Boycott Arizona!

ICHC

By now, the only people who haven't heard of SB 1070, Arizona's Immigration Bill, are the acephalous. Because, you know, this feckin' thing has been teh Talking Point of every rightwing nutjob windbag since the first of them crawled back into the slime from which the rest of us fled.

While we would never incinerate that you, dear visitor, might be one of the impaired, we will, nevertheless, post a link to that foul piece of legislation, just so you can cast your seasoned and cynical eyeball over it.

One of the major talking points bandied about by the aforementioned RWNJs (Right-Wing Nut Jobs, for those of you who were not paying attention) is that the Arizona legislation is Teh Good and Totally Not Stinky Because It's Exactly Teh Same as Teh Nanny-Nanny-Boo-Boo Federal Legislation, So Suck It Lib H8ers.

Yeah, right. Here for your perusal is the Federal legislation, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8 of the U.S.C.

While the Arizona law refers extensively to Federal law, it goes way beyond what Federal law envisioned as appropriate in criminalizing the presence of undocumented migrant workers.

And it is a great danger to the civil liberties of American citizens and especially to American taxpayers.

For example, Title II, Chapter 7, Article 8 G states:

G. A PERSON WHO IS A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THIS STATE MAY BRING AN ACTION
37 IN SUPERIOR COURT TO CHALLENGE ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A
38 COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT ADOPTS
39 OR IMPLEMENTS A POLICY OR PRACTICE THAT LIMITS OR RESTRICTS THE ENFORCEMENT
40 OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL
41 LAW. IF THERE IS A JUDICIAL FINDING THAT AN ENTITY HAS VIOLATED THIS
42 SECTION, THE COURT SHALL ORDER THAT THE ENTITY PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NOT
43 LESS THAN ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND NOT MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR
44 EACH DAY THAT THE POLICY HAS REMAINED IN EFFECT AFTER THE FILING OF AN ACTION
45 PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION.

Pardon the formattage, it's from a PDF and this is just what Blogger does to it.

What does this section do? It allows any fucking nutbag who is a citizen *or resident* of Arizona to sue any police officer and any police department if they think such officer/department is not enforcing this law stringently enough.

I don't recall Federal law containing any such provision. Note that since police departments are funded by taxpayers, it is the taxpayers who must pay all costs associated with such lawsuits. Now why would the legislators of Arizona want to screw the citizens because they get a woody from h8n' on "teh illegalz"?

And how many cities are so wealthy that they can afford to cough up between $1K and $5K per day, if successfully sued?

It also permits the same mentally deficient RWNJs to sue any city or other state-level entity that adopts a "sanctuary" policy. Which, frankly, sucks. But what the abovementioned language means for the law enforcement personnel who have to put it into practice in the streets is that if you call the cops because, oh, I dunno, you're being raped or murdered? And someone else calls reporting a suspected "illegal alien"? You're shit outa luck, because the PD won't get sued if it doesn't immediately show up to save your injured ass. It will fershure get sued if some litigious asshole made the "illegal alien" call and found out that the police failed to respond or did not respond swiftly enough.

Arizona, you sure you want this shitty law?

And that's just the peripheral stuff.

Here's the real reason why this law seriously sucks hind end:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This, boyz'ngurlz, is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It is part of what is called The Bill of Rights.

For decades now, the courts have chipped away at various provisions of the Bill of Rights, but none so brutally and continually as the Fourth Amendment. See, the Fourth Amendment prevents the government from violating its citizens rights to a great degree. It says "... no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, ..." et cetera. This means the cops can't haul your ass to jail for looking, or dressing, or even acting funny without swearing under oath that they have a good reason to believe that you're a dangerous criminal. They can't bust down your door, they can't enter your home, they can't stop you when you walk down the street, they can't do shit to you without that little piece of paper signed by a judge and sworn to under oath. So if the cops lie to get that little piece of paper, they're guilty of perjury and you have the right to sue their asses off.

However, this law amends Section 13-3883 of the Arizona Revised Statutes to permit the police to arrest without a warrant, not just for dangerous felonies and suspected terrorism, which we would probably all agree is justified by the demands of public safety, but also for mere misdemeanors. Under this law, the cops can come into your house and demand to see everyone's papers if there's too many people in your house, or you're violating some noise ordinance, or there's a car on blocks in your yard.

The po-pos can impound your vehicle if you give someone a ride without inquiring for evidence of their immigration status. Isn't that nice? Give your elderly neighbour a ride to church? Bam! Go to jail, do not collect, etc. Give your friend's kids a ride home from school? Tough shit for you if they were born someplace else and are "undocumented." Wifey in the car had a little nip of alcohol? If she's under 21, off you go to teh jailhouse. What's even worse, the law specifies that your insurance company has no duty to pay any charges that you might rack up during this period. What, not even while you're pleading your innocence and wrongful arrest through the courts? Nice.

