Dear Sarah Palin:

You have repeatedly issued declarations online asking that “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan” and that New York issue “a decision not to allow the building of a mosque.”

Let’s make a quick check of the facts:

1. It’s not “a mosque.” The Cordoba Center will be an inter-religious community center dedicated to inter-faith outreach, open to people of all faiths in New York City. It will have an auditorium, a swimming pool, exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, stores, restaurants and a mosque inside.
2. It’s not at Ground Zero. It’s three blocks away. A lot of things are within three blocks of other things in Manhattan.
3. There are 14 Christian and Jewish churches and synagogues that are also close to Ground Zero.

Anyone who exerts herself or himself can verify these facts.

You write this week with frustration of your call to ban the Cordoba Center that “This is nothing close to ‘religious intolerance,’ it’s just common decency.” But here’s a helpful hint: if you don’t want to attract accusations that you’re engaged in “religious intolerance,” you might not want to write an essay based on arguments about “sacred ground,” and you might not want to give your essay the title: “An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground.” It’s crazy, but people might get the idea that you were using religion to be intolerant.

Also helpful on that point would be not asking New York to use its power to ban a building because it is associated with a religion you don’t like. Some Americans are a little touchy about that kind of thing; apparently it has something to do with some sort of “Amendment” thingamabob.

Yesterday in Congress, Louie Gohmert, a representative from Texas, declared the following:

“The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.”

Is this true? Prove it. Here’s the Louie Gohmert Bible Challenge for today:

Go to the Christian Bible and show me in which part of the books of Exodus, Matthew, Isaiah or the writings of Paul the following aspects of the Bill of Rights are discussed:

- Free speech
- Freedom of religion
- Freedom of the press
- Protection from unreasonable search and seizure
- Protection from double jeopardy
- Freedom from quartering soldiers
- The right to a jury trial
- A ban on excessive bail

(Tip of the pen to qs)

The Defense Department calls its new unit FICOR — the Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records. But the military group describes the data it will collect through intelligence and data mining operations:

“Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data… [from] Federal, state, local, and tribal entities, foreign intelligence agencies, educational and research institutions, foreign governments and open source literature.”

Data collected from “federal, state, local, and tribal entities” including a person’s “Social Security Number (SSN)”? How foreign does that sound to you?

Military spying on Americans? No, that’s not Change I Can Believe In. It’s more of the same. Read up on the Bush-era TALON program, a military program that spied on law-abiding American citizens without their knowledge and without a warrant, solely on the basis of their political activity (For the younger among you who may not have heard of this thing called a “warrant,” see the increasingly quaint document known as the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 4. See also “freedom of assembly and petition,” Amendment 1). Read especially the part of the 2007 Defense Department brief in which the military explicitly indicates it will keep the data and restart the program in the future:

DoD to Implement Interim Threat Reporting Procedures

DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) will close the TALON Reporting System effective Sept. 17, 2007, and maintain a record copy of the collected data in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements.

To ensure there is a mechanism in place to document and assess potential threats to DoD resources, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs will propose a system to streamline such threat reporting and better meet the Defense department’s needs.

In the interim, until this new reporting program is adopted, DoD components will send information concerning force protection threats to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Guardian reporting system.

It was hiding there in plain sight: no, the military never planned on keeping TALON shut down at all. But the military has a new Commander in Chief. Barack Obama could have stopped this domestic military surveillance. But he went right along with it. That’s not Change. It’s more of the same.

Much was made of Senate candidate Rand Paul’s support for business owners who want to engage in racial discrimination, setting up separate facilities to isolate African-Americans. Much less has been made, however, of some of Mr. Paul’s other extreme positions, such as absolving BP of responsibility for the Gulf oil spill and declaring that mountaintop coal mining ought to be appreciated for replacing the Appalachian mountains with great big fields of waste that will be better than the mountains because they’re flat.

Another area of Rand Paul extremism that has received little focus is his antipathy to immigration. Even though border crossings are dramatically down in recent years, Paul often speaks to whip up the false perception that there’s some sort of crisis in illegal immigration.

Recently, Rand Paul has expanded his anti-immigration fervor to include a particularly small target. Rand Paul is now going after the babies.

