Obama Citizenship

AZ Governor Cuts AZ AG from Immigration Bill Defense

By Phil

And that’s not the half of it, as you’ll soon see. The Obama Administration really doesn’t like Gov. Jan Brewer; that’s OK — SB1070 allows her to exercise pretty broad powers in defense of illegal immigration in the State.

The LATimes carried the story that Gov. Brewer had cut State Attorney General Terry Goddard (who is also likely to be her Democratic challenger in the 2010 Arizona gubernatorial race) from formally representing her and the State in any legal challenges to the bill once it goes into effect on July 28, 2010.

First, according to the bill, the Governor doesn’t have to exclusively use the AG for her defense (under Section 14: Immigration legislation challenges; emphasis mine):

A. Notwithstanding title 41, chapter 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, and any other law, through December 31, 2010, the attorney general shall act at the direction of the governor in any challenge in a state or federal court to Laws 2010, chapter 113 and any amendments to that law.

B. Notwithstanding title 41, chapter 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, and any other law, through December 31, 2010, the governor may direct counsel other than the attorney general to appear on behalf of this state to defend any challenge to Laws 2010, chapter 113 and any amendments to that law.

While RedState has a pretty decent run-down of the rationale for the Governor doing this (including the fact that the AG, while not supporting the bill, apparently was willing to defend it), they missed something very key — verbiage within her own statement:

PR_052810_StatementByGovBrewer

Notice the third paragraph from the above statement:

For some inexplicable reason, the Department of Justice officials met with the Arizona Attorney General hours before meeting with the State of Arizona?s legal team, and then allowed the Attorney General to hold a press conference to discuss the meeting. This level of coordination between the Attorney General and the Obama Administration is disturbingly similar to the coordination with Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords earlier this week on President Obama?s still unclear plan to deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the border.

At the very least, we know that the Obama Administration completely disrespects the appropriate chain of command etiquette per a given State, much less federalism and States’ rights. It would be a lot different if there were no federal illegal immigration laws in existence. In this case, all that Arizona is doing is enforcing the existing law.

Want to know something even worse about the general illegal immigration debate that’s been going on? Well, check this out.

A concerned citizen sent along the following from the WashingtonTimes: “Illegals granted Social Security” (excerpted):

The Senate voted yesterday to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits based on past illegal employment — even if the job was obtained through forged or stolen documents.

“There was a felony they were committing, and now they can’t be prosecuted. That sounds like amnesty to me,” said Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican who offered the amendment yesterday to strip out those provisions of the immigration reform bill. “It just boggles the mind how people could be against this amendment.”

The Ensign amendment was defeated on a 50-49 vote.

“We all know that millions of undocumented immigrants pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for years and sometimes decades while they work to contribute to our economy,” said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican.

“The Ensign amendment would undermine the work of these people by preventing lawfully present immigrant workers from claiming Social Security benefits that they earned before they were authorized to work in our community,” he said. “If this amendment were enacted, the nest egg that these immigrants have worked hard for would be taken from them and their families.”

Mr. Ensign was among 44 Republicans and five Democrats who voted to block such payouts.

Aside from the overall point that illegal immigrants would be allowed to receive Social Security benefits, apparently Sen. McCain — whom Gov. Palin is endorsing in Arizona’s August 24 primaries — doesn’t understand that Social Security is not a “nest egg,” but is actually insurance. And, of course, it’s barely even that any more; it’s really another line-item tax on every payrolled worker in America.

Go, Jan, go!

-Phil

Email: phil [at] therightsideoflife [dot] com

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Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on May 29, 2010 (boomark / email).