Free Republic

Arizona state politicians will introduce model legislation this week to encourage states to prevent children of illegal immigrants from being granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Lawmakers in at least 14 states have said they are committed to passing the legislation targeting birthright citizenship. Arizona's anti-illegal-immigrant bill, SB-1070, was also based on model legislation that could be easily copied by states, and at least seven states are likely to pass bills similar to the first Arizona immigration overhaul this year, according to one analysis by an immigrants rights group. Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce will unveil the bill Jan. 5...

Leaked govt memo: Shooter may be linked to hate groupBy Liz Goodwin 29 mins ago According to a leaked memo obtained by Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security is looking into the possibility that suspected shooter Jared Loughner was linked to a white supremacist group called American Renaissance, or AmRen. AmRen founder Jared Taylor, however, tells Fox he'd never heard of Loughner and that according to his group's records, Loughner never received AmRen publications. His group's events are all held on the East Coast, he said, far from Loughner's hometown of Tucson. According to the memo, Loughner "is possibly...

Republican activists on Thursday released a video of Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat now running for an open Arizona U.S. Senate seat, advising liberal activists how to "stop your state from becoming like Arizona." The surreptitious recording dates from 2011, after Arizona Republicans had passed SB1070, a controversial immigration law that led to nationwide boycotts and concern even among some Arizona Republicans that the Legislature had moved too far right. Those concerns led to a recall against the then-senate president Russell Pearce, whom Sinema blamed in her remarks for much of the discord. But the talk also contains unusually...

A federal judge has upheld part of Arizona’s contentious immigration law, rejecting claims that the so-called “show your papers” section discriminated against Hispanics. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton on Friday was on the last of seven challenges to the 2010 law. The section she upheld allows police in Arizona to check the immigration status of anyone they stop. Bolton ruled that immigration rights activists failed to show that police would enforce the law differently for Hispanics than other people. …

A man has been arrested in the shooting death of a woman who was walking along San Francisco’s Embarcadero with her family Wednesday evening. Texas resident Francisco Sanchez had been detained as a person of interest south along the Embarcadero shortly after the shooting at Pier 14 after witnesses on the pier snapped his photo, which was quickly forwarded to officers investigating the killing.

In an ad released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, former Florida governor Jeb Bush endorses Arizona Republican Martha McSally for the U.S. House.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill on Friday accused Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach of “putting his finger on the scales” by disallowing Democratic Senate nominee Chad Taylor to withdraw from the ballot. McCaskill, an out-of-state Democrat, has come under scrutiny for a conversation she had with Taylor that shortly preceded his decision to attempt to drop out of the Kansas Senate race. Several reports have suggested that McCaskill urged Taylor to withdraw from the ballot, allowing Democrats to rally around independent Greg Orman to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. Orman has a lead over Roberts in a head-to-head race,...

In the nearly two weeks since South Tucson’s city council approved a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union over how its police department carries out SB 1070, officials from surrounding jurisdictions have pored over the terms of the deal. The agreement, which overhauled the department's immigration policy, has galvanized some Tucson-area elected officials to pursue procedures they believe better guard against prolonged detentions and racial profiling — two key concerns raised by critics of the law. “Now we have a case study, and we can compare notes,” said Regina Romero, a Tucson city councilwoman who has opposed the law...

Republicans are still apologizing to Hispanics for Pete Wilson's immigration policies. Mr. Wilson himself, however, offers no apologies... "We have to turn the page," says Simon campaign strategist Sal Russo.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal of a blocked provision of Arizona’s 2010 immigration enforcement law, dealing another blow to Gov. Jan Brewer in her effort to defend the law. The court declined to review the ruling that barred police from arresting people who harbor those living in the United States illegally. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked police from enforcing the prohibition, concluding last year that it was vague and trumped by federal law, which already forbids harboring people in the country unlawfully. …

The Republican Party has grown more conservative over the past couple of decades. But news commentators sometimes wrongly imply that GOP voters take an extremist position on every issue. As I described on Friday, for example, Jeb Bush’s support of Common Core educational standards isn’t likely to hurt him if he runs for president in 2016; the issue is neither all that relevant to most Republicans nor all that divisive. If candidates running to Bush’s right are looking for a wedge issue, they’ll probably have some better choices.

