{"id":10404,"date":"2010-04-29T12:38:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-29T17:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10404"},"modified":"2010-04-29T14:21:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-29T19:21:56","slug":"arizona-a-to-z","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10404","title":{"rendered":"Arizona, A to Z"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.\u00a0 According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.<\/p>\n

That distinction (if I\u2019m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, \u201cLawful contact\u201d. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a \u201creasonable effort\u201d to ascertain a person\u2019s immigration status (based on a \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That said, if I\u2019m wrong and \u201clawful contact\u201d means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying \u201chey, how ya\u2019 doin\u2019? Papers please,\u201d then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not <\/em>mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced<\/em> (but isn’t).\u00a0 I’m no lawyer.\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.\u00a0 To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.\u00a0 Christina\u00a0Cordova at \u00a0“MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation<\/a>, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:<\/p>\n

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally \u2014 in other words, anyone that \u201clooks\u201d like they \u201cmay\u201d not be\u2026 a \u201cwhite\u201d American. Hmm\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.<\/p>\n

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.\u00a0 And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.\u00a0 The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.\u00a0\u00a0 We need to keep our cops accountable.<\/p>\n

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante <\/em>problem.\u00a0 The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.\u00a0 We need to end it.<\/p>\n

On the sixth hand, until we do <\/em>end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.\u00a0 It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.<\/p>\n

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.\u00a0 And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.\u00a0 It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.\u00a0 Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante <\/em>crime these days.\u00a0 Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u00a0 And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is <\/em>no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.\u00a0 Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.<\/p>\n

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.\u00a0 The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.\u00a0 The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.<\/p>\n

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.\u00a0 America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.\u00a0 The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.<\/p>\n

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.\u00a0 It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all <\/em>dissent on any <\/em>subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.\u00a0 You will never <\/em>see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).<\/p>\n

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere<\/em>, who actually favors clamping down on legal <\/em>immigration.\u00a0 “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.<\/p>\n

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?<\/p>\n

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet. On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”.\u00a0 On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,79,11,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-slander-files","category-world","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10404"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10414,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10404\/revisions\/10414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}