It's that dicey word "illegal" that always throws them off.
New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis, who hosts a morning radio show at WWRL, isn't happy with Arizona state legislators passing a sweeping bill to curtail illegal immigration.
Here's what Louis said about it while filling in on Ed Schultz's radio show Wednesday, after speaking with a caller from Arizona (here for audio) --
LOUIS: Listen, stay tuned 'cause I'm going to talk in a little bit about this bill that just passed over there yesterday in Arizona that will, that would allow the police to arrest illegal immigrants on trespassing charges simply for being in the state of Arizona. Uh, you guys got some electoral work to do out there, my friend! You got, I don't know how this got through!
Next thing you know, cops will be charging burglars with trespassing - and possibly more! What's this country coming to when a person can't engage in illegality without police intervention?
My favorite part of Louis laughing off the notion of officers of the law upholding the law? The word "simply" added for effect. Simply priceless.
Agreed, "illegal immigration" is such a harsh term. Louis prefers to see it as "building the base." As to be expected from people more concerned with thought crime than actual crime.
This wasn't the only recent example of curious remarks about the Arizona legislature's action in tackling, ahem, illegal immigrants. (Italics added for benefit of liberal trolls)
Here's Rachel Maddow talking with Homeland Secretary Secretary and former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano on Maddow's MSNBC show Wednesday (audio here) --
MADDOW: On that issue of immigration, not in your Department of Homeland Security purview 'cause this is at the state level, but your home state of Arizona this week has passed a very, a very, very strong anti-immigration bill. I think of it as the papers please bill. It compels police officers to demand papers from anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant. It's now a misdemeanor to not carry your immigration paperwork with you at all times in Arizona. Didn't you veto something like that when you were governor there?
NAPOLITANO: I think I vetoed things like that at least twice and I did because, first of all, immigration is primarily federal, not exclusively, but primarily federally, federal. But secondly, it doesn't allow law enforcement to focus on where law enforcement needs to focus and to prioritize the way law enforcement needs the ability to prioritize for the protection of the public safety. There are other reasons as well, but it was no surprise to me when I was governor of Arizona that, by and large, law enforcement, the men and women who are charged with protecting public safety, opposed legislation like that.
In other words, Napolitano wants police to look the other way when presented with probable cause that a person is in the US illegally.
Notice Maddow's sleight of rhetoric in referring to the legislation as an "anti-immigration bill." Even Time magazine, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, in its story on the legislation described it in the first sentence as "the toughest anti-illegal-immigrant measure in a generation."
Nice to see that Time doesn't hesitate using the dreaded word "illegal", even while Louis and Maddow can't bring themselves to state the obvious.
