Navajo Indian And Democratic Senator Leaves To Join GOP [VIDEO]

Arizona Democratic State Senator Carlyle Begay announced Monday he is leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican. Senator Begay is a Navajo Indian and represents an area of Arizona which encompasses the Navajo and Hopi reservations.

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Redistricting Not Worth the Verbal Footwork

"Words mean what they say," I wrote in my Washington Examiner column one week ago. But, as I added, not necessarily to a majority of justices of the Supreme Court. The targets of my column were the majority opinions in King v. Burwell and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project.
In King v. Burwell, Chief Justice Roberts interpreted the words "established by the state" in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as meaning "established by the state or the federal government," even though the law itself defines "state" as the 50 states and the District of Columbia.


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Arizona governor vetoes controversial bill allowing religious beliefs as defense for denying service

During Gov. Jan Brewer's announcement that she had vetoed SB 1062, she said the bill was "broadly worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences." The legislation caused a national uproar, with the business community, the state's Super Bowl Committee, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and both Republican U.S. senators calling for a veto. Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney also weighed in and urged Brewer to veto the bill, which had been passed by social conservatives in the Arizona Legislature. Proponents complained that the bill had been misrepresented.

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In a 7-2 decision SCOTUS strikes down Arizona's voter ID requirement

Excerpts - While the court was clear in stating that states cannot add additional identification requirements to the federal forms on their own, it was also clear that the same actions can be taken by state governments if they get the approval of the federal government and the federal courts. ✧ Arizona can ask the federal government to include the extra documents as a state-specific requirement, Scalia said, and take any decision made by the government on that request back to court. Other states have already done so, Scalia said. ✧ The Election Assistance Commission "recently approved a state-specific instruction for Louisiana requiring applicants who lack a Louisiana driver's license, ID card or Social Security number to attach additional documentation to the completed federal form," Scalia said. ✧ Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court's ruling. Read more: Fox News Read More......

Homeland Security suspends immigration agreements with Arizona police

The Obama administration said Monday it is suspending existing agreements with Arizona police over enforcement of federal immigration laws, and said it has issued a directive telling federal authorities to decline many of the calls reporting illegal immigrants that the Homeland Security Department may get from Arizona police.

Administration officials, speaking on condition they not be named, told reporters they expect to see an increase in the number of calls they get from Arizona police — but that won’t change President Obama’s decision to limit whom the government actually tries to detain and deport.

Read more at The Washington Times Read More......

Fox: Utah on verge of passing bill demanding Feds relinquish public land

3/6/2012 (AP) SALT LAKE CITY – Lawmakers who want to seize control of federal lands are pushing a legal battle they insist is winnable despite multiple warnings their effort is highly unconstitutional and almost sure to fail in court. ✧ Utah is poised to become the first state to pass a package of bills that demand the federal government relinquish claims to huge sections of public land. A proposal that advanced Wednesday demands that by 2014 the federal government cede control of nearly 30 million acres -- nearly 50 percent of the entire state. ✧ A bill setting an identical deadline is also moving in the Arizona Legislature. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

IMPRIMIS: The Constitution and Limited Government

By Edward J. Erler, Professor of Political Science
California State University, San Bernardino
Published September 2011 by Imprimis

Two cases that are currently making their way to the Supreme Court may well in the short term decide the constitutional issue of the reach and extent of the federal government. At stake, in other words, is the future of limited government. And together, these two cases present an exceedingly odd situation. In the case of the Arizona illegal alien law, the federal government is suing a state for constitutional violations; and in the case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—that is, Obamacare—more than half the states are suing the federal government, contesting the Act’s constitutionality. It is indeed a litigious season.

But the Supreme Court’s decisions in these two cases may not be the last word, because both of them present eminently political issues that will have to be decided ultimately by the American people.