The Constitution declares that anyone born in the United States is an American citizen, but Rand Paul seems to believe that these particular American babies are a great danger. “That baby becomes a citizen, and I think that that should stop also,” Paul warns.

Rand Paul wants to change the Constitution to limit the legal rights currently given to American babies, stripping them of their citizenship. Why? What do these babies do that’s so terrible, other than being American? Is it really so awful for babies to be American?

I just don’t understand Rand Paul’s fear of babies, but I’ll do him the favor anyway of passing along his campaign’s message: Vote Rand Paul 2010 – Because The Baby Menace Must Stop!

Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams has taken to posing for speeches in front of a big enlarged document that starts with the words “We The People.” He might want to try turning around and reading the rest of the words on that document before he opens his mouth again.

Reaction has been strong to Williams’ words on the planned erection of a cultural, entertainment, shopping and recreation center in New York City that would contain a mosque:

“The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god”

I’d like to link directly to that blog post. I’d like to, gosh-darn it, but now that Mark Williams is attracting attention for his comments, he’s only letting people read his Islamic “monkey god” post if they buy a copy of his latest book first. That’s entrepreneurial. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, a cache of Williams’ post is still publicly available. Here’s the complete text of his post:

Savage Islam wants Mosque at Ground Zero – monument to hijackers, 9/11 a “positive” thing
Friday, May 14th, 2010

Click here to get your copy of Mark Williams’ book “Taking Back America One Tea Party at a Time” in which you will find an entire chapter on the savage 7th century death cult called “Islam” and the threat that it presents to civilized Man

UPDATE: The Ground Zero monument to the 911 Muslim Hijackers is now scheduled to open on 9.11.11

UPDATE: Muslim Miss USA

The animals of allah (terrorists) for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslim hijackers.

The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god (repeat: “the terrorists’ monkey-god.” if you feel that fits a description of Allah then that is your own deep-seated emotional baggage not mine, talk to the terrorists who use Allah as their excuse and the Muslims who apologize for and rationalize them) and a “cultural center” to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult. It is a project of American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, essentially the same group of apologists (but under 2 different names) for terrorists and the animals who use it as a terrorist ideology. They cloak their evil with new age gibberish that suggests Islam is just misunderstood.

“The time for a center like this has come because Islam is an American religion,” Daisy Khan, executive director of the Muslim society, told CNN. “We need to take the 9/11 tragedy and turn it into something very positive.”

The longest, most heavily researched and footnoted chapter in my book is about the fruit baskets and nut wads that gravitate to Islam and why it attracts such mental cases (Daisy for example apparently suffered a severe head injury early in life).

On the other hand, Abdul Rauf is the guy behind both of the organizations and in the wake of 9/11 defended Islam and attacked the entire Western world for “causing” the 9/11 attacks.

“The US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end. New York-based Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf speaking from his New York mosque, Imam Feisal said the West had to understand the terrorists’ point of view.

Imam Feisal said it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.”

An evil shadow falls over lower Manhattan

Follow the fight to stop the shrine to savages at this link

Satan’s Spawn

UPDATE: May 17

Miss Muslim USA, stripper Rima Fakih

Meet the new Miss Muslim USA Rima Fakih. In the photo above she is a participant in a stripping contest held by a Detroit T & A radio show. Last night she won the nod for Miss. USA when Miss. Oklahoma dared answer a question from a judge about illegal aliens with a response that suggested immigration law be enforced while safeguards against racial profiling are also enforced. At that point pageant political correctness went into full gear and Fakih was declared the winner.

Note to the freaks and mental cases who dominate Islam: See what you’re missing when you peal off the burka there fellas? Maybe you wouldn’t have to spend so much effort Michael Jacksoning the little boys in your terror camps if you took a look at the chicks for a change.

In the meantime I have a wonderful idea along the same lines as that mosque at Ground Zero thing… a nice, shiny new U.S. Military Base on the smoldering ruins of Mecca Hooters in time for Haj (thanks to the MarkTalk reader for that much better suggestion). Works for me! Comments are enabled below.

