PHOENIX — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.
The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.
The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues.
07/28/2010 87 ORDER granting in part and denying in part the United States’ 27 Motion for Preliminary Injunction. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED denying the United States’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction as to the following Sections of Senate Bill 1070 (as amended by House Bill 2162): Section 1, Section 2(A) and (C)-(L), Section 4, the portion of Section 5 creating A.R.S. § 13-2929, the portion of Section 5 creating A.R.S. § 13-2928(A) and (B), and Sections 7-13. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED preliminarily enjoining the State of Arizona and Governor Brewer from enforcing the following Sections of Senate Bill 1070 (as amended by House Bill 2162): Section 2(B) creating A.R.S. § 11-1051(B), Section 3 creating A.R.S. § 13-1509, the portion of Section 5 creating A.R.S. § 13-2928 (C), and Section 6 creating A.R.S. § 13-3883(A)(5). Signed by Judge Susan R Bolton on 07/28/10. (NOTE: See attached pdf for complete details) (ESL) (Entered: 07/28/2010)
(AP) – The Kentucky Senate, reacting to a divisive comment by Republican Rand Paul, has adopted a resolution declaring any form of discrimination to be inconsistent with American values.
Louisville Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal introduced the resolution Friday during a special session on the state budget. It was adopted without objection in the predominantly Republican chamber.
Neal, Kentucky’s only black state senator, said he took personal offense at the comment made last week by Paul, a U.S. Senate candidate, who was criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Paul said in an MSNBC interview that the federal government shouldn’t have the power to force restaurants to serve minorities if business owners don’t want to.
Neal said Paul’s “extreme belief” has made Kentucky “a laughingstock.”
Police chiefs from 10 major U.S. cities, including Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., expressed strong disapproval of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law today, May 26 in a meeting with US Attorney General Eric Holder. …
Tucson Chief of Police Roberto Villaseñor discussed what he told Holder. “We have all expressed concern that this will cause a divide between our communities and our agencies,” he said.
Recent declines in crime, Villaseñor explained, have resulted from hard-won close relations between the community and the police. Police are more successful in protecting communities from crime when they have good communication and close ties to the people they protect. …
San Jose Chief of Police Ron Davis said the police understand people’s “frustration” with the broken immigration system. He added, however, that local law enforcement agencies should not be handed immigration enforcement as a top priority. In addition to driving a “wedge” between the police and the communities they protect, local law enforcement agencies don’t have the resources to enforce federal laws. “It’s a matter of resources, and its a matter of trying to figure out what our priorities are,” he noted.
Major city police chiefs have agreed on this point for many years, Davis added.
Chief Harris stated, “Immigration is a serious issue. It’s a federal responsibility to resolve those problems.”
OKLAHOMA CITY — Gov. Brad Henry vetoed a controversial abortion bill that would have required women seeking the procedure to report extensive personal information about themselves, his office announced Saturday.
Henry said House Bill 3284 had numerous flaws and would result in another expensive, and possibly futile, legal battle for the state. …
Information that a woman would have had to give included marital status, age, race, education, number of live births, number of miscarriages, number of induced abortions, type of abortion and reasons for the abortion.
Henry said he supported reasonable abortion restrictions but that House Bill 3284 had several flaws, including the lack of an exemption for rape and incest victims.
“By forcing rape and incest victims to submit to a personally invasive questionnaire and posting the answers on a state website, this legislation will only increase the trauma of an already traumatic event,” Henry said. “Victims of such horrific acts should be treated with dignity and respect in such situations, as should all people.” …
“Requiring patients to publicly reveal highly intimate and personal details of their lives to obtain a medical procedure protected by this nation’s highest court constitutes an unconstitutional invasion of privacy and barrier to legal medical treatment,” Henry said.
This is the third abortion bill that Henry has vetoed this legislative session. The GOP-controlled Legislature has overridden two of the vetoes.
It’s a shame that political wives have to clam themselves up so much, but that’s the way it is. Good for Laura Bush for saying saying her beliefs out loud, now that she is uncaged.
Galen Carey, director of government affairs for the National Evangelical Association, tells Yahoo! News the organization is seeking to rally support for comprehensive immigration reform. The campaign begins with a full-page ad Thursday in Roll Call, a Washington newspaper that covers Congress.
“What we say is: There does need to be some workable system that’s put in place to address the situation of people that are already here,” Carey said.
The association, which includes members from 40 evangelical denominations, reached consensus on the issue of immigration reform in 2009 — almost two years after President George W. Bush’s failed attempts to reform immigration — by focusing on the biblical material that supports immigration. (The group took no official stand on the issue during the last congressional debate.) The group’s 2009 resolution on immigration includes several paragraphs citing scriptural authority:
“Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the families of his sons turned to Egypt in search of food,” it says. “Joseph, Naomi, Ruth, Daniel and his friends, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther all lived in foreign lands. In the New Testament, Joseph and Mary fled with Jesus to escape Herod’s anger and became refugees in Egypt.”
The 2009 resolution calls for a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the country illegally but “who desire to embrace the responsibilities and privileges that accompany citizenship.”
Thursday’s ad, Carey said, calls for reform that “establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.”
Legal experts, including former State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger, have already slammed Senator Joe Lieberman’s proposal to strip citizenship from American citizens accused of being involved with a foreign terrorist organization. After expressing initial support, Senator Chuck Schumer later backed out.