The administrative state, of course, always seeks to extend its reach and magnify its power. This is an intrinsic feature of a system where administration and regulation replace politics as the ordinary means of making policy. If there are to be limits to the reach of the burgeoning administrative state, they will be political limits imposed by the people in the ordinary course of partisan politics. The advent of the administrative state poses the greatest challenge to limited government, because it elevates the welfare of the community—whether real or imagined—over the rights and liberties of individuals. The task today is to confine the federal government to its delegated powers. The minions of the administrative state seek to destroy constitutional boundaries in their desire to replace politics with administration. This is tantamount to denying that legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed, or that limited government rests on the sovereignty of the people.

One of the proofs offered in the Declaration of Independence that King George was attempting to establish an “absolute Tyranny” over the American colonies was the fact that “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” Obamacare certainly fits the description of the activities denounced in the Declaration. The number of regulations and the horde of administrators necessary to execute the scheme are staggering. We have only to think here of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. It is a commission of 15 members appointed by the President, charged with the task of reducing Medicare spending. This commission has rule-making power which carries the force of law. The Senate, it is true, will have the power to override its decisions—but only with a three-fifths majority. There are no procedures that allow citizens or doctors to appeal the Board’s decisions. The administrative state—here in the guise of providing health care for all—will surely reduce the people under a kind of tyranny that will insinuate itself into all aspects of American life, destroying liberty by stages until liberty itself becomes only a distant memory.

The advent and extraordinary success of the Tea Party movement, with its emphasis on restoring limited government, has made this a propitious time to rethink what the Framers meant by limited government and how they understood the relationship between limited government and the protection of rights and liberties. It is rare to see a people acting spontaneously in a political cause. The Tea Party movement must be regarded as a testament to the independent spirit—the freedom-loving spirit—of the American people.

How did the Framers understand limited government? In the first place, limited government was not for the Framers identical with small government, as the Tea Party sometimes tends to believe. The identification of limited government with small government was the position of the Anti-Federalists who opposed the ratification of the Constitution. Limited government, for the Anti-Federalists, meant government that was too weak to threaten the rights and liberties of the people. Small government was, therefore, both the necessary and sufficient condition of political freedom. Consequently, the Anti-Federalists preferred a purely confederal form of government in which the states assumed priority.

The Federalists, on the other hand, regarded confederal government as an attempt to do the impossible: to create a sovereignty within a sovereignty. Conflicting claims to sovereignty would be debilitating and would render the government of the whole ineffective—as was surely the case under our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.

The Framers of the Constitution settled upon a novel design for government, one that Madison said was “partly national, partly federal.” For some purposes, Madison explained, we will be one people; for others, we will be multiple peoples. With respect to the national features—those things that concern the nation as a whole—the federal government will have sovereignty—complete and plenary power to accomplish the objects entrusted to its care in the Constitution. Those objects are principally found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. National defense, for example, is exclusively delegated to the federal government. And since the exigencies that face nations in foreign affairs are unpredictable and innumerable, the federal government must have sovereignty to fulfill this delegated trust. And if that trust is to be fulfilled, the federal government must also be accorded the necessary means to achieve that end. If this entails large government—and today it surely does—then large government must be compatible with limited government. Similar reasoning applies to all the objects delegated to the care of the federal government.

The Declaration of Independence provided the authoritative statement of America’s political principles. For the first time, government was said to derive its legitimacy—its just powers—from “the consent of the governed.” This was a turning point in world-historical consciousness: no longer would it be possible to argue that sovereignty belonged to governments or kings—even if kings claimed appointment by divine right.

In order to form just government, the people delegate a portion of their sovereignty to government to be exercised for their benefit. The fact that only a portion of sovereignty is ceded by the people is the origin of the idea of limited government. The people delegate only some of their sovereignty to government, and what is not granted is retained by the people—the people, for example, always reserve (and can never cede) the ultimate expression of sovereignty, the right of revolution. The Declaration describes this right as “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” government when it becomes destructive of its proper ends—namely, the protection of the safety and happiness of the people. This right of revolution, as understood by the Founders, was the right that secures every other right, because it serves as a constant reminder of the sovereignty of the people.

