It's all opinion

And thus spake Fox:

"The Ninth Circuit court as a record of being overturned" said one voice at the table.

"Obviously it deserves to be" said another. "This judge just doesn't understand the situation."

"Well she's famous for making rulings based on her opinion. What we need are decisions based on law!"

Of course, like most clubs, mine has a policy discouraging political talk at the dinner table, but in practice, that means "Liberals shut up, Fox is talking here."

Wednesday evening at the would have been a good time to start a diet, my appetite fading as my gorge rose. Yet I said nothing. Nothing would have mattered or could have stood up to the wave of regurgitated Fox propaganda. None of those present had any background in constitutional law and like virtually all Americans have a very hazy view of what it says: indeed a hazy view of the entire Arizona Immigration law in general. But they have opinions to support any inchoate anger -- the anger and the opinions furnished by Fox News and all it costs is your freedom.

Opinion? What is a judicial decision but an opinion of what the law says? Yes, of course Article 1 section 8, clause 4 of the constitution gives all power over naturalization to the US congress, but does that grant exclusive power to regulate immigration? Perhaps there is a valid discrimination to be made, but if so, the conservative one would be that the Constitution does give the Federal Government sole power to determine who will require a visa, have a visa and what the terms thereof shall be and so it's reserved to the Federal Government to enforce those rules and no to some small town Sheriff or small minded Arizona governor buying votes from the hysterical mob.

Yes, sure, that's an opinion. As I said, any court decision is the opinion of the court and to any intelligent person, the law is open to interpretation and always will be - that's why we have the ninth circuit court in the first place. Should I be impressed that my dining companions are so knowledgeable about the history of that court? Not at all, since their rhetorical unanimity shows them to be a conduit leading from Roger Ailes's rectum to my ears. It's all opinion, but not reasoned opinion based on the law. It's based as Ailes has asserted publicly, on ratings and the sales value of anger.

My nausea having begun to subside, I was formulating a polite reply, but the rush to get home in time to watch Hannity and Beck preempted the effort. I haven't been back.

Arizona burning

"The law was made for man, not man for the law"

-Jesus of Nazareth-

He's "not going to put up with any civil disobedience" said the notorious Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff on Good Morning America. No doubt he expects to see some, as the infamous Arizona "show me your papers" law goes into effect tomorrow. Protest is all "hype" anyway and it's "a crime to be here illegally and everyone should enforce" it. Everyone?

It sounds like fun and I can't wait to start enforcing the law myself -- I mean all the laws, of course and since I have the firepower, why not stop every blond person I see and make him prove he's not Canadian? It's all a cowboy movie to sheriff Joe Arpaio, so why shouldn't I play along? But, of course, it's not the law in general that we should all enforce, it's the infamous Arizona law reducing the rights of anyone looking to any Arizona Cop like he has Native American ancestry.

But why pick on this comic book villain? The idea is widely popular, particularly in the old Confederate states, where good manners, big hearts and small minds go hand in hand. Civil disobedience is, in fact, just what we need to clog up the courts and disable and embarrass the damned fools who pretend it's all about the law and not a distraction to hide another expansion of police power. We need just what was so effective in the 1960's; thousands and thousands of people to flood the streets of Arizona looking illegal. We need a spectacle: sit-ins, marches, civil disobedience, dogs, water cannons and an impotent, sputtering, apoplectic, beer-belly Joe looking like the Dukes of Hazzard relic he is.

Now, before you reach for some more canned rage: no, I'm not in favor of allowing undocumented workers to remain, or letting people overstay their visas, just don't tell me we have to become a brutal, inhumane police state to correct the problem and if it isn't all based on racial purity, tell me why we don't know or care how many Canadians or Englishmen are working here and living here without benefit of citizenship.

Suing Arizona

Years ago, returning from a visit to El Paso, we were booming along a lonely Texas road in my old Corvette, enjoying the breathtaking desert scenery on the way to Carlesbad, New Mexico. Seeing something on the side of the road a long way ahead, I backed off on the throttle and coasted down to something resembling the speed limit. "Damn" I said to myself as I saw a uniformed officer getting out of his car to flag me down. I thought perhaps I'd been snagged by an airplane and was going to get a ticket, but no, the very polite officer simply asked me where I was going and where I'd come from. "And you ma'am?" he said to my uncustomarily silent wife. "He wants to hear your accent, dear. Say something."

It was really no surprise. Returning from a number of trips abroad, someone from the government hanging around the baggage claim always has managed to inquire as to where she was born or something like that -- just to hear her speak. I'm used to being embarrassed by and for my country and its undying suspicion of non-European genetics. Now of course, in Arizona, the State we usually passed through on the way to visit her brother, a retired US Army Colonel, she would be required to furnish proof of citizenship to any officer who used any pretext to stop us. My home state is hell bent to emulate them.

