Duplicity

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, and State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley, have denounced the new Arizona illegal immigration law. Oh, by the way, all five of them have publicly admitted they have not read the law. Now that’s government you can believe in, and trust to represent you fairly, and do the right thing. Right ....

I just read the law. It took me 20 minutes.

Latinos are protesting, and, based on interviews with them and the signs they carry, they fear that Arizona police will stop any Latino looking person and “ask for their papers” – not surprising since President Obama expressed that same concern. Yet the Arizona law specifically prohibits police from doing that very thing. Federal law already requires non-citzens to carry documentation on their person, and the Arizona law prohibits police from asking to see that documentation unless the person has been detained for violating some other law. Furthermore, racial profiling is specifically prohibited. In fact, the Arizona law is completely consistent with existing Federal law (you’d think the U.S. Attorney General would know that).

Administration officials, including the President, are making inflammatory public statements that are outright falsehoods. In so doing, the Administration is once again dividing the country, this time along ethnic lines, which is of course consistent with previous Administration efforts to divide us along racial and socioeconomic lines. (Does that make the President responsible or irresponsible?) Don’t I remember Obama campaigning on “unifying the country”, based on “post-partisan” politics. The “great unifyiner”? I don’t think so – more like the “great divider”.