There's also the hypocrisy of good old Chuck Grassley, who does not want terrorists mirandized and also believes that it violates the 2nd Amendment if folks on the FBI watch list are banned from buying weapons. Gotta protect the 2nd, but fuck the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th.

Maybe we need a new thread.

Oh, FYI, the Los Suns uniforms are not new; the team has worn them before. They were worn for the occasion yesterday, but they were not created for the occasion yesterday. I noticed that about 98% of the mentions that I've seen didn't bother pointing this out.

I thought someone posted the article where it mentioned that the uniforms were used on Latino Day.

You're right, someone did. I had noticed that most articles and news reports were implying that the jerseys were a new idea, and wanted to clear that up :)

The point IS that they wore the uniforms with a purpose last night. The date of design is to ME irrelevant. It was the purpose that made it important.

I don't feel that there's a need to be disillusioned or think that this becomes less relevant. It was significant, it huge that the team did this, and it was huge that the commissioner approved. All I was doing was presenting the facts. Having as much information as possible should be important (if for no other reason than to avoid the sudden humiliation of announcing to a group of folks that the Suns made these great uniforms to protest only to have some NBA fan call "bullshit" to your face). :readfineprint:

Hey. Good point. I'm all about having all the facts. :seesaw:

I'm really confused, as nothing that I posted referenced you or your words. I clearly stated that most of the media reports that I had seen neglected to mention that these uniforms already existed. If your offended or something, please don't be; it really wasn't about you.

http://presente.org/sticker/az?ak_uid=72.35028.3zfWY8

--link to free sticker or more with donation and good site

he really is not being very consistent is he?

if you are on the FBI list you should not be read your rights, but you should be able to get a gun. makes no sense.

UGH

This thread derail is so much of a derail that it's a "the train is in the next county somewhere hanging from a tree" derail, but this is the only thread I'm posting in lately and I simply had to share.

linklyloo

Wanted to post this following email from a social work professor in Arizona. I was given a green light to share it in good company and thought the accounting here of what is happening was important to share, as this is not what is being shown on any of my local news channels.

Anyway, here is the email:
Greetings everyone,
I hope all of you are healthy, happy and productive in whatever ways you have chosen. It would be a treat to hear from any of you who find time enough to send an email. Of course, I haven't been communicating with you either, but am now moved to do so by the urgency of what is happening here in Arizona . I believe the word is out nation-wide that our state legislature produced the most racist piece of legislation since those brought down by the civil rights movement. SB 1070 allows local police and sheriffs in AZ to apprehend anyone they have reason to suspect is in the US without documentation. In AZ that is anybody who "looks Mexican" or if they are feeling particularly motivated, anyone whose skin is not obviously white! Never mind that this is land taken from Mexico with assurance that the Mexican families living here were made full US citizens, that the majority of Latinos living here are citizens, that our Latino population has much deeper roots here than Anglos, that Mexican families live on both sides of the border, that our Native American population--with the deepest roots here--also get swept up in this "ethnic cleansing" effort. Truly, it is hard to believe what I see happening around me!

In addition to the engagement of local law enforcement officers in this madness, both the Border Patrol and ICE are acting with impunity. Two weeks ago ICE brought in an additional 200 agents to conduct a sweep of an area on Tucson . They blocked off streets in the Latino section of the city and raided the commercial shuttle companies that transport people between Tucson and Phoenix , and between Tucson and Nogales . The majority of their passengers are Latino since families are spread among these three cities. Owners and drivers were arrested as "smugglers" basically, because they transport people without regard to their legal status. (Of course, they have no legal right to ask their customers status!) This part of the ICE action got positive media coverage as a significant arrest of smugglers. What the media did not say was that the ICE agents also invaded some apartment buildings, going door to door, banging on the doors and shouting at occupants to open up. What else was not reported was that these ICE agents were MASKED AND FULLY ARMED WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. Clearly, it was an effort aimed at terrorizing the Latino community, and believe me, it was successful! This is only one event that may give you a sense of the fact that we are living in a militarized zone down here.