That's not the sad or the unexpected part of the story. That would be the fact that a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted a month ago showed 57 percent of Americans support Arizona's unconstitutional power grab, an attempt that if it had been backed by Democrats would surely be compared with Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin and Ted Nugent's favorite, Mao Zedong. Perhaps we can blame a lack of respect for citizens of foreign birth or for citizens with certain ethnic backgrounds or the appearance of it. Perhaps we can blame the smug attitude that "I'm blond, so what do I care?" Instead they're already trashing Obama for what they would have trashed him for had he supported it.

"The American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law,"

said Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain in a joint statement as though any bad and illegal measure was justified by a legitimate problem. Representative Lamar Smith, Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (Republicans all) Piled on with the same arguments and attacks on Obama with all the enthusiasm of an 8th grade football team in response to the Justice Department's decision to sue.

Whether these gentlefolk really are so concerned with a real, but already decreasing problem or whether as usual, they're just trying to sabotage the Democrats even if it sinks the ship of state is impossible to tell, but of course I suspect the latter.

I do have to ask whether 57% of Americans would support the Federal Government's efforts in other important respects by allowing small town police to stop anyone and demand tax returns of anyone who appears too wealthy? I have to ask why the Tea Bag twits get away with insisting we're losing our freedom while supporting the loss. I don't have to get an answer however and I'm sure I won't. I'm also sure that nothing will ever induce me to visit that state again.

As goes Arizona. . .

I'd like to give notice. There must be someone, some registry I can add my name to as one who wishes to officially disassociate myself with the idiocy of America. Those who doubted that our experiment in including the rabble in government would fare any better than the French Revolution did would, if they could, be smiling to read Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott's campaign rhetoric and would spit up in their coffins to read the comments on his website from people responding to his appeal to "stand with Rick Scott" in pushing for an unconstitutional immigration policy. The end should justify the means in Florida and not just in Arizona.

The United States Constitution, like the Bible and the Qur'an are mirrors in which we see our thoughts justified, venal and noble. I hear from people who insist that Arizona is doing what's necessary and if immigrants are second class citizens, required to wear yellow stars and carry papers at all times, it simply doesn't bother them. Of course if the Coast Guard hails and boards their yachts and fishing boats asking for papers; asking about weapons aboard and checking registration and proof of ownership? Why that's unconstitutional!

In fact the constitution demands that the US protect our states from "invasion" by gardeners, fruit pickers, dish washers and day laborers, says one Scott supporter. And of course, it's not racism, says another. It's simply our distaste for infractions of the law, you see. If we were being "invaded" by Canadians, we'd need to do the same thing although since nobody seems to bother tallying up the number of Canadians in the US illegally and fair skinned blue-eyed, people named McKenzie or Scott aren't being stopped in Home Depot parking lots for interrogation. I frankly don't think anyone gives a damn about immigration law or quotas or visas or green cards. I think it's about an ethnically pure America, just as it always has been.

No, I don't deny the need to control immigration. I don't deny that there is a problem with porous borders. I do deny that the problems need to be dealt with by taking away yet another bit of American freedom.

I don't notice much damn being given at all about US agents shooting a Mexican 14 year old on Mexican soil for throwing rocks either. Fox News of course assured us that it was all OK, since the kid was "known to authorities," although in Fox Fashion, no actually authorities were identified or quoted and more than likely weren't actually consulted. Why bother, why care? Something needs to be done and so anything can be done and let's just be done with it.

Will Florida join the Arizona Confederacy and force people with Spanish accents and other unspecified characteristics to stop and furnish papers or be arrested? Will we fire teachers with accents and punish schools that mention Cesar Chavez or that the Seminoles were hunted down like animals and killed and tortured or that an entire Florida town was murdered and no one was prosecuted for it or that (yes, it's true) our fair state tolerated de facto slavery until the 1940's?

If I'm looking at the future when I look at Arizona and listen to Rick Scott, if the near unanimous opinion of my peers is that we have a disaster in the Gulf because of "too much government regulation" I want no part of the insanity, the stupidity, the animal rage, the drooling masses yearning to bring back what my parents' generation and my generation fought to free us from.

Ditat Deus

God enriches: it's the state motto of Arizona. To some it surely suggests that the rich are the chosen of God and the poor and struggling? Your papers please.

My hypocrisy alarm has burned itself to a cinder over the last few days simply from the stench coming from our self-styled Libertarian friends from Arizona who have just given far more power to the State government than the Constitution allows and reduced constitutional protection from the power of law enforcement provided by that constitution -- a step away from Libertarian principles that even the notorious Glenn Beck balks at.

Anyway, if God has enriched Arizona in any way, the government of that stolen state has done a great deal to cheapen its claim to being a part of a free country and to impoverish its moral status as well. Perhaps taking a clue from the Texas school board's redaction of American history, Arizona has decided that no courses taught in its schools may give students the impression that they belong to a persecuted minority.

That's right, the Navaho have always had it easy, no one ever gave a black man a hard time and the state itself was never taken by force. It's now official.