The Anti-Federalists never understood these revolutionary implications; they seemed to believe still that governments, not the people, were the ultimate repositories of sovereignty, and that the only way to secure the rights and liberties of the people was to weaken the power of government—as if freedom existed only in the exceptions to government power. But as Madison wrote, “Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government.”

What limits the federal government is not a limit on its power to act, but the limited range of objects entrusted to its care—the enumerated powers of government. The powers not delegated to the federal government nor forbidden to the states in the Constitution (e.g., ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts) are reserved to the states. These are the police powers, which are generally described as the power to regulate the health, safety, welfare and morals of the citizens of the states.

In cases of conflict, the supremacy clause of the Constitution gives preference to the federal Constitution and laws made in pursuance of the Constitution. The supremacy clause was described by Madison as an essential improvement over the Articles of Confederation. Where there is no final authority to arbitrate disputes between the federal government and the states in this “compound Republic,” government will be paralyzed. Madison confessed, however, that the exact boundary between the powers of the federal government and the state governments will be impossible to determine in advance. The precise lines of demarcation will have to be worked out in practice. The Supreme Court—and through the supremacy clause, the state courts—will have to determine conflicts on a case by case basis.

An illustration of the difficulties of drawing clear lines between federal and state authority in our “compound Republic” is the Arizona illegal immigration bill, passed in April 2010. The law allowed police officers to verify the immigration status of any person after a valid stop or arrest if there “is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States.” Everyone remembers the hysteria that was unleashed when the bill passed. The President called the law irresponsible, saying that it threatened “basic notions of fairness.” Others said the provision of the bill relying on “reasonable suspicion” would mandate racial profiling; and some of the more hysterical commentators even insisted that the law was tantamount to genocide. The Assistant Secretary of State felt compelled to apologize to members of a Chinese delegation visiting the United States for this egregious assault upon human rights. One can only imagine the bemused looks on the faces of the Chinese delegation.

The President ordered the Justice Department to intervene. And to the surprise of many, the Justice Department’s lawsuit did not seek to enjoin the law based on racial profiling or equal protection or due process, arguing instead that the law conflicted with the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration. Perhaps someone had explained to the Attorney General that “reasonable suspicion” has been a part of our due process jurisprudence for many years. It means that a police officer can question on suspicion that is less than probable cause; reasonable suspicion, of course, must be something more than a hunch or a guess or an intuition—it must be based on articulable facts. In addition, the Supreme Court in 1975 ruled that ethnicity could be one of the factors determining reasonable suspicion. The Arizona law, in contrast, disallowed any use of ethnicity in determining whether a person could be asked about his immigration status.

In United States v. Arizona, the Federal District Court judge enjoined the operation of the law because it intruded upon the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration and control foreign policy. On appeal from the District Court, one piece of evidence adduced by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Arizona law was an unconstitutional impingement upon the federal government’s exclusive power to conduct foreign policy was the fact that the President of Mexico and the heads of several other Latin American countries had expressed severe criticisms of the bill both in the press and in amici briefs! Rarely do we encounter such humor in court opinions, however unintended the humor might be.

The Constitution, of course, does not specifically grant control over immigration to the federal government. Instead Congress has power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Control over naturalization, however, seems to imply control over immigration—so uniform rules governing immigration would seem, by necessary implication, to fall within the scope of federal power. The real question here—although it was not addressed by the District Court or the Court of Appeals—was what power, if any, devolves upon state governments when the federal government fails to carry out its obligations. The District Court had candidly noted that the Arizona law was passed “against a backdrop of rampant illegal immigration, escalating drug and human trafficking crimes, and serious public safety concerns.” In the face of federal inaction or manifest indifference, does Arizona have the reserved power—indeed the obligation—to secure the safety of its citizens? The President’s recent remarks that the border has been secured and that it is now time to think of providing a path to citizenship for illegal aliens is, in reality, a statement of declared indifference to the people of the State of Arizona and to all the border states similarly situated. Surely those states have the constitutional right, sustained by their police powers, to protect themselves through laws that are as unobtrusive as the Arizona law. But in the District Court’s judgment, the Arizona law invoked “an inference of preemption” because it placed an “impermissible burden” on federal “resources and priorities” and inevitably “will result in the harassment of aliens.” The burden on federal resources stems from the fact that there will be an increased number of requests to verify immigration status. This increased burden will in turn force the immigration services to reallocate resources away from other priorities. Such is the logic of the District Court.

