"Lawful contact" and the Arizona law

Cesca

Byron York and other Republicans have been insisting that the "lawful contact" language in the Arizona law only permits authorities to ask for "papers" if the suspect is stopped for a different offense -- pulled over for speeding, etc.

I went around and around with a commenter the other day on the Huffington Post about this language, and I argued that "lawful contact" could mean just about anything, from saying "hello" on a street corner to a police officer responding to a bicycle crash. Turns out, I was on the right track. Media Matters asked the Republican House majority's Homeland Security research analyst, Rene Guillen, about the "lawful contact" language and this is how she explained it:

...lawful contact is essentially any interaction a police officer may have with an individual through the normal legal, lawful course of the performance of their duties. So it wouldn't just be those suspected of crimes. It could be victims, witnesses or just people who are lawfully interacting with the police officer where through the course of that contact they are able to build reasonable suspicion and therefore inquire.

So the initial contact could be anything. From there, it's all up to the totally subjective view of the police officer as to whether the person is an illegal immigrant. And for the record, illegal immigrants don't wear special hats or t-shirts indicating their illegal status.

Media Matters also compiled an array of other views of the "lawful contact" language.

Glenn Beck attacks Democratic Elections

Srsly. Democratic elections are apparently a bad thing now. Only bad people who hate America like elections. After all, Hitler was democratically elected.

*facepalm*



Last week, Bob Cesca posted this piece from Kids In The Hall from 16 years ago where Dave Foley accurately predicts Glenn Beck.

Sarah Palin is an idiot. Inadvertantly calls Fox "lamestream media".

Just to clarify, calling Fox News stupid doesn't make her an idiot. Her lack of comprehension makes her an idiot.

via Cesca

"This is the problem with that lamestream media throughout our country, it's not just this issue but so many. One of the media outlets the other day just, ah, just was killin' me on this one, Sean, where they had a caption across their screen that said this Arizona law will make it -- it will make it illegal to be an illegal immigrant -- some bizarre type 'a headline like that where it was just this illustration that they just don't get it."

Sarah Palin on the Hannity Show last night

Uh, Sarah?

Stewart on Goldman Sachs and the AZ immigration law

Go Carl Levin! Goldman called out over "shitty deal"

Huff Post

Chairman Carl Levin, to the delight of the crowd, continually repeated a descriptive, colorful word typically left out of family newspapers that was used by a top Goldman executive to describe a deal it made for clients.

The security, named Timberwolf I, a collateralized debt obligation of other collateralized debt obligations that were based not on actual home mortgage bonds but instead on those bonds' movements, was referenced in a June 22, 2007, email from a Goldman senior executive, Tom Montag, to another, Dan Sparks. Sparks is testifying today before Levin's panel.

In his email, Montag remarked of the Timberwolf I deal, "[B]oy, that timeberwof [sic] was one shitty deal."

Levin used the word "shitty" 11 times -- eliciting multiple rounds of quiet giggles -- in questioning Dan Sparks, the former head of Goldman's mortgage department, about why Montag would describe it as "shitty," how long they had known it was "shitty," and whether they knew the deal was "shitty" when they peddled it to clients.

"Our clients' interests always come first," Goldman says on its website.

That security was rated less than three months prior to Montag's email. It lost 80 percent of its value within five months of issuance. Sparks and Montag have since left the firm.

Levin grew exasperated with Sparks' non-answers: "I don't think you want to answer."

The next panel member to ask questions, Susan Collins (R-Me.) also grew frustrated, saying that she was already getting tired of Sparks' evasiveness after 30 seconds. -- Shahien Nasiripour

Under tough questioning from panel member Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Goldman trader Fabrice Tourre refused to take the bait and blame the firm for releasing embarrassing emails he sent to his girlfriend.

Tourre did express regret over the emails, including one in which he bragged about selling the lousy Abacus CDO to "widows and orphans."

"I regret these e-mails," Tourre said. 'They reflect very bad on the firm and on myself. I wish I hadn't sent those."

Coburn, who confirmed that Goldman is paying for Tourre's legal advice, also asked Tourre, "How many Goldman lawyers talked to you before this hearing?" Tourre's response: "I don't remember."

