Arizona Adopted California and Oklahoma Immigration Laws

All the liberal anxiety aimed at Arizona's new tough illegal immigration law is surprising, since I don't remember any of it when California passed a law years ago almost the same as Arizona's.

the California Penal Code actually requires that every law enforcement agency in the state shall "fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws."

Below is a copy of section 834b of the California Penal Code that deals with immigration law enforcement at the local level.

(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. (b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following: (1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status. (2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States. (3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity. (c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.

The last sentence prohibits such abominations as San Francisco's "sanctuary" law.

Three years ago Oklahoma passed a similar law:

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma Legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative
Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

So what makes Arizona's law special? In fact, what would make any state law special in light of federal law?

President Obama was a spokesperson for those of you ignorant of federal law (apparently all Liberals fall in this category), when he said in Iowa:

"One of the things that the law says is that local officials are allowed to ask somebody who they have a suspicion might be an illegal immigrant for their papers."

If the President believes that is wrong, his complaint is with federal law, not Arizona's.

It is already federal law that an alien in the United States must register and carry certain documents with him while he's in the United States. In fact it's been federal law for 70 years.

Nor is it news to local law officers. They check the immigration status of those they stop on suspicion of a crime.

The federal government has a 24-7 hotline that's been in place for about 15 years for exactly that purpose. And it's being used more than a thousand times a day all over the country.

The defenders of the immigration law say it's essentially the same as federal law -- which the president is bound to uphold.

(The above information was provided by Kris Kobach, a lawyer who is an expert in immigration and who helped construct the Arizona bill.)

So there you have it -- grandstanding by ignoramuses, which seems to be our leaders' most highly developed talent.

Making the Army of Reconquista

“Maria, it is your patriotic Mexicana duty to make a baby with me tonight.”

“Jose, you already have esposa y ocho niños in Mexico. You send them all your dinero except for what you spend on yourself y los prostitutas. I know why you want to go to bed with me. But why do you want to make a bebé?”

“Maria, you think I am just a peón, but I am a Reconquistadore, a gallant soldier in the Army of Reconquista. And tonight I want to enlist you in this noble cause”

“Last night Juan wanted me to go to his room too, but he didn’t say he wanted to ‘enlist’ me. He used a different word.”

“Juan is a selfish pig. He told you he would use a condom, so no bebé, verdad, is that not so? He wanted you for his pleasure only, I want you to show my patriotism.”

“Jose, last night I think Juan showed me a bigger patriotism than yours.”

“Maria, la Reconquista must have babies, mucho bebés. Very soon, maybe 15 years, the babies will be big, and they will have mucho bebés. Then, in 15 more years, mucho, mucho bebés! Comprende, Maria? In 50 years California will be just like Mexico!”

“Jose, are you loco? We came to California to get away from Mexico. What will we do when California is just as bad?”

“Maria, then we will go to New York. You will like it. For now, show me your patriotism.”

Damn! I Want Global Warming!

Alice and I moved to the northern California coast in 1998, when we were each 56 years old. We knew the weather on the coast was cool, but with expectations of global warming, as promised by Al Gore, we thought it would warm as we aged.

Old people need warmer, you know.

If you don't believe me, go to Florida and Arizona.

Anyway, each year we look for the warming signs.

Last summer it was so cool on the coast that the blackberries we pass on our daily walks to the beach never ripened. We watched them hungrily, day after day, and they never made it past "too bitter to swallow."

They were at their best twelve year ago just after we moved here from hot and sunny Livermore. That also happened to be the last real warm year we've had here, thanks to the strongest El Nino in the past hundred years.

Now a very respected scientist finds that we're in for more cooling until around 2030.

Whoa just a ding dong dang minute! In 2030 Alice and I will be 88 years old, and in need of all the warming we can get!

No one seems to like cooling, least of all our elders. If you look at a map of population trends in the United States, you will see massive movement from the colder regions to the warmer. In effect, we've been voting for global warming with our feet for the past century.

However, Alice and I love our home, and we don't want to move south, particularly to the idiocy and stupidity of Los Angeles, where I was born and Alice grew up. Alice and I are looking forward to the lights going off in Los Angeles when LA votes to boycott Arizona. We're already boycotting San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley because of their fatuous boycotts. Now we've added LA to the list. So far our boycotts have resulted in almost $1,000 of our funds not being spent in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We're doing our part to cool them off.

Don’t Shit in Your Mess Kit – Protecting Against Terrorists

The would-be Times Square terrorist almost escaped. The Obama administration says that it’s the job of the airlines to check passengers against the no-fly list, and that Emirates Airlines dropped the ball. Luckily Customs spotted Faisal Shahzad on the passenger list before his flight left, but after he had already boarded.

