Given a Choice Between Science and GOP Primary Voters, McCain Chooses GOP Primary Voters
My editor ran a cartoon with my column (Pat Robertson holding a gun, licensed to kill, the 007 Club; hey, it was his choice, not mine) even though Robertson was just the appetizer for the column's McCain main course. That meant he cut out the tag line at the end, but I think I'll reinsert it. You can see the cartoon (and the newspaper version of the column) here. Weird headline, too.
Now that Arizona's senior senator has endorsed teaching "intelligent design" and come out in favor of a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, does all this pandering to right-wing GOP primary voters finally mean that we can stop with the hagiography? Please?
ID GOOFS DESERVE GOP-STYLE CENSURE EFFORT
East Valley Tribune, Aug. 28, 2005
The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post had the best reaction to Rev. Pat Robertson’s most recent foray into foreign policy, his televised comments last week that it would be “a whole lot cheaper” to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez than to spend billions to invade the country. They called their editorial, “Who Would Jesus Whack?”
There are at least two different business books lauding management principles supposedly gleaned from watching The Sopranos. But I didn’t realize that the Reverend was working on a companion volume, which would be the second version of “The Gospel According to Tony” (as preached to the Bada Bing congregation.)
Robertson first tried to explain away his comments by noting that he never used the magic word “assassinate,” instead calling on U.S. Special Forces to “take him out,” which could mean lots of things instead of murder, like kidnapping, or hosting him for dinner at Applebee’s. Of course, that was a lie; the video shows Robertson saying, “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it.”
Lying having failed, Robertson grudgingly apologized, blaming his remarks on frustration with the democratically-elected leader of another country who keeps doing things of which Robertson disapproves. But at least we now know that according to Robertson (and thus, under the Michael Moore-Ward Churchill rules of civic discourse demanded by the right wing, to every other Republican and conservative as well) that democracy isn’t nearly as important as doing what Robertson wants.
Can we Democrats avoid responsibility for Michael Moore as easily as the Bush administration did with Robertson, merely by calling his remarks “inappropriate”? Let me know.
But the silliest thing said by a Republican last week wasn’t Robertson’s soon-disavowed remarks, but rather our very own Arizona Sen. John McCain’s endorsement of teaching of “intelligent design” in schools.
Yes, the Ol’ "Straight Talking" Maverick himself has thrown in with those who believe science should be a matter of public opinion polls and the least common denominator. In an interview with editors and reporters from the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson (hat tip: Political Wire), McCain sided with President Bush in supporting teaching ID, on the justification that “all points of view” should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.
It’s not disclosed in the Daily Star article if McCain also thinks students should learn about ID while waving the Confederate flag, which is a “point of view” as well, and one that can help presidential contenders in the South Carolina GOP primary. Just like McCain did in 2000, if you get queasy that your personal ambitions require shameless pandering to the worst voters’ worst instincts, you can always apologize after the election is over -- when it doesn’t matter anymore. If you can crawl into bed with the worst race-baiters around, it becomes a very simple matter to throw in with the anti-science know-nothings.
McCain’s view of making “all points of view” available is a case-by-case matter, however. He wants to make junk science mandatory in classrooms, but having a debate over the war in Iraq is a real problem for him. Naturally, Cindy Sheehan is allowed to have her views -- but she should only be allowed to express them in ways to which no one will pay attention. Disagreeing with the Bush administration is constitutionally permissible, of course, but as a matter of good taste and prudence, any dissenting opinions should be expressed only where and when nobody actually notices.
Can we treat ID the same way as Bush and McCain want to treat Sheehan? Of course ID supporters are decent people. We feel their pain. But they are being used by groups opposed to the U.S. having a first-class education system and leading the world in science and technology. They’re “a symptom, not a cause” -- but just like Gold Star mothers opposed to the war, they must be stopped.
It’s exactly what the right kind of “higher power” would want.
Since January 8, 2011, this is a personal blog only. Comments? Email the author, Sam Coppersmith, at SCoppersmith at Charlie Bravo Lima Alpha Whiskey Yankee Echo Romeo Sierra dot com.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
We Are All Wildcat Fans Now
At least those of us related to the new Vice Dean for Administration, UA College of Medicine-Phoenix. (The Tribune ran an article on the appointment; the Republic has not.) I am now too busy supporting the new medical school to consider writing about it.