This law also shifts the burden of proof regarding entrapment charges to the defendant. If the cops entrap you into doing something illegal (we all know the honourable po-pos would never do that, right?), this law says it is up to you the citizen to prove that they entrapped you. As a rule, the burden of proof has been on the prosecution because the Government has vast resources and power, compared to the average citizen. It is less costly for the Government to prove that it has clean hands than for you, joe citizen, to prove that it does not.

Nowhere in the Constitution or in Title 8 of the USC does it say that an American citizen must carry identification on their person at all times. But SB 1070, the Aryanzona law (as it's popularly known among the bright sparks of the InnerTubes) says that if the cops stop your ass for, I dunno, crossing against a light? Walking your dog off leash? Parking in the wrong zone? — they can ask you for ID, and if you don't have any, it's off to the hoosegow with you, buddy.

Don't take my word for it. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ, has done this several times. In his opinion, it's totally cool to throw all the brown people in jail and release the US citizens later. Does this sound like the Fourth Amendment is being respected and obeyed at all in Aryanzona?

And when did AZ flatfoots become experts in determining the ethnicity of a brown person, let alone their possible immigration status? Because, you know, stuff like this happens all the time.

By now you're probably sick of hearing about this. I'm certainly sick of writing about it. In honour of the humongous fucking headache this issue has given me, I'd like to leave you with this very enjoyable video clip.



And for the last word, we turn to the Native inhabitants of this land:



We'll be blogging on this issue regularly. Stay tuned.

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Politics: A Sign of The Times

We hardly know what to say when greeted with news such as this.

Yes, that incivil &mdash strike that, that foul harpy, Melanie Morgan, who once polluted the airwaves of San Francisco with her poisonous assaults on reason and the reasonable &mdash is GONE!! We're sorely tempted to run up and down the house shrieking, "Ding, dong, the Witch is dead! The wicked witch, the wicked witch, ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!" But despite being in possession of a fine singing voice and a pair of lungs that might not shame a Pavarotti, we fear los gatos at mi casa will be (a) awakened, and (b) as is their wont, offended.

So we will confine our glee to the written word. Let us turn our attention to the wording of the article describing our liberation from this vile vermin. We would refer to her as a virago, but the sexist overtones of that word dismay us, especially when one considers that Morgan has more in common with pre-evolutionary slimebags like Rush Limbaugh, Michael "I'm not a Jew" Savage, and Sean "I'm Slime" Hannity than women:

KSFO owner Citadel Broadcasting decided not to renew [Morgan's] contract as part of the company’s announced across-the-board financial cost cutting.

“The ratings were terrific and I got to connect with a lot of passionate conservative casues, and I’m really grateful for that,” Morgan told me just now. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the show, I don’t know what’s going to happen to KSFO.”

We venture to guess that KSFO will do just fine without that ambulatory vituperation. Perhaps it will adopt a format that will allow real human beings to communicate instead of giving it up to foul demagogues.

For examples of Morgan's vile spew, you can listen to Morgan and her co-host(s):

• Trashing the victims of Hurricane Katrina, making an on-air death threat to Nancy Pelosi, and calling George Soros a Nazi collaborationist;
• Threatening physical violence against Jon Soltz of VoteVets and questioning the patriotism of soldiers who speak out against Bush's pet war in Iraq;
• Calling for the execution of newspaper editors with whom she did not agree (Bill Keller, NYT);
• Airing repeated racist smears against Black Americans and Jewish Americans, including Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and George Soros;
• Airing nasty remarks celebrating torture;
• Making threats against all Muslims, especially Indonesian Muslims(??).

Melanie Morgan's greatest claim to fame, as her sad legacy winds down, will probably be, in the end, her vicious reaction to Media Matters and to the lone blogger at Spocko's Brain, who covered much of her nastiness that the rest of the media simply ignored, to the detriment of the victims. Glee aside, we see in this evictment of the nasty wretch a hopeful sign. Perhaps the tide is finally turning and the American public has seen through the nasty, hateful, subhuman purveyors of slime in all its forms, and has become disgusted enough to want human discourse again.

Listening to Morgan blather on makes us so ill, we're going to have to take a break here. Enjoy. Or maybe, don't. But do keep an eye out for this amoebic wretch and the next gig she takes on. None of us can rest while people like her have the ear of deranged listeners and actively encourage violence and brutality against others. Let us know if she surfaces in your town.

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Health: Food Safety

Regular reader Sister GTG alerts us to the existence of The Center For Food Safety, a network that actually lets you tell the schmucks in charge to quit messing around with the nation's food supply.

No doubt, you've heard by now that a Minnesota meatpacker recently issued a recall for 188,000 lb of ground beef it distributed, after five people in Wisconsin and one in California fell ill when they consumed the beef, according to the Florida Herald Tribune.

