[H/t Heather]
My boycott of Arizona and the Diamondbacks is going very well. Bloggers and news paper op-eds are calling for practically the same thing. I've received a ton of emails from our readers who support a boycott and are simply sick and tired of these wealthy business owners like Jerry Colangleo doing their best to destroy what America stands for. It's not farfetched to think that this law was targeted at Latino voters, who are too young to vote now, but will be soon -- as well as the vast number of Latino voters already registered in AZ.
What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
With a sheriff like Joe Arpaio, if I were Latino and had a family in Arizona, I would be very afraid -- legal or otherwise. But I think it'll take more than that to scare them out of their homes.
Have you heard a peep from the leading Republicans for the 2012 presidential race about Arizona's new racial profiling new law? Sarah Palin went on Fox and voiced her support for Jan Brewer, but since then has been silent: no bumbling Facebook posts yet. Meanwhile, where's Newt or Mitt or Huck?
Scarborough, who I disagree with most of the time, is asking the same questions on Morning Joe:
Scarborough: One out of every three citizens in the state of Arizona are Hispanic and you have now put a target on their back on one of three citizens if they're walking their dog around the neighborhood. If they are walking their child to school. They are an American citizens and a legal, legal immigrant and now put a target on their back and make them think when they walk out their door, they may have to prove something. I will tell you that is un-American. It's unacceptable and un-American.
Where's Mitt Romney? Where's Newt Gingrich? Where's Mike Huckabee?
Why are they hiding? We know they probably support this Bircher, nativist law so why don't they just come out and say it? There was a reason Bush and Rove tried to do immigration reform, but now the GOP fears their teabagger base even more than the Democratic Party does.
The new law has already cost Arizona a convention.
Just minutes after Brewer signed 1070 into law on Friday, the American Immigration Lawyers' Association canceled their annual fall convention. They had planned to host the September event in Scottsdale.
"We can't in good conscious spend the organization's money in a state that's going to pursue these kinds of policies," said Regina Jeffries of the AILA.
The irony is that this law is so constitutionally compromised, it will likely never be enforced. Yet Arizona's xenophobes have essentially turned their state into an American pariah, the likes they hadn't seen since their MLK Day disaster, while costing Arizonans in tourism and jobs. And for what? For a hateful statement that will do nothing to address the issue of half a million undocumented workers in their state, could bankrupt myriad municipalities, and provide the ultimate catalyst for real immigration reform at the federal level.