Where is the Tea Party when you need them?

Where is the Tea Party on immigration? Where is the Tea Party on bank regulation?

The group that prides itself on stopping government overreach, and the party that claims to be about restoring balance in favor of average citizens is nowhere to be seen on these two issues.

Why aren't they out there? Aren't these two issues right in their wheelhouse? If they want to prove that they're an independent group - as opposed to the militant wing of the Republican party - then they need to get in front of this. Republicans voted as a bloc to stop debate on reforming the bak practices that led to the collapse of 2008. And Arizona's Republican governor signed legislation that requires American citizens to show their papers when stopped by police.

If this isn't an example of exactly what the Tea Party purports to be against, then I don't know what is.

Eugene Robinson/Washington Post
Where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn't the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim -- and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state -- would send the Tea Partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?

Even Joe Scarborough is against the Arizona law.

"...It does offend me when one out of every three citizens in the state of Arizona are Hispanics, and you have now put a target on the back of one out of three citizens, who, if they're walking their dog around a neighborhood, if they're walking their child to school, and they're an American citizen, or a legal, legal immigrant -- to now put a target on their back, and make them think that every time they walk out of their door they may have to prove something. I will tell you, that is un-American. It is unacceptable and it is un-American.

- Joe Scarborough via Benen

Of course, maybe the Tea Party are hypocritical racists.

Dems in Disarray!

Nation in Crisis!

President Failing!

PANIC!

MSNBC

BREAKING NEWS: Consumer Confidence Index rises in April to highest level since September 2008

USA Today

Sales of new homes surged 27% last month, bouncing off the previous month's record low and blowing past expectations as better weather and government incentives boosted sales.

MSNBC

In a sign of its confidence in the economic recovery, Ford said it's boosting North American production in the second quarter to 625,000 vehicles, a 9 percent increase over first-quarter levels.

The Hypocrisy of the Budget-Cutting Right; Christie on pace to be a one-termer

Governor Chris Christie was ushered into office amid the fanfare of wins in Virginia and Scott Brown's election to Ted Kennedy's seat and cries that America was rejecting the deficit spending of the Obama Administration.

He'll cut taxes, they said.

He'll eliminate waste, they cried.

He'll balance the budget, they promised.

It's easy. Just tell the damned poor to go get a job, crack down on the illegals and stop abortions and it'll all be swell.

As has been said before though, you can't have everything. If you want a balanced budget, hard cuts are going to have to be made. While it's a lovely narrative for rich white folks to demonize those not like them as lazy layabouts sucking down all of their hard-earned taxes, the reality is different.

As Christie found out.

NJ.com via Boehlert

Public opinion of Gov. Chris Christie has taken a dive in the aftermath of his first state budget, according to a poll released today.

The Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that Christie's favorability rating sank 12 points since February, when 45 percent of residents had a favorable opinion of the governor and 26 percent unfavorable. Now that stands at 33 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable, according to the poll.

The survey did not measure Christie's job approval ratings. Another poll, released by Fairleigh Dickinson University last week, found his job approval rating dropped 9 percentage points, to 43 percent, after he introduced his budget in March.

The governor's $29.3 billion budget proposal makes wide-ranging cuts -- including to property tax rebates and school, town and college aid -- while resisting broad-based tax increases. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll said that 43 percent of those who had heard about the budget are very or somewhat pleased with it, while 50 percent are somewhat or very displeased.
“Support for Christie is tied directly to the budget proposal,” said David Redlawsk, director of the poll. “Three weeks after the budget speech, the impact is starting to sink in. The result is a recognition that the proposed budget cuts are going to hurt and a significant decrease in favorable impressions of Christie.”

This is not as easy as celebutard Sarah Palin would have you believe. It's not just the poor and the illegals sucking down the resources.

I don't believe that Americans don't have the stomach for belt-tightening. But when they campaign on a platform of socking it to the layabouts to straighten things out, it comes as a bit of a shock to see your services cut.

Perhaps we ought to start telling the truth to the American people.