Complaints that Williams is being “mean,” “offensive,” or “racist” have their place. Also worthy of note but largely ignored by people reading Williams’ blog is his “wonderful idea” that the entire city of Mecca be destroyed. Paragraphs after complaining that anyone would think Christians kill civilians, Williams calls for the destruction of an entire city. Massive civilian deaths are hunky-dory with the Tea Party Express chief, so long as they’re massive civilian deaths of people who worship the “monkey god” of “savage Islam.” And their babies, too, because one day those babies will worship a “monkey god.”

You may have missed it amid all the calls for the destruction of cities, the identification of a Muslim woman as a pole dancer and “Hooters in time for Haj,” but Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams is specifically calling his followers to action. On June 6, activists are holding a protest to demand that New York City government place a ban on the Cordoba Center and “Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero.” Williams directs his followers to that action:

Follow the fight to stop the shrine to savages at this link

I encourage you to read about the plans for the Cordoba Center and decide for yourself whether Williams’ descriptions of it are accurate. I also encourage you to consider what protests for the banning of the Cordoba Center amount to. For a man who stands in front of a large-scale mockup of the U.S. Constitution when he speaks, Mark Williams has a stunning disregard for it. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees people in the United States freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. But if Mark Williams gets his way and the Cordoba Center is banned, the right of the people behind the Cordoba Center to peaceably assemble and to engage in free speech will be curtailed.

The First Amendment to the Constitution also forbids the government from establishing religion. One way religion can be established by government is when government favors certain religions over others, granting some religions rights and privileges that it denies to others. Take a look at this map of religious establishments in the neighborhood of the proposed Cordoba Center.

Mark Williams and his movement aren’t demanding that the Living Word Community Church be shut down. Mark Williams and his movement aren’t demanding that Lion of Judah Sephardic Hebrew be shuttered. Mark Williams and his movement aren’t demanding that Glad Tidings Tabernacle or Saint Peter’s Catholic Church or Saint Paul’s Chapel or the National Association for the Advancement of Orthodox Judaism or the Church of Holistic Healing or the John Street United Methodist Church or Our Lady of Victory Church or Agudah Women of American Faith Evangelical Ministries or Museum of the Trinity Church or Trinity Church itself or Ephesus NonDenominational Church or St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church be banned. Mark Williams and his movement are only demanding that government step in to ban the Cordoba Center. Why? Because the Cordoba Center subscribes to the wrong religion.

While Mark Williams poses in front of a giant poster with the words We The People on it, he and his movement spit in the eye of the First Amendment by trying to shut down free speech, free assembly and free exercise of religion. They want to use the power of government to reward the religions they like and punish the religions they don’t like. This sure isn’t my idea of America. It’s not the Constitution’s idea of America either.

In his libertarian appeal to Tea Party, Senate candidate Rand Paul likes to talk about his support for the Constitution. He writes, “The Federal Government must return to its constitutionally enumerated powers and restore our inalienable rights. America can prosper, preserve personal liberty, and repel national security threats without intruding into the personal lives of its citizens.”

Yet, as much as Paul likes to pose as pro-Constitution, he also is savvy enough to know that he’s got to please the right wing voters of Kentucky in order to win the election. So, when it comes to the details of supporting personal liberty, Paul is willing to throw the Constitution under the bus when it’s convenient.

On the issue of immigration, Constitutional liberty isn’t convenient to the Rand Paul campaign. The facts are mighty pesky too.

The fact is that the rate of people illegally crossing the border into the United States from Mexico appears to have dramatically decreased in recent years, to about a third of what it was ten years ago. Rand Paul’s campaign ignores that fact, and supports the standard Republican concept that illegal crossings are increasing across a loose border. “Millions crossing our border without our knowledge constitutes a clear threat to our nation’s security,” Paul writes.

What does Paul intend to do about that clear, diminishing threat? He wants to force people to speak English, making it the official language of the United States. When Paul said that he didn’t want government to exceed its constitutional authority, he apparently meant to exempt the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. If we can’t choose which language to speak, the government is telling us that only a limited range of words and syntax are allowed. That’s not free speech.

