Well, I see from this morning’s Arizona Republic that the East Valley’s favorite neocon, state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-right of Attila the Hun) isn’t resting on his laurels. After successfully enacting Senate Bill 1070, that forward-thinking new state law that demonizes anyone with brown skin as a potential deportation target and incidentally creating a bonanza for the private prison industry, Pearce has now set his sights on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that any person born in the United States is an American and a citizen of the state of birth.
Joining our hero in this important cause is a group called “State Legislators for Legal Immigration”, ostensibly formed to introduce coordinated legislation in different states that would effectively nullify the Fourteenth and seek to deny babies born of illegal immigrants on American soil automatic citizenship, which has been part of the Constitution since 1868 and has been affirmed in several court decisions over the years. Pearce didn’t release any details about such a bill in his stand-up before the media, saying that the details were still being “fine-tuned”.
This is the latest salvo in Pearce’s war on immigrants, joined by many other like-minded right wing crazies. Supposedly, the so-called “anchor babies” are swamping American society, overcrowding our emergency rooms, swelling schoolrooms, and causing every societal ill from glaucoma to housemaid’s knee. The trouble, of course, is that there are no reliable statistics available to give us an actual idea of how many of these kids there are. This fact is conveniently overlooked by the proponents of this ill-advised junk, who are using it as the latest weapon against those who aren’t “like us” (white, male, old, and stupid). While we should be concerned about the increasing power of corporations over our rights, political expression, and our democracy itself, these folks insist on diverting our attention from the obvious and setting us against each other.
Here’s a little Civics 101 lesson, guys: If you object to an aspect of the Constitution, there’s a simple tool to “correct” it. It’s called the amendment process. This is accomplished in one of two ways. The first, the only one used in history, is for both houses of the Congress to pass an amendment by a two-thirds majority; the bill is then sent to the states for ratification, usually with a time limit.
The second method, never used thus far, is for two-thirds of the state legislatures to call a Constitutional convention, which would meet to propose one or more amendments, then sent to each state legislature for ratification; three-fourths of the states would have to ratify the amendments in order for them to take affect.
So why aren’t these patriots simply proposing amending the nation’s founding document to correct this horrible wrong? Simple. It takes too long. Certainly, in order for this crowd to reap the rewards of again charging up the “underinformed” voter and getting their faces all over Fox “News”, they need, swift, decisive action now, hopefully before the next election cycle. Doesn’t matter that any such legislation will ultimately die in the Federal court system as unconstitutional (see SB 1070, so far). The point is to keep ramping up the volume to the gullible folks who, in a time of economic turmoil, need to blame someone for the mess this country’s in.
In a political era unmatched in history for irony, I find the conservative “defense” of the Constitution, which they trumpet at every turn, laughable. Sure, they’re all for the Constitution—until they’re against it. Sorry, folks, it’s all or nothing. If you don’t like it, change it.
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