Last week, Arizona state Senator Lori Klein (R) read a letter on immigration on the state Senate floor as the legislature considered a bill that would have required public schools to verify immigration status. The letter was written by a substitute teacher who complained about an “invasion” of Latino students in his class who didn’t want to say the pledge of allegiance and would rather join gangs than go to school:

I have found that substitute teaching in these areas most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters. They hate America and are determined to reclaim this area for Mexico. If we are able to remove the illegals out of our schools, the class sizes would be reduced and the students who wanted to learn would have a better chance to do so and become productive citizens.

I applaud and support your efforts to stop this invasion into our state and country. When the citizens of a country are forced to speak the invaders language, adopt their customs, and forced to support them, are we not a conquer nation? I do not want to see our state and nation turned into a third world country. Thank you for standing up to this invasion.

Watch ABC15′s news coverage:

Initially, the name of the letter’s author was not released. However, when people started to question whether the letter was doctored, the man’s name was released. Tony Hill claims that “an unusually disheartening day” at Glendale middle-school motivated him to write a letter to state Senate President Russell Pearce (R). He reportedly stands by his statements but regrets sending the letter because of the media attention it has attracted.

However, Hill’s colleagues don’t agree. David Hume, spokesman for the Pendergast Elementary School District, told a local news station that the observations in Hill’s letter “do not represent any typical educational environment in Pendergast schools. The remarks do not warrant any legitimate response.” Danielle Airey of Peoria Unified School District similarly stated, “The type of behavior described in this letter is not typical of our 8th grade classrooms. What you would expect to find as typical in our schools are classrooms where teachers are focused on instruction and students are engaged in learning. We would expect any of our teachers, including substitute teachers, to handle inappropriate behavior through our discipline process or by bringing it to the attention of the principal.”

Whether the behavior described in the letter is “typical” or not, there is certainly reason to question whether it’s true at all. “Some people can’t handle the truth,” proclaimed Pearce as he was defending the letter. An editorial in the Arizona Republic replies, “More to the point: Some people can’t take time to find out the truth before passing along unfounded accusations.”

Meanwhile, actual statistics paint a different picture of young Latinos. Although “a persistent educational attainment gap remains between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites,” nine in 10 Latinos say it’s “necessary” to get a college education to get ahead in life — more than any other ethnic group. However, language barriers, parental involvement, and a sense of responsibility to helping support their families has created a “divide between aspirations and reality.”

Ultimately, a testimony by a teacher who worries about a Latino invasion says a lot more about the biases of the instructor himself than it says about any of his students.

Issuing his third annual Nowruz greeting to the Iranian people over the weekend, President Obama used the opportunity to tie the recent Middle East uprisings to the post-election demonstrations in Iran in 2009. “These movements for change are not unique to these last few months,” Obama said.”The same forces of hope that swept across Tahrir Square were seen in Azadi Square in June of 2009“:

And just as the people in the region have insisted on having a choice in how they are governed, so do the governments in the region have a choice in their response. So far the Iranian government has responded by demonstrating that it cares far more about preserving its own power than respecting the rights of the Iranian people.

Significantly, for the first time President Obama also specifically named several imprisoned Iranian dissidents:

We’ve seen Nasrin Sotoudeh jailed for defending human rights. Jafar Panahi, imprisoned and unable to make his films. Abdolreza Tajik, thrown in jail for being a journalist. The Baha’i community and Sufi Muslims punished for their faith. Mohammad Valian, a young student sentenced to death for throwing three stones. These choices do not demonstrate strength, they show fear.

Watch it:

Responding in the Washington Times, Eli Lake suggests that Obama has “reversed course” on human rights in Iran, but I don’t think that’s correct. The administration has slowly but steadily increased its focus on Iranian human rights abuses, an approach supported by, among others, the Center for American Progress at an event last February. President Obama’s 2010 Nowruz message was an escalation from the conciliatory tone of 2009′s, noting how, in June 2009, the aspirations of the Iranian people were “met with a clenched fist, as people marching silently were beaten with batons; political prisoners were rounded up and abused… and people everywhere were horrified by the video of a young woman killed in the street.” The latest message represents yet another, albeit more serious, escalation.

A key thing to recognize, however, as I noted in a piece earlier this month on Secretary of State Clinton’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, (and as Karim Sadjadpour notes in Lake’s article) is that the credibility and potential effectiveness of Obama’s criticisms now have been significantly enhanced by Obama’s engagement policy, a policy that conservatives (most of whom spent the Bush years supporting policies that vastly increased Iran’s influence in the region) have relentlessly mocked as naive.

Prominent Iranian dissidents like Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji disagree that it was naive, noting that Obama’s outreach effort, by clearly revealing Iran’s current rulers as the intransigent party, played an important part in creating political space for the domestic opposition. By offering to negotiate in good faith, Obama has presented Iran’s hardliners with a choice they would desperately prefer not to have to make. This is also why it’s important that, even as his administration continues to increase pressure on the regime, the offer of an “open door” to negotiation remains open.