It appears that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t read the executive order President Obama issued on his first day in the White House. Obama pledged that his administration would provide the American people with “an unprecedented level of openness in government.” Either he didn’t read it or Holder thinks the executive order doesn’t cover Operation Fast and Furious, the misguided Justice Department program that allowed thousands of weapons to be sold in the United States to known gunrunners for Mexican drug cartels. The idea was the government would then track the “walked” guns, thus enabling prosecution of cartel figures by linking them to particular weapons found at crime scenes. But officials lost track of an estimated 1,400 such guns, two of which turned up at the scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s slaying in Arizona in December 2010.
Terry’s slaying sparked a national uproar and prompted an investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa. The committee described the response of Holder’s department to that investigation in a report released last Thursday:
A m e r i c a n P o s t – G a z e t t e
Distributed by C O M M O N S E N S E , in Arizona
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Regarding that “scathing” Dept of Justice report being used as a club against Sheriff Arpaio, isn’t this the Dept of Justice, under Eric Holder, who attacked SB1070 before he had even read the bill?
Isn’t Eric Holder under investigation for Fast and Furious for deliberately allowing guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, and that resulted in the death of Arizona Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?
Isn’t the Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, the same one that has been sanctioned for more than $4 million for frivolous lawsuits and misconduct?
Thomas Perez once served as president of Casa de Maryland, a radical open borders group that encourages ILLEGAL aliens not to speak with the police and urges local governments not to enforce federal fugitive warrants against them.
You may have read about Mr. Parraz’s latest community organizational tactics. He is leading a group of dunderheads who are demanding that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors REMOVE Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Last I heard, the Sheriff is elected by the people, not appointed by the Board of Supervisors, but Randy Parraz can’t be bothered with the law. He wants what he wants, and the law isn’t going to slow him down.
This is a guy with an undergrad and a law degree from the University of California, Berkely. Why am I not surprised? He has also been a community organizer for the AFL/CIO, couldn’t get any traction in Texas, so he slid on over to Arizona. He now heads a group called Citizens for a Better Arizona (his better Arizona). He seems to be cut from the same cloth as our current President, Barack Obama. But his latest rants about how terrible Sheriff Joe is have received a willing audience from the Arizona Republic stenographers (reporters).
American conservatism doesn’t make any sense in the rest of the world.
-Anonymous
Rick Perry has seen his poll ratings suffer after a series of weak performances in national debates
I’ve lost count of the number of times over the Christmas break that people have asked me some variation of that question. Weird, mad or bonkers, whatever word they used their contemptuous dismissal was the same.
Some will call it bias to even point out that this is a common perception, but it is real, and it is important.
There’s no doubt that the scorn was more likely to be expressed by people on the left than the right, and more often by the British than Americans.
Of course there is a long, if not honourable, tradition of regarding those you disagree with as off their rockers. And we Brits have a bit of a record of patronisingly shaking our heads at American quirkiness.
I took an oath of office in which I agreed to enforce the laws of the state and federal constitutions. As the top law enforcement officer in Maricopa County, I do not have the luxury of deciding whether to take a “hard-line approach” in the enforcement of state and federal laws. I must enforce all of them. Arizona currently has two laws in the state constitution concerning illegal immigration, which I am enforcing.
As a result of my enforcement of these laws, my staff has investigated and arrested more than 50,000 illegal aliens on the streets and in the jails. We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration. My office has been responsible for finding and identifying 25% of the nation’s illegal alien criminal offenders through the state-federal immigration law enforcement partnership known as the 287(g) program.
Opposition beware: It’s too soon to write off Barack’s re-election
“Barack Obama wins historic second term!” Get ready; you may be reading that headline a year from now.
Granted, the macro indicators don’t look good for President Obama. Unemployment is over 9 percent and not expected to decline dramatically. Economic growth is anemic. Federal budget deficits are through the roof, and most voters think the country has veered into a ditch. Mr. Obama‘s Gallup weekly public-approval rating is lower than those for every postwar president except Jimmy Carter. The poll also shows the incumbent losing to any generic unnamed Republican opponent by eight points. The Obama team is already touting its candidate as the underdog, thinking it will be easier to manage expectations with a “lead from behind” campaign.
Republicans who think the election is in the bag are in for a shock. The electoral map is not as one-sided as national polls might suggest. Mr. Obama can still count on a strong electoral-vote base and will be competitive in enough battleground states to be able to pull off a win. It may not even be that close.
Not many voters may have noticed yet, but our system of financing political campaigns is in enormous turmoil.
