Soetoro's azz es grazz. God Bless AZ!
Posted on 06/19/2010 11:56:28 AM PDT by Qbert
After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accidentally let it slip during an interview that the Department of Justice would bring a lawsuit against Arizona challenging its recently passed immigration law, state leaders say they are confident that SB 1070 will be upheld.
“We will prevail,” said Russell Pearce, the state senator who sponsored the legislation. “I vetted this bill very, very carefully, anticipating a lawsuit, and making sure we wrote it right.”
Although the details of the Justice Department’s lawsuit have not yet been announced, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said any challenge to SB 1070 would most likely center around the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
“Those critics rely on the argument that Congress has preempted the states from regulating illegal immigration,” said Thomas, who is running for attorney general. “Unfortunately for them, that’s not what the federal courts have ruled.”
Thomas said that proponents of previous anti-illegal immigration bills have successfully used the precedent set by the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in De Canas v. Bica as a defense against legal challenges.
“We have had a number of challenges to our human smuggling law, our employer sanction law, our voter ID law, passed by the [Arizona] voters in 2004. They’ve all been upheld,” Thomas said. “The Justice Department will be going against this steady stream of cases that we have won in both federal and state court — unless they have come up with a brilliant new theory that basically invalidates the Supreme Court and other case law we’ve relied on.”
Thomas said a lawsuit could target provisions specific to SB 1070, but he noted that the majority of the bill would likely remain intact even if such a suit succeeded.
“It should just cut down that portion,” Thomas said. “If there were an ancillary part of the law that they had trouble with, they could strike that down and leave the rest alone.”
For Pearce, it is clear that any federal lawsuit would rest primarily on ideological — not legal — ground.
“The grounds basically are, ‘I don’t like the bill,’” Pearce said. “They have an agenda. That agenda is to not allow enforcement of these laws that have been on the books for 50 years.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s office has already mounted a defense of the law.
“Our attorney general has no intention of enforcing our laws on the illegal alien issue,” Pearce said. “Knowing his opposition to 1070, we put it in the bill that the governor would lead this effort.”
Pearce said that several legal groups have offered to help defend the law pro bono and that over $45,000 in private donations has been raised to help defray defense costs.
Thomas said that “no one should underestimate the minds of the U.S. Justice Department in coming against Arizona,” but that he is “confident that 1070 will be upheld if we have proper legal representation and the will to go into court and fight for it.”
Brewer did not know of the Justice Department’’s imminent lawsuit until she learned about it like most observers — through the press coverage of Clinton’s interview.
“This is no way to treat the people of Arizona,” Brewer wrote in a statement. “To learn of this lawsuit through an Ecuadorean interview with the Secretary of State is just outrageous. If our own government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do is inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation.”
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard’s office declined to comment. Gov. Jan Brewer’s office could not be reached for comment by press time.
Goddard just ruined his chances for any kind of political career here in Arizona. I’m pretty sure of our chances when this goes to SCOTUS. Bam Bam is pretty dumb to take this on.
yeah but the WH mafia have long arms so I pray for not only AZ but those defending AZ.... now that the G*dfather has given our land over to drug runners, human traffickers, rapist and murderers.
What is the point of a State Attorney General who regards his own point of view as more important than the law of his State?
OBambia = pinko commie POS. He has no clue what real Americans think.
It is clear to me that the undocumented Muslim sitting in the Whitehouse is the enemy of the citizens of this country.
Right there, in the first sentence; does anyone honestly believe Hillary! “accidentally” let it slip?
Hillary is one very cold and calculating entity.
Could some of the legal minds explain - how does the Federal government have “standing” in this case? Doesn’t somenone have to be harmed by the law first, and then that person sues?
bump
“Hillary is one very cold and calculating entity.”
Yes, she is shrewd at least. Could it be that since we all believe she is NOT done with national politics after her current gig, that she wants the state (any state) to flush this out so she doesn’t have to deal with it on a Federal level later? She wants the precedents set so the *dirty* work won’t be left to her....
Does anyone know of a petition circulating that would
provide an opportunity for we citizens to disassociate
ourselves from this idiotic lawsuit? If there isn’t
one there should be.
It sounds like precedents are already set. The Progressives have deemed case law to trump the Constitution. Arizona has a plethora of case law.
I actually think Hillary was told to say the DOJ would bring suit and told to say it in a Latin American venue. How can she ever run for POTUS after being used in so many different manners by the administration?
Obama is nothing but a racist community organizer, and this proves it.
Soetoro's azz es grazz. God Bless AZ!
This is like something out of George Orwell. Truly scary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.