Battered by the media tsunami caused by Arizona’s “show us your papers” law and the resulting lawsuits and threats of boycotts, Arizona’s legislature today sought cover by seeking to moderate provisions of SB 1070.  Are these real changes or are they just cosmetic changes and an effort to save face?  It’s probably some of each.  Put another way, those who oppose the law can know that their outrage is being heard and felt.  But the changes don’t eliminate the problem, they just provide better cover for it.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

– State lawmakers voted late Thursday to repeal one of the more controversial provisions from the new law aimed at illegal immigration….

HB 2162, approved by the House and Senate, changes the law to specify that when deciding whom to question about immigration status, police may not use race, ethnicity or national origin as a factor.

That is a significant change from SB 1070 as it was approved by lawmakers and signed less than a week ago by Gov. Jan Brewer. That version of the law permits police to consider any of those factors when deciding if there is “reasonable suspicion” someone is not in this country legally, as long as it is not the only reason for investigating further.

There’s more, of course:

As originally approved, SB 1070 requires police to determine the immigration status of those with whom they have “lawful contact” if there is reasonable suspicion the person is not here legally.

That “reasonable suspicion” language remains. But the language about “contact” is replaced with a reference to “stop, detention or arrest.” Paul Senseman, the governor’s spokesman, said the changes effectively reduce checking immigration status to “secondary enforcement.”

“There have to be other steps, such as another law being broken first,” he said, before an officer could, with reasonable suspicion, inquire if a person is a citizen or legal resident.

He compared it to Arizona’s seat-belt laws: Police cannot stop a motorist solely because the person is unbuckled. But officers can issue a ticket for failing to buckle up if the driver is stopped for some other reason.

Join me in Nogales.

Arizona has apparently decided to use its police force as an instrument to oppress and harass Mexican appearing people within its borders.  And, as you might expect from a police state, it is doing so at the expense of protecting citizens and diverting law enforcement from its traditional functions, enforcing the penal laws.

Linda Greenhouse, who usually writes about the Supreme Court for the New York Times, had an op-ed yesterday, “Breathing While Undocumented,” that captures Arizona as the emerging police state it truly is:

What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?

And in case the phrase “lawful contact” makes it appear as if the police are authorized to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime, another section strips the statute of even that fig leaf of reassurance. “A person is guilty of trespassing,” the law provides, by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States – a new crime of breathing while undocumented. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is “attrition through enforcement.”

The rest of the op-ed is definitely worth reading.  But there’s another point that deserves to be made about the Arizona statute.

Please add the following update to your travel guides about visiting Arizona. It may be of assistance in avoiding unwanted, undesirable discussions with Arizona law enforcement, arrest and detention, and police harassment. If you already live in Arizona, something I wish on no one today, you already know everything I am about to write.  I am writing this so that others may reflect on your situation.

This is a bus stop in Tucson, Arizona.  I know it doesn’t look like a bus stop in New York, or Chicago, or New Orleans.  This is an Arizona bus stop:

There are some things that are very important if you are waiting for the bus at such a stop in Arizona.  

What an unbelievably ignorant and oppressive and probably illegal “immigration” law Arizona has just passed.  In its efforts to oppress the Mexican American and immigrant population within its borders, and anyone who might appear to be in that group (some Native Americans?) Arizona has enacted a law that facilitates prejudicial law enforcement and a blatant police state.  Put simply, this law is an outrage passed by and for the radical right, and it’s designed to make life for brown people and those who aren’t very white even more difficult.

The basic provisions of the law:

The law, which opponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in the country in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime. It would also give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have decried it as an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.

According to The New York Times

The Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles called the authorities’ ability to demand documents Nazism. While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

And President Obama isn’t exactly thrilled either:

Even before …the bill [was signed], President Obama strongly criticized it.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws – an overhaul that Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon.

Saying the failure of officials in Washington to act on immigration would open the door to “irresponsibility by others,” he said the Arizona bill threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

And the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF} notes:

“Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” said a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”

When is the last time you saw a new state law greeted with such an outcry?  Probably never.  This law is that bad and deserves all of this and more.

Join me below.  

My son just got back from a week in Haiti.  Haiti was impoverished beyond belief before the earthquake.  And now it is difficult to describe the pervasive suffering.  His descriptions bring me to tears.

And then there’s this:

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (AP) — After the Haitian national soccer team couldn’t eat another bite of chef-prepared pork or ice cream, and before going back to its cabins at a Texas resort, coach Jairo Rios asked for a favor.

Tents. As many as they could haul back to Haiti.

”I eat well here. I sleep well,” forward Charles Herold Jr. said in French, speaking through a translator. ”But I cannot help but think of my friends and family who don’t have that. I can’t get that off my mind.”

I can’t get that off my mind either.  I hope you won’t be able to get it off your mind.  The futbol players can’t get it off their minds, either:

Players are already wrestling with the guilt of their relatively better fortunes. Forward Eliphene Cadet, 29, escaped from his house in Port-au-Prince after the roof caved on him and two children.

