Chip, Chip, Chip...

The Florida Senate has passed an amendment that would not only require women seeking abortions to get an ultrasound, but to pay for them:

With two days left in the legislative session, the Republican-held Florida Senate passed a controversial amendment 22-17 Wednesday requiring women who are seeking abortions to pay for ultrasound exams, using legislative manuevering to deliver an election-year victory to religious conservatives.

The ultrasound requirement would apply to first-trimester abortions, which make up more than 90 percent of abortions in Florida. Ultrasounds are already required in late-term abortions that are performed after the first trimester.

Women could refuse to view the ultrasound image after filling out a form. Exceptions to the ultrasound requirement are provided to victms of rape, incest and domestic violence — but they would have to provide proof.

Oh, so nice to see you again, Exceptioneers. You're just as full of absolute shit as you were the last time I saw you.

"It's actually, to me, the ultimate insult to women," said Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston. "It's saying women can't make up their own minds, can't use their own judgment, as to what they want to do with their bodies. The Legislature is making a medical decision for women."

Well, at least there's still one person with some sense left in the Florida Senate.

Supporters of the amendment noted that the decision to have an abortion is very serious and said the ultrasound mandate would simply provide women with more information.

And again I will note, as I do each time one of these mandated ultrasound bills is passed and the justification is inevitably "providing women with more information," that if an altruistic helpfulness were the authentic motivation, then women would be offered a choice as to whether they wanted to get the ultrasound. I'll also note that if these paternalistic fuckwits were genuinely certain that women need this information to make a totally informed decision, patients would not be offered the choice to refuse viewing the images. But because all of this is bullshit based on the notion that ultrasound images will convince women not to terminate a pregnancy—because ALL'S THEY NEED IS TO SEE A PICTURE OF THE BEHBEE AND THEN IT WON'T MATTER THAT THEY DON'T WANT OR CAN'T AFFORD A CHILD!—none of it makes any sense, except in the Bizarro World of Totally Mendacious Codswallop in which Republicans live.

"What we're talking about is not an appendectomy, we're not talking about cancer treatment," said Sen. Steve Oelrich, R-Gainesville. "What we're talking about is ending a human life."

Yes, that is indeed what you're talking about, but that doesn't magically turn abortion into murder. I could spent the next three years calling Matilda a unicorn; she'd still be a goddamn cat.

Ironically, senators put another amendment on the same bill that says government can't compel Floridians to purchase health services. Senators did just that with the ultrasound requirement, but supporters said the ultrasound mandate wouldn't count because abortion is an optional procedure.

Just LOL. I can't even respond to that with anything but contemptuous laughter.

"To you ladies, I really respect your point of view," said Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami. "However, I just don't see the problem with having somebody have a little bit more information before they make a decision."

More disdainful howling.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish baking a giant cookie that I'm sending to President Obama for protecting Roe.

[H/T to Shaker SamanthaB.]

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Sweep Around

Every Saturday morning, Mama used to throw open the doors to our little house, turn on her stereo, and start cleaning. One of the songs we listened to over and over included the line, "Sweep around your own front door, before you try to sweep around mine." I thought the song was really about cleaning for the longest time.

I share that little anecdote to say, my horror with Arizona might need to extend to areas a little closer to home (Texas).

From the AP:

[Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball, TX] says she plans to push for a law similar to Arizona's get-tough immigration measure.

(snip)

Riddle says if the federal government did its job "Arizona wouldn't have to take this action, and neither would Texas."

Apparently, she has at least one person of like mind in the state legislature:

[State Rep. Leo] Berman... plans a broad bill similar to the Arizona law, which makes being an undocumented worker a crime. He specifically wants to include the measure to allow law enforcement officials to ask people who they believe may be in the country illegally about their status.

Berman is also enamored of the Arizona bill that will require President Obama to prove that he was born in the U.S. or risk being left off the ballot in 2012:

Berman said he's planning several bills, including one that would require presidential and vice presidential candidates to prove their citizenship to the Texas Secretary of State before their names can be put on the ballot. The Arizona law requires presidential candidates to produce birth certificates.