At least those of us related to the new Vice Dean for Administration, UA College of Medicine-Phoenix. (The Tribune ran an article on the appointment; the Republic has not.) I am now too busy supporting the new medical school to consider writing about it.
More Estate Tax Fun and Games (And It's a Video!)
The Protecting Arizona's Family Coalition has a new "iFilm" on repeal of the estate tax here. Take a look. Then complete the email at the end.
The Protecting Arizona's Family Coalition has a new "iFilm" on repeal of the estate tax here. Take a look. Then complete the email at the end.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Wake Up, America! (to this estate tax nonsense)
I used up all my brownie points by filing early the previous week by needing an extra day this week, so my column ran on Monday instead of Sunday. The newspaper version is available here.
The Washington Post article mentioned in the column by Birnbaum and Weisman, "The 1% Split Over Estate Taxes; The Few at the Top of the Heap Disagree on How to Keep the Most," appeared on Aug. 12, 2005, at D1.
RICH GET PAMPERED; REGULAR FOLKS GET TAXED
East Valley Tribune, Aug. 22, 2005
Last month, Arizona state workers learned that when it comes to making their lives (and jobs) more difficult, nobody’s more creative than the Arizona Legislature. In their most recent and creative trick yet, lawmakers found a new way to reduce employees’ take-home pay: by giving them a raise.
This spring, state workers faced a significant hike in required contributions to the state retirement system; poor stock market results and some legislatively required benefit increases for public-safety employees meant that employee contributions for retirement would increase by nearly 50 percent.
So the Legislature gave employees a “targeted” 1.7 percent raise, designed to pay, to the dollar, only the expected increase in retirement-system deductions so take-home pay wouldn’t decline. But the budgeters forgot about the tax implications. But the slight pay increase, even though all of it disappears in required deductions, means slightly higher federal -- and state -- income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes. Thus, the pay “increase” actually reduces take-home pay for virtually all employees. A state worker making $25,000 annually now has each biweekly check reduced by this pay raise by some $2.25, while an employee making $60,000 a year sees about $140 less annually.
This kind of problem only affects the middle-class and working stiffs, of course. When big corporations decide to give already exceedingly-well-paid CEOs new benefits or raises, they always make sure to “gross up” the increase with an additional payment to cover the increased taxes, including those on the gross-up payment.
Apparently, treating most employees like dirt is part of “running government like a business.” It’s not enough for politicians to denigrate what these employees do; by giving them a raise that means less pay, it helps maintain a turnover rate calculated by the Department of Administration at 17.6 percent annually -- which costs taxpayers over $50 million a year in lost productivity and higher training costs.
So, naturally, with the current tax system meaning that $35,000-a-year employees face lower take home pay, what’s the debate on taxes in Washington today? It’s all about the estate tax, which has become a battle between what reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post called the “very rich” and the “merely rich.”
Lobbying groups representing so-called “small business” owners (the “merely rich”) want to exempt from tax inheritances of up to $10 million. But people with estates worth tens or hundreds of millions, or even billions, are lobbying Congress for a reduced tax rate with a lower exemption, because $10 million just isn’t nearly enough for them.
Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl is siding with the very rich, with a “compromise” plan that would lower the top tax rate on inheritances from 47 percent to 15 percent. But, unfortunately for the merely rich, the exemption would cover estates up to only $3.5 million (estate taxes being one of the few endeavors where you can say “only $3.5 million”). It will save really, really big estates millions or even billions, but will leave many “small” estates (to these people, $5 million is “small”) still subject to tax.
What’s really “small” here is the number of people affected by the estate tax -- and what’s miniscule, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is the number of businesses that had to liquidate assets to pay any tax (only 0.007 percent of adult deaths in 2000). Of the 2.4 million adults who died in 2003, less than 29,000 left estates that were large enough to pay any tax at all. By contrast, more than 43,000 state employees, just in Arizona, just got their taxes raised, but they aren’t on Kyl’s radar at all. Instead, his estate tax plan is “targeted” -- at the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers.
