Growing GOP Extremism at the State Level

The growing insanity of the Republican Party at the national level - e.g, that Michele Bachmann could even launch a presidential campaign that was taken seriously - is frightening enough. But in some ways even more frightening things are developing at the state level. Mississippi's legislation to grant embryo's person hood status so as to criminalize abortion and even some types of contraception is one such example (its no coincidence as Bob Felton notes that Mississippi high school graduates have an average composite ACT score of 18.81 — the lowest in the country) that might actually become law. Another case of batshitery comes from Alabama - another state not exactly known for embracing modernity and civil rights for all - where the state is challenging the right of the United States Justice Department to investigate possible civil rights abuses connected to Alabama's anti-immigrant immigration law in a manner reminiscent of George Wallace back in the battles over desegregation. The New York Times editorial looks at this disturbing mindset and these are some highlights:

Surely Alabama’s attorney general, Luther Strange, did not mean to summon the memory of Gov. George Wallace when he picked a fight with the Department of Justice last week over the state’s new immigration law.

Surely no law-enforcement official of his stature would have responded to a fact-gathering request by challenging the federal government’s “legal authority” to investigate reports of civil rights abuses. Could there be an attorney general in the South — or anywhere — who is not acutely aware, and mindful, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

The federal inquiry was prompted by the state’s new immigration law, which took effect in September, part of which requires schools to check the immigration status of schoolchildren and their parents. The Justice Department has already sued Alabama over the law, the nation’s cruelest collection of immigration enforcement schemes and punishments. After receiving reports that students were being harassed and bullied, and that frightened parents were keeping children out of school, the department asked 39 school superintendents for data on student absences and withdrawals since the school year began.

Instead of acknowledging that the Supreme Court has upheld every child’s right to a public education regardless of immigration status, and that the new law requires schools to collect the information that the government was seeking, Mr. Strange sent Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, an ultimatum. . . . . “Your letter does not state your legal authority to demand the information or to compel its production. If you have such legal authority, please provide it to me by noon Central Standard Time on Friday, November 4, 2011. Otherwise, I will assume that you have none and will proceed accordingly.”


Mr. Perez’s reply, sent Friday, was to the point. He cited Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. He also reminded Mr. Strange of an array of other laws that federal agencies would be considering when investigating possible violations in Alabama: the Fair Housing Act, the Safe Streets Act, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “among others.”

The law’s architects and supporters proclaim that their goal is to catastrophically disrupt the lives of illegal immigrants and their families. With reports of harassment and panic, and of a mass exodus of immigrants fleeing the state, the potential for civil rights abuses is acutely obvious.

That Alabama’s attorney general would not welcome a federal inquiry, but bristle instead, with an implicit appeal to state’s rights — with all the defiant history of intolerance and minority oppression those words suggest — says volumes. All Americans should feel ashamed.

No doubt some readers will accuse me of beating up Republicans while giving Democrats a free pass. I make no claim that Democrats are perfect or that the Democratic Party doesn't have problems too. However, the increasing level of hate, incivility and desire to turn the clock back to less than honorable periods in this nation's history seems to derive increasingly solely from the GOP and its Christianist/Tea Party base. They would turn American into something very ugly if they could have their way.