Rand Paul doesn’t talk about Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, which directs law enforcement officials to use the color of citizens’ skin as a criterion for suspicion of criminal activity. He does, however, suggest a position of support, saying that “I support local solutions to illegal immigration.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the government in order to find out whether Patriot Act provisions have been used to violate Americans’ constitutional freedom. But it didn’t have to be this way. Had Barack Obama followed federal law upon his inauguration and submitted nominations to fill the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the board would have made the determination without the need for a court case to press the point. The Board has the statutory task of compiling data regarding the government’s use of its powers against Americans and regularly reporting to Congress and the public on the extent of constitutional compliance by the President and his executive branch.

But Barack Obama has not followed federal law. He has violated it by going 478 days in office without nominating a single person to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The work of that board is therefore going undone; the board does not exist.

No, the president just hasn’t had the time to fill this board. He has had the time to declare a National Day of Prayer, though, asking Americans “give thanks for the many blessings God has bestowed upon our Nation” and “asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.”

Should we pray that God will staff the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board? Will that do the trick?

The Tea Party Express organization says it is dedicated to preserving the United States Constitution. But not one of the congressional “Tea Party Heroes” it identified last month has bothered to support a bill promoting awareness of the Constitution among America’s schoolchildren.

Mediaite has tipped me off to the latest in Palinisms. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly, 2012 presidential contender Sarah Palin makes an attempt to set a new world record in sentence length:

Bill O’Reilly: So why do you think America is a Christian nation?

Sarah Palin: I have said all along that America is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and, you know, nobody has to believe me, though, uh, you can just go to our founding fathers’ early documents and see how they crafted a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that, um, allows that Judeo-Christian belief to be the foundation of our laws, and our Constitution of course essentially acknowledging that our unalienable rights don’t come from man, they come from God, so that document is set up to protect us from a government that would ever infringe upon our right to have, um, freedom of religion, and to be able to express our faith freely, so it’s ironic that here on the National Day of Prayer, you know, there’s so much controversy about whether or not we’re a nation that’s built on Judeo-Christian beliefs and whether or not we can even talk about God in the public square, and that’s outrageous nonsense what we’re hearing.

At first I had no idea what Sarah Palin was talking about when she referred to “our Constitution of course essentially acknowledging that our unalienable rights don’t come from man, they come from God”. The U.S. Constitution does not contain the notion of “unalienable rights,” or of their origin from a god. In the Constitution — which is the basis of law in the United States — some rights are enumerated and others are said to rest with the people. The word “God” does not appear in the Constitution, and there are only two references to religion in the Constitution. The first reference is the declaration of Article VI that religion shall not be used as the basis for a public trust or for a person’s ascension to public office. The second reference is the declaration of the First Amendment that the government shall not be used to establish religion.

So how can Sarah Palin possibly characterize the Constitution as “acknowledging that our unalienable rights don’t come from man, they come from God”? I didn’t see the answer at first, but then it occurred to me that The Lord often speaks in mysterious ways. Now look at Article VI again:

“no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

What’s the real message here? I think Sarah Palin has used the power of anagrams to find the answer, a tweet from above if you will:

“Devil? ’tis bad. O yea, the USA sure shalt require God, atrocious enfant terrible Palin. Constituent ruse: quit l’office!”

Sarah Palin is if nothing else a faithful follower.

Last month, former Senator and former presidential candidate Mike Gravel posted an article on our diaries advocating for a classic idea of his, the National Initiative for Democracy. If passed, it would lead to the decimation of constitutional rights.

Gravel’s National Initiative idea consists of two pieces of legislation: a constitutional amendment called The Democracy Amendment and a congressional bill called The Democracy Act. The Democracy Act is a bill to implement a series of administrative procedures to implement The Democracy Amendment, and in the long term it doesn’t matter what The Democracy Act involves because as we’ll see The Democracy Amendment is so overpowering.

Here’s the full text of The Democracy Amendment:

1. The sovereign authority and the legislative power of citizens of the United States to enact, repeal and amend public policy, laws, charters, and constitutions by local, state and national initiatives shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state.

