Whew Go Arizona!

[A Black Falcon]

You know, the more I look into this bill, the more I'm beginning to hate it. The fact that the bill allows the police to question whoever they want simply on the basis of immigration stats can lead to the abuses of a police state. Look at like this: the fifth amendment to the Constitution states that no citizen has to self-incriminate themselves. If a minority who is a legal citizen starts being questioned by an officer on personal matter--residency, family, status, etc.--that to me inquires the beginning of a Police State.

Another thing that I am afraid of is that it could lead to a fourth amendment violation if the officers feel that they can search legal minorities without a warrant. Such a thing can happen. Just look at what happened with the PATRIOT act.

Do I believe something needs to be done about illegal immigration? Yes. However, I feel that this isn't the right way to go.

Here's Judge Andrew on the matter:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/judge-napoli...80%99.html

So, yeah, I'm highly skeptical of this bill. This is not the right way to go.

Obviously your paranoia about America turning into a police state isn't entirely accurate, but you are right that this bill is constitutionally very questionable. The growth of government surveillance power over the past decade has been extremely troubling, and one of the worst things about Obama is that he has not revoked most of Bush's impositions onto the Constitution in the world of surveillance and beyond. That has been not entirely unexpected, but quite disappointing. We have rights for a reason, and Obama's "I will not punish anyone or pursue any trials for anything done wrong during the Bush Administration" policy is horrible and implicitly condones their unconscionable behavior. It's very, very sad that he's done that, the Democratic party should be better than that! You can't just ignore widespread, upper-level criminality, it tells everyone "in the future, doing this stuff is fine, all that'll happen is you get repudiated later. You won't actually have to suffer or be tried for it or anything like that.", and this country should be better than that.

Anyway, this obviously goes way too far. You can't just arrest people at random because you think they might be illegal. There's no way this is constitutional, I think.