Contempt

So, if you are reading this blog there is virtually no chance that you are not aware of the Supreme Court decision yesterday in Arizona v. U.S., overturning sections 3, 5(C), and 6 of Arizona SB 1070, the draconian anti-immigrant law that Governor Jan Brewer signed back in April, 2010. My interest today is not so much in amusing effort of both sides to paint the decision as a victory, nor in Scalia's ass-hat dissent (he accused the President of refusing to enforce the nation's immigration laws, a charge which centers on the President's recent announcement that he will be exercising "deferred action" on certain classes of immigrant, an authority the executive branch has lawfully possessed since at least 2003).

No, I am interested in the reaction of everyone's favorite wild west Sheriff, Mr. Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona:

And, by the way, I'm not stopping anything. I'm going to continue to enforce those state laws, regardless of what the federal government is trying to put pressure on me to satisfy all these activists, which, by the way, are in front of my building right now. Three-and-a-half years, they've been in front of my building.

So, I'm not going to bend to the federal government, especially when we still have state laws to enforce.

No, Joe, you don't still have state laws to enforce. Your state laws are preempted by federal statute, which makes sense when you think about it. You can't have every jackass Sheriff in the South running around deciding who will be eligible for citizenship and who will be shipped back to Me-hi-co. We're not talking about "residency" here, the state version of the same. Citizenship, the path to it, the requirements for it, and the shades of gray in between a flag-waving patriot and an illegal alien are the province of the nation as a whole, and by extension their elected representatives. To the extent that the Obama administration is "failing" to enforce immigration laws, they are doing so lawfully, with the discretionary power given to them by the legislative branch.

My real interest here is the idea that this man believes that he can continue to enforce a law vacated by the highest court in the land with impunity. This is an elected official already being sued by the Justice Department for flagrant civil rights violations that range from tackling, cuffing, and detaining a woman for a a malfunctioning license plate light, all the way to failing to investigate over 400 sex crimes due to the prioritization of immigration enforcement over, you know, crime.

This is Dick Cheney all over again. I am always wary of using law enforcement to arrest political figures for their role in crimes committed while pursuant to their duties in office, so long as those crimes aren't related to corruption or bribery. This sort of thing is all too often used to settle scores, rather than seek justice. I don't want to go down the slippery slope to criminalizing policy differences. But in some cases, I think we may be left with no choice but to send in the U.S. Marshall Service to kick down doors and handcuff people.

Dick Cheney and his cohorts were clearly guilty of both violations of international and domestic law, and have in fact been convicted in absentia of the latter. Joe Arpaio, should he choose to put his money where his mouth is, will be in clear violation of the highest court in the land. At some point, these guys have to be treated like the common criminals they are, or they will keep raising the bar for what it takes to be smacked down hard. Seriously, where does it end?