2. The United States Electoral Trust (hereinafter “Electoral Trust”) is hereby created to administer the procedures established by this Article and the Democracy Act. A Board of Trustees and a Director shall govern the Electoral Trust. The Board of Trustees shall be composed of one member elected by the citizens of each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Territories of the United States. An election shall be conducted every two years to elect members of the Board of Trustees. Immediately after the first election, the elected members shall be divided as equally as possible into two classes. The seats of the members of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year; the seats of the members of the second class shall be vacated at the expiration of the fourth year. All members of the Board of Trustees shall serve for four years except the members of the first class. In order to facilitate the initial election of members to the Board of Trustees, an Interim Board is appointed by the Democracy Act. A Director responsible for day-to-day operations shall be appointed by the majority of the members of the Board of Trustees, except that the first Director shall be appointed by the Board of Directors of The Democracy Foundation.

3. An initiative created under the authority of this Article that modifies a constitution or charter assumes the force of law when it is approved by more than half the registered voters of the relevant jurisdiction in each of two successive elections conducted by the Electoral Trust. If such initiative is approved in the first election, the second election shall occur no earlier than six months and no later than a year after the first election. An initiative created under the authority of this Article that enacts, modifies or repeals any statute assumes the force of law when approved by more than half the registered voters of the relevant jurisdiction participating in an election conducted by the Electoral Trust.

4. Only natural persons who are citizens of the United States may sponsor an initiative under the authority of this Article.

5. Only natural persons who are citizens of the United States may contribute funds, services or property in support of or in opposition to a legislative initiative created under the authority of this Article. Contributions from corporations including, but not limited to, such incorporated entities as industry groups, labor unions, political parties, political action committees, organized religions and associations, are specifically prohibited. Such entities are also prohibited from coercing or inducing employees, clients, customers, members, or any other associated persons to support or oppose an initiative created under the authority of this Article.

6. The people shall have the power to enforce the provisions of this Article by appropriate legislation. No court in the United States may enjoin an initiative election except on grounds of fraud.

Pay attention to points #1 and #3. Point #1 grants citizens of the United States of America a new power: to amend “public policy, laws, charters, and constitutions” at the local, state and federal level by initiative. Point #3 explains that initiatives would amend the U.S. Constitution if a majority voted for an amendment twice in a year.

What have majorities of Americans thought to be a good idea? Detention and deportation without trial, waterboarding, extension of presidential terms, canceling of free speech, government establishment of religion, government prohibition of other religions, ending the freedom of the press, ending freedom of association, establishment of search and surveillance without probable cause. Of course, let’s not forget slavery and the disenfranchisement of women. All of these could be fixed in the Constitution so long as a stupid majority of American citizens voted to do so twice in a year’s time. That’s a much lower standard for changing the fundamental basis of government than our current requirement for supermajorities in both Congress and the states.

Once Mike Gravel’s Democracy Amendment is placed in the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent the revocation of the rights of minorities by the whims of a bare majority. Nothing but the hope that a majority of Americans would be smart enough or compassionate enough to refrain from such behavior. Do you have that kind of hope regarding an American majority? Is such a hope strong enough to sustain you?

Of course Mike Gravel and Joshua Pritkin, his ally for The Democracy Amendment, would beg to differ. They say American minorities have nothing to fear from the rule of the majority under their Democracy Amendment. In their “FAQ” section they have the following to say:

There are a number of arguments which suggest that minorities need not fear a national initiative:

* Minorities are protected by the right of free speech. The voice of minorities would be greatly amplified by NI4D. Democracy Act, Section 4-F-4 would empower the Electoral Trust to disseminate a balanced analysis of initiatives via all modes of communication. Listen to an introduction to deliberative polling (12m 29s) from the 2002 Democracy Symposium.

* Direct initiative has been criticized as lacking informed deliberation, consensus-building, and compromise.
Typically, initiative language is finalized prior to the beginning of signature gathering. To address this weakness, NI4D incorporates a deliberative committee (see Democracy Act, 3-I) charged with receiving testimony from all stakeholders and rewriting the initiative incorporating feedback and compromise.

* Miller (2002) analyzed all initiatives from 1960 to 1999 in California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. Miller found that the courts invalidated, in whole or in part, 28% of the initiatives approved by voters. However, initiatives affecting minorities were invalidated at a much higher rate (46%). The courts are vigilant in examining whether initiative laws comply with the 14th amendment equal protection provision.

