles the other day from defenders of Arizona's police-state immigration law, SB1070, when it issued a travel warning giving all out-of-state Latinos a heads up about the potential problems they face if they travel there:

The nation's top civil liberties group on Wednesday issued travel alerts for Arizona, saying the state's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants could lead to racial profiling and warrantless arrests.

American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn't take effect until July 29, its executive director said.

The alerts are designed to teach people about their rights if police stop and question them.

The Arizona law requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if officers have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. It also makes it a state crime for legal immigrants to not carry their immigration documents and bans day laborers and people who seek their services from blocking traffic on streets.

Attorneys defending the law against constitutional challenges filed by the ACLU and others argue that the Legislature amended it to strengthen restrictions against using race as the basis for questioning by police. Five lawsuits are pending in federal court, and the U.S. Justice Department is believed to be preparing a legal challenge.

Despite the legislative action, the ACLU still believes that officers will inappropriately target minorities.

"We have a long history of racial profiling in this state, and this is basically going to really exacerbate that problem," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.

The story has since been a hot topic at Fox News, where they've been searching up anybody who will say unkind things about the ACLU. Stuart Varney, filling in for Neil Cavuto on Your World on Fox yesterday, decided to ask Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona's 1st District about the advisory. And though Kirkpatrick opposes SB1070, she thinks the travel advisory is a "bad idea" -- just like the various boycotts of the state that erupted after the law was passed.

But Kirkpatrick doesn't explain why it's a bad idea, except to suggest that it will hurt innocent Arizonans (her same rationale for opposing the boycotts). What both she and Varney -- and for that matter, the Associated Press story -- neglected to explain to their audiences was that, if and when SB1070 is enacted, Latino American citizens who travel to Arizona will need to produce more than just their drivers licenses to prove their citizenship.

Radio host Mark Levine made this point clearly and succinctly to Laura Ingraham the other night when she was filling in on The O'Reilly Factor:

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Levine: Certainly, a month from now, if this law goes into effect, all kinds of Latino American citizens may be in danger and I think what they're doing is they're telling people --

Ingraham: In danger?

Levine: Absolutely. Look, Laura, do you have --

Ingraham: How are they in danger? If they're legally in the United States, how are they in danger?

Levine: I'll explain. SB1070, the Arizona law, says if you're not carrying an Arizona drivers license, you can be stopped, and you can be arrested.

Ingraham: No profiling.

Levine: Let's say you're from New Mexico, or Utah, or Nevada, or any of the other fifteen states that don't require you to be a citizen in order to have a drivers license. I don't have an Arizona drivers license! Luckily for me, I don't look Latino, but if I go to Arizona without a drivers license, they can stop me.

You'll notice that Ingraham has no reply except to say that the law is popular anyway. (Yeah, we noticed that. So what?)

We explored this point in some depth previously:

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Representatives Steve King (R-IA) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA) have staked out roles as two of the most vehement and controversial anti-immigrant mouthpieces in Congress. Recently, they have offered their collective expertise to Arizona law enforcement, who have spoken out strongly against the state’s new profiling law, SB 1070, because of the way that it inhibits community policing and fighting real crime.

The Representatives' advice to worried police has been simple: “just check their shoes!”

Shoe fetish aside, Rep. King also made the absurd statement Monday that law enforcement could spot those here illegally by either noting indicators such as, “What kind of clothes people wear…what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accent they have, the type of grooming that they might have…” or:

“…just a sixth sense...”  

America's Voice decided to have some fun envisioning King’s worldview as a horror flick.

Watch it:

If you find this as ridiculous as I do, please sign the petition to Obama to stop Arizona-style profiling and help spread the word!

If Bud Selig thought we were going to go away he was dead wrong. The good people of Boston showed up at a Red Sox game when the Diamondbacks showed up during an interleague game and voiced their outrage at the hate bill SB 1070.

Boston Globe:

The team has become mired in the vitriolic national debate over illegal immigration, a symbol of a state under fire for recently passing the most restrictive immigration law in the country. Protests have dogged them in Houston and Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, and yesterday in Boston, where scores of demonstrators gathered behind the Green Monster before game time to rally against the law.

“It’s been happening everywhere we go,’’ said Miguel Montero, a 26-year-old catcher from Venezuela. “We don’t talk about it.’’

Yesterday’s demonstrators — about 200 people from labor unions, church groups, and immigrant advocates — crowded the sidewalk behind sausage stands to assail the law, which was passed in April and takes effect next month. The law makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and allows police to question those they suspect of being in the country without papers.

The protesters also spoke out against a proposed crackdown in Massachusetts, where lawmakers are debating budget amendments that would restrict illegal immigrants’ access to government services.

They said they fear that the Arizona law creates a climate for racial profiling, and they urged politicians to instead create a path to legal residency for the millions of immigrants in the United States illegally. They chanted and carried signs saying “We are all Arizona,’’ saying they were protesting the legislation, not the players.

“We’re not going to let a law like Arizona’s happen in Massachusetts,’’ said Yessenia Alfaro, director of organizing for the Chelsea Collaborative and a US citizen originally from El Salvador. “I believe in the American dream. This is my country and my children’s country. We came here for a better life.’’

