Arrest

Oil booms are seen offshore as Brown pelicans nest on Breton Island off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Wildlife in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, created by Theodore Roosevelt, are vulnerable to the oil spill resulting from the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last week. See the National Audubon Society’s website for further information    Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

The Brown Pelicans, state bird of Louisiana, should just be arrested and deported. What are we waiting for?  Get them OFF the barrier islands, off the wetlands and away….  Surely they are illegal in some way?  Broke some law?

Here is a tidy tidbit…

Oh woe is us! I am sure Obby and Holder meant to find this dangling participle of a memo, on that big table. You know that table, the one that has nothing on it…. it was declared free of encumbrances… nothing on it. ”OFF THE TABLE”… and so on.

Love the name attached to the 2002 memo:   BYBEE.

Of course deportations have been up, a full 5%, under Obby. And that compares to W, The Deservedly Hated One.

In the legal battle over Arizona’s new immigration law, an ironic subtext has emerged: whether a Bush-era legal opinion complicates a potential Obama administration lawsuit against Arizona.

The document, written in 2002 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that state police officers have “inherent power” to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law. It was issued by Jay S. Bybee, who also helped write controversial memos from the same era that sanctioned harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects.

The author of the Arizona law — which has drawn strong opposition from top Obama administration officials — has cited the authority granted in the 2002 memo as a basis for the legislation. The Obama administration has not withdrawn the memo, and some backers of the Arizona law said Monday that because it remains in place, a Justice Department lawsuit against Arizona would be awkward at best.

“The Justice Department’s official position as of now is that local law enforcement has the inherent authority to enforce federal immigration law,” said Robert Driscoll, a former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official in the George W. Bush administration who represents an Arizona sheriff known for aggressive immigration enforcement. “How can you blame someone for exercising authority that the department says they have?”

The Arizona law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer (R) last month, makes the “willful failure” to carry immigration documents a crime and empowers police to question anyone if authorities have a “reasonable suspicion” the person is an illegal immigrant. It has drawn words of condemnation from President Obama and intense opposition from civil rights groups, who on Monday filed what they said was the fifth federal lawsuit over the legislation.

An ACLU attorney, in the Wapo piece, murmurs sweet nothings… the AZ law goes way beyond the memo… memos haven’t the weight of law… and so on.  But the anonymous, third party even! quotes attributed to the Justice Dept in the article, ring false.  They are working so hard!  Doing what?  Considering their options.

Don’t sweat too hard boys.  No anguished fretting!

The Right is so good at knowing the loopholes, sniffing them out, planting them, banking them for a rainy day…  and the Dems are so good at helping the Righties thru the big fat hanging holes.

Handmaidens, forever.  I guess it’s a job.

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