"We'll do it," said Berman, R-Tyler, and a former Arlington mayor pro tem. "We'll do it from now on. If he can't prove citizenship ... he won't have a place on the Texas ballot."

As if he ever could "prove" citizenship to their satisfaction.

I hope this shit doesn't get off the ground here.

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Icy Asteroid

Cool:

An icy asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Saturn is adding credence to theories that Earth's water was delivered from space, according to a report published in the new issue of the science journal Nature.

Two teams of scientists found their evidence when looking at 24 Themis, a asteroid about 479 million kilometers (300 million miles) from the sun, or roughly three times the average distance from Earth to the sun.

Using the infrared telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, they were surprised to find not only water on 24 Themis, but organic compounds as well.

..."Astronomers have looked at dozens of asteroids with this technique, but this is the first time we've seen ice on the surface and organics," astronomer Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, told Nature.com.

...The findings on 24 Themis lend weight to the idea that asteroids and comets are the source of Earth's water and organic material.

Somebody inform Congressman Hunter it turns out we're all undocumented aliens here.

Asteroids were thought to be devoid of water because they sit too close to the sun, while comets have been the water bearers of the universe because they form farther out in space.

...Scientists now plan to scan the asteroid belt for more evidence of water and organic materials, hoping to determine if 24 Themis is just an interloper -- possibly a comet that got caught in the asteroid belt -- or the first of many water-bearing asteroids that will change the way astronomers look at the solar system.

SCIENCE!

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Pop Quiz

Q: Which is the more hilaritragic entry in Time's Top 100 Most Influential People: Sarah Palin lionizing Glenn Beck, or Ted Nugent lionizing Sarah Palin?

A: Time is garbage.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Devo: "Whip It"

For Spudsy

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Within Our Souls

Last weekend, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr. (R-CA) attended a Tea Party rally in San Diego County, where he was asked by a man in the audience: "Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens?" To which Hunter responded:

I would have to, yes. … You can look and say, 'You're a mean guy. That's a mean thing to do. That's not a humanitarian thing to do.' We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now. We just can't afford it. California's going under. … We just can't afford it anymore. That's it. And we're not being mean. We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's within our souls.

I daresay what the lily-white Rep. Hunter really meant was: "It's within our DNA."

Because, the truth is, if Republicans were interviewed to see exactly what qualities lay within the soul of a Real American, their idealized Civis Americanus—fearless, adventurous, independent, enterprising, entrepreneurial, optimistic, indomitable, visionary, and irrepressible—would look an awful lot like the undocumented immigrant who makes hir way across the border in search of a better life, risking deportation and detention and bodily harm to realize a dream arbitrarily denied on the accidental circumstances of one's birth.

Would that it took at least walking across the border to become an American citizen. We'd certainly have fewer citizens who used the gift of their unearned citizenry as a justification to behave like intolerant, isolationist wankers.

Instead, there is the usual collection of projectionist hypocrites caterwauling about the unique soul of the American citizen, whose own souls could not less resemble their ideal. There's nothing brave or innovative or hopeful or confident, nothing reflective of a fervent belief in freedom and autonomy, about xenophobic nationalism, about the promotion of personal avarice above social conscience, about contempt for the marginalized.

This country, a beautiful mosaic of people and cultures and ideas, still infused with a spirit of exploration and invention, really does have the potential to be a land of opportunity for everyone who arrives on its shores or crosses its borders, if we gave that notion half the chance it deserved.

But that chance is precisely the thing that people like Hunter endeavor to crush, turning America into a nation where anyone who does not look and sound and behave like its self-appointed True Patriots is de facto threatening, where the natural and philosophical resources are pillaged and destroyed in the acquisition of wealth, which is itself concentrated among only the most privileged, where philanthropy and empathy are relegated to little more than cute, clichéd memories, the habits of silly activists and dirty hippies, where the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age stand astride the bodies of those who have been condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of Social Darwinism and bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net, declaring without a trace of irony, "The government never gave me anything!" as they deposit their million-dollar checks from their latest no-bid Defense Department contract then head off to Tiffany's to get The Little Woman a bauble with their fat tax returns.

