Sherrilyn Ifill (Professor of Law, University of Maryland):

This new habit of “polling” in place of a focus on legality has become a dangerous habit. If a nationwide poll were conducted in 1953, no doubt a majority of Americans would have supported segregated schools. It’s doubtful that many of the provisions of our Bill of Rights would survive an up or down vote in most of the country. That’s why we have a Constitution – something that can survive the prejudices, exigencies and ignorance of the day and set the parameters of legality for our country.

Polls like this are irrelevant to the question of whether the Arizona immigration law (and Arizona’s latest attack on ethnic studies) is legal or even whether it’s offensive to minorities. I shudder to think where this country would be if questions of civil rights and constitutional legality were decided by public opinion poll. This poll only shows how far off the grid many Americans are when they think that a president who advances health care reform is “shredding the Constitution,” but have no problem with a state law that gives law enforcement officers blanket discretion to stop individuals anywhere and demand proof of legitimacy. [ READ MORE ]

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On Same Issue
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•   Greg Dworkin, Contributing Editor, Daily Kos: [ READ ]

•   Darrell M. West, Vice President, Governance Studies, Brookings Institute: [ READ ]

Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Purporting to correct misconceptions, Luntz misrepresents AZ immigration law

MediaMatters: On Fox & Friends, Frank Luntz falsely suggested that under Arizona’s new immigration law, police can only ask about the immigration status of someone “if they believe that they’re in the process of committing a crime.” In fact, the law directs police to check the immigration status of those stopped for non-crimes including violations of city and county ordinances and civil traffic violations if the officer suspects those individuals are undocumented. [ READ MORE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Mediamatters: Dobbs promotes website that hosts several pro-secession articles: On the September 17 broadcast of his radio show, Lou Dobbs hosted Tenth Amendment Center founder Michael Boldin and repeatedly “urge[d]” his listeners to visit the group’s “very interesting” website. The site, among other things, has published or reprinted several articles advocating secession from the United States. [ READ MORE ]

HUFFINGTONPOST: Faced with a growing movement of communities demanding that CNN drop his program, Lou Dobbs responded Friday with one of his favorite postures: the victimized defender of American virtue. “They ask CNN to fire me because I oppose illegal immigration” said Dobbs, who added, “”The last thing they want is a first amendment, where people can express themselves… These are the most un-American, frightened people in the world because they won’t compete in the marketplace of ideas and facts.” [ READ MORE ]

Dobbs on “ethno-centric interest groups” calling for him to be fired: “these are the most un-American, frightened people in the world“

Taking more cues from Beck, Dobbs advances attacks on White House, NEA, “left-wing propaganda” educational video

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Past racial insensitivity by Sotomayor detractor. Ref: Sessions vows third GOP vote against Sotomayor

   By: Ken Bode
Sometime next week, Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed as the first person of Hispanic descent ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 219 years, there have been two women and two African-Americans on the court along with 106 white males.

Sotomayor will be confirmed because the Senate Judiciary Committee could find nothing disqualifying in her 17 years experience on the federal bench. Still, suspicious Republicans on the panel turned to her personal views, especially as related to ethnicity. Has ever a single sentence been so blown out of proportion as when Sotomayor suggested that because of her life’s experiences a wise Latina might reach a better conclusion than a white male?

Especially for the ranking white male on the Republican inquisition forces on the committee, Sotomayor’s comment was deeply troubling. In the mind of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Sotomayor’s comment revealed excessive racial sensitivity, and Sessions sought to turn it into a mountain blocking Senate approval.

Sessions knows about racial insensitivity. Now the lead Republican interrogator, Sessions was at the Judiciary Committee witness table 23 years ago, nominated for a federal judgeship by President Ronald Reagan. Then, too, the issue was excessive racial insensitivity. Sessions was serving as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, and some of the things he’d been doing and saying were brought to the attention of the committee.

For example, Sessions called a white civil rights attorney who litigated voting rights cases “a disgrace to his race.” He addressed an assistant U.S. attorney as “boy” and warned him, “Be careful what you say to white folks.” He admitted he thought the Ku Klux Klan was an “OK” organization until he learned that some of them smoked pot. Also, Sessions condemned the NAACP and ACLU as “un-American” and “Communist inspired,” because they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.”

   Jeff Sessions [ Enlarge ]
But it was what he did that mattered most. Sessions served as U.S. attorney at a time when black voter registration drives were threatening white control of county courthouses in rural Alabama. Who wins elections for governor or senator is of minor importance to the locals compared to who wins the job of county sheriff, prosecutor, judge, clerk, treasurer and assessor.

In the 1980s, Perry County, Ala., retained its old plantation roots of unremitting distrust between its black majority and white minority. With black voter registration surging in Perry County, control of country government was dangerously close to shifting. So U.S. Attorney Sessions used the power of his office to back charges by the white courthouse crowd that a black civil rights group was tampering with absentee ballots.

An investigation was ordered and federal officials were waiting at the post office when the Perry County Civic League mailed 504 absentee ballots for the 1984 Democratic primary. The ballots were opened, marked, numbered and searched for erasures or new markings.

Searching for evidence of tampering, FBI investigators contacted 1,500 black families in Perry County, terrifying many first-time voters in their 70s and 80s. Among those charged with 29 counts of altering ballots and mail fraud was Albert Turner, an adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Turner helped plan the Selma march and was later chosen to guide the mule train that carried King to his gravesite. He and his two Perry County co-defendants faced 115 years in prison.

The investigation is estimated to have cost the government $500,000, and it produced evidence so thin that it took the jury less than four hours to throw out the case.

