Your Papers, Please, Phoenix and Flagstaff, Part 6

Eugene Robinson with the column du jour on Arizona, Police State:

Arizona's draconian new immigration law is an abomination -- racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust. About the only hopeful thing that can be said is that the legislation, which Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Friday, goes so outrageously far that it may well be unconstitutional.

Brewer, who caved to xenophobic pressures that previous governors had the backbone to resist, should be ashamed of herself. The law requires police to question anyone they "reasonably suspect" of being an undocumented immigrant -- a mandate for racial profiling on a massive scale. Legal immigrants will be required to carry papers proving that they have a right to be in the United States. Those without documentation can be charged with the crime of trespassing and jailed for up to six months.

Activists for Latino and immigrant rights -- and supporters of sane governance -- held weekend rallies denouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn't the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim -- and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state -- would send the Tea Partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?

Absolutely.  This law violates every argument the Tea Party has brought up against Obama:  it's more government, it's intrusive on a personal scale, it's reactionary, it's unconstitutional, it's fascist, it's an increase in spending, and it's immoral.

In fact, any Tea Party member who doesn't come out fully against this measure is a hypocrite of the worst sort.  The fact that the Tea Party supports this measure just proves basically everything I've been saying about them from the beginning:  they're a bunch of loudmouthed bigots who are so angry that the rest of America is passing them by that they are furious.  It's just raw anger that's developed into full-blown racism and bigotry and hatred.

This law is everything you feared in the Democrats doing and everything you've accused Barack Obama of doing.  And you sit there silently or worse, applaud the measure?  At best you're Marco Rubio, who today said there were concerns about the law bu stopped short of supporting or condemning it.  At worst, you're Byron York, who says:

The bottom line is, it's a good law, sensibly written and rigorously focused -- no matter what the critics say.

The bottom line is folks like Byron York have no problem when Republicans enshrine unconstitutional bigotry into law, and then call Obama a fascist.