Where is James Madison when you need him? Yesterday, the announcement came that the attorney general of the United States, at the direction of the president of the United States, is filing suit against the state of Arizona because . . . because why? The real reason is because they do not want Arizona to enforce the law with respect to illegal immigrants. The stated reason is that they do not want a state to be seen to usurp federal authority.
First, what about that law? Have you read it? It’s not long. Unlike the legislation coming out of Washington, it doesn’t bludgeon citizens with thousands — yes, thousands — of pages of gobbledygook. It’s an 18-page document whose main burden is to say that the federal immigration law already in place should be enforced. You wouldn’t know that from the liberal hysteria that the bill has sparked. But that is the case: you can find the text of Senate Bill 1070 here: read it and see. As Byron York noted in the Washington Examiner,
Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.