I'm telling you this, because I know you to be thoughtful, concerned citizens, and people nationwide need to know what is happening. In fact, you may have realized that something of the same nature is happening, hopefully in a smaller way, in your own communities. Down in Nogales , Mexico , where we are trying to help people who have been deported from the US , we are meeting people who have been picked up and deported from all parts of the country. For example, last week I was talking with a man deported from Pensacola , Florida . He was preparing to cross our desert and some way get back home because "My wife and 3 kids--my only family--are in Pensacola ." (All his family members are US citizens.) We hear this over and over again, every day, from people deported from every state.

Please, talk to your friends and neighbors about what is happening in our country. It would be great if you would express concern in letters to your government representatives and letters to the editor of your local papers. Please urge the federal government to overturn SB 1070 in AZ as it did the racist laws in the South during the civil rights movement.

Ok folks, I'm sorry to load this on you, but I needed to write it! I hope you understand that you are the recipients because I know what good folks you are. Again, I want you to know I still think about all of you often and am grateful for our connection. However, for the moment---til we get SB 1070 repealed, I have to urge everyone to BOYCOTT ARIZONA !

My Alot is cuter than you're Alot... ( yes on purpose.. )

I like you Alot :)

Yeah. So thanks alot!

Austin should have Alot Ranches......You know....to keep it weird alot......

:cowboy:

Irregardless, I dig you ...

Well,after reading a few more of these posts,I am still not convinced why I should boycott Arizona.I believe that all immigrants should be welcome here in America,after all,this is a land built on people from many countries.You can't deny that we are living in a dangerous world.America has rules and laws,I support that.When I was born I was documented and given a birth certificate and a social security number.I also had just enough native American blood in me to be issued a card stating that I am a bona fide member of a federally recognized tribe.All those documents have helped me in some way or another,but most importantly it has proven my citizenship,and that I can be 'tracked' so to speak,and frankly I'm fine with that.I'm a good productive person in this society that doesn't commit crimes for a living.I'm simply saying here that by supporting Arizona's new law that if I was given 'papers' to live in this country,why shouldn't others from different countries be expected to?.We now know that this bill was drawn up by a racist,that alone will probably get it struck down by the supreme court.But I don't see it as being a racist law.If the law is killed,I hope something similar is written up so that it won't be seen as a law that profiles people..but that could be a real challenge.

Someone reported my posts as being racist,I am sorry you felt that way.My opinion is here because it should be counted,like yours.If my opinion is different than yours,then lets agree to disagree.But don't call me something that is untrue..or try to get me banned for typing my thoughts on this serious subject.When you do that I feel like you're trying to censor me.

I'm here trying to figure it all out myself.If we work together we might get something done to protect our borders.

Peace y'all,not war.

Bronson, if you were stopped by a cop every time you drove your car and asked to produce papers, or a cop came to your door twice a week under the premise of you having some minor lawn violation and asked you to produce papers, or a cop wandered over in the middle of a romantic dinner and asked you to produce papers, would you still be "fine with that"? If you walked down the block to grab a soda from the local store and forgot your papers and ended up in jail or fined because you forgot your papers, would you still be "fine with that"? I'm just trying to gauge where you stand on pesky little things like civil liberties and such.

From people who want to mow our lawns and wash our dishes and harvest our food and clean our hotel rooms, perhaps?

It's not 'borders", it's "border". Just one. Just the one to the south. No one's pitching a fit about closing the border to the north, or building ten foot sea walls along the coasts. There's only one border that they seem to be concerned about.

i could give a shit about the border, how do we protect the mexicans?

I wouldn't like it,but I know my civil rights and do get very loud in public if my rights are violated in anyway or form in America..my mamma taught me to be like that.


Serious question for you MsDemeanor,my posts are talking about protecting American borders.What do you suppose we do about illegals coming across into America and not getting themselves documented?.That's not too much to ask in my opinion.I mean,when I travel over to other countries I need to carry my 'papers' and show them on demand.When that happens,I don't feel like my civil liberties have been taken away.

Do you suppose we do nothing,like maybe if we ignore all the drug killings,and rapes,kidnappings taking place it will just fix itself..go away perhaps.No,I feel we need to do something about it.