Sessions was so obviously guilty of racism and overreaching his prosecutorial authority that the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-to-6 to derail his nomination. The majority against him included two Republicans and his home state senator, Howell Heflin.

I covered those events for NBC News, and during the Sotomayor hearings I wondered what Jeff Sessions had learned about racial insensitivity and impartiality. Evidently, not much.

About The Author(s): Ken Bode — is the Pulliam Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and a Hudson adjunct fellow. His academic career includes being the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism as well as the Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University from 1998 to 2002; a John L. Hughes University Professor and Director of the Center for Contemporary Media at DePauw University from 1989 1997; and an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University from 1965 to 1969 and at SUNY Binghamton from 1969 to 1970. Bode is a 1961 graduate of the University of South Dakota, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in philosophy and government. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1963 and 1966, respectively. He has taught at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton. Bode was a post-doctoral fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1978 and a Poynter Fellow in journalism at Yale University in 1989. He also was a senior adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis.

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MSNBC’s history in this regard is well-known. The cable channel gave Michael Savage his own television show, and then had to fire him when he told a caller to “get AIDS and die.” It gave Don Imus a television show, and then had to fire him when he called members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

But through it all, MSNBC has continued to employ Pat Buchanan, despite a long record — which he builds on frequently — of bigoted speech. Throughout his time in public life, Buchanan has engaged in speech characteristic of an era in which open prejudice was the norm. And yet no one in the mainstream media bats an eye over the fact that he continues to enjoy a position of influence and prestige on what is increasingly — though not convincingly — described as a “liberal” cable channel.

Buchanan has used his position at MSNBC to lead the charge against Sotomayor with dishonest and often unhinged diatribes against the nominee. He even offered an ugly and misleading attack on her for doing exactly what he has always claimed to want non-native English speakers in America to do: practice their English language skills. [ READ MORE ]

Rachel Maddow Challenges Buchanan on RACE | Sotomayor | Senate BIGOTS

Maddow on Buchanan tapping “white people’s racial grievances”: “You’re playing with fire… you’re living in the 1950′s”

In showdown with Maddow, Buchanan says Sotomayor “was appointed because she’s a Latina, and a Hispanic, and a woman”

Buchanan: Hispanics Shouldn’t Get Affirmative Action Because “They Were Never Enslaved”

O’Donnell slams “crazy uncle” Buchanan’s “ugly thought about what it means to be born a Latina in this country”

References:

1. The State of Hate in America – Sweet Home Alabama!
2. Hawking Racism — Pat Buchanan’s Latest Book Is A White Nationalist Screed
3. The intellectual dishonesty of Pat Buchanan

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President Obama is set to make history today, by nominating to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first Hispanic American — federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York, pictured below.

If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, Judge Sotomayor, 54, would replace Justice David H. Souter to become the second woman on the court and only the third female justice in the history of the Supreme Court.

The president reached his decision over the long Memorial Day weekend, aides said, but it was not disclosed until Tuesday morning when he informed his advisers of his choice less than three hours before the announcement was scheduled to take place. [ READ MORE ]

Congratulations Judge!

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Now, TEA-BAGGERS, READY SET — PAAAAANNNNNNIIIIIICCC!

To be updated with the venomous right-wing RACISM — which is to follow shortly!

LOL!
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UPDATE: THE CHESS-MASTER’S (Obama) POISON IS WORKING AS PLANNED!
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President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor, Tuesday morning, elicited exactly the behavior I expected from the right-wing dumbNUTS.

They picked up the “POISONED BONE” and ran with it …….

White Nationalist Pat Buchanan of MSNBC was one of the first to throw DUNG at Judge Sonia Sotomayor. “…she is an Affirmative Action Candidate!,” declared Buchanan.

Tom Tancredo, the anti-immigrant compost-thrower and the HEAD of the Republican Party, “constitutional lawyer,” Rush Limbaugh, called the Judge “a RACIST!” In fact, Limbaugh went further, lumping Judge Sotomayor with Obama — and calling both “Reverse-Racists,” adding that he wanted both to FAIL.

“I used to be FAT, but now my stomach is stapled,” former governor and “tea-bagging” show host at Fox, Mike Huckabee deliberately posted the name “Maria” Sotomayor on his website — obviously to remind his tea-bagging followers of the HISPANIC heritage of the judge.

Even anti-immigrant megalomaniac bigot, FAT Lou Dobbs, whose wife is Hispanic joined the right-wing brethren, to fight for DEAR-HOMELAND. Dobbs conducted one of his impromptu, unscientific polls, that are always skewed and probably doctored, and not surprisingly, eighty five percent of the poll participants, “miraculously” branded Judge Sonia Sotomayor — a RACIST. LOL!

Blatant RACISTS calling others racist? Keep digging PUBIC-HAIR ASSHOLES! The self-isolation of the GOP is in full swing — thanks Mr. President!

“They oppose her at their peril,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of his GOP colleagues and conservative activists who are leading the court fight. “I think this process is going to be more a test of the Republican Party than of Sonia Sotomayor.”

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that we need to tread very carefully,” said John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for years. “The only way we’ll find ourselves in a political predicament is if we don’t treat her with the same respect that other nominees received.” [ READ MORE ]

Will Obama Benefit From GOP Opposition?

Limbaugh Calls Sotomayor/Obama Racists!

The Grand Introduction of The Judge By Obama

Justice Pick Breaks New Ground

What’s coming For Judge Sotomayor

Examining Sotomayor’s Record

Confirmation Fight Looms

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