Top 10 dumbest things said about the Arizona immigration law

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
05/01/10 7:46 AM EDT

The last few days have seen an extraordinary outburst of criticism of Arizona’s new immigration law.  In the nation’s elite media outlets, its most respected commentators are portraying the law as an act of police-state repression.  Many, if not all, of the specific criticisms can be refuted simply by reading the law itself, but others are more generalized criticisms of immigration enforcement.  In any event, it’s hard to choose the most over-the-top and wrongheaded commentary on the law, but here are ten choices, in no particular order.  (If you don’t know why a particular statement is wrong, you can check here, and here, and here, and here.)

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/top-10-dumbest-things-said-about-the-arizona-immigration-law-92577964.html

New York City Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square

Associated Press

Bomb investigators found propane tanks, powder and an apparent timing device inside.

NEW YORK -- Police found an "amateurish" but potentially powerful bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square, authorities said Sunday. Thousands of tourists were cleared from the streets for 10 hours while the bomb was dismantled.

"We avoided what we could have been a very deadly event," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact."

New York Gov. David Paterson released a statement calling the failed Times Square bomb scare an "act of terrorism."

Investigators removed three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components from the back of the Nissan Pathfinder, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. A black metal box resembling a gun locker was also recovered and will be detonated off site, he said.

Bloomberg called the explosive device "amateurish" and Kelly said the explosives were consumer-grade fireworks but could have caused huge damage on a block of Broadway theaters and restaurants teeming with tourists.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/01/new-york-city-police-close-times-square-investigation/

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) was arrested outside the White House on Saturday during a May Day protest for immigration reform.

Guiterrez had been speaking to a crowd of hundreds at Lafayette Square when he announced that he was going to go to the White House fence with other protesters, sit down, and not move until he was arrested or until comprehensive immigration reform was signed.

Gutierrez, who chanted "Si se puede" ("Yes, it is possible") along with other demonstrators, linked arms with other protesters and took a seat along the White House fence. He was warned to move by police, and when he did not comply he was arrested with a few dozen other protesters.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/95459-rep-gutierrez-arrested-outside-of-white-house

Bill Maher: 'Why Isn’t Barack Obama Getting More S--t For This' Oil Spill?

HBO's Bill Maher on Friday asked an extraordinary question of his guest panel: "Why isn't Barack Obama getting more s--t' for the oil spill in the Gulf?

Almost as surprising, the studio audience applauded after the "Real Time" host said this. 

"Okay, so I mentioned in the monologue I'm a little mad this week," Maher began after introducing his guests.  

"I'm mad at the oil company who didn't obviously build their rig well enough," he continued. "I'm mad at America in general because we should have gotten off the oil tit starting in the '70s."

Hold on to you seats: "But I'll tell you who I'm really mad at which is Barack Obama...So, why isn't Barack Obama getting more s--t for this" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/05/01/bill-maher-why-isn-t-barack-obama-getting-more-s-t-oil-spill

Unanswered Questions on the Spill

There are many avenues to pursue. Here are two: the oil company’s response, and Mr. Obama’s. The company, BP, seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.

A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country’s richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush’s hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving.

The timetable is damning. The blowout occurred on April 20. In short order, fire broke out on the rig, taking 11 lives, the rig collapsed and oil began leaking at a rate of 40,000 gallons a day. BP tried but failed to plug the well. Even so, BP appears to have remained confident that it could handle the situation with private resources (as did the administration) until Wednesday night, when, at a hastily called news conference, the Coast Guard quintupled its estimate of the leak to 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons a day.

Only then did the administration move into high gear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01sat1.html

Texas Rep Wants to Import AZ Immigration Law

A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.

Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.

"The first priority for any elected official is to make sure that the safety and security of Texans is well-established," said Riddle, who introduced a similar measure in 2009 that didn't get out of committee. "If our federal government did their job, then Arizona wouldn't have to take this action, and neither would Texas."

The Arizona law would require local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status -- and make it a crime for immigrants to lack registration documents.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/politics/Rep-Wants-AZ-Immigration-Law-in-Texas-92305354.html

Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill

Posted by Chris Edwards

Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.

A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.

Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/26/costly-irs-mandate-slipped-into-health-bill/

Obama to visit Gulf oil spill area

Hacker of Sarah Palin's e-mail found guilty

Older Americans are down on the Democrats

WASHINGTON — Democrats have glimpsed their biggest threat this fall, and she is Grandma.

One reason President Barack Obama and other party leaders are rolling out campaigns this week to energize young and minority voters for November's elections is that they've seen the polling data on senior citizens, and it's ugly.

Democrats once counted on voters older than 65, but many seniors' loyalties changed in the past decade. That's partly because of the parties' stands on policy such as fiscal and personal responsibility, and partly, experts said, because the demographic changed. Many of today's seniors started voting in the 1950s, when Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president. The number of seniors whom FDR converted to Democrats in the '30s is shrinking fast.

A majority of seniors backed Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona over Obama in 2008. The seniors' current tilt toward Republicans is being reinforced by Obama's biggest accomplishment as president: the health care overhaul.

A George Washington University Battleground Poll this month found that only 36 percent of likely voters who were 65 and older approved of the health care legislation, which expands and mandates health insurance coverage. That was the lowest approval rating of any voter age group.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100429/pl_mcclatchy/3491469