Last night, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff (R) told On the Record host Greta Van Susteren that though he shares Arizona’s frustration with the broken immigration system, he does not support the state’s new immigration law, SB-1070. Shurtleff echoed many of the arguments often made by police chiefs who oppose SB-1070 on the basis that it will make communities less safe by using scarce resources to pursue people who aren’t a threat to public safety and hurt local law enforcement’s relationships with immigrant communities:

And as the chief law enforcement official in the state of Utah, and speaking on behalf of most law enforcement officers, we don’t want to be put in the position of doing the job for the feds. But we do have to have a role in security and public safety. [...] And quite frankly, we need the cooperation of other undocumented aliens as confidential informants to work with us so that we can get rid of the worst of the worst. And something like Arizona makes it more difficult for us to do that job. So that’s the security part of this issue.

Watch it:

While many police chiefs and local citizens support his position, Shurtleff is largely bucking a large segment of the Republican party. State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom (R-UT) is currently drafting a bill for the 2011 Utah legislative session that’s modeled after Arizona’s. “It is imperative that we pass similar legislation here in Utah,” Sandstrom said. “In the past, when we’ve seen tougher legislation in Arizona … a lot of illegal immigrants just move here.” Sandstrom plans on moving ahead with the legislation, despite the federal lawsuit that is currently challenging SB-1070. Utah is also the state where citizen vigilantes sent a witch-hunt list of 1,300 suspected undocumented immigrants, including social security numbers and pregnancy due dates to state authorities.

However, Shurtleff has been seeking the support of a powerful potential ally: the Mormon Church. While many leaders of other faiths have come out against the Arizona law, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has remained relatively neutral. “I think that would help stop an Arizona style law here, if they would definitely come out against the Arizona style law,” said Shurtleff in a separate interview. It appears fellow Mormon lawmakers have accused Shurtleff of defying his faith by standing against the Arizona law. “They consistently get on me saying if I’m not out there rounding up every illegal alien in the state, then I’m not obeying my own article of faith,” said Shurtleff.

Sandstrom appears confident that the Mormon Church will remain neutral on the issue, but he shouldn’t be so sure. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if often said to be the fastest growing religion in Latin America with 5.2 million members and 5,500 chapels. The number of Spanish-speaking Mormon congregations nationwide has grown by 90 percent in the past decade, up to more than 700. Meanwhile, the majority of Latinos in the U.S. bitterly oppose the Arizona law. In fact, Mormon Latinos launched a letter-writing campaign to Latter Day Saints Church President Thomas S. Monson, asking him to define the church’s official position on immigration. “This is affecting our families,” Tony Yapias, who launched the campaign, stated. “Where’s the church in this? The longer they stay quiet, the more political it gets, the more divisive.”

In some ways, some of the damage is already done. The sponsor of SB-1070, state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), is a devout Mormon. The Arizona Republic reported that his association with SB-1070 has “tarnished the Mormon Church’s image among many Latinos.” Pearce has repeatedly said his anti-immigration efforts have been guided by the Mormon Church’s 13 Articles of Faith, which includes obeying the law. In the past, the Mormon church has also faced criticism over the “racist doctrine” found in Mormon texts and the lack of a diverse leadership that reflects its heterogeneous membership.

While Shurtleff agrees with the federal government on immigration, his support stops there. He is part of the dozen other states who have filed a lawsuit challenging the health care reform package passed earlier this year.

In a nice catch, Eli Clifton reports that the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the latest neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, is based out of the same office as a previous neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI):

The evidence lies in a a letter from ECI’s executive director (pdf), Noah Pollak, to Comcast regarding the attack ad the group has been running in Pennsylvania. The letterhead bears the following address: “918 Pennsylvania Ave., SE · Washington, D.C. 20003.”

That address happens to be the same as that of Orion Strategies, a public-relations consultancy owned and operated by renowned GOP lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, who, in addition to serving as president of the CLI, has been retained since the 2008 elections as Sarah Palin’s personal — and Bill Kristol-approved — foreign-policy trainer.

The connection to Orion Strategies comes through former Weekly Standard web editor and regrettable McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who joined Scheunemann’s firm last January, and serves as an adviser to the Emergency Committee for Israel. In addition to his work with ECI, Goldfarb also advises the Liz Cheney/Bill Kristol-led Keep America Safe, and was a research associate at the Project for the New American Century, which served as the mothership for various neocon enterprises in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, most notably the invasion of Iraq.

In addition to serving as president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Scheunemann served as PNAC’s director, and was a key ally of Iran-connected con-man Ahmad Chalabi.

Considering how disastrous the Iraq invasion was, not only for U.S. security but also for Israel’s — driving radicalism and sectarianism in the region, vastly increasing Iranian influence in the region and allowing it to advance its nuclear program — it is deeply ironic that the people operating the “Emergency Committee for Israel” are among those most responsible for creating that “emergency” in the first place.