They know only the soul of Corporate America. When the soul of their Ideal American Citizen stares them in the face, they suggest kicking it out of the country (but not before microchipping it first).

Within their own souls is not the expansive, courageous ideal they champion, but a profound insecurity born of the lazy complacency that unearned privilege breeds. They are anxious braggarts, waving the flag and shouting about how America is the "greatest country in the world!" at every opportunity—and then reacting with sullen resentment when people agree and clamor to get in the door.

Certain people, anyway.

My Scottish-born husband came to the US not because his life was dreadful or he was being persecuted or his family was starving or because he couldn't find work. He came on a fiancée visa (which speaks to our straight privilege as well as our class privilege) because he fell in love with an American citizen. And when we were flying over the ocean that once separated us, together, for the first time, clutching hands and chattering excitedly about the life on which we were about to embark, Iain talked about his vision of life in America—about its diversity and opportunity and generous supply of chances. It was, I imagine, a conversation not at all dissimilar to those had by undocumented immigrants making their way into the same country, who are different from Iain only by virtue of a piece of paper he held in his hand as he crossed the border.

That's it. Just a piece of paper.

Hunter and others like him would have us believe it's that piece of paper, or the lack thereof, that makes all the difference to them, but it is not that piece of paper at all which insulates Iain from hateful charges that he doesn't have the soul of a Real American. What insulates him is his DNA, and the privilege that he is afforded because of it, particularly in discussions that reduce "being American" to a matter of geography, law, and luck.

Being an American is more than that. Frequently, the people who weren't born here seem to understand that better than many of those who were.

They laugh and sniff and squirm and rage at the abiding belief shared by many Americans that this country is not "ours" to gift or deny to anyone who wants to share this space in good faith, and help make it better. They ignore any history that might suggest this land isn't "theirs." They not only draw lines along borders, but lines between citizens—the kind who belong here, and the kind who don't, because they didn't earn it, as if having been born here to citizens by a twist of fate is some sort of laudable achievement, but having been born here to non-citizens is some sort of scam.

And they talk about souls—whatever that means—as if souls don't reside inside one's humanity, which is neither contingent on nor contained by borders. Any American soul not firmly rooted in one's humanity isn't much of a soul at all; it's a selfish intellect disconnected from the commonality of humanness, whence the dehumanization of non-Americans begins.

I don't know if I have any kind of soul at all, no less a particularly American one. But if I do have an American soul, I can say this with certainty: Within my American soul is a love of this country, even despite its many flaws, so profound that I cannot imagine denying the chance to love it as much as I do to anyone who wanted it.

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...And I Want a Cake with Scott McClellan on It!

My birthday is in May, and so recently Mama Shakes asked me to make a list of anything I might want or need for my birthday. Because I have a mind like a steel sieve, her request immediately fell right out, so she emailed me this morning with a reminder:

"Don't forget to send me a birthday list. If you don't send me one, I'm getting you The Collector's Edition of the Wit and Wisdom of Dick Cheney. If I buy you the whole set—Volumes 1-815—it comes with a free shotgun and box of bird shot. Did I mention that George W. wrote the introduction and Karl Rove added amusing commentary at the end of each chapter? Unfortunately, Harry Whittington chose not to participate in the project for some reason."

LOL!

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Open Thread

Hosted by a french horn.

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Whovian Fandom Step Forward!

C'mon, we can't let all these sad Losties have all the geeky fun around here, can we? ;)

So - there's an issue that came up recently in discussing possible cosplay* around the new Doctor that I wanted to discuss. It's a bit spoilery, so I'm gonna go behind the jump here, but I know that those of you reading on RSS don't get that advantage, so I'm gonna just pause here for some spoiler identification (for my own sake as well as others'; I've only seen through episode 2 of Season 5 at the moment myself, and I ask most sincerely that you keep your discussions free of reference to events from episode 3 or beyond).