Lieberman hasn’t given up on his proposal however. Hoping to harvest the populist anger of the Tea Parties, Lieberman, who has enlisted Massachussetts Senator Scott Brown and Reps Jason Altmire (D-PA) and Charlie Dent (R-PA) in the House, is calling his proposal the TEA Act, or “Terrorist Expatriation Act”.
The Terrorist Expatriation Act would bring existing federal law up to date by adding another item to the list of acts for which a U.S. national would lose his/her nationality: providing material support or resources to a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as designated by the Secretary of State, or actively engaging in hostilities against the United States or its allies.
Lieberman’s originally called for stripping citizenship from those who were merely suspected of being part of a terrorist organization, but from the press release it sounds like the new proposal might apply only to those people who are actually convicted. We’ll find out at noon today, when Lieberman holds a press conference announcing the details.
One thing is clear though, the designation “foreign terrorist organization” wouldn’t apply to domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, which means that the law would, in practice, only ever apply to American Muslims.
EXCLUSIVE: Email From Author Of Arizona Law Reveals Intent To Cast Wide Net Against Latinos
Kris Kobach of the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
………………
Wonk Room recently obtained an email written by Kris Kobach, a lawyer at the Immigration Reform Law Institute — the group which credits itself with writing the bill — to Arizona state Sen. Russell Pierce (R), urging him to include language that will allow police to use city ordinance violations such as “cars on blocks in the yard” as an excuse to “initiate quieries” in light of the “lawful contact” deletion:
To begin with, Kobach’s correspondence affirms that though the bill was proposed and passed in Arizona, the shots are being called by a small group of lawyers whose office is based in Washington, DC. It also indicates that after vigorously defending his bill and its “lawful contact provision” in the New York Times, Kobach may have had second thoughts about the constitutionality of the bill he prides himself with writing.
More importantly, Kobach is basically admitting to Pearce that by allowing police to use the violation of “any county or municipal ordinance” as a basis for inquiring about a person’s immigration status, the bill will still cast a wide enough net to help offset the effect of omitting the “lawful contact” language which would’ve allowed police to ask just about anyone they encounter about their immigration status. The examples Kobach provides, “cars on blocks in the yard” or “too many occupants of a rental accommodation,” suggest that net will mostly end up being cast over the poor.
It’s all Obama’s fault, so Hispanics should register Republican. Bwahaha.
“That said, and even though we are taking a stance against Jan Brewer and Russell Pearce’s law, we are ultimately holding President Obama accountable. Obama promised Hispanics that he would pass immigration reform within 90 days of his Presidency. Had Obama carried out his promises to Hispanics last year, the Hispanic community would not be experiencing the crisis we are experiencing right now. There has been recent criticism over our Senator John McCain because John McCain probably feels he cannot win the primary elections due to his previous stances on championing immigration reform and the consistent untrue attacks by Hayworth. It is understandable on why McCain believes he is in the fight of his life. For the record, Senator McCain has taken action in the past while Obama has not. McCain’s valuable experience contributed to Americans winning the Iraq war. The problem is this: There are more Latinos registered as Democrats in the State of Arizona that cannot vote for McCain in the primary elections and McCain wants to win. How can these hypocritical democrat leaders lay blame to the McCain when at the very least McCain has action to back his words? Why aren’t Democrat leaders holding Obama’s feet to the fire? Hispanics are more aligned with Republican values because of our social conservative values and our belief in the Creator; and if Hispanics want to make a real change to help change the face of our Party to bring it back to the Party of Abraham Lincoln, then I call upon all Latinos (Democrat and Independent) to register themselves as Republicans in order to bring it back to those roots.
A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.
Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday’s editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle. …
State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat and former president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, called the law “extremely damaging and hateful.”
Van de Putte predicted failure for any similar measures in Texas and said the GOP would suffer politically for such a move.
Asked about the Arizona law, GOP Gov. Rick Perry and his Democratic challenger, Bill White, emphasized through spokespeople that immigration is a federal responsibility.
Justin Elliott at TPMMuckraker is following the story about the iPhone prototype left in a German restaurant and subsequently passed to Gizmodo, whose editor’s home was raided. I don’t quite see this as a case of high industrial espionage, but Apple is acting as if it does.
This is very troubling:
Apple is on the steering committee for the REACT task force that raided Chen’s house. Formed in 1997, REACT is a partnership of 17 local, state and federal agencies tasked with investigating computer- and internet-related crimes.
Corporations should not be able to send government forces to bust into a journalist’s home; especially when the corporation has an obvious conflict of interest, but unless there is an imminent danger to someone, never.
Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Wired
The federal Privacy Protection Act prohibits the government from seizing materials from journalists and others who possess material for the purpose of communicating to the public. The government cannot seize material from the journalist even if it’s investigating whether the person who possesses the material committed a crime.
Instead, investigators need to obtain a subpoena, which would allow the reporter or media outlet to challenge the request and segregate information that is not relevant to the investigation.
“Congress was contemplating a situation where someone might claim that the journalist was committing a crime [in order to seize materials from them],” Granick says.
California state law also provides protections to prevent journalists from being forced to disclose sources or unpublished information related to their work.
“California law is crystal clear that bloggers are journalists, too,” she says.