But it all makes sense when you ask yourself who’s more likely to give campaign contributions or take politicians on golf junkets, state employees making $25,000 a year, or the heirs to the Wal-Mart, Mars candies, or Campbell Soup fortunes?
That’s Washington these days, where the middle class doesn’t matter, because politicians are way too busy taking care of the top 1.2 percent.
I used up all my brownie points by filing early the previous week by needing an extra day this week, so my column ran on Monday instead of Sunday. The newspaper version is available here.
The Washington Post article mentioned in the column by Birnbaum and Weisman, "The 1% Split Over Estate Taxes; The Few at the Top of the Heap Disagree on How to Keep the Most," appeared on Aug. 12, 2005, at D1.
RICH GET PAMPERED; REGULAR FOLKS GET TAXED
East Valley Tribune, Aug. 22, 2005
Last month, Arizona state workers learned that when it comes to making their lives (and jobs) more difficult, nobody’s more creative than the Arizona Legislature. In their most recent and creative trick yet, lawmakers found a new way to reduce employees’ take-home pay: by giving them a raise.
This spring, state workers faced a significant hike in required contributions to the state retirement system; poor stock market results and some legislatively required benefit increases for public-safety employees meant that employee contributions for retirement would increase by nearly 50 percent.
So the Legislature gave employees a “targeted” 1.7 percent raise, designed to pay, to the dollar, only the expected increase in retirement-system deductions so take-home pay wouldn’t decline. But the budgeters forgot about the tax implications. But the slight pay increase, even though all of it disappears in required deductions, means slightly higher federal -- and state -- income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes. Thus, the pay “increase” actually reduces take-home pay for virtually all employees. A state worker making $25,000 annually now has each biweekly check reduced by this pay raise by some $2.25, while an employee making $60,000 a year sees about $140 less annually.
This kind of problem only affects the middle-class and working stiffs, of course. When big corporations decide to give already exceedingly-well-paid CEOs new benefits or raises, they always make sure to “gross up” the increase with an additional payment to cover the increased taxes, including those on the gross-up payment.
Apparently, treating most employees like dirt is part of “running government like a business.” It’s not enough for politicians to denigrate what these employees do; by giving them a raise that means less pay, it helps maintain a turnover rate calculated by the Department of Administration at 17.6 percent annually -- which costs taxpayers over $50 million a year in lost productivity and higher training costs.
So, naturally, with the current tax system meaning that $35,000-a-year employees face lower take home pay, what’s the debate on taxes in Washington today? It’s all about the estate tax, which has become a battle between what reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post called the “very rich” and the “merely rich.”
Lobbying groups representing so-called “small business” owners (the “merely rich”) want to exempt from tax inheritances of up to $10 million. But people with estates worth tens or hundreds of millions, or even billions, are lobbying Congress for a reduced tax rate with a lower exemption, because $10 million just isn’t nearly enough for them.
Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl is siding with the very rich, with a “compromise” plan that would lower the top tax rate on inheritances from 47 percent to 15 percent. But, unfortunately for the merely rich, the exemption would cover estates up to only $3.5 million (estate taxes being one of the few endeavors where you can say “only $3.5 million”). It will save really, really big estates millions or even billions, but will leave many “small” estates (to these people, $5 million is “small”) still subject to tax.
What’s really “small” here is the number of people affected by the estate tax -- and what’s miniscule, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is the number of businesses that had to liquidate assets to pay any tax (only 0.007 percent of adult deaths in 2000). Of the 2.4 million adults who died in 2003, less than 29,000 left estates that were large enough to pay any tax at all. By contrast, more than 43,000 state employees, just in Arizona, just got their taxes raised, but they aren’t on Kyl’s radar at all. Instead, his estate tax plan is “targeted” -- at the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers.
But it all makes sense when you ask yourself who’s more likely to give campaign contributions or take politicians on golf junkets, state employees making $25,000 a year, or the heirs to the Wal-Mart, Mars candies, or Campbell Soup fortunes?
