Todays revelation regarding the Arizona immigration law set me to thinking as well as set me to anger.

When I got home I reread two articles that I found rather intriguing regarding the issue. Both written by Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Prof. William Richardson. Professor Richardson is also a blogger, whom runs a site called Legal Insurrection.

I won’t pretend to be anywhere near as knowledgeable of the law as the good Professor, I will attempt to understand, and be as clear ,as best I can.

The first was the announcement regarding the actual injunction.

The conversations after the fact were of the most interest from the commenter (mostly lawyers and one nut job, myself)

Some of the interesting points raised included that the injunction essentially nullified current law like 8 USC Sec. 1304 (e) regarding immigrant documentation which reads

“….Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him ….”.

The injunction however ruled that immigrants are not required to carry their papers.

The injunction also ruled that state law enforcement could not play on the federal field, in laymans states can not enforce federal law. As Professor Jacobson clarified

“…The decision would not, as I read it, prevent police from checking immigration status in a particular case, but would prevent a statewide system to do so…”

Which, in my eyes brings a direct counter to such programs as 287(g).
Another commenter brought up…what if a local law enforcement officer failed to act in the case of a suspect preparing to violate 18 USC 1751? That code is the Federal law regarding Presidential assassination or kidnapping. Mind you I am not suggesting this, but the injunction makes clear that local law enforcement is not act upon Federal juris prudence. So by the letter of the law, versus the spirit, they should not interfere.

All of this is fine well and good. Depressing yes, and quite frankly after this ruling, compounded with the DOJ’s failure to enforce military personnel voting rights, and the recent rift of judicial activism with personal beliefs removing individuals from schools for religious views, and secession is a word that I am becoming extremely familiar with, in fact endorsing.

Will it happen?

Doubtful. But a guy can dream.

It was Professor Jacobson’s second article that got my attention and brought the dark cloud of gloom around what had been a very good day for me.

Brought about because he makes several extremely valid points in the writing, but one stands out above all else:

“When the law and the federal government reward lawlessness, something is very wrong.”

As the good Professor notes, states have hereby been rendered helplessness. States rights have been 100% eliminated. Our Governors are little more than representatives of our states to a Federal Institution to regulate taxation upon their citizenry. The entire legal landscape has been changed. Whereas previously Federal law always assumed usurpation of authority over States regulations, it has not always been the case and states have been able to regulate their own as was outlined in the US Constitution via the 10th Amendment which reads “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”

In 1787 Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Edward Carrington wrote ”

…The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution…..The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter…. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind…”

We, the people are the true power of this nation, of this country. Those who sit at home and say “I do not wish to be involved.” Will have no one but themselves to blame when there is nothing left of our Union. They will bemoan the loss of our once inalienable rights, and weep at what has been left.

Apathy is our enemy.

When our government dismisses our generation from a education that they pay for due their religious views on a sexual preferences while another religion endorses suicide bombings, sexual abuse and the revision of over 100 years of womens rights…there is a problem

When our government usurps and lays to waste how many generations of people from other countries who learned the language, learned the country, took the oath at Ellis Island, paid their dues and their taxes yet will allow one group of people to cross our border unharrassed and unpunished, while our citizens are murdered…there is a problem.

When we reward law breakers with free education, free health care, government housing, while the good citizens of this country sweat, strive, toil and die for this country….there is a problem.

When our tax dollars pay for these things, while we lose our homes, lose our jobs, and struggle to make ends meet, whereas they get loans without credit reports while we pay massive bailouts to the companies that do so for them….there is a problem.

When our children, who are citizens here, who will pay taxes here, who will work here, educate here, live here and possibly die here are not permitted the the same, equal and inalienable rights as someone who broke the law to be here…there is a problem.