**SPOILERS BELOW! COMMENTS AS WELL, UP THROUGH S5E02**

The issue is this: there are, as ever, fascinating new characters, some of them at first glance eminently suitable for cosplay; the character around whom this discussion arose was the delicious Liz 10, HRH Elizabeth X of the UK&NI, as portrayed by the lovely and talented Sophie Okonedo.

She's a fun character, with a few great lines ("...higher alien intelligence, hair of an idiot." and "I'm the Queen, mate. Basically, I rule."), and a great easy costume to pull off: red dress, red hooded robe, boots, porcelain mask, all finished, right?

So one of my friends was a little surprised when, after mentioning how easy it would be to do, I stated that I'd never do it.

I don't think one can be a serious sf/f fan and not have heard about RaceFail last year, the huge explosion in fandom after some truly unfortunate and highly privileged statements by various authors and sf/f publishing industry people.

One thing it did for me was to point out to my own over-privileged eyes something I should have noticed earlier: the conspicuous lack of visibility of POC in sf/f, and a consequent lack of roles for POC in screen-media, as well as a concomitant lack of representation of POC in fandom (or FOC). I make no excuses for that failure to notice: it was privilege, pure and simple.

But it's meant I've had to look a little harder at cosplay, and how easy it is for white fans to appropriate the few roles that POC have won. We all know the roles, because there are few enough of them: Dr. Who's Martha Jones and her family, or Mickey Smith (and what was with Nine's bizarre and unsettling dismissal of Mickey from the moment they met?); Toshiko of Torchwood; various Klingons of TNG and more recent vintage (generally - but not always - played by POC); Storm of the X-Men; Teal'c of Stargate; Zoe, Book, and Fanty & Mingo from Firefly; the entire cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender; and a few others (mostly unnamed because I don't watch the shows in question; I don't even watch Stargate, but I know of Teal'c just from endless commercials thereof - though I didn't know his name!).

And it occurred to me that if I want to see more FOC out to cons and events, then one of the most elementary steps toward that end would be to make sure I don't tread on any of the small number of cosplay options that should, I believe, only be open to FOC. To do otherwise is to tread perilously close to "blackface" (or yellowface or redface or whatever other nasty replacement is happening).

We in the privileged seats have many, many options open to us: by far the majority of the roles continue to be given to people who look just like us, and even then, certain directors feel the need to "whitewash" their casts for the usual Hollywood bullshit reasons: that white fandom won't go see movies built around the lives and stories of POC, that there aren't sufficient quality actors of colour. This is the spurious and racist reasoning behind the horrendous miscasting of the live action version of Avatar TLA, or of whitewashing Ged and others from a broadcast of U. K. Le Guin's Earthsea.

So no, as I told my friend, though the character is delightful and I'd adore playing her, Liz 10 (and Zoe, and Tosh, and the few others) won't be someone I'll be cosplaying in this lifetime.

I hope no Shakers need to be told why it's not an equivalent problem if FOC decide to cosplay roles originally given to white actors.

For those wishing to educate themselves about the issues FOC face in being a visible and vocal part of greater fandom, I recommend a pair of LJ communities as a good start: foc_u - Fans of Colour United - and Racebending, the latter focused specifically on the travesty of the whitewashed cast of the live-action A:TLA (if you hadn't heard, this film will include one POC in the main cast of "good" guys, Dev Patel playing Prince Zuko - who starts out as a villain - while all the other POC in the cast are playing villains).

If we want to see a more diverse and representative fandom, as we claim, then we white fen need to shove over a bit, and make some room for FOC. And I think the most basic way we can start in doing that is to leave roles played by POC to be portrayed by FOC, and not appropriate them ourselves.

