Your Papers, Please, Phoenix and Flagstaff, Part 7

The argument that Arizona's immigration law is constitutional is that the law forbids officers from stopping people based on race alone, and that doing so is against the law itself.

Somebody might want to tell Sheriff Joe Arpaio that.  Steven D at Booman Tribune:

In Maricopa County, masked deputies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio are conducting massive sweeps of the streets in search of illegal aliens. That's right, the tactics of used by members of death squads in Latin America and in Iraq, are being employed to terrorize Hispanic-Americans who happen to live or pass through Sheriff Joe's jurisdiction for the crime of not looking white enough:

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is not waiting for the controversial law SB 1070 to take affect and so, he continues with police neighborhood sweeps under the guise of crime sweeps. This time, he will be carrying out his 15th sweep with over 150 deputies and Posse volunteers. No doubt, Arizona has become a police state where entire neighborhoods are corralled and its inhabitants are subject to police intrusion and arrest.

Here's more from a recommended diary at Daily Kos which describes the actions of Sheriff Joe and his posse in further detail:

William Crum Green Congressional candidate in Arizona spotted men dressed in black with their faces covered. Driving black unmarked vehicles as some other vehicles were being towed away. They stopped a hispanic male driving a white pick up truck, after 22 min a second car pulled up (four officers), two min after that another car now 5 officers on the one male and they just put the cuffs on him. [...] Source tells me that Arpaio gave post-sweep interview in which he stated that one reasonable suspicion is "if they speak Spanish."

This is the type of action one sees in police states, in right wing dictatorships, in the mythical nation of Oceania of George Orwell's 1984. However, in those countries ordinary citizens had no guns, no weapons with which to oppose the tyrannical regimes oppressing them. That is not the case in Arizona. 

The rest of Steven D's case as to why and how Latinos in Arizona are eventually going to actually do what the Tea Party loudmouths have only been talking about up until now, that is take up arms against a fascist police state, is frightening.  Absolutely read it.

Arpaio knows exactly what he's doing however.  He's trying to make the case that an armed, military response on our borders is needed -- and that an armed military response inside the United States is needed as well -- to purge undesirables from America.  Best way to do that?  Foment a riot by sweeping through and making mass arrests.

Somebody's going to eventually fight back.  Joe Arpaio is counting on it.  And I'm betting a whole lot of other wingers are too.  Unlike their Teabagger fantasies, Arpaio and his jackbooted goon squad really are coming to round up people.  So when the lid finally blows on this little steam boiler, it's going to become a national catastrophe that will draw a brutal armed response in turn.

Democrats don't have a choice but to work out a national reform law and soon.