The Big Lie The Media Tells About Indiana’s New ‘Religious Freedom’ Law

On Friday, the Washington Post published an article titled “19 states that have ‘religious freedom’ laws like Indiana’s that no one is boycotting.” The article snarks about organizations like the NCAA that have protested Indiana’s law, noting “the NCAA didn’t say it was concerned over how athletes and employees would be affected by Kentucky’s RFRA when games were played there last week.” The piece concludes “Indiana might be treated as if it’s the only state with a bill like this, but it’s not.” The piece has been shared over 75,000 times on Facebook.

The Washington Post article largely mirrors the argument advanced by Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Pence claimed “Then state-Sen. Barack Obama voted for [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act]. The very same language.”
The same argument is parroted on Fox News and elsewhere.

It’s not true. READ MORE

Emails Show Arizona Immigration Law Racially Motivated

Senator Russell Pearce speaks to the Arizona Red
Mountain Tea Party members at East Valley High
school in Mesa, Arizona, 03/19/12.
(photo: Tim Hacker)

Br Alia Beard Rau , Arizona Republic

21 July 2012

 
he American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has released thousands of e-mails that it says proves Arizona's controversial immigration law was racially motivated.

The e-mails, acquired through a public records request to the state Legislature, are to and from former senator Russell Pearce, who authored Senate Bill 1070.

The ACLU included dozens of those e-mails as part of a legal filing this week, asking U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton to prevent a key part of SB 1070 from going into effect.

The e-mails from Pearce in the court documents include statements like, "Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance ... It's like importing leper colonies and hope we don't catch leprosy. It's like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream."

They include statistics such as "9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens," and "the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens."

Pearce did not return calls seeking comment. While all the e-mails were sent from Pearce's personal or legislative e-mail address, it is unclear if they were all his own words or if some of the statements were taken without attribution from other individuals.

Email Excerpts    READ MORE

Supreme Court Takes the Edge Off Arizona Immigration Law

Talk Radio News Service/Flickr

The ruling blocking much of Arizona's harsh SB 1070 calls into question the right's get-tough approach to immigration.

—By Adam Serwer

| Mon Jun. 25, 2012 10:58 AM PDT

 

 

Several parts of Arizona's harsh anti-illegal immigration law, which sought to purge the state of unauthorized immigrants through a policy of "attrition through enforcement," were blocked Monday by a Supreme Court decision that invalidated three of the law's four main provisions but let stand—for now—the part of the law that allows police to stop anyone they suspect or being in the country illegally and request proof of their status. The Arizona law had set off a burst of copycat legislation in other conservative states, some even more severe than the original. But with this decision, the laws spawned elsewhere are now susceptible to challenge—and the right's get-tough approach to immigration is at risk.

 

 

"The court resoundingly rejected the argument that Arizona had the right to impose its own criminal penalties for being undocumented in [Arizona] or trying to seek work in the state," says Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. "I think that is very encouraging to challengers of other state laws."   READ MORE

More MoJo coverage of immigration

• "It Just Not Right": The Failures of Alabama's Self-Deportation Experiment
  
• Maps: We Analyze the 164 Anti-Immigration Laws Passed Since 2010
  
• Did Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Anti-Immigrant Zeal Kill David de la Fuente?
  
• Kris Kobach: The Legal Mastermind of the New Nativists
  
• The Small, Interlocking World of Anti-Immigration Advocates
• Flowchart: How Did Harsh Immigration Laws Spread to Your Statehouse?
• Photos: Feeling the Pain of Self-Deportation in Alabama

Arizona Will Ignore Federal Court’s Ruling on Restrictive Voter Law

State election officials say the Court’s order only affects federal voter registration forms—not the state version.

April 19, 2012 

The Arizona voting wars continue. This week, a federal appeals court ruled that Arizona’s photo ID requirement was not a “poll tax” or racially discriminatory, which was a defeat for voting rights activists who offered evidence that certain voting blocks—particularly people of color—disproportionately lack photo ID.  

 

But the other half of the ruling over Proposition 200 addressing whether Arizona could require documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote—if that proof did not already exist in state databases—left voting rights activists only slightly cheered. 

 

Arizona’s Proposition 200 was the nation’s first state law to require documented proof of citizenship before registering to vote—whether a would-be voter used the national voter registration application, found in all post offices; or a state voter registration form that the state gave out at state offices and is used for its online registration.

 

The Ninth Circuit ruling only affected the federal voter registration form, saying Arizona overreached by imposing additional proof-of-citizenship conditions. It ordered Arizona election officials to tell local registrars to accept that application, where people attest to citizenship by signing their name under penalty of perjury.  READ MORE

Arizona Is the "Petri Dish" for Corporate-Influenced Legislature

Arizona State Capitol Bldg

Monday, 16 April 2012 13:30 By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout | Report 

Arizona, with 49 out of 90 legislators with membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is a darling of the bill drafting body and home to several bills modeled on the council's legislation targeting workers' compensation, unions and public education.

A report by People For the American Way Foundation, Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Now details the bills drafted by ALEC's large concentration of affiliated legislators in Arizona's State senate, and compares it to model legislation identified as ALEC-drafted in the past in "ALEC in Arizona: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests in the Halls of Arizona's Legislature."
"ALEC-member legislators are unabashedly continuing to push legislation straight from corporate headquarters to Arizona's lawbooks," said Marge Baker, executive vice president at People For the American Way Foundation. "Well-heeled special interests are circumventing the democratic system and bypassing Arizona's citizens, who can't match the level of access that ALEC provides. As a result, Arizonans are facing an endless assault from laws that serve the interests of the rich and powerful instead of everyday people."

Two-thirds of Republican legislative leaders, and at least eight previous Senate presidents in Arizona have been ALEC members, said the report, noting that the lack of a definitive list of legislators involved in the council may be even higher.  READ MORE