These reasons seem trivial when compared to the real and pressing dangers that Arizona faces as a result of federal inaction and indifference. Surely this is not what the Framers had in mind when they crafted the supremacy clause, while at the same time reserving to the states the essential responsibility of protecting the safety and welfare of their citizens. Madison wrote in The Federalist that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” This extensive power reserved to the states should weigh heavily on preemption decisions. In this light, the Arizona law seems to have been a clear exercise of the state’s police powers, and any burden imposed on the federal government to have been incidental and insignificant.

Obamacare is another issue that tests our understanding of the Constitution and the role of limited government. In federal courts, the Obama administration has defended the bill as a legitimate exercise of Congress’ power to regulate commerce. At issue here is the individual mandate that forces individuals to purchase health care insurance and carries a penalty for failure to do so. Congress has the power to regulate commerce; but does it, as here, have the power to create commerce—i.e., to force individuals to engage in interstate commerce by purchasing health care insurance from private providers? Another way to look at the issue would be to ask whether, under the commerce clause, Congress has the power to regulate inactivity, i.e., the refusal to buy insurance. This would indeed be a novel extension of commerce clause jurisprudence and utterly impossible to square with any notion of commerce that was held by the framers of the Constitution.

In addition to the commerce clause argument, the Obama administration maintains that the individual mandate is authorized by Congress’ power to tax and spend for the general welfare. Congress’ power here is extensive. Over the years, the Court has generally deferred to Congress in determining what constitutes the general welfare. This is proper, since Congress represents the nation and what promotes the general welfare is essentially a political question. If Congress determines that a universal health care system serves the general welfare, then the courts will not interfere. The power to “lay and collect Taxes,” however, has been subject to judicial scrutiny. While Congress may tax for the purpose of raising revenue, it may not use the power of taxation for the express purpose of regulation. A tax that is merely a subterfuge for regulating activities will not be allowed, although a tax that only incidentally regulates behavior will pass constitutional muster as long as the principal purpose is raising revenues.

Madison argued that the general welfare clause was actually a limitation on the federal government. Taxes could be imposed and money spent only for the general welfare—meaning the welfare of the whole of the American people. It is true that Alexander Hamilton had a more extensive view of the general welfare clause, but throughout much of our history Madison’s view prevailed. Today, however, the idea that the general welfare clause was ever intended as a limit on the reach of government has been destroyed by the progressive architects of the welfare state.

In any case, if the individual mandate is to be defended under the general welfare clause, what the plain language of the bill calls a penalty must be regarded as a tax for the express purpose of raising revenue. If the penalty can be sold as a tax, the Obama administration argues, then Obamacare is authorized by the general welfare clause. In the Florida District Court case, the Justice Department made the wholly tendentious—not to say absurd—argument that since the IRS was charged with administering the individual mandate and collecting the penalties, this was sufficient to convert a penalty into a tax. But as Florida District Court Judge Roger Vinson remarked: “Besides the fact that President Obama confidently assured the American people that there would be no new taxes to support the medical insurance scheme, no amount of administrative indirection should be allowed to convert a penalty into a tax for raising revenue. This is not a revenue raising measure and therefore cannot be justified under the general welfare clause.”

