Y’all, It Just Get Creepier and Creepier in Arizona
So now folks in Arizona who are on a state senate panel have decided that there’s part of the United States that they don’t like and it’s the United part.
Declaring state law to be above all others, a Senate panel voted Tuesday to both block federal gun laws they believe violate the Second Amendment and punish the city of Tucson for enacting its own restrictions.
They also agreed to bar state and local governments from helping any federal agency that collects metadata like phone and email records without a warrant. Any official who cooperated would be forever barred from holding public office.
I think they just seceded.
But, for God’s sake, let’s not stop there.
And if that isn’t enough, the same committee declared that county sheriffs are supreme, meaning they can arrest federal officials — including police — who try to arrest someone or seize property without first getting their consent. And county attorneys who refuse to bring charges of kidnapping for arrests done without the sheriff’s permission would be subject to prosecution themselves by the state attorney general for “official misconduct.”
Oh yeah, because they don’t have no crazy damn sheriff’s in Arizona, right? Hell, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is smarter than any of those cotton-pickin’ G-men.
The folks who are trying to pass this claim that they should be allowed to pass laws that their constituents want. Yeah, well, I think George Wallace tried it. Didn’t work.
Here’s what I think. As long as President Obama is in office they want state rule. The minute they have a Democratic governor in Arizona, they’ll want city rule. The minute they get a Democratic mayor, they’ll want … get off my damn lawn rule.
Thanks to Bunny for the heads up.
Didn’t you guys sort this sort of thing out in the 1860s?
1Does LSD occur naturally in the water in Tucson? Or is Scottsdale spiking the punch?
2Andrew Jackson’s statement regarding nullification.
3“Yes I have; please give my compliments to my friends in your State and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach”
They knew he meant it and backed down.
This is one of the central tenets of the Posse Commitatus and Sovereign Citizen movements and is deeply rooted in the concept of Identity Christianity.
At it’s base it is all completely, utterly and totally racist. The more egregious practitioners of this disgusting perversion of American justice are actually considered terrorists by the SPLC, and true law enforcement officers consider these movements to be a greater threat to a peaceful society than foreign terrorists.
The federal government, with all those pesky laws about things like paying taxes, letting people vote, allowing minorities equal rights and not – you know – lynching them, is the ONLY thing that stands between these people and religious courts, rigged elections and thug-ocracy.
4The Arizona Senate Panel that recommended this law reminds me of those late night electronics ads during the 1980’s. The ones that claimed the owner went out of town and his crazy cousin took over the store for the weekend:
CAMERAS – $3.00!!!
STEREOS – $29.95!!!
How do we do it? Crazy Al is out of town, and he’s put his even crazier Cousin Eddy in charge!!
THESE PRICES WON’T LAST LONG!!
Hopefully the Arizona Senate Panel won’t last any longer than that either.
5The gila monsters can have Arizona.
6So the law in Arizona is whatever this wacko “panel” says it is, including not giving someone who appears intoxicated and has discharged a gun, a breathalizer test. Apparently the good people of Tucson thought this was a no-brainer, but the state “panel” says it is too restrictive (of gun rights of course).
7Must be all that mezcal they’re swigging, and the agave worm wriggling in their brains that causes such mental dysfunction.
States’ Rights is just another way of saying the patients are running the asylum.
Sounds like Dodge City in its heyday but with a huge dose of mescaline! As for Andy Jackson, that was one helluva scary dude. My husband had an ancestor who was part of Andy’s troop of citizen soldiers at the battle of New Orleans. You just did not mess around with Andy. Unfortunately, we just don’t have anyone with Andy’s kind of DNA these days with his feet planted where they are needed most.
8Let me see if I have this straight. Well, no, it’s never going to be straight. Let’s see if this is actually what they’re saying: state law trumps federal law, and it also trumps local law. So the folks in the state house in Phoenix are the only ones in the USA who have any authority anywhere in Arizona.
What substances are these people on, and why weren’t there any civics classes in Arizona about 30-40 years ago?
Mike’s quotation from (genocidal, let’s not forget) Jackson reminds me of a slightly politer version from a British imperial official in 19th-century India. I paraphrase from memory.
“I understand that you have a custom of burning widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres. We also have a custom. When a man burns a woman alive, we hang him. So you follow your custom, and we will follow ours.”
9And if that isn’t enough, the same committee declared that county sheriffs are supreme, meaning they can arrest federal officials — including police — who try to arrest someone or seize property without first getting their consent.
I really want to see this happen, just once. I would think the Feds would make sure it happened only once by making an example out of the first guy.
Arapio, your move.
10Seditionists, secessionists and nullification advocates can just “get off of my lawn”!
11@Rhea
12Please don’t sell Andrew Jackson short. He wasn’t JUST into genocide. He spent his spare time dueling/killing and dreaming of dueling/killing and his hanging political foes. Oh and shaping the US Presidency into the Office we know today. Quite a feller!
The funny thing is that they want the Federal Government to stop Colorado from legalizing marihoochy. I swear they keep winning elections because they’re so two-faced that each face gets its own vote.
13You can’t spell “crazy” without (R-AZ).
14This stand on law is consistent with right-wing beliefs on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the Bible, the Constitution, etc. They applaud the concept, but cherry-pick which bits they actually want to support.
15The Dixiecrats, George Wallace, and Sheriff Bull Connor in Alabama have nothing on these racist sleazeballs.
16It gets even better. The (R) senator who is pushing the bill is none other than Judy Burgess who, along with two other (R) AZ legislators, took the time to go up to visit rancher Cliven Bundy (there’s no such thing as federal government and I am going to continue to not pay my grazing fees like I haven’t for the last 20+ years) last year during Bundy’s stand off against federal authorities to show her support.
Just when we thought Arizona wasn’t crazy enough – remember that militia leader who was on Hannity declaring during the stand off that their strategy on confronting the armed feds was to put the women in front? Well, now he’s plans include efforts to take over one Arizona county and make it a display case for the Posse comitatus idea of the sheriff being the supreme law of the land.
17And who will be our “Robbing Hood?” And our feudal lord? To whom we we picket and pray for, above the salt? If I only had a fetlock to pull, to show my subservience.
18The Sheriff is back, watch out for the “taking large steps” aspect that the puffed up nature of the job. I think it’s a Southwestern life form –Texas Rangers, freeze dried so that have no juicy bits, no honor, instead have so many assumptions, Barney Fife and Andy Griffith both being made ball-boys under the next crAZy Administration…I would never go back there, it’s been outgrown completely.
Beauregard is on his way to Charleston.
19Mental note…if I ever have reason to travel that way, plan route to avoid Arizona.
I have visions of Sherriff Beuford T. imposing his own trumped up laws–like the motorists traps of old, where the fines went to local municipality making it a direct benefit for local cops to catch motorists with finable charges.
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