* Costume play - a form of fandom wherein the fen** dress in costumes to resemble the various characters of the fandom.

** Fen - a fan's name for fans as a group.

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Question of the Day

Would you rather be a member of a world championship sports team or be the champion of an individual sport? Which sport would you choose?

[Taken from The Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock, PhD, published in 1985 and still sitting on my shelf looking pretty damn raggedy, because I've pulled it out at many a party for many a laugh.]

I would definitely prefer to be a member of a team—although only if I get to be the captain. *wink*

The sport would definitely be mixed-sex synchronized swimming, because Spudsy looks HAWT in a bathing cap.

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Assvertising

A new ad from Skyy Vodka, submitted without comment (via Dodai):

[Click to embiggen.]
[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103.]

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On the Transracial Adoption of Louis Bardo Bullock

by Shaker Quixotess

From Madonna, to multitudes of white Christian families in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, white adoption of black babies and children is systemically fucked up. Not every single white adoptive parent in a transracial adoption (TRA) approaches the process of adoption with ignorant and/or messianic ideas (although many of them do), but adoption in the public sector is woefully under-resourced and adoption in the private sector is, of course, corrupted by profit—and both the dearth and the infusion of money provide opportunities for exploitation.

In fact, all white adoptive parents benefit from a systemically racist system that facilitates the separation of black parents (especially mothers) from their children, makes it easy to ignore the importance of black community for a black child in white supremacist culture, and prioritizes the desires of white adoptive parents over the needs of black children, even despite the protests against TRA mounted by adult adoptees of color.

As with everything else, fame, power, and wealth have typically inglorious roles to play in this process, too.

Which brings us to Sandra Bullock, who has adopted a black baby, the adoption process for whom she began with her ex-husband Jesse James, four years ago, which culminated in Louis Bardo Bullock being brought home reportedly three months ago.

Naturally we are meant to assume that this baby was adopted in good faith by both parents and adoption agency workers, and I don't know whether they adopted him through government agencies or through private agencies, but, if it was private, Bullock and James have a lot of money, and even with the best intentions in the world, people looking to spend a lot of money are going to get lied to, especially if the truth might jeopardize their spending it. Given that this baby was born in New Orleans, it's also entirely possible that some element of the Shock Doctrine (normally reserved for developing countries), in which TRA plays an important role in maintaining colonial power, was involved.

This is all entirely fucked up and racially charged enough before we get into the fact that Jesse James likes to get dressed up in Nazi clothes and date women who do the same. His father has said that James has long been "fascinated" with Nazis.

Now that Sandra Bullock and Jesse James are getting divorced, Sandra Bullock will be the only legally adopting parent, but Bullock has said of James that she "doesn't know how our paths will intersect in the future. Which doesn't sound like: "Holy shit, I better keep my Nazi ex away from my son."

And which also means that even a white adoptive parent being "fascinated" with Nazis and white supremacist culture is not enough to stop them adopting a black baby.

A final note: Some of the conversation I've been seeing around this story tends to hold Bullock solely responsible for the adoption and as the only one involved in the process. This may be partly because People's interview was with her, but James had a part in this as much as she did. In fact, in a staggering display of privilege and entitlement, James says: "I know in my heart that I can be the best father possible to my four children, and the mate Sandy deserves." He has three biokids. He obviously plans to try to parent the newly adopted child, and Bullock isn't exactly ruling it out.

(Also: "The mate Sandy deserves." Barf. She's divorcing you, you twit! And more barf… He also said: "The decision to let my wife end our marriage, and continue the adoption of Louis on her own, has been the hardest." Let. Ugh.)

[H/T to thirdrootprod.]

