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Foxnews
An Arizona bill that would impose some of the toughest immigration laws in the country is generating a storm of controversy nationwide as it tracks toward the governor's desk.
The Arizona Senate voted Monday to approve the final version of the bill, which was voted up on a party-line vote by the state House last Tuesday. If it's signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, it would give police in the state broad new powers to arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally.
The legislation
has attracted widespread attention, with some accusing the state of sanctioning a racial profiling program that flies in the face of residents' civil rights.
Most recently, the head of the nation's largest archdiocese said the bill would encourage "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques."
Cardinal Roger Mahony, who heads the Los Angeles archdiocese, made the comments in his blog Sunday, a day before the Arizona Legislature passed the bill.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., also led a press conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to denounce the proposal and call on the federal government
to put pressure on Arizona officials not to enforce it.
"The president needs to say on immigration laws, the Constitution is clear we preempt all state laws," he said.
The bill contains several provisions. Among them, it would create a new state misdemeanor crime for failing to carry alien registration documents; allow officers to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving their legal residence; allow people to sue if they feel a government agency has adopted a policy that hinders immigration enforcement; prohibit people from blocking traffic when they seek or offer day labor services on street corners; and make it illegal for people to knowingly transport illegal immigrants.
But in the absence of a federal immigration overhaul, some are coming down in support of the proposal.
Republican Sen. John McCain, who is in a tight race against primary challenger J.D. Hayworth in Arizona, has come out in favor of the bill, despite co-authoring a bill four years ago with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy that was derided by some as amnesty.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, who is sponsoring the measure, dismissed claims that the bill would lead to arbitrary profiling and said the bill is needed to help Arizona deal with rampant crime. He cited the recent killing of local rancher Robert Krentz by a suspected illegal immigrant.
"When do we stand up for Americans and America? Enough is enough," he told Fox News on Tuesday. "Arizona has become ground zero. We're number two in the world in kidnapping. ... We're not taking it anymore. We're going to enforce our laws, with compassion."
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Foxnews
Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the specter of domestic terrorism has returned to haunt the Obama administration, with a warning from the FBI that “home-grown and lone-wolf extremists” now represent as serious a threat as Al Qaeda and its affiliates, The Times reported on Saturday.
The warning, from the FBI Director, Robert Mueller, came as the former President Clinton drew parallels between the Oklahoma City tragedy and a recent upsurge in anti-government rhetoric, while American television audiences heard Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, describe the “absolute rage” that drove him to plan an attack that killed 168 men, women and children.
An FBI spokesman said Friday that Mueller was referring to right-wing extremist groups and anti-government militias, as well as American Islamists, in his testimony to the Senate committee that must approve the FBI’s $8.3 billion budget.
Last month federal agents arrested nine members of a Christian militia based in Michigan, calling itself the Hutaree. They have been charged with plotting to murder local police with a stash of guns, knives and grenades.
Since the passage of President Obama’s health reforms, the FBI has also made arrests in Seattle and San Francisco after death threats were sent to Democratic senators.
“It’s one thing to express dissatisfaction with the Government but once you cross the line with a violent threat, that’s a violation that we take extremely seriously,” Bill Carter, the bureau’s spokesman, said.
The Oklahoma bombing was followed by an exhaustive civilian trial in which McVeigh became a hate figure to most but a hero to some members of the survivalist fringe on which he was radicalized.
He was executed in 2001, but not before granting 45 hours of death-row interviews to the authors of a book, American Terrorist, whose tapes will be broadcast for the first time on Monday.
McVeigh never confessed to the bombing in court but he appears to do so on the tapes.
“I feel no shame for it,” he says. “This was something that I saw as a larger good, and I know that, as I analyzed the history of not just the U.S., but all nations throughout the history of mankind. People have killed for what they believed was the greater good, and it’s accepted. Sometimes killing is accepted.”
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NY Times
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. insisted on Wednesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his accused Sept. 11 co-conspirators may yet face trial in a federal court in the Southern District of New York, if not in lower Manhattan.
A venue in New York is “not off the table,” he said, and the Obama administration may make a decision “in a number of weeks.”
Still, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Holder said that the administration was taking “into consideration the concerns that have been raised by local officials, and by the community in New York City,” about the cost and disruptiveness of security arrangements that would be needed if the case were to be prosecuted in a Manhattan courtroom. And he did not rule out moving the case to a military commission.
“The Southern District of New York, for instance, is a much larger place than simply Manhattan,” Mr. Holder said. “There’s also the possibility of trying the case in other venues beyond New York.”
Mr. Holder’s remarks drew criticism from the ranking Republican on the panel, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who said, “I don’t think the people of New York want this trial anywhere in their state or their city, or the Southern District.” Mr. Sessions argued that the case should be tried before a military commission rather than a civilian court.
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, told Mr. Holder that there was an “overwhelming consensus” in New York that the trial “should not be held there.” Mr. Schumer later released a statement saying: “We know the administration is not going to hold the trial in New York. They should just say it already.”
Mr. Holder said last November that he had decided to hold the Sept. 11 trial at the federal courthouse in Manhattan. But two months later, the White House pulled that decision back for reconsideration after Mayor Michael Bloomberg reversed his prior support for holding the trial in the city, citing the cost and disruptiveness of the necessary security.
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