Passing this law was a good start.

My eyes are tired,I am going to bed now y'all.

Um, he was a US citizen.

My responses in red.

that's probably the understatement of the century.

please click the link to read the article (it's good stuff!!)...

http://www.azcentral.com/community/p...cafe-chef.html

Barrio Cafe chef speaks her mind about Arizona's new immigration law

by Michael Kiefer - May. 8, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Silvana Salcido Esparza is nationally known for the food she serves at Barrio Cafe in Phoenix. She was a 2010 finalist for best Southwestern chef in the coveted James Beard Foundation Awards, the Oscars of food.

But last week, she was pushing a Mexican ice-cream cart by the state Capitol during a protest against Senate Bill 1070, the new immigration law that requires police to ask for proof of citizenship if they suspect someone is in the country illegally...

Bronson:

Have you ever had a gun pulled on you by a police officer for being in the wrong neighborhood? I have. Have you ever had a cop get behind you on a surface street and then follow you for five miles even though you were obeying every traffic law and the only thing that might have gotten his notice is that you are brown-skinned with dreadlocks and driving a luxury car? I have. If you have been tailed, were you afraid--I don't mean in the "oh crap, he's going to give me a ticket" sense but in the "oh shit, let me get on the phone so at least if he pulls me over and this goes badly, there's a recording of the incident".

You are a VISITOR in that country. We're talking about American citizens being detained and asked to show their papers. I'm sorry to tell you this, Bronson, but my wife--who is white, hazel eyed with red-hair--being stopped by the police is a completely different experience than me being stopped by the police. She is going to be treated as "Ma'am" while I'll be treated as "criminal until proven otherwise". That's just the reality of life in America for brown-skinned people. While you may be sanguine about some American citizen being stopped because she happens to share a phenotypic trait with someone from Mexico, that doesn't mean that we *should* be sanguine about that.

Straw man argument. Unless I was mistaken, murder, rape and kidnapping are *already* against the law in Arizona and if they are not, Federal law prohibits all of those and supercedes Arizona law. No one is saying that those crimes should not be prosecuted, but that's not what this law is about. It is about targeting a group of people who all share a particular phenotype.

I'm curious if you can answer this question for me. How is that an officer of the law is supposed to be able to tell, by looking at someone, whether or not his person's family was in Arizona for longer than whites knew that this continent existed (there's been human habitation in Arizona since *at least* 9000 BCE) and someone who is from ten miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border and who just got here last Wednesday? That's the concern. The population of the border area--the *indigenous* population--will look very similar because there's not enough of a gap for the two gene pools to have diverged. Given this reality, how do you propose the police in Arizona discern the American citizens (the descendants of the people who came across the land bridge 13K years ago, settled in Arizona around 9K years ago and have stayed put) and those who are descended from the same stock but kept going south into what became Mexico?

Cheers
Aj

The fact that you 'get loud' if your civil rights are violated tells me that, despite your Native American card you are not treated--on a day-to-day basis--as anything other than white in this society. Why do I know that? Let's compare three circumstances---your hypothetical having your civil rights violated, my *actually* having my civil rights violated and a prominent non-white person having HIS civil rights violated.

So you would 'get very loud' in public.

Now, I was standing on the lawn of my parents house, getting ready to do my paper route--as wholesome a bit of Americana as you can imagine in the early 80's--when a cop pulled his weapon on me and demanded to see my identification to establish "what I was doing in this neighborhood". We'd lived in that neighborhood for 14 years at that point. It was the only *other* house I'd lived in. The only reason it didn't go really hard on me (I didn't have an ID on me because I was 15 and my ID consisted of a bus pass, a library card and a student ID card--all upstairs) was that I was able to name drop a superior court judges' name because of the prominence of my family in Sacramento.

Henry Louis Gates was *in his own home*, was insulted by a police officer demanding that he provide some proof that this was his own home and he got arrested!