The GOP Myth of Obama's Falling Poll Numbers

via Eric Boehlert

The Gallup Daily Polling debunks the myth of Obama's falling poll numbers.

At the end of last August, in the middle of the Town Hall Tea Party hysteria, the President's numbers stood at 51/42.

Today?

51/42.

This is after he supposedly rammed health care down America's throat, turned us into a socialized country, squandered America's respect by bowing (several times), gave away our nuclear capability and made us less safe, and coddled the Underwear Bomber by Mirandizing him, increased taxes by passing a tax decrease, and tried to take away our guns (??). And that's just off the top of my head.

After all that, he's still in the same place.

The media want to play the "both sides do it" meme. If the Republicans are lying - making up stories out of thin air or whole cloth - then Democrats must be doing it too. The evidence isn't showing that, but the media is in such full-on CYA mode that they feel the need to create balance where none exists, or a counter-narrative where no valid one is available.

They've done it for the last decade - from Valerie Plame to WMD to death panels. Now they're doing it with a false narrative of falling electoral confidence.

As the almost always disagreeable Mark Halperin points out:

It is too early to assess the ultimate measure of victory: whether the President's actions have been prudent and beneficial, domestically and internationally. But by Election Day 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government. Not bad for a guy whose opponents (in both parties) for the White House suggested that he was too green in national life to know how to do the job — and whose presidency began in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis that demanded urgent attention and commanded much of his focus.

Cesca

The Republican Party doesn't get that President Obama, while being iconic, is also supremely qualified to be president -- perhaps not in terms of having a lengthy political resume, but chiefly in terms of having the temperament, education and intelligence for the job to a degree rarely seen in the presidency.

The AZ immigration law in action: why it's a horrible, un-American law

The problem with the Arizona law is that it sets up probable cause as being based solely on skin color. What other means would an officer have for determining that someone has committed the crime of illegal immigration? What other probable cause is there for detaining someone? It's solely skin color and an assumption that there is "an American look" as opposed to an "illegal immigrant look". Do any of my caucasian friends think they'll be stopping us and asking for proof of residency? What does a real American look like?

Skin color ALONE is not probable cause.

I've had several debates with people who are frustrated by the problem of illegals, and I'm entirely sympathetic. If we as a society are going to make promises to our citizens of universal health care, schooling and such (as i believe we should), then it cannot be a global offer.

I think we're overdue on real immigration reform. My objection to the AZ law is that its a knee-jerk, half-assed attempt that hurts the Constitution. That document is too important to be trifled with.

The problem reaches farther than immigration. What if a future President decides to single out white guys with short hair because they look like terrorist Tim McVeigh? Or they single out gun owners? Or teenagers that wear a lot of black? In America, there has to be real proof that a crime has been committed in order for law enforcement to intervene in your life. They can't do it based on how you look.

Now, this law ought to be DOA in the courts anyway. The Constitution explicitly states that immigration is a federal power, not a state one. A state has no power to enforce immigration law. So on that, and that alone, the law is unconstitutional.

Fresh off the heels of the new law, a US citizen stopping to get his truck checked at a weigh station in AZ was arrested when he wasn't able to produce a birth certificate. He had a valid driver's license and Social Security card, but because he didn't carry a BIRTH CERTIFICATE, he was hauled off in cuffs.

AZ Family

A Valley man says he was pulled over Wednesday morning and questioned when he arrived at a weigh station for his commercial vehicle along Val Vista and the 202 freeway.

Abdon, who did not want to use his last name, says he provided several key pieces of information but what he provided apparently was not what was needed.

He tells 3TV, “I don't think it's correct, if I have to take my birth certificate with me all the time.”

3TV caught up with Abdon after he was released from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in central Phoenix. He and his wife, Jackie, are still upset about what happened to him.

Jackie tells 3TV, “It's still something awful to be targeted. I can't even imagine what he felt, people watching like he was some type of criminal.”

Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver’s license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.

Both were born in the United States and say they are now both infuriated that keeping important documents safely at home is no longer an option.

This is not OK. You shouldn't be arrested for not carrying a birth certificate. Do any of my white friends on here carry theirs?

Tell Me This Doesn't Look Awesome