But here is a somber thought: If, instead of using the individual mandate, Congress had relied on its general revenue-raising powers, under current Supreme Court doctrine, it is almost certain that Obamacare would be constitutional. It would be an example of Congress spending money for the general welfare.

In conclusion, the only certain method of defeating universal health care and other cases of federal overreach—as it appears that the American public desires to do—is political opposition. A political party dedicated to genuinely limited government—not small government—is an urgent political task. Whether the Tea Party is up to this task remains to be seen—but it is probably our best hope. The Tea Party will have to learn, however, that the task today is not to weaken the power of government—it is to confine the government to the exercise of its delegated powers and to restore to its full vigor the partly national, partly federal form of government that was the legacy of the Founders.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on May 24, 2011, in Dallas, Texas.

Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” Read More......

Obama Urges a National Dialogue of Healing at AZ Memorial

Saying he wants to live up to the dreams of a 9-year-old girl who perished in a Tucson parking lot last weekend, President Obama on Wednesday urged Americans to temper the political discourse now polarizing the public square. Read more at Fox News... Read More......

Krauthammer: Massacre, followed by libel

WASHINGTON POST, 1/12/2011 by Charles Krauthammer - The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires. ∴ The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Shooting rampage in Tuscon injures Rep. Giffords and takes lives

1/8/2011 - We offer our sincere condolences for the victims of the senseless shooting attack in Tuscon today. Our prayers for Congresswoman Giffords and all who were shot whose conditions are yet unknown, and special prayers for the families suffering unimaginable grief over the sudden loss of loved ones. The shooter was tackled by bystanders and is in custody.

1/6/2011 - Rep. Gabrielle Giffords participates in reading the U.S. Constitution on the house floor.

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Ray Stevens - God Save Arizona

(Hat tip: Lou Copes) Read More......

AT: Is This Just a Nightmare, or Did It Really Happen?

AMERICAN THINKER, 5/24/2010 by Jared E. Peterson (Hat tip: Stella Guenther) - Over the past week we witnessed presidential and congressional disloyalty without precedent in American history, events that should be indelibly imprinted on the American electorate's collective memory. For the first time (at least to this writer's knowledge), a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president's implicit but obvious public support for that invasion; and that same foreign leader spoke to Congress and received a standing ovation from its Democrat members' for his country's war on America's borders.

Is this just a nightmare, or did it really happen? Read more at American Thinker...

Why didn't the Republicans walk out during Calderon's rant? Kudos to McClintock (R-CA) for speaking up. --bc Read More......

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen Explains SB 1070

From Benton Co. Republicans Newsletter, May 9, 2010:
"I'm Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen. I want to explain SB1070 which I voted for and which was just signed by Governor Jan Brewer. ∴ Rancher Rob Krentz was murdered by the drug cartel on his ranch a month ago. I participated in a senate hearing two weeks ago on the border violence. Here are just some of the highlights from those who testified. ∴ The people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico Border have for years been terrorized and have pleaded for help to stop the daily invasion of humans who cross their property. One rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people a DAY come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles.

Another rancher testified that drugs are brought across his ranch daily in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile further are more guards. These people are violent, and they will kill anyone who gets in the way. This was not the only rancher we heard from that day who talked about the drug trains.

One man told of two illegals who came upon his property -- one shot in the back and the other in the arm by drug runners who had forced them to carry the drugs and then shot them. Daily they listen to gun fire; during the night it is not safe to leave his family alone on the ranch, and they can't leave the ranch for fear of nothing being left when they come back.

The border patrol is not on the border. They have set up 60 miles away with check points that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing them and, if they get their hands on them, then they can take them back across the border.

Federal prisons have more than 35% illegals, and 20% of Arizona prisons are filled with illegals. 80% of our law enforcement officers who have been killed or wounded in the last few years have been killed or wounded by an illegal.

The majority of people coming now are people we need to be worried about. The ranchers told us that they have seen a change in the people coming -- they are not just those who are looking for work and a better life.

