Alabama wants to be like Arizona, only worse

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so Republicans keep up their assault on undocumented immigrants:

Republican Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday signed into law a crackdown on illegal immigration in Alabama that both supporters and critics consider the toughest in the nation.

The measure will require public schools to determine the citizenship status of students -- a provision not included in an Arizona law that has been at the forefront of actions by several states to curb illegal immigration.

Under the Alabama law, police must detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbor someone who is in the country illegally.

This isn't just a racist, draconian law to crack down on a specific group of people and deny them the dignity and fair treatment they deserve.

As Little Green Football's Charles Johnson notes, it "explicitly violates the Bill of Rights's provisions against unreasonable search and seizure, by requiring police to arrest anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally if they can’t produce documentation — when stopped for any reason... That's right — in Alabama, you may now end up in jail if you're not carrying your papers, whether or not you've done anything wrong."

I know we're supposed to be civil and all, but can't we call this what it is? It's fascism. Brought to you, as usual, by the Republican Party.

Slow train coming

By Capt. Fogg

One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.

It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to take over municipal governments (duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.

Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law. The Walker plan: 

would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so.

I have no doubt that's just what the Tea-Shirts would like and little doubt that they will be able to reconcile that with their flimsy facade of Constitutional reverence. 

Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need.

That's not tyranny, that's not the kind constitution shredding the baggery would love to attribute to the President: at least it's not to the Tea-drunk masses longing to break free of any remaining bonds of civilization.

It'll never happen? It's liberal hyperbole? Think a state government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.

I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th-Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)