I don't expect many Latino players to speak out like Adrian Gonzalez or Jorge Cantu did because they must be terrified what might happen to them so it's up to us to be their voice for them. Great job Boston. Our Big Coalition have made plans for our next phase in trying to get the 2011 All Star game moved out of Arizona and I'll let you know soon enough.

TIME magazine has a piece up about Russell Pearce's new brainchild, trying to outlaw children born in America.

"Anchor babies" isn't a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation's toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots - the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. - for their next move.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists - things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See the battle for Arizona: will a border crackdown work?) But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the "anchor" and leave.

Back on May 25th, David N. posted on this when Pearce went on Bill O'Reilly and admitted this is what he had in store as his next volley as he continues his attacks on the non-whites of America.

O'Reilly, of course, is not much help: He counters Pearce by observing that this is "federal law" -- though that is hardly the half of it, since this particular principle, of birthright citizenship, is embedded in the Constitution and is indeed a proud part of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.

Pearce wants to claim that this only refers to people with "legal domicile" in the U.S. -- even though the words appear nowhere in the Constitution.

He complains that the concept of "illegal immigration" hadn't been conceived when the 14th Amendment was written -- which is true enough, but irrelevant to whether it remains in force. Indeed, a much stronger argument can be made that the nakedly racist/eugenicist/Nativist Immigration Act of 1924 -- which first created "illegal immigration" -- was grossly unconstitutional because it clearly violated the 14th Amendment.

Moreover, it's irrelevant because the law has always been interpreted to mean that, when a newborn is accorded automatic birthright citizenship based on birth on American soil, its status is generally unaffected by the legal status or citizenship of that individual's mother or father. This was true both before and after 1924...read on

I think Pearce knows that this will be struck down in the Supreme Court even with the right wing fringe running the place because it's firmly embedded in our Constitution and Scalia and his clones are supposed to be Originalists, right? You must understand something about movement conservatives. They pick fights not because they know they can win it in the end, losing is just as acceptable when it comes to immigration and the culture wars because *"backlash politics" is all about playing the victim. They get to stir the pot, create some outrage, make tons of cash and get themselves elected over issues that they never can win at. Remember creationism vs evolution? They knew that it would never pass with the scientific community, but as Thomas Frank puts it, they don't care. They can hold their noses high and attack the "elites" over and over again making the case that those snobby, latte sipping Frenchmen think they know better than all of the red blooded-red state Americans because they believe they are smarter than us.

Backlash Politics:

The backlash narrative is more powerful than mere facts, and according to this central mythology conservatives are always hardworking patriots who love their country and are persecuted for it, while liberals, who are either high-born weaklings or eggheads hypnotized by some fancy idea, are always ready to sell their nation out at a moment’s notice.7

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When reality catches up to Arizonans for their passage of their misbegotten police-state immigration law, it's going to be ugly and unpleasant. If other states really are considering passing similar laws, they will want to watch what happens to Arizona -- and they will inevitably wind up thinking twice.

We've pointed out previously -- as have the nation's police chiefs -- that the law is almost certain to in fact increase violent crime and dilute law enforcement's capacity to deal with it in Arizona.

And that will only be the first consequence (and a decidedly ironic one, since this law was sold as being a means to crack down on violent crime). The longest-lasting and most significant, however, will be the economic one: When the Latino workforce flees Arizona, their economy will suffer a dramatic downturn unlike any they've seen in decades.

It's already starting to happen:

Arizona’s hard-hitting immigration law is driving Hispanics out of the state weeks before the controversial law goes into effect.

Although concrete figures are not available, anecdotal evidence suggests Hispanics, both legal residents and illegal immigrants, are starting to flee.

Schools in Hispanic neighborhoods are reporting abnormal enrollment drops, and businesses that serve Hispanics also report that business is down, according to a USA Today report published Wednesday.

The report suggests that the immigration law is compounding demographic trends that have already significantly curtailed illegal immigration during the past two years. The bad economy has been the primary deterrent to many Hispanic immigrants seeking to enter Arizona, says Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

“If you have a bad economy and a hostile environment, then that’s likely to cause people to think twice about coming, and possibly even to leave,” Mr. Passel says.

... Any loss, however, will be a loss for the Arizona economy, [David Gutierrez, a professor of immigration history, at the University of California San Diego] suggests.

“Latinos...are a highly flexible, highly exploitable work force, a buffer to economic downturns,” he says. “Many of the industries here – agriculture, service industries, low-end manufacturing, construction – are massively dependent on undocumented workers.

“If I were able to conduct an experiment and pay all of Arizona’s undocumented workers to not work for two weeks, the economy would come to a screeching, crashing halt instantaneously.”

This brought to mind a video forwarded to me from my friend Jimmy at McCranium, an Eastern Washington blog, of a Pasco immigration attorney named Tom Roach giving an informational talk to group of local citizens in Kennewick on May 29.

The talk is excellent, and I recommend watching the whole thing if you're interested. Because Roach effectively drills down to the heart of our dilemma with immigration -- namely, our current laws are so screwed up they have no chance of meeting the nation's economic needs or effectively dealing with natural immigration pressures that are driven by not just the economy, but the American Dream itself:

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