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Hollywood Throws in the Towel (Again)

Will this movie be good? Signs point to fuck no:

aramount has extended its business with Mattel, optioning the venerable toy Magic 8 Ball to use as the basis for a live action adventure film. The deal is being put in place by Paramount Motion Picture Group president Adam Goodman, and will be produced by Brad Weston through his overall deal on the Par lot. Jon Gunn and John Mann will write the script. They wrote the DreamWorks Animation pic Alcatraz Vs. The Evil Librarians. Paramount is already in business with Mattel on Max Steel, and has scored hits the Hasbro toys GI Joe and Transformers. Mattel's Tim Kilpin and Barry Waldo are exec producers. The toy has 20 pre-set answers to whatever questions one can ask about their past and present and their fortunes.

Someone get me Adam Goodman on the phone. I've got an exciting spec script about a piece of belly button lint that he'll want to option PRONTO!

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This, too, is a Real Thing in The World

If you just can't seem to figure out what to do with yourself lately, I highly recommend watching the Hummingbird Nest Cam at Ustream.



If you have a free Ustream account, you can also chat with the avid hummingbird watchers there.

When my Beloved found this cam and I started watching, I entered the following into the chat: "I will now officially get NOTHING done -- into perpetuity."

A regular chatted back: "Heh. Welcome to the Dirty House Club."

For facts about the cam and the birds, visit HERE for such amazing tidbits as "the nest is about the size of a golf ball, with eggs being about the size of a tic-tac candy". Phoebe is currently sitting on two tic-tacs, which should hatch sometime in May.

Yay, Hummingbirds!

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WHAT. THE. EVERLOVING. FUCK.

[Trigger warning for dehumanization.]

Pat Bertroche, one of seven Republicans running in Iowa's 3rd District Congressional primary, has a tremendous immigration proposal:

"I think we should catch 'em, we should document 'em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going," said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. "I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can't I microchip an illegal?

"That's not a popular thing to say, but it's a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under," Bertroche said.

The amount of hatred that the average Republican has for non-privileged people is absolutely staggering.

They don't really like it when someone like me accuses them of hatred—and, frankly, I don't really like it, either. Because talking about human beings like they're stray mongrels isn't hatred. It's something even worse.

Hatred implies some measure of care, of passion and heat and a beating human heart. What is expressed in sentiments like Bertroche's is utterly devoid of any of these things.

It is a void where a feeling should be. It is the emotional equivalent of a piss-hole in the snow—a soulless apathy, an indifference to human dignity so complete that to call it cruelty is to do it a kindness.

It terrifies me.

[H/T to Shaker KathleenB, who hat tips Sully.]

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Daily Kitteh

i can haz box mi ruff fitz in?

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Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning for disablist language.]

"There is no ability or opportunity in [the new Arizona immigration law] for the racial profiling. Shame on the lame stream media again for turning this into something that it is not. It's shameful, too, that the Obama administration has allowed...this to become more of a racial issue by perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part of this law."—Sarah "Death Panels" Palin, ranked #1 on Forbes' list of Purveyors of Unmitigated Temerity.

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Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"

See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]

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Exposing the Racist Roots of Arizona's New Immigration Law

If you thought there was any chance that the new immigration law in Arizona was about anything other than race, watch how Rachel Maddow thoroughly rebukes that notion.

That people like Russell Pearce and members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform have the platforms that they do and can shape legislation is chilling. I was going to add "especially to me, as a WoC" but I am trying to get better about statements like that which imply that racism is primarily the concern of people of color and that white people should not care/worry about it/address it.

Transcript below the fold:

MADDOW: The big deal news headline out of the world of politics today was the Republican Party‘s filibuster of Wall Street reform. But there was supposed to be another big deal thing in politics today. Today was supposed to be the day that Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham announced bipartisan climate change legislation.

That announcement, as you probably noticed, did not happen today. Why didn‘t it happen? Because Lindsey Graham got very mad. He scuttled his own climate legislation because he says he‘s angry that the Obama administration might bring up the issue of immigration reform first.

Quote, “This comes out of left field. We haven‘t done anything to prepare
the body or the country for immigration.” Senator Graham‘s anger has been seconded now by the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who said yesterday, this isn‘t, quote, “the
right time to do immigration reform.”

