Half a loaf, not a day old and still stale

Unlike Richard Dunham, I just don't see this as being a 'big win' for Obama.

The Supreme Court's conservative bloc divided in two this morning, allowing President Obama to score a legal victory in the closely watched Arizona immigration case.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a nominee of President Reagan, wrote the 5-3 majority opinion that struck down several key provisions of the Arizona immigration law, known as SB 1070. Those provisions designated it a state crime to seek work without a work permit, fail to carry immigration registration documents or allow the arrest an individual suspected of committing a crime that could lead to deportation from the United States.

Kennedy was joined by President George W. Bush's choice for Chief Justice, John Roberts, as well as Democratic selections Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Elena Kagan, who worked on the case during her time as President Obama's Solicitor General, did not take part in the decision.

The three most conservative justices -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- dissented. An impassioned Alito read extensive excerpts from his dissenting opinion in the court chamber this morning.

The court did not strike down the state's right to permit police to routinely check the immigration status of people stopped for other reasons.

The Wicked Witch of the West also claimed victory.

Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, said that the decision -- which did not strike down the police enforcement provision -- upholds "the heart of SB1070." She promised that Arizona law enforcement would careful guard the civil rights of suspected illegal immigrants. The governor added that police officers who crossed the line into racially profiling would be punished.

But this next is flawed rationale IMHO.

The victory was a big political win for President Obama, who intervened in the case against the Arizona law. It's a setback for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who called the Arizona enforcement provisions a "model" for state immigration laws.

Kennedy's ruling declared that "the national government has significant power to regulate immigration" and that Arizona or other states "may not pursue policies that undermine federal law."

That was exactly the argument made by the Obama administration during oral arguments on the case.

Dunham provides more perspective for his headline here, but I'm still not buying it. It's a legal win but not a political win. I spent considerable time in the past few months telling Democrats that the expected upholding of this law could be used as political momentum; in effect that the motivation to turn out Latinos -- particularly on the strength of last week's executive order on the DREAM Act -- would catapult the grassroots efforts to get out all of the vote for the president in November.

They don't get that push with this ruling. Meanwhile the conservatives have a fresh Outrage O'Day. Just read the comments at the links above if you want a clue.

So the spin -- "it's good/bad that most of the law was struck down", "it's good/bad that the key component of the law was upheld" -- is in both directions, and on both sides.

I think it's remarkable that the conservative bloc on the Court fractured, and I think it's halfway good for Latinos in the long run, especially with the disembowelment of much of Arizona's -- along with the other states' rights bills lined up behind it -- law dealing with immigration.

But the worst part of it remains; upholding the racial profiling is simply heinous. Joe Arpaio will continue to arrest and detain innocent people who by virtue of their complexion "look" illegal, and his atrocities are well-documented. That's not a win for anybody, I don't care how large a bigot you are.

This is half a loaf, and it's not even a day old and still tastes stale to me.

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Update: OK, let's go ahead and call it a win.

Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court approved Arizona law enforcement officers’ authority to demand “papers please” from suspected illegal immigrants, the Obama administration moved to mitigate the on-the-street impact by suspending Arizona authorities’ instant access to the immigration database used to determine the legal status of questioned or arrested suspects.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, a former governor, attorney general and federal prosecutor in Arizona, abruptly suspended the so-called 287 (g) program in Arizona that deputizes local and state law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws and provides them access to federal immigration files in order to do that.

[...]

The significance of her action means that illegal immigrants stopped and questioned by law enforcement officers in Arizona under provisions upheld by the Supreme Court will not be prosecuted by federal authorities unless they have committed crimes beyond unlawful residence, have repeatedly violated immigration laws or are recent arrivals who entered the country illegally.

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Meanwhile, we get to wait until later in the week for a decision on ObamaCares. My opinion of that ruling is the same as it was for this one: if the SCOTUS strikes it down, the Democrats should be able to gain tremendous enthusiasm for November. And its repeal -- together with a Democratic House and Senate -- might just be enough to get a single-payer universal health care law passed in 2013. If the Democrats can manage to do then what they were unable to in 2009.

We shall wait a few more days and see.

Sunday Funnies

Does Gilberto Hinojosa have some explaining to do?

In my post wrapping up the Democratic and Republican state conventions two weekends ago, I referenced some things others -- mostly RGV Tea Partiers -- had written about Gilberto Hinojosa, who prior to his election as state party chair served as a district judge in Cameron County.

I discounted most of that as sour grape partisan whining. Now there seems to be more to it than that. People keep getting tried and convicted who were involved in the sordid affair. Details, you say?

-- First, the racketeering trial of attorney Ray Marchan concluded last week with a guilty verdict and included testimony from former state district judge Abel Limas -- who himself pleaded guilty to racketeering last year -- which identified both Hinojosa and state Representative Rene Oliveira as pay-to-players. The excerpt:

Limas himself has offered compelling testimony, describing how he made ends meet on a judge's salary by squeezing attorneys for a piece of the action. What emerged was a convoluted explanation of friends who helped him versus friends who bribed him — and some major Cameron County name-dropping.

The ones he said helped him included state Rep. Rene Oliveira, heard in a phone conversation telling Limas: “I've got my pants on — on my knees,” and former Brownsville Mayor Eddie Treviño, who slipped him $2,000 as a campaign donation that went unreported.