• Good News: The meat was not sold in retail establishments.
• Bad News: The USDA issued the warning after people had already consumed the meat, which was distributed to restaurants and food service providers.
• What this teaches us: Don't eat ground beef in restaurants. Buy it from a reliable source, if you must. Better yet, grind it yourself, if you can. Or order the steak or fish, or better yet, the tofu or vegetables. Buy organic, if you can afford it.
• The contaminant: E. coli.

What, we don't have enough stuff in our food supply to worry about?

Meanwhile, the government is working on making our heads spin by:

• having the FDA approve the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals
• without labeling requirements
• despite Congress passing legislation requiring further studies and considering legislation reflecting the will of the American people that such foodstuffs be clearly labeled
• while simultaneously the USDA is recommending that food from cloned animals be kept off the market.

Sounds like another case of "the right hand knoweth not whose butt the left hand is patting."

Meanwhile, AFP assures us that American consumers are apparently indifferent to the possible problems of GM food, despite the 150,000 comments on cloned food, most of which are against it.

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) points out a very important issue:

“Just because something was created in a lab, doesn’t mean we should have to eat it. If we discover a problem with cloned food after it is in our food supply and it’s not labeled, the FDA won’t be able to recall it like they did Vioxx [...].

No shit, peoples.

Mind you, even as these jerks try to bullshit us about how they're keeping cloned animals out of the food supply, their fellow jerks have this to say:

Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies conceded yesterday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report.

At least one Kansas cattle producer also disclosed yesterday that he has openly sold semen from prize-winning clones to many U.S. meat producers in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone.

"This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain," said Donald Coover, a Galesburg cattleman and veterinarian who has a specialty cattle semen business. "Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're not being honest."

Nice to know your government is lying to you. Time to quit eating animal products altogether, or buy only organically produced and certified. Sheesh.

The Center for Food Safety tells us:

A 2004 New England Journal of Medicine report stated that "[G]iven the available evidence, it may be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to generate healthy cloned animals." In 2003, FDA's draft assessment on cloned food safety relied on just a single study on cloned milk, and no studies on meat from cloned animals. A 2004 National Academy of Sciences report said that the safety of cloned food could not be asserted because "the paucity of evidence in the literature on this topic makes it impossible to provide scientific evidence to support this position."

A grateful twitch of the PoliticalCat ears to Sister GTG for getting us all fired up on this issue. Go sign the petition today, folks, and pass it on.

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The People Must Lead

Or the leaders will not follow. Tomorrow is your chance to make your voice heard. Our leaders have stopped listening to us. They don't hear what we're saying about ending the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. They don't hear us when we say we're worried about our economy. They don't hear us when we say we need a better health care system now. They don't hear us when we say we want our food supply protected and safe for us and our families.

If they won't listen to us, we have to find a way to make them hear. So, tomorrow, call in sick to work, keep your kids at home, don't spend a dime in the stores or restaurants. Cook a meal, hang out with the cats and dogs, don't drive anywhere, don't spend any money. Because the only thing they hear is the sound of money talking.


We must take the country back. Shut it down!

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Politics - An Excellent Idea

Graphic courtesy of Shut It Down

Over at Shut It Down, some excellent bloggenvolk have come up with an irresistible idea - let's everybody not go to work on October the 17th. Just shut the whole goddamn machine down.

You can take a sick day, or a vacation day, or a personal day, or whatever. Just stay home with the kids, the family, the beasties, and do what you want as long as it does not involve keeping the corporate machine going.

Because, as those fine folk point out, the government is just not listening to the people. And the only way to get them to listen is to shut the machine down.

I'm distributing this to everyone I know. Let's hope it takes off. Please pass it on.

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Politics - Not Very Entertaining This Time

Talentless hack and hasbeen aging rocker Ted Nugent managed to get himself a little publicity this week.

In obscenity-laced tirade, Ted Nugent jokes of killing Obama, calls Clinton a 'bitch'

Suggesting that California's senators and congressional representatives could "suck on this," he waved weapons around in lieu of his microdick. Regrettably, the right to free speech is enshrined in the constitution and must be respected no matter what one thinks of the speaker. And, to clarify, he didn't actually incite the murder of Barack Obama. Methinks Te(r)d has a lawyer who knows the difference between actionable and protected speech.

Details at Raw Story.

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Homophobia and chocolate

As y'all probly already know, the Mars chocolate company, maker of Snickers and Mars Bars and other fine fatty treats, recently aired a very homophobic ad for the SuperBowl.

Well, the ever-snarky Maru the Crankpot managed to find this snarky response from Three Musketeers. Ooh-weee!

If the link to Maru doesn't work, you can always view the ad at Devil Ducky. Warning: seriously NOT work-safe. I laughed my ass off anyway.

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