Leaving Haiti meant leaving his family in a tent in a field, near where his house once stood. Other players left their families in similar conditions.

”All the guys talk about it,” Cadet said. ”I know that they’re here. There are still tremors now. That’s our biggest worry.”

So as the rains come, shelter is extremely important.  And of course medical aid continues to be important.  And, of course, drinking water and sanitation are critical.

There are so many of us, and we have so much.  Can we use this essay to develop a list of organizations that will accept our small donations to continue aid in Haiti?  Can we work together on this?  Can we make some donations?

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles and dailyKos

And the corollary Constitutional right to say extremely crazy, untrue, provocative things to large gatherings of possibly armed people has been getting a workout, too.

Look at this:

A few thousand people gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington today for the first of two Tea Party rallies in the nation’s capital today organized to protest government spending and taxation.

Clutching angry signs and occasionally breaking out into chants of “USA! USA!,” the protesters listened to a series of fiery speeches attacking the Obama administration for what they cast as irresponsible spending and far left wing policies.

Rep. Michele Bachmann said the “gangster government” has instituted a “takeover of one private industry after another,” again making her questionable claim that “the federal government owns or controls 51 percent of the private economy.”

She said the Obama administration is “perfectly content with presiding over a decline in our economy,” adding: “I’d say it’s time for these little piggies to go home, and come November that’s where they’re headed.”

That, of course, is Constitutionally protected, insane speech.  The “gangster government” was elected by a majority vote.  And its policies, for better or worse, were what it was apparently elected to do.  Evidently, democracy and majority rule are now “gangster government.”  But strangely, the previous administration’s kidnapping foreign nationals off of streets, secretly putting them on airplanes, flying them to secret, black hole prisons, and torturing them for months is not “gangster government.” That’s necessary “security.”  The illegal renditions must not have been “gangster government” solely because there was no demand for ransom.  But I digress.

Michele Bachmann’s (RWNJ-Minn) utterances are so far from the truth and so obviously unhinged that Bill Clinton has criticized them:

“They are not gangsters,” Mr. Clinton said in an interview with the New York Times. “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.”

The former president, who was in his first term in office when Timothy McVeigh bombed an Oklahoma City federal building, drew parallels between the anti-government rhetoric being used now and what was being said then.

But back then it was the camouflage wearing militia fringe that was making the dangerous, provocative claims.  Nobody in their right mind listened to their rantings.  They were shunned.  And they got no publicity.   And now, well now it’s an elected Congressperson and evidently the Tea Parties and Faux TV that trumpet this insanity and the rest of the Traditional Media^TM feels compelled further to disseminate the ravings.

The First Amendment Right to crazy talk is getting a total, stretching workout.  Let’s hope this exercise of madness doesn’t lead inexorably to yet another “imminent breach of the peace.”

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles and dailyKos

This is Cornelius.  He is fourteen.  Today he left home.

UPDATE: 6:20 pm EDT:  The Innocence Project reports that the US Supreme Court has issued a stay that prevents the execution of Hank Skinner.





Hank Skinner

Texas plans to kill death row prisoner Hank Skinner by lethal injection today.  Even though DNA from the crime scene has never been tested, and even though Skinner has insisted for more than sixteen years that he is innocent, Texas plans today to have its inexorable revenge against Skinner for a triple homicide.  Stopping the execution now so that DNA testing can be conducted depends on long shots: Texas Governor Rick Perry and last minute appeals to the Supreme Court.  

In light of the impending extinction of the tiger, this is profoundly upsetting.

The New York Times reports:

A zoo where 11 rare Siberian tigers recently starved to death is fast becoming a symbol of the mistreatment of animals in China, with allegations of misspent subsidies, bribes, and the deaths of at least dozens of animals.

The local authorities stepped in over the weekend, taking control of the 10-year-old zoo, in Shenyang in northeastern China, and dispatching experts to try to save the remaining 20 or so tigers, three of which are in critical condition.

Among the charges under investigation are employee reports that the zoo used the bones of dead tigers to illegally manufacture a liquor believed to have therapeutic qualities. One employee said he had made vats of the liquor and served it to visiting government officials.

A know of few concrete, helpful things that can be done this late in the game.

I recommend (again) a contribution to Panthera.  Or to another organization that rescues and saves tigers and other big cats.

Beyond that, I have nothing I can suggest.  I am filled with sadness and despair.  And shame.

Listen to the classic “Canción Mixteca,” sung in Spanish by the Mexican supergroup Los Tigres del Norte, accompanied by [Irish] accordion, bajo sexto, tin whistle and uilleann pipes.

“How far I am from the land where I was born! Immense longing invades my thoughts, and when I see myself as alone and sad as a leaf in the wind, I want to cry. I want to die of sorrow.”