That’s Washington these days, where the middle class doesn’t matter, because politicians are way too busy taking care of the top 1.2 percent.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Where's My Trip to Saipan?
I always wanted to use the phrase "knickers-twisting" in a family newspaper.
For those of you not familiar with Arizona politics, this column might be a bit obscure, but for this columnist (and lawyer), Fife Symington is the gift that keeps on giving. It also was fun that Republic columnist MacEachern published yet another piece on the Air America "scandal" in the competing paper the same day. We'll see if his outrage continues. I originally described him as "Tribune alumnus Doug MacEachern, now with some other newspaper," but my editor doesn't like snark as much as I do.
I didn't have enough room, but in line with the other guys always getting something out their side's corruption, I couldn't find the article on the Washington Post website using my weak wi-fi connection in Barcelona. Of course, the problem was that the article I remembered actually appeared in the New York Times which reported how Arizona's very own Institute for Justice head Clint Bolick got one of the Abramoff's client's trips to the Northern Marianas, then wrote an op-ed supporting their legislation in The Washington Times.
RIGHT-WINGERS' RESTITUTION DEMANDS SELECTIVE
East Valley Tribune, Aug. 14, 2005
The latest cause of knickers-twisting in ‘winger circles is the culpability of every liberal, everywhere, in the embezzlement of funds from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in The Bronx, N.Y. It’s not just the amateurs, but even so-called “professional” journalists like Arizona Republic columnist Doug MacEachern, flogging this one. And, they always scold, you haven’t seen any coverage of this important scandal in The New York Times!
Here’s how the story works. Evan Cohen, then the development director at the club, also was director of the previous corporate entity behind Air America. The accounting trail is somewhat confusing, to say the least, but it appears that Cohen caused the club to loan himself and the Air America entity as much as $800,000. Most came from club accounts, but some came from club donors directly. It’s not clear how much went to Cohen and how much to Air America directly.
Air America, the attempt to create a radio network for liberals that would be just as one-sided politically and unfair to its opponents as, say, right-wing talk radio, certainly is a juicy target. After all, in two years it hasn’t come close to duplicating the “overnight success” Rush Limbaugh took two decades to achieve.
The first incarnation of Air America was poorly capitalized, and famously thrown off the air in key markets for failing to pay radio station bills. It quickly and loudly failed, amid talk that Evan Cohen wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest businessman. A new group of investors created Air America, version 2.0. The new entity acquired only the failed version’s assets, including its trade name, but didn’t assume its liabilities. The new group also excluded Cohen, who was viewed as a liability as well.
This happens all the time in business; entrepreneurs try, fail, and get to try again (and perhaps succeed eventually) because each new venture doesn’t have to repay all of the mistakes of its principals’ previous attempts. But the new Air America entity, according to ‘wingers, is different, because it -- and its key players -- have “moral liability” for everything the prior entity did.
Conservatives’ insistence on acknowledging such moral obligations appears to be somewhat selective, however. They’re demanding that the different Air America entity repay the club (or its successors; the club itself faces closure) all the money that the prior entity got -- which Air America has announced it will do -- and that everybody at Air America should acknowledge that they knew what was going on at the time, when even today the New York City Department of Investigation still hasn’t figured out what exactly happened.
Of course, these same people had no problem with Fife Symington remaining governor for years after he stopped paying his debts, which then, because of his bankruptcy, he no longer had a legal obligation to repay. They never demanded that Symington, and his political and business successors, repay the money he borrowed before his bankruptcy from the retirement pensions of those hard-working blue-collar engineers and laborers.
These critics never insisted that Fife must have known what was going on years before he finally as forced to admit his financial collapse. Apparently, only Republicans may avoid repaying debts by legal stratagems like filing bankruptcy, and their business failures must catch everybody by surprise.
But the real leap of logic is that even if the second version of Air America gets held to a higher moral standard than every other business, this failing somehow may be attributed to every liberal in America.
‘Wingers believe in collective guilt -- for liberals, anyway. But if I’m somehow responsible for what The New York Times hasn’t written about money invested in a business entity that no longer exists, then aren’t all conservatives similarly complicit in Fife’s bankruptcy, the Ohio and Illinois pension fund scandals, or Jack Abramoff’s shakedowns of Indian tribes?
