La Migra

These days, my main source of news is actually Yahoo News. I spend pretty much all day every day shining a chair with my ass, staring at a computer, and plotting world domination. Staring at a computer all day, I find that while most mainstream news services are either disgustingly revolutionary (MSNBC) or frighteningly reactionary (FOX), Yahoo at least puts up the articles from both sides. This is good for me, if for no other reason than that both sides provide no end of comic relief and eye rolling.

Among the gems that appeared this week was notice that the President and Justice Department are challenging Arizona's new law granting police authority to explore the citizenship status of person who give cause for the officers to question the suspects legal standing to be in the United States. Personally, I think this is Obama in a nutshell: the Arizona voters passed the law and continue to support it with an impressive majority. While management of immigration is a Federal chore, Obama himself has admitted that the Federal government is handling it badly. The Consitution expressly says that States have the power to enact and enforce the law within their own borders. In effect, there doesn't seem to be even a little bit of basis for a Washington politician to tell the people of Arizona that no, they're not really in charge of their own state. But no matter. Barack doesn't like it, so it's going to have to go.

Have I mentioned my thoughts on secession lately? Once upon a time, I thought that there's no way that a state would seriously consider departing the United States over the course of my lifetime. Now, I'm not even sure we'll get the to end of Obama's presidency before there are rumblings, especially along southern-border states that are being saddled with healthcare and benefits for illegal aliens while being told by the Federal government that they're going to have to shut down their oil industries. I guess the worry is that our kids will not be able to pay off all this debt Obama is running up if they're busy dealing with global warming, whenever (if ever) it actually arrives.

But going back to the immigration thing, I'm not sure I'm a supporter of the Arizona law (I grew up in California, and am a firm believer that the quality and cheapness of California's unsurpassed produce is largely a result of migrant labor), but I absolutely support that Arizona can pass that law if they see fit. But more than anything else, I think the way the debate appears in public forums says a lot about the difference between Republican and Democratic mindsets. In their article posted on Yahoo News ("As Dems lay low, GOP hits Obama on Arizona lawsuit,") the AP stated:

"But some Democratic strategists say the GOP is playing a dangerous game. Past GOP bids to crack down on illegal immigration have driven Latino voters into Democrats' arms, as was seen most dramatically in California in the 1990s. And Americans who are most passionate about illegal immigration tend to be reliable Republican voters anyway, and not up for grabs, these strategists say.

"There's no evidence that Republicans have been able to turn this issue into a winning issue in a general election," said Simon Rosenberg, who follows immigration matters as head of the liberal-leaning group NDN. If top Republicans keep pounding the issue, he said, it could increase Democratic turnout in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, California and possibly other states."

That's actually cut and pasted from the article.

I find it hugely ironic (and very insightful) that the GOP position is based on things like separation of powers, legal prerogatives of the states, and the legality of Arizona's actions. You know: the LAW. Democrats, on the other hand, don't seem to care about the law. They're in it for the votes, and their analysis focuses not on whether or Arizona's statute (or the challenge to it) have legal standing, but on whether or how Arizona's statue can be spun into a mass-media sound bite. Is that the real difference between the left and the right? The Right seems to care about the LAW. The left seems to care about what is POPULAR at any given moment.

The left is in power currently, and it's showing. We don't have time to do things legally, so lets forget about the laws and do what we want. *Sigh.* So much for being a nation of law, not of men.