Republicans are bending over backwards right now, doing everything they possibly can, scuttling their own legislation if they need to in order to make sure that immigration reform does not come up. Remember when George W. Bush wanted to do immigration reform in 2007? Again, it was
his own party, the Republicans, who bent over backwards and delivered their own president a huge political defeat on this issue because they were so desperate to not do immigration reform at the federal level.And the fact that it continues to not happen at the federal level is
all the justification that some states need right now to deal with immigration on their own, which is how we got this—

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JAN BREWER ®, ARIZONA: The bill I‘m about to sign into law, Senate Bill 1070, represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis that we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: And so, the state of Arizona now has a new law requiring police officers to demand the paperwork of anyone who looks like they might be an illegal immigrant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: What does an illegal immigrant look like? Does it look like me?

BREWER: I do not know. I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I can tell you that I think that there are people in Arizona that assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: In the meantime, papers, please. Before this bill was actually signed into law, we told you about the guy who introduced it in the first place. It‘s this guy, Republican State
Senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for having sent an email to his supporters that included a white nationalist screed, accusing the media of pushing the view, quote, “a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish, quote, ‘Holocaust‘ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of nonwhite aliens pouring across the borders.” Mr. Pearce sent that around to all of his supporters, which he later apologized for.

Russell Pearce is also famous for having been caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. No, like a real neo-Nazi. Not some sort of metaphorical Godwin‘s law-invoking neo-Nazi guy, but an actual neo-Nazi guy. See, with the swastikas?

Russell Pearce is the guy who introduced this radical immigration bill in Arizona that just became law. But if you want to meet the guy who’s taking credit for writing the new law, that would be the gentleman named Kris Kobach. Kris Kobach is a birther. He‘s running for a secretary of state in Kansas right now. His campaign Web site today brags, quote, “Kobach wins
one in Arizona.”

The guy that helped Arizona‘s new immigration bill is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That‘s the legal arm of an immigration group that‘s called FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton. Mr. Tanton is still listed as a member of FAIR‘s board of directors. Just for some insight into where John Tanton and FAIR were coming from seven years after he started FAIR, Mr. Tanton wrote this, quote, “To govern is to populate. Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night or will there be an explosion?” That‘s FAIR, who helped write Arizona‘s anti-immigrant law.

After John Tanton got FAIR off the ground, for nine of the first years of the group‘s existence, the group reportedly received more than $1 million in funding from something called the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as a group formed, quote, “in the Darwinian-Galtonian
evolutionary tradition and eugenics movement.” For the last 70 years, the Pioneer Fund has funded controversial research about race and intelligence, essentially aimed at proving the
racial superiority of white people. The group‘s original mandate was to promote the genes of those, quote, “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.”

John Tanton‘s organization, FAIR, which, again, claims credit for writing Arizona‘s new immigrant law, John Tanton‘s FAIR was long bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund—which actually makes sense after you read some more of Mr. Tanton‘s writings. Quote, “I‘ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-
American majority and a clear one at that.” In 1997, John Tanton told the “Detroit Free Press” that America will soon be overrun by illegal immigrants, quote, “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” Defecating is the problem, I guess.

Again, this genius is the guy whose group is behind Arizona‘s new radical immigration law. They take credit for writing it. FAIR is bragging about having, quote, “assisted Senator Russell Pearce in drafting the language” of his Senate bill.

In drafting that language, FAIR may have slipped a little something special in there for themselves. FAIR makes a living off of suing local and state governments over immigration laws. Tucked inside Article VIII of Arizona‘s new law is a provision that if groups like them win their cases, quote, a judge—sorry—a judge may order that the entity, quote, “who
brought the action recover court costs and attorney fees”—which could create a nice financial boon for the formerly eugenics movement-funded, advanced the white majority, promote the genetics of white America anti-immigrant group whose attorneys helped write the new law.
Congratulations, Arizona. This thing is going to make you really, really, really famous for a really, really, really long time.

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