* Every initiative has its own unique majority and minority. For example: A citizen may be in the majority on an education initiative but in the minority on an energy initiative. Most initiatives will not start with an overwhelming majority. Advocates of both sides of an initiative will attempt to appeal to the undecided and minorities. This recurring dynamic develops concern for minorities.

* The protection extended to minorities by a ruling elite minority is no more certain than the protection extended by the majority. For example, Oklahoma Initiative 10 disenfranchised black citizens in 1910, but around the same time, numerous Jim Crow laws were being enacted by legislatures. California Proposition 1 restricted the property rights of Japanese in 1920, but then during World War II, elected officials placed some 60,000 American citizens of Japanese origin in internment camps. No form of government is perfect.

Considering how many years Pritkin and Gravel have been working on their Democracy Amendment, it’s surprising how little they’ve thought this matter through. The above defense of the rights of majorities can be boiled down to these four points:

1. Sure, your rights as a minority may be threatened on some issues, but maybe you’ll be in the majority on other issues.

2. Hey, minority rights are being threatened as it is.

3. Our piece of congressional legislation called the Democracy Act will ensure that everything turns out OK.

4. Courts will review the results of initiatives to make sure they’re constitutional.

Point #1 isn’t a denial; it’s a perky assertion that maybe you’ll be lucky. Point #2 isn’t a denial either, and it glosses over the fact that these outrages were eventually remedied by application of constitutional protections under our current system.

Points #3 shows a serious misunderstanding of the difference between legislation and the constitution. Once The Democracy Amendment is passed, it won’t matter what free speech protections are contained in The Democracy Act. The Constitution in Article VI is established as the supreme law of the land, and if The Democracy Amendment becomes part of the Constitution, its provision that

the legislative power of citizens of the United States to enact, repeal and amend public policy, laws, charters, and constitutions by local, state and national initiatives shall not be denied or abridged by the United States

will overrule any attempt through subsidiary legislation to impose civil liberties limitations on that power. Indeed, such limitations will become unconstitutional. The Democracy Amendment will be coequal with all of the rights protections of the Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment and so on. What’s more, The Democracy Amendment opens the gate for the cancellation of any constitutional right by simple majority vote. Bye-bye, freedom of the press. Bye-bye, free speech. Bye-bye, gun rights. Hello to new outrages, all on the whim of a majority whipped up in the short term of one year.

Gravel and Pritkin’s assertion that “courts are vigilant” in reviewing the constitutionality of new provisions of law glosses over the impact of a constitutional amendment. Read Article VI of the Constitution again. It clearly states not only that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but that all judges shall be bound in their rulings to the provisions of the Constitution. Once the Democracy Act becomes part of the Constitution, new constitutional amendments could be passed by majority vote. When they’re passed, they also become part of the Constitution, and cannot be struck down by a judge’s ruling.

The Constitution is made difficult to amend for a reason: it is so strongly constraining upon our laws that its provisions should reflect the consensus of a huge majority, measured in more than one way and amassed over the number of years it takes for an amendment to go through the supermajority process of being voted on in the Congress and the states. Mike Gravel and Joshua Pritkin propose doing away with the superconsensus behind the protection of constitutional rights. I object to their efforts with all my heart.

The Arizona protests that began in earnest during the last week of April show no sign of abating in the first week of May. April saw the passage of SB 1070, a new state law that violates the 4th Amendment by requiring police to search and seize citizens’ and legal residents’ papers without probable cause, and violates the 14th Amendment by explicitly permitting people to be targeted for search on the basis of skin color, so long as another stereotypic quality (such as language or perceived national origin) also characterizes an individual (see SB 1070 bill page 1, lines 20-34). If U.S. citizens and legal residents targeted for the search and seizure of their papers don’t happen to have proof of their American citizenship or legal residency on them, they are subject to detention until they can establish such proof.

People in Arizona — a great many of whom have brown skin, speak Spanish, and are often asked whether they were born in Mexico — are understandably upset at this prospect. And so protests against SB 1070 continue tomorrow, May 5. People will be meeting at 12 Noon at the University of Arizona in Tucson outside the Old Main building to air their grievances against this new law. At 6 pm, the people of Phoenix will gather at the Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church at 6 pm for a rally, followed by a march against SB 1070 at 8 pm.