The Federal Government has refused for years to do anything to help the Border States. We have been overrun, and once they are here we have the burden of funding state services that they use. Education costs have been more than a billion dollars. The healthcare costs billions of dollars. Our State is broke – a $3.5 billion deficit -- and we have many serious decisions to make. One is that we do not have the money to care for any who are not here legally. It has to stop. The border can be secured. We have the technology; we have the ability to stop this invasion. We must know who is coming, and they must come in an organized manner legally so that we can assimilate them into our population and protect the sovereignty of our country. We are a nation of laws. We have a responsibility to protect our citizens and to protect the integrity of our country and the government which we live under.

I would give amnesty today to many, but here is the problem. We dare not do this until the Border is secure. It will do no good to forgive them because thousands will come behind them, and we will be overrun to the point that there will no longer be the United States of America but a North American Union of open borders. I ask you, what form of government will we live under? How long will it be before we will be just like Mexico, Canada, or any of the other Central American or South American countries? We have already lost our language – everything must be printed in Spanish, also. We have already lost our history – it is no longer taught in our schools. And we have lost our borders.

The leftist media has distorted what SB 1070 will do. It is not going to set up a Nazi Germany. Are you kidding? The ACLU and the leftist courts will do everything to protect those who are here illegally. SB1070 was an effort to try to stop illegals from setting up businesses, taking jobs from Americans, and receiving state services and to give local law enforcement the ability – when there is probable cause, like a traffic stop – to determine if they are here legally. Federal law is very clear: if you are here on a visa you must have your papers on you at all times. That is the law. In Arizona all you need to show you are a legal citizen is a driver’s license, MVD identification card, Native American Card, or a Military ID. This is what you need to vote, get a hunting license, etc. So nothing new has been added to this law. No one is going to be stopped walking down the street, etc. The socialists who are in power in D.C. are angry because we dare try to do something when what the socialists want us to do is just let them come. They want the "Transformation" to continue.

Maybe it is too late to save America. Maybe we are not worthy of freedom anymore. But, as an elected official, I must try to do what I can to protect our Constitutional Republic. Living in America is not a right just because you can walk across the border. Being an American is a responsibility and it comes by respecting and upholding the Constitution – the law of our land which says what you must do to be a citizen of this country. Freedom is not free."

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THE YEAR…1907

Theodore Roosevelt explains his ideas on Immigration

THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S IDEAS ON IMMIGRANTS AND BEING AN AMERICAN IN 1907

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American and nothing but an American....There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Read More......

Governor Brewer of Arizona responds

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Poll: 59% favor Arizona's immigration status law

RASMUSSENREPORTS, 5/4/2010 - [...] Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters still favor legislation like Arizona's that authorizes local police to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Thirty-two percent (32%) oppose such a law. Those figures are virtually unchanged from a week ago. ∴ The support remains even though 57% of voters are at least somewhat concerned that efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants will end up violating the civil rights of some U.S. citizens. Forty percent (40%) do not share that concern. Read more at Rasmussen's....

I believe the question was tougher than the actual legislation. --bc Read More......

Arizona passes strict illegal immigration act

LA TIMES, 4/13/2010 by Nicholas Riccardi - Arizona lawmakers on Tuesday approved what foes and supporters agree is the toughest measure in the country against illegal immigrants, directing local police to determine whether people are in the country legally. Read more at the LA Times... Read More......

Stimulus Package Protest in Mesa Arizona

VIA EMAIL (H/t: Patrick Wills): Anti-Obama/Stimulus Protest in Mesa, Arizona, February 18, 2009 - At the Mesa AZ protest against President Obama, KFYI listeners brought signs telling Santa Obama what they wanted from the savior-based economy. Hats off to KFYI’s Bruce Jacobs and J.D. Hayworth. Reader Al Swanson sent these priceless pic[ture]s. Visit the Pesky Emotional Republican for great protest photos... Read More......