Another big name came up in the testimony of Mark Gripka, the FBI agent who began investigating Limas in 2007. According to a Brownsville Herald report from afternoon testimony Wednesday, Gripka said Limas had named former Cameron County judge and newly elected Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa as another who paid him.

Limas said there was in his mind a clear difference between loans and gifts and “bribes,” a word he had to be prodded to use.

-- In the course of researching that, there was also this: an alleged vote-fixing scheme during Hinojosa's tenure as judge. As that allegation is almost two years old, it has all but fallen down the memory hole. So far I can find no public record of whether or how the complaint might have been resolved.

What I'm confused about is how there was no mention of any of this business in the run-up to Hinojosa's election as Democratic state party chair. The establishment in fact lined up behind him in droves, like state representative Joaquin Castro, one of the keynoters at the convention, as well as several other state reps like Oliviera, whose taped telephone conversation here revealed his complicity in the racketeering scheme.

“Man, I need I need a big, big favor,” Oliveira told Limas.

“We f----d up on a case,” Oliveira told Limas, who served as judge of the 404th district from 2001 through the end of 2008.

“We have to try (the case), but I need to buy some more time,” Oliveira said, noting that the firm stood to lose the client.

Oliveira said that attorney Randall Crane, who represented the opposing party, had him “by the b---s.”

Oliveira indicated in the conversation that an associate would attend the hearing and seek more time, and that Crane was going to go “ballistic.”

Oliveira asked Limas to “pretend” not to know. Before indicating to Oliveira that things would work out, Limas told Oliveira that Crane was trying to have attorney Ray R. Marchan sanctioned and that he does not sanction attorneys.

Did I miss the discussion among Democrats about Hinojosa's involvement in these matters? Did the powers-that-be decide it amounted to nothing? Were they so intent on anointing Hinojosa that no amount of scandal would stop them from doing so? Is this just the way politics is run in the Rio Grande Valley and people just turn their head and look the other way every time it goes down?

And if Hinojosa doesn't want to explain anything now, as he begins to implement his overhaul of the Texas Democratic Party... is there anybody else that would? Help a brother out here, please.

Senatorial hopefuls debate

The two Democrats competing in the July 31 runoff for U.S. Senate are set to participate in a televised debate on Tuesday, June 26.

The one-hour debate between former state Rep. Paul Sadler, of Henderson, and retired educator Grady Yarbrough will be hosted by KERA, the Dallas PBS affiliate that is also hosting a debate this Friday between the Republican candidates in the Senate race, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz.

More details at the TexTrib. You can watch the two ReBloodlicans go at it live but not the pair of DemoCrips (yes, I stole that from Jesse Ventura). Meanwhile the Green and the Libertarian will continue to try to attract some media attention so that corporate-sponsored media will report on something besides the two-party duopoly.

Grady Yarbrough is of course the joke candidate in the Democratic runoff, but not even my preferred candidate's endorsement of the East Texas Blue Dog is enough to sway me in this contest.

Moderate conservatives will have two choices in November... either one of the Democrats and the Libert, but neither jerk that wins the R primary. Liberals and progressives will only have one, and his name is David Collins.

Rubio ends his bid for veep

It was a self-inflicted wound.

While discussing immigration policy in his new memoir, "An American Son," Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called for "common decency" in dealing with undocumented immigrants and said that if put in a similar position as those who are fleeing destitution, he would break the law, too.

"Many people who come here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn't feed our families," Rubio writes in his book, which went on sale Tuesday.  "If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn't give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn't a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here."

Two conclusions:

1. Rubio isn't going to be the vice-presidential pick now, whether he is actually being vetted for the post or not. The xenophobes, bigots, and Minutemen who comprise the base of the Republican party won't be able to look past this betrayal. They'll quit on Romney in waves if he were to pick Rubio now.

2. The immigration issue is now resolved for all but the dregs of society's conservatives. "Deport 'em all" joins "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim" as a declaration of the certifiably insane. No one except a few criminals are going to continue to be deported ... at least until after the election. Whatever the SCOTUS decides about Arizona's immigration law in the next few days is irrelevant to the national question, because if AZ or AL or other states make it illegal to have brown skin (and the SCOTUS upholds their right to do so) then Mexicans will simply vote with their feet again. Many are already returning to Mexico, where the emotional toll of being partly of two countries -- and all of neither -- is weighing on the children the most (as usual).

Not that Republicans give a damn -- the Romney campaign is still trying to decide whether to shit or wind their wristwatch --  but that is the moral imperative of making comprehensive immigration reform a priority. After November, naturally.

Update: And apparently Chris Christie got some assistance shooting his vice-presidential aspirations in the foot (since he can't see either one without a full-length, double-wide mirror).

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone had a happy Father's Day as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff did an interview with State Sen. Wendy Davis, the Republicans' top target in November.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the Texas GOP is getting set to raise taxes on working and middle classes Texans again. Here comes the next wave in the assault on health care and public education in Texas.

Refinish69 at Doing my Part for the Left wonders WTF? Has the entire country lost its mind?

Neil at Texas Liberal attended a march of Houston janitors lwho are ooking for nothing more than a more fair wage for the work they do. This post has two videos of the arrest of one of these peaceful marchers by aggressive Houston police officers on horseback.

At TexasKaos, lightseeker points out that all of a sudden somebody at the national level gets it: the Dems have NO Brand! Check it out... It's the Branding, Stupid!

Sunday Funnies