Anyone who has followed campaign spending closely this election season has seen the pattern. Money, lots of money, is flowing to Arizona candidates and causes.
But because of reporting loopholes opened wide following the 2010 Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, we have no idea who is cutting many of the checks.
It’s time to face the facts: By any objective standard, the Independent Redistricting Commission has completely botched the job. Governor Brewer and the Senators should exercise their Constitutional duty and replace all of them.
Let’s forget the blatant partisanship and open meeting violations and focus on one issue. The fundamental job of the IRC is to draw districts that fulfil the requirements of the Constitution. The proposed Congressional map clearly violates those requirements.
I’ve printed the full text of the requirements below, but here’s a summary. The first two requirements are right out of federal law: The Districts must comply with the US Constitution and voting rights act and have roughly equal population. Then there are three requirements that were obviously written to prevent Gerrymandering: The Districts have to be geographically compact and contiguous; they have to respect communities of interest and they have to respect natural boundaries.
Then there’s a sixth requirement that uses different wording. Here’s the whole thing.
F. To the extent practicable, competitive districts should be favored where to do so would create no significant detriment to the other goals. (Emphasis added).
Here’s your statutory interpretation question…does the 6th requirement have the same status as the other five, or does it have a lower priority? In the first version of this post, I argued that the 6th requirement was secondary. I still believe that and the lower courts agreed with my interpretation, but (as the first comment to this post pointed out) the state Supreme Court doesn’t like that term. Here’s what the Supreme Court said:
By: Selwyn Duke
When we think of political persecution, places such as Tiananmen Square may come to mind. Increasingly, however, this tool of tyranny is coming to our shores – and it is not made in China. It is, in the case I’ll discuss today, made in Maricopa County.
Every avid news reader knows about the battles between Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the federal government; Leviathan has targeted him because of his principled stand against illegal immigration. What is not quite as well known, however, is that the sheriff and his supporters – most notably, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas – have long been battling a corrupt local political machine bent on thwarting the rule of law and benefitting itself. Not surprisingly, as in the film Walking Tall, Arpaio’s and Thomas’ attempt to end local corruption has come at a price: the State Bar of Arizona (SBA) has begun prosecuting Thomas and two of his deputies in a move that reeks of political retaliation.
One of these underlings is ex-deputy county attorney Lisa Aubuchon. The other is ex-deputy county attorney Rachel Alexander, whom some readers may recognize as the proprietor of the website Intellectual Conservative. Alexander, despite having played only the smallest of roles in a racketeering case against the Maricopa County Supervisors, now faces suspension of her law license and significant career damage. And outrageously, Alexander’s supervisor, Pete Spaw, has not been charged despite having played a far larger role in the RICO case. This has led many to conclude that Alexander is the victim of selective prosecution.
The problems for Thomas and his deputies started when the County Supervisors filed wrongful prosecution charges against them with the SBA, which their leftist allies in the bar association ran with. What were these local politicians so upset about? John Hawkins at RightWingNews.com provides some background, writing:
Thomas came up with a unique way to prosecute illegal immigrants with a felony, instead of just letting them go with a slap on the wrist. He used a felony smuggling statute to prosecute them, describing them as “smuggling themselves.” With a felony conviction, they would be required to serve time and would not be able to return to the U.S. He even distributed money – which was seized from racketeering funds – to programs for youth run by the Boy Scouts and churches. By law, that money is to be distributed to organizations that keep youth away from crime and drugs. Thomas ensured that it was no longer only distributed to left wing politically correct organizations. Due to the proactive efforts of Thomas, along with Joe Arpaio and Senator Russell Pearce, illegal immigration has greatly decreased in Arizona. The population of illegal immigrants dropped by one-third over two years.
From the political notebook:
- Republicans are claiming that the new congressional map preliminarily adopted by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is designed to improve Democratic prospects. They have a case.
There is, first of all, the circumstantial evidence. All of the major decisions of the commission have been partisan. The two Democratic commissioners have been consistently joined by Chairwoman Colleen Mathis, who has been independent in name only. As a mapping consultant, they chose not an independent demographer but a Democratic campaign consultant.
And then there is the map itself.
Right now, Paul Gosar is the Republican’s most vulnerable incumbent. He’s in a rural district anchored in northeast Arizona that has a Democratic registration advantage of 3.8 percent. Under the commission’s map, the Democratic advantage swells to 9.5 percent.
The Democrat’s most vulnerable incumbent is Gabrielle Giffords. She’s in a southern Arizona district that has a Republican registration advantage of 4.8 percent. Under the commission’s map, that shrinks to a tenth of a percent.
