Think Progress

Arizona Republican National Committeeman tries to show solidarity with the ‘brown people’ in his city.

Arizona Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash recently called in to the radio show of right-wing host Jon Justice — who has been called the “Rush Limbaugh of Tucson” — to take issue with local Democratic Party chairman Jeff Rogers’ opposition to a city ballot initiative. Ash said that Rogers doesn’t understand levels of crime in the city. To show how aware he is personally, Ash recounted some of his conversations with the city’s “brown people”:

I listen to the event and I heard the argument, and what was really truly amazing to me, Jon, was the pomposity that Jeff Rogers displayed. He sits in his little house in midtown with his kids who go to school, with his little job, and his job as the Democrat county chairman, and he is blind to all of the crime that is going on in this city.

It’s maybe not happening in his little neighborhood, but you ask any of the brown people who live on the South Side, or the West Side, or the South Central side of Tuscon, and they will tell you, in no uncertain terms, the fear they have getting in their car, walking in the street, and sometimes just sitting in their house.

Listen here:

The Arizona blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion gives Ash the benefit of the doubt and says it might not have been blatant racism. However, the site says that Ash’s “sudden care for ‘brown people’ on the South Side” comes off as “good old fashioned patronizing and nothing more.” Huffington Post blogger Marlene Phillips also notes that crime statistics don’t support Ash’s claim that crime is higher in the city’s Hispanic neighborhoods. (HT: AMERICAblog)

Scalia says there’s nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent.

Almost two decades ago, Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Since then, seven of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, and some have even implicated Sylvester “Redd” Coles, a witness who testified that Davis was the shooter. In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

So in Justice Scalia’s world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die.  One wonders why we even bother to have a Constitution.

Fox News legal analyst sides with Professor Gates.

On Monday, Fox News Legal Analyst and former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano told to the conservative network’s audience that police broke the law when they arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct during a conflict with police on his own property, but as Napolitano explained, the law only “allows an arrest for being disorderly if you are in public. … So if Professor Gates was arrested because of the words he used to police inside his house, on the front porch or on the front lawn, it was an improper arrest.” Napolitano added that police violated Gates’ Fourth Amendment rights the minute they entered his home without his permission:

The law says, unless [a police officer] witnesses a felony…or unless he has a piece of paper from a judge—a search warrant or an arrest warrant—saying “you can go in that house,” he can’t go in the house. So when Professor Gates said “no you can’t come in,” and the police went in anyway [the police] violated the federal Constitution.

Watch:

Ever since President Obama criticized Gates’ arresting officer — who happens to be white — for mishandling this arrest, the right wing has ramped up its racially charged rhetoric against the President, with Fox’s Glenn Beck claiming that Obama’s statement somehow proves that the President “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” If Beck actually bothered to watch his own network’s legal analysis, he’d know that this attack doesn’t hold water.

Right-wing group tries to ‘connect the dots’ between ‘gay marriage and mass murders.’

In recent days, there has been no shortage of fear-mongering about same-sex marriage. Right-wing groups have said that marriage equality removes the “cornerstone of society” and may “destroy…democracy.” Morality in Media President Bob Peters goes even further today, linking same-sex marriage to the recent tragic uptick in mass murders:

This secular value system is also reflected in the ’sexual revolution,’ which is the driving force behind the push for ‘gay marriage;’ and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.

It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

Warren Throckmorton writes that using the “awful situation in [Binghamton] New York to bash gays takes it to a new level of immorality in media.” David Corn has more here on Peters. (HT: Box Turtle Bulletin)

Freedom’s Watch attacks Democratic Senate candidate whose daughter was kidnapped as being soft on crime.

Yesterday, the struggling Freedom’s Watch released an attack ad against Georgia’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin, saying that he “failed to look out for Georgia’s families.” “First he actually helped block stiffer penalties for drunk drivers,” warns the voice in the ad, which echoes previous GOP ads. “And then, Martin voted against tougher sentences for domestic abuse.” Watch it:

Martin’s daughter was kidnapped when she was eight years old. In a new ad, he states, “You never forget the horror of coming face-to-face with violent crime. … I never forgot the way she trembled when she faced her kidnapper in court. That’s why I fought so hard to crack down on violent crime.” Watch it:

In fact, Martin’s tough-on-crime record has been praised by people such as former senator Zell Miller, who is now backing Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) in the state’s tough run-off election. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/21/97]