Last week, in case you hadn’t heard, Arizona passed a law subjecting law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents to warrantless search and detention without probable cause.

You read that right. Don’t let someone limit discussion of this new law, SB 1070, to illegal immigration and their illegal illegality, because the truth is that the law does not only apply to people who break the law. Indeed, the central problem is that this Arizona law violates the greater constitutional law in order to accost people, search them and detain them without probable cause to believe they have done a single thing wrong. Under the United States Constitution, the supreme law of the land, a person cannot be searched and have their papers and effects seized except on the basis of “probable cause,” actual evidence indicating that this person has broken the law. It’s spelled out in the 4th Amendment.

Instead of following the requirements of the constitution and demanding probable cause before action, Arizona law SB 1070 allows — no, requires — a police officer to demand that any old person walking down the street produce documentation to prove they aren’t an illegal immigrant, if the police officer so much as suspects the person might be an illegal immigrant. Then, if that person doesn’t have proof of their citizenship or legal immigration status on them, the police officer is to send the person off to detention until they can prove their legal status. SB 1070 actually allows anyone in Arizona (think Minutemen) to bring a lawsuit and inflict significant financial penalties on any city or town in Arizona for not pursuing such action to the fullest extent possible.

Your papers, please! Papiere, bitte! Search and detention on mere suspicion, not on the basis of probable cause. A free state turned into a police state. Is this the America you believe in?

Millions of Americans are voicing their firm “NO!” Yesterday, I noted that more than 70 cities across the nation had organized protests for this Saturday, May 1 in favor of saner, more humane, more constitutional immigration, search and detention policy. Well, in just 24 hours that number has grown even larger. As of this hour, the American cities and towns hosting protest marches number nearly 100. In addition to the cities I listed yesterday, these communities have added their own protests over the last day:

Flagstaff, AZ
Fresno, CA
Stockton, CA
Watsonville, CA
Bloomington, IL
Denison, IA
Wichita, KS
New Orleans, LA
Lincoln, NE
Las Vegas, NV
Southampton, NY
Asheville, NC
Greensboro, NC
Kernersville, NC
Alexandria, VA

Click here for the full list.

You don’t have to be or even know an illegal immigrant to have this issue affect you. All you need to do is look at yourself in the mirror before you step out on the street and ask yourself, “Do I look like an illegal immigrant today?”

Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at “Tea Party” organizations across America and finding (link | link | link | link) two components of the movement sitting so oddly side by side. On the one hand, Tea Party leaders cry loudly about their commitment to the Constitution. On the other hand, Tea Party organizations endorse and contribute overwhelmingly to Republicans — Republicans who have acted nationally in the U.S. Congress to gut the 1st Amendment, the 4th Amendment, the 6th Amendment, the 8th Amendment and the 14th Amendment.

Republicans have been pursuing a particular anti-constitutional agenda for some time: turning America into a society in which people are subject to identification and tracking at the whim of the government. In 2005, without any hearings, 96.5% of Republicans in the House and all Republicans in the Senate passed the REAL ID Act into law, allowing the Secretary of Homeland Security to nullify any law in border regions of the United States and requiring Americans to hold national identification cards. In 2008, we learned that anyone forgetting their ID and entering an airport was having their name added to the Terrorist Watch List as some kind of twisted door prize, thanks to the policies of the Bush administration.

And then in 2006, Republican leaders of the Ohio state legislature introduced a bill that would have created an entire state agency dedicated to coordinating police as they arrested people solely for being illegal immigrants. Considering our 4th Amendment constitutional protections against search and seizure of personal papers without probable cause, I wondered at the time how police could possibly go about arresting people just for being illegal immigrants:

How exactly does an officer arrest a person solely for being an illegal immigrant, given that people don’t tend to walk around with signs that say “Illegal Immigrant Here!” or t-shirts that say “I Walked 500 miles, Illegally Crossed the Border, and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt”??? Also peskily missing are the illegal immigrant tattoos on the forehead. What will qualify for suspicion meriting further investigation? Brown skin? Overheard snippets of conversation in Spanish?