Now, one of these incidents is not like the other. One of these incidents isn't the same. What do you think the difference could be? When I have to talk to the police I don't 'get loud'. No matter *how* scared I am, I stay calm, my tone of voice is measured, reassuring the officer that I am not getting angry no matter how pissed off I am, I keep my hands in plain view and restrain my tendency to gesticulate when I talk. Why? Because any other behavior is a fantastic way of, if I’m lucky, spending the night in jail and if I'm not lucky being late--as in the late Adrienne Davis.

Now, this might come as a surprise to you but the experience of Hispanics with the police is closer to my or Skip Gates experience than it is to yours or my wife's experience.

The difference...
 

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/articl...cid=webmaildl1

The video shows a group of officers standing around three men who are lying on the ground. Seattle Police Detective Shandy Cobane shouts, "I'm going to beat the [expletive] Mexican [expletive] out of you homey! You feel me?"


Pretty much the video and article speak for themselves. This was in Seattle--liberal, rainy, Seattle 1000 miles from the border. Please note that the person who was beat wasn't armed, he wasn't even handcuffed and he wasn't arrested.

Oh, perfect border security is easy enough. Once we achieved it we wouldn't be recognizable as the same nation, but achieving perfect border security is simple.

Step 1) Build a large wall along the border.

Step 2) Put a mine field on both sides of the wall.

Step 3) Every 200 yards or so, put a weapons system based on the Phalanx ship-defense system (rotary cannon, auto-firing) using an FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) targeting system tuned to shoot at anything with a heat signature larger than, say, a coyote. To be 'humane' have warning signs in several languages 1000 feet from the wall warning that anything trespassing into this are will be shot by an automatic system. Lights and sirens here might help.

Step 4) Have routine, 24 hour, aerial surveillance using either predator drones or satellites (probably the former, the physics of doing the latter in a very low orbit (which is what you would want for this kind of application) ). The drones could be armed or unarmed, take your pick.

There you go, perfect border security and defense in depth. Anything that makes it through all the layers is an army.

We can already control the ports of entry so that's not the problem. You take the ports of entry down to a very small number (no more than half a dozen) and there you have it. You have achieved a level of border security that would be the envy of the East German Stasi. Congrats!

Now, who or what you'll blame when there are still murders, still theft, still drug trafficking in Arizona after we have achieved perfect border security I don't know.

more from phoenix new times:
 

more from phoenix:

link: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2010-...or-jan-brewer/

excerpt from:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Reign of Terror Becomes State Policy, Thanks to State Senator Russell Pearce and Governor Jan Brewer

...We know precisely what the impact of Senate Bill 1070 will be upon the streets of Arizona because of a little-noticed settlement in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

In 2001, Flagstaff attorney Lee Brooke Phillips and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sued the state, charging that the Department of Public Safety — the highway patrol — engaged in rampant racial profiling.

John Lamberth, a Temple University professor with expertise in racial-profiling research, produced data in 2000 that showed African Americans made up fewer than 3 percent of traffic offenders but 43 percent of all stops by the DPS.

Based upon this study, the court ordered the highway patrol to turn over all data on traffic stops in northern Arizona for a one-year period.

What happened next made seasoned observers blink.

Instead of turning over records, records were destroyed.

"Look, the judge ordered the state to turn over a year's worth of records, and the state's prosecutor's office refused to turn them over," noted Phillips in an interview at the time with an advocacy group. "We learned they weren't turning them over because half of them have been destroyed."

Arnold vs. Department of Public Safety reached a historic settlement in 2006 with a federal court's approval.

The settlement, among other provisions, required the DPS to collect information on all traffic stops between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007.

Of the 200,000 traffic stops made on Arizona's interstates during this period, 13,271 ended with a vehicle search.

According to the study: "On average, Native Americans stopped by DPS officers were 3.25 times more likely to be searched than whites stopped by DPS officers. African Americans and Hispanics were 2.5 times more likely than whites to be searched by the DPS...

more from the same article:

"Higher search rates for minorities were not justified by higher rates of transporting contraband. In fact, on average, whites were more likely to be carrying contraband than Native Americans, Middle Easterners, Hispanics, and Asians on all major Arizona highways. African Americans were at least twice as likely as whites to be searched on all six interstate segments, despite the fact that the rate of contraband seizures for African Americans and whites was similar."