The Obama administration may claim a victory here, but it seems more like dumb luck. The anti-terrorist system is no good if you trust that the airlines will do all the right things at the right time. In this case, Emirate Airlines followed their usual procedure of updating their no-fly list infrequently, and we didn’t have a clue that they probably wouldn’t have a current list available to check against less than 24 hours after Faisal Shahzad was put on it.

Trusting in dumb luck is no way to run an airline, and even less an anti-terrorist system.

Illegal Immigrants Have More Rights Than Citizens

Federal authorities just arrested 596 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions (LA Times), according to John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Most of them will be deported, though 22 may be prosecuted for illegal entry after previous deportation. He said the Obama administration is focused on deporting immigrants who break the law.

The sweep exposed holes in the U.S. immigration enforcement system, since 572 of the criminals, some previously convicted of murder, sex crimes, assault and fraud, had been released from jail or prison without being turned over to immigration authorities as the law requires, Morton acknowledged.

There are as many as a million such criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S., Morton said.

The sweep illustrates the hypocrisy of the Obama administration towards immigration enforcement as it dithers over responding to Arizona’s law. Obama officials say they are focusing their efforts on people convicted of crimes, but acknowledge that they continue to remove noncriminals.

Meanwhile, the administration is also facing criticism from Congress that it is not aggressively enforcing immigration laws. In response, officials say they are removing a record number of immigrants, about 400,000 per year. A majority of those have not been convicted of crimes.

Arizona proposes doing what the federal government does poorly – enforce immigration laws. Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If I were stopped for a driving violation, the officer would ask to see my driver’s license. If an illegal immigrant were stopped for the same violation and asked to show a driver’s license, that’s not racial profiling, unless illegal immigrants now have more civil rights than U. S. citizens.

Hide The Decline

It Is The Government, Stupid!

It is the government, Mr. Obama. What we're seeing in Greece is a foreshadow of what's in store for us if you, the government, and the public employees unions continue to grow the public sector on the back of the private.

Here's the money quote about Greece and its problems:

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country’s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.

In California, the counties and cities have lived far beyond their means by expanding public employment much faster than the general population growth, and demanding more and better government services. Looming over all the public sector employment - which, the public seems to have forgotten is paid for by taxes out of someone's pockets - is the spector of generous pension plans that begin with the illogic of very early retirements.

Of course, much of this is not recognized by the voters, because many of them are net recipients of tax monies rather than payers. Add to these beneficiaries of government generosity the members of the fastest growing voting block in California, the public employees themselves, and you have a perfect system for increasing taxes and spending.

In Europe they have been working at this longer than we have, so are much further down the path to economic ruin. We could learn from their mistakes, but instead we emulate them because we don't recogize that their security, which we envy, is only illusory.

Look to Greece for an example of what's soon to come for Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland - and they're only tips of the iceberg.

Bureaucrats will raise their fists at the barricades in a general strike and protests on Wednesday to protect their considerable perks from the IMF.

They and other public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.

Obama denies it, but even a fool should realize that what happened in Greece happened because government employees became too strong.

California's public employment is up significantly during the past four years, even as California as a whole has its highest rate of unemployment of modern times.

California public service unions are so strong, that even though the only answer to California's ruinous budget deficits is drastic cuts to the public payroll, California politicians will not bite that bullet. The unions are too powerful.

You Can't Get There From Here

Global warming alarmists base their scenarios of doom on the contemplation of a doubling of atmospheric CO2. However, responsible scientists realize the impossibility of doubling atmospheric CO2. Simply, we will not have enough hydrocarbons available to burn in the time frames the alarmists envision. Both fossil fuel emmissions and atmospheric CO2 will peak before 2100, and atospheric CO2 will only reach about 500 ppm, a 32% increase over the present 380 ppm.

As the farmer in the field replied when the city slicker asked directions to New York City, "You can't get there from here."

Al Gore - Can He Have It Both Ways?

A graph of Northern Hemisphere snowfall by decade for the past fifty years shows the past decade was the smowiest. Click link here for eye-opening information Al Gore denies exists.

According to Al:

"Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,” Gore wrote in a wonky Op-Ed for The New York Times.

"The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth,” he acknowledged.

“Yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans,” he wrote. And that puts “significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow.”

Al, look at the graph. Notice the high levels of snow in the relatively cool 1960's and 1970's, and the diminishing levels in the warming 1980's and 1990's.

Then the record-breaking (for the fifty-year period, that is) snow for the 2000's.

Al, you say the increased snow in the 2000's is proof of warming. Then what did the much lower levels of snow in the warming 80's and 90's prove? And the higher levels in the 60's and 70's?

Al, you just don't make sense.