Way to go, Peach State! Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday signed S.B. 160 - a tough expansion of Georgia's H.B. 87, the Arizona-style law cracking down on illegal aliens, which passed in 2011. The La Raza lobby was left stunned and upset, believing Deal would bend to the prevailing GOP pressure for immigration appeasement in Washington, and veto it. They were sadly mistaken. Passed in the final hours of the General Assembly’s 40-day session - and despite fierce lobbying against it by ethnic intimidation groups, big business interests, and the ACLU - Senate Bill 160 was created to "fix" problems in licensing...

Above: Georgia's House passes the SB 160 crackdown on illegal aliens in the furious last half-hour of the 2013 session. - by John HillStand With ArizonaWebsite | Facebook | Twitter Way to go, Peach State! Georgia’s Legislature has approved a tough expansion of the state’s 2011 Arizona-style crackdown on illegal aliens, and it now awaits the Governor's signature (please contact him to do so - contact info below after the article). Passed in the final hours of the General Assembly’s 40-day session - and despite fierce lobbying against it by La Raza groups, the Chamber of Commerce, ACLU and...

SAN FRANCISCO - Gov. Jan Brewer is making a bid this week to salvage part of what's left of the law she signed in 2010 aimed at illegal immigration. Attorneys for the governor will argue Tuesday to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Arizona has a legal right to arrest and prosecute those who, while violating any other law, harbor or transport someone they know, or should know, is in this country illegally. They want the court to reverse a ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocking the state from enforcing the measure as an invalid intrusion...

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer — or at least her attorneys — will get a chance to argue that Arizona should be allowed to enforce a law aimed at those who harbor illegal immigrants. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled an April 2 hearing to decide whether to overturn a trial judge’s conclusion last year that the law, a provision of the controversial SB 1070 approved by lawmakers, is illegal. Brewer contends that U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton got it wrong. Brewer is trying to salvage some parts of the 2010 law that she signed in front...

Here they come again. California unions are once again meddling in Arizona politics on behalf of illegal aliens, and against the interests of their own American workers. The deceptively-named "Campaign For Arizona’s Future" - which was funded by the national mega-labor unions AFL-CIO and UNITE HERE is spending millions to try and defeat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The group, which calls its campaign "Adios Arpaio", is mostly comprised of the same Los Angeles-based activists which protested in 2010 after the passage of S.B. 1070. They claim to have registered over 36,000 - mostly Hispanics - in Maricopa County, AZ to...

The federal government is canceling a model program that gives local police the ability to check the immigration status of people they arrest in Prince William County, Va. And that has proponents of the policy, called 287(g), seeing red. “In the debate last night, President Obama said he wanted to focus in on illegals who are committing crimes,” Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and a key force in the county’s 2007 adoption of the 287(g) program, told Times247.com in an interview Wednesday. “Then why is he eliminating the very program that does that?”

PHOENIX (AP) — Several hundred activists and union officials have spread out across Latino neighborhoods in metropolitan Phoenix to register voters in an effort to prevent the re-election of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

The ABC News/Univision project continues to develop, and we are beginning to get a sense of the tone that is being set. The network, which for now is just a sub-site on ABCNews.com, is launching a new series called “Arpaio Watch,” which is dedicated to monitoring the policies of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the impact they have on the Latino community. “The goal of Arpaio Watch is to monitor the effects of Arpaio’s policies on Arizona immigrant communities, and to report from the ground up about how immigration raids, disproportionate police stops and a disconnect between residents and law...

Sheriff Joe Arpaio may not detain suspects based solely on a belief that they are in the country illegally, the 9th Circuit ruled. The federal appeals panel in San Francisco late Tuesday upheld a preliminary injunction in a class action over the sheriff's alleged pattern of racial profiling. Other issues in the action went to trial in Phoenix in late July. Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, David and Jessica Rodriguez, Manuel Nieto Jr., Velia Meraz and the organization Somos America sued Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's office over three traffic stops during a 2006 anti-illegal immigration sweep. The plaintiffs...