Shouldn’t I get something out of the deal? Where’s my free trip to the Northern Marianas Islands or Guam (home of the original Air America investment entity!), paid for by Abramoff’s clients?
Instead, all I get are these ranting emails.
I always wanted to use the phrase "knickers-twisting" in a family newspaper.
For those of you not familiar with Arizona politics, this column might be a bit obscure, but for this columnist (and lawyer), Fife Symington is the gift that keeps on giving. It also was fun that Republic columnist MacEachern published yet another piece on the Air America "scandal" in the competing paper the same day. We'll see if his outrage continues. I originally described him as "Tribune alumnus Doug MacEachern, now with some other newspaper," but my editor doesn't like snark as much as I do.
I didn't have enough room, but in line with the other guys always getting something out their side's corruption, I couldn't find the article on the Washington Post website using my weak wi-fi connection in Barcelona. Of course, the problem was that the article I remembered actually appeared in the New York Times which reported how Arizona's very own Institute for Justice head Clint Bolick got one of the Abramoff's client's trips to the Northern Marianas, then wrote an op-ed supporting their legislation in The Washington Times.
RIGHT-WINGERS' RESTITUTION DEMANDS SELECTIVE
East Valley Tribune, Aug. 14, 2005
The latest cause of knickers-twisting in ‘winger circles is the culpability of every liberal, everywhere, in the embezzlement of funds from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in The Bronx, N.Y. It’s not just the amateurs, but even so-called “professional” journalists like Arizona Republic columnist Doug MacEachern, flogging this one. And, they always scold, you haven’t seen any coverage of this important scandal in The New York Times!
Here’s how the story works. Evan Cohen, then the development director at the club, also was director of the previous corporate entity behind Air America. The accounting trail is somewhat confusing, to say the least, but it appears that Cohen caused the club to loan himself and the Air America entity as much as $800,000. Most came from club accounts, but some came from club donors directly. It’s not clear how much went to Cohen and how much to Air America directly.
Air America, the attempt to create a radio network for liberals that would be just as one-sided politically and unfair to its opponents as, say, right-wing talk radio, certainly is a juicy target. After all, in two years it hasn’t come close to duplicating the “overnight success” Rush Limbaugh took two decades to achieve.
The first incarnation of Air America was poorly capitalized, and famously thrown off the air in key markets for failing to pay radio station bills. It quickly and loudly failed, amid talk that Evan Cohen wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest businessman. A new group of investors created Air America, version 2.0. The new entity acquired only the failed version’s assets, including its trade name, but didn’t assume its liabilities. The new group also excluded Cohen, who was viewed as a liability as well.
This happens all the time in business; entrepreneurs try, fail, and get to try again (and perhaps succeed eventually) because each new venture doesn’t have to repay all of the mistakes of its principals’ previous attempts. But the new Air America entity, according to ‘wingers, is different, because it -- and its key players -- have “moral liability” for everything the prior entity did.
Conservatives’ insistence on acknowledging such moral obligations appears to be somewhat selective, however. They’re demanding that the different Air America entity repay the club (or its successors; the club itself faces closure) all the money that the prior entity got -- which Air America has announced it will do -- and that everybody at Air America should acknowledge that they knew what was going on at the time, when even today the New York City Department of Investigation still hasn’t figured out what exactly happened.
Of course, these same people had no problem with Fife Symington remaining governor for years after he stopped paying his debts, which then, because of his bankruptcy, he no longer had a legal obligation to repay. They never demanded that Symington, and his political and business successors, repay the money he borrowed before his bankruptcy from the retirement pensions of those hard-working blue-collar engineers and laborers.
These critics never insisted that Fife must have known what was going on years before he finally as forced to admit his financial collapse. Apparently, only Republicans may avoid repaying debts by legal stratagems like filing bankruptcy, and their business failures must catch everybody by surprise.
But the real leap of logic is that even if the second version of Air America gets held to a higher moral standard than every other business, this failing somehow may be attributed to every liberal in America.