I was joking about the special Illegal Immigrant T-Shirts, but Representative Brian Bilbray wasn’t joking when he appeared on cable news just the other day and suggested that yes, you could accurately pick out illegal immigrants and not just because of the brown color of their skin. No, no, not just skin color! It’s also, explained Rep. Bilbray, because they wear Illegal Immigrant Clothes:

Chris Matthews: Like what, like what? Give me a non-ethnic aspect that would tell you to pick up somebody.

Brian Bilbray: They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there’s different type of attire, there’s different type of, right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes.

My point in bringing all this up is that these aren’t isolated policies. We’ve got ourselves a trend when it comes to this Republican Party obsession with using police to track people and demanding people’s identity papers not on the basis of probable cause (too constitutionish) but rather on the basis of some characteristic that’s a synonym for SKIN TONE and rhymes with GLACIAL SNOWPILING. It’s a long-term Republican policy trend.

So when we saw that the Arizona State Legislature passed a bill last week requiring police officers to stop people on the basis of rhymes-with-GLACIAL-SNOWPILING, demand their papers, and detain them if they don’t have papers, should we have been surprised? No. Should we be surprised when we find out that every single Arizona State Senator and Representative who voted for this bill (SB 1070) is a Republican? No. Should we be surprised to find out that only 1 out of the approximately 100 Republican Arizona state legislators voted against the measure? No. Should we be surprised when we find out that the current Republican Governor of Arizona, channeling Evan Mecham and J. Fife Symington III, signed the bill into law? No.

No, we shouldn’t be surprised, because time and again we have seen that this is what Republican politicians do. We shouldn’t be surprised by these events, but we should note them and remember them. We should also remember what these practices were called back during the Cold War when our teachers told us about the evil countries that practiced them. “Papiere, Bitte!” cried the East German Stasi agents in the spy films we were shown as they chased Good Germans citizens racing for a train to Free Berlin. “Police State” was a phrase my teacher used in civics class fairly often to describe the evil Communist way of life, the way of life that our own great country rejected in the noble cause of Freedom.

Any self-respecting and serious Tea Party member who cries “Constitution” or who holds a sign with a picture of Obama with a “Hitler” mustache or who sports a bumper sticker declaring Nancy Pelosi to be a “Communist” or who explains to the nice journalist with the mike that we have to protect our “Freedoms” against the power of “Big Government” should be speaking out right about now against SB 1070 and should have nothing to do with the Republican politicians who voted for it.

Watch Tea Party members over the next few days to see if they live up to that “self-respecting and serious” part. And while you’re at it, watch yourself too. The next time you consider voting for a Republican, remember that THIS is their agenda for America.

When you buy a sweatshop-free t-shirt from Irregular Times, you do more than spread a liberal message across your chest. You help support liberal causes, too. For every shirt we sell, we donate a dollar to a worthy liberal cause.

In November of 2009, Antonio Musumeci was arrested and repeatedly harassed by Department of Homeland Security official Clifford Barnes and other police officers. Musumeci’s offense: taking photographs of a public political protests held by members of the Libertarian Party on public property in New York City. Oddly enough, Musumeci was present as part of the proceedings to ensure that protesters’ civil liberties were respected and to report on the proceedings of protests to others. Musumeci was arrested in violation not only of the relevant provisions of federal law (40 U.S.C. § 1315), but also in violation of Americans’ rights to a free press and to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances, rights guaranteed in the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

To defend the rights of Antonio Musumeci and others to participate in and photograph acts of political dissent, the NY Civil Liberties Union (a state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union) is filing a lawsuit, the purpose of which is not only to gain personal relief for Musumeci, but to force the Department of Homeland Security to respect Americans’ First Amendment rights in protest and photography.

Antonio Musumeci and the ACLU don’t agree on all substantive points of policy, but regardless of this the ACLU is standing up for the rights of Musumeci, for the rights of us all. The ACLU defends the constitutional rights of Americans left, right, center and off-center every day. That’s why our latest liberal donation from t-shirt sales goes to the ACLU. If you feel strongly about civil liberties and you have a few bucks to spare, consider making a donation to the ACLU yourself.