The debate over START is overall a pretty weak one. Conservatives on the far-right try to find things to nitpick about the treaty, or make factually dubious or contradictory claims about its impact. These points are then thoroughly refuted. And then the cycle repeats itself. The basic problem for treaty opponents is not just that there are not that many of them and that they are grasping at straws, but that even if it were true that this New START treaty had flaws or was not as good as the old one, it is still better than the alternative — which is no treaty and no inspection or monitoring of Russia’s nuclear forces. As a result, most serious relatively status quo national security officials — even those that feverishly oppose broader Obama’s nuclear agenda, like arch-conservative James Schlesinger — support START.

New START is really just about stability, it is about continuing down the status-quo arms-control path that has been practiced by the US for the last half century. Thus, the pro-START side represents the general post-Cold War foreign policy consensus in the US that is in favor of reducing nuclear weapons and gradually unwinding the massive nuclear build up of the Cold War. This view unites the Democratic foreign policy establishment (Sam Nunn, Bill Perry) and the traditional Republican foreign policy establishment (Kissinger, Powell, Baker, Scowcroft).

But if you think the status quo is highly dangerous, if you want to radically and fundamentally change US nuclear policy and you have an entirely different perception of the world that believes the Cold War never really ended and as a result you aren’t just distrustful, but outwardly paranoid of Russian intentions than this treaty is probably not for you. This side consists of the Heritage Foundation and some prominent Republican Senators – like Senator Jon Kyl, Jim DeMint, and James Inhofe. What they want is to shatter the nuclear status quo. James Carafano of Heritage clarified the dividing lines of the debate, when he wrote:

What Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar both overlook is probably one of the most important questions to address – why in the post-Cold War era is the U.S. content with accepting the Cold War status quo? This treaty solidifies Russia’s role as a dominant nuclear power by putting the Russian arsenal on par with ours. It was a classic example of nuclear diplomacy and will only lead to Russia seeking further concessions down the road. It is imperative that this treaty is looked at as something more than an arms control document. Once that is done, it will become clear why this treaty is wrong for the U.S.

See the problem with START not that this or that monitoring provision isn’t good, Carafano’s problem is simply that this is an “arms-control document.” To Carafano this is a treaty that keeps the US at relative nuclear parity with Russia, which ensures Russia’s status as a dominant nuclear power. But to Carafano only the US should be the dominant nuclear power and as a result the only way to have an arms-control treaty with Russia is to have one where there is designed disparity, where the US is allowed to have more nukes than the Russians, where the Russians are forced to acknowledge the US as nuclear top dog. After all to Carafano and the right we have the capability to bury them. We are richer and could spend billions or trillions building more nukes in a new arms race or building a super sweet (yet infeasible) missile defense system to target them. At the point, then Russia will really have to kneel and kiss the ring.

This is an extremely radical and destabilizing view. This is a vision that doesn’t want to unwind the Cold War — since to them the Soviet/Russian adversary is still out there. This is a vision that therefore is determined to build and test new, more usable nuclear weapons. They don’t want to unwind the Cold War, they want to try to win it again.

Yet this is such a warped, outdated, and dumb conception of power. We worry about China’s strategic intentions and would tend to see China as more powerful and influential than Russia now, yet they only have around 250 nuclear weapons compared to our 5,000. The Chinese know that if they can take out Los Angeles, we will be deterred from invading them, to them any capability beyond that is basically just a waste of money — since being able to kill 8 million people in 30 minutes is a pretty massive deterrent.

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In a nice catch, Eli Clifton reports that the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the latest neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, is based out of the same office as a previous neocon astroturf pro-war outfit, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI):

The evidence lies in a a letter from ECI’s executive director (pdf), Noah Pollak, to Comcast regarding the attack ad the group has been running in Pennsylvania. The letterhead bears the following address: “918 Pennsylvania Ave., SE · Washington, D.C. 20003.”

That address happens to be the same as that of Orion Strategies, a public-relations consultancy owned and operated by renowned GOP lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, who, in addition to serving as president of the CLI, has been retained since the 2008 elections as Sarah Palin’s personal — and Bill Kristol-approved — foreign-policy trainer.

The connection to Orion Strategies comes through former Weekly Standard web editor and regrettable McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who joined Scheunemann’s firm last January, and serves as an adviser to the Emergency Committee for Israel. In addition to his work with ECI, Goldfarb also advises the Liz Cheney/Bill Kristol-led Keep America Safe, and was a research associate at the Project for the New American Century, which served as the mothership for various neocon enterprises in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, most notably the invasion of Iraq.

In addition to serving as president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Scheunemann served as PNAC’s director, and was a key ally of Iran-connected con-man Ahmad Chalabi.

Considering how disastrous the Iraq invasion was, not only for U.S. security but also for Israel’s — driving radicalism and sectarianism in the region, vastly increasing Iranian influence in the region and allowing it to advance its nuclear program — it is deeply ironic that the people operating the “Emergency Committee for Israel” are among those most responsible for creating that “emergency” in the first place.