‘Wingers believe in collective guilt -- for liberals, anyway. But if I’m somehow responsible for what The New York Times hasn’t written about money invested in a business entity that no longer exists, then aren’t all conservatives similarly complicit in Fife’s bankruptcy, the Ohio and Illinois pension fund scandals, or Jack Abramoff’s shakedowns of Indian tribes?
Shouldn’t I get something out of the deal? Where’s my free trip to the Northern Marianas Islands or Guam (home of the original Air America investment entity!), paid for by Abramoff’s clients?
Instead, all I get are these ranting emails.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
It's Late, But It Finally Arrived
Here's the Arizona ADL statement (issued August 3; I first saw it on August 7) on the Haab case. "Sends Wrong Message?" I'd have used "Is Wrong," but at last the local ADL is on the right side of this issue. I would argue that they used a flawed procedural process--the chief deputy to the County Attorney is a local board member, and they let him participate in the decision-making process despite his huge conflict of interest--and that led them to reach a bad substantive decision, but it's a bad decision that they (unlike Andrew Thomas) reconsidered and corrected.
ADL: PROSECUTOR’S DECISION IN HAAB CASE SENDS WRONG MESSAGE
Phoenix, AZ, August 3, 2005…The Arizona Office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today expressed disappointment with the refusal of Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas to reconsider his decision not to prosecute Patrick Haab.
Before making any public statement about the case, ADL had sought a meeting with Thomas in order to raise the League’s serious concerns over the decision not to prosecute Patrick Haab for holding seven illegal immigrants at gunpoint. At a meeting with members of Thomas’ staff, ADL representatives both questioned the legal basis for the County Attorney’s action and stressed the dangerous message that such action had already sent to potentially violent, anti-immigration activists and vigilantes.
Following the meeting, Bill Straus, Arizona Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League stated:
“We are disappointed that the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office showed so little empathy for our concerns. The Haab decision sets a dangerous precedent and could set the stage for increasing anti-Hispanic violence and civil rights violations. We are already seeing dozens of references to Haab on the websites of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. The thought of armed individuals using the Haab decision as an excuse to draw down on anyone who, in their opinion, looks like an undocumented immigrant, is frightening, to say the least."
ADL has expressed alarm at the involvement of extremists and white supremacists in the anti-illegal immigration issue for several years, dating back to its 2003 report, Border Disputes: Armed Vigilantes in Arizona.
Here's the Arizona ADL statement (issued August 3; I first saw it on August 7) on the Haab case. "Sends Wrong Message?" I'd have used "Is Wrong," but at last the local ADL is on the right side of this issue. I would argue that they used a flawed procedural process--the chief deputy to the County Attorney is a local board member, and they let him participate in the decision-making process despite his huge conflict of interest--and that led them to reach a bad substantive decision, but it's a bad decision that they (unlike Andrew Thomas) reconsidered and corrected.
ADL: PROSECUTOR’S DECISION IN HAAB CASE SENDS WRONG MESSAGE
Phoenix, AZ, August 3, 2005…The Arizona Office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today expressed disappointment with the refusal of Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas to reconsider his decision not to prosecute Patrick Haab.
Before making any public statement about the case, ADL had sought a meeting with Thomas in order to raise the League’s serious concerns over the decision not to prosecute Patrick Haab for holding seven illegal immigrants at gunpoint. At a meeting with members of Thomas’ staff, ADL representatives both questioned the legal basis for the County Attorney’s action and stressed the dangerous message that such action had already sent to potentially violent, anti-immigration activists and vigilantes.
Following the meeting, Bill Straus, Arizona Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League stated:
“We are disappointed that the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office showed so little empathy for our concerns. The Haab decision sets a dangerous precedent and could set the stage for increasing anti-Hispanic violence and civil rights violations. We are already seeing dozens of references to Haab on the websites of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. The thought of armed individuals using the Haab decision as an excuse to draw down on anyone who, in their opinion, looks like an undocumented immigrant, is frightening, to say the least."
ADL has expressed alarm at the involvement of extremists and white supremacists in the anti-illegal immigration issue for several years, dating back to its 2003 report, Border Disputes: Armed Vigilantes in Arizona.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)