Even the Wall Street Journal Doesn't Seem to Care About SB 1070

      I mean that has to be the unkindest cut of all. If the GOP can't trust their buddies over at the Wall Street Journal who can they trust?

      Yet what struck me about today's op-ed about the SJC's ruling is how little effort they go in arguing the case for the Arizona GOP. Sure they did say something in the piece's subtitle about how the SJC "unanimously rejects a White House power grab."

      Yet when you actually read the piece that's really not how it sounds it went down even by the WSJ's own words. The WSJ starts out:

      "On a five to three vote, the Supreme Court knocked out much of Arizona's immigration law Monday—a modest policy victory for the Obama Administration. But on the more important matter of the Constitution, the decision was an 8-0 defeat for the Administration's effort to upset the balance of power between the federal government and the states."

       http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303640804577488640267175810.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

       Yes that's the important thing, not that most of the law and all of it's toughest provisions have already been struck down. What counts is that the Administration was defeated 8-0. Except, it really wasn't a defeat. After all, the Court did not say it was constitutional only that they want to wait on a verdict on that one as the law hasn't even gone into effect yet.

       Once it does the Court made it clear that there's a green light to reopen a case against it. Again, most of the law is struck down. And even this part that allows the Arizona police to check suspects' immigration status even if they were stopped form non-immigration reasons is construed pretty narrowly. It's clear that the Court does not think it's Kosher to keep suspects waiting longer than they otherwise would have been while checking their immigration status.

      "Arizona Cannot Detain People Simply Because They Might Be Undocumented: Although the opinion does not strike down the “show me your papers” provision, it significantly lessens the harm caused by this provision. SB 1070 provides that “[a]ny person who is arrested shall have the person’s immigration status de­termined before the person is released,” but the Court warns the state not to apply this provision literally if it wants to avoid running headlong into the Constitution:

Detaining individuals solely to verify their immi­gration status would raise constitutional concerns. And it would disrupt the federal framework to put state officers in the position of holding aliens in custody for possible unlawful presence without federal direction and supervision. The program put in place by Congress does not allow state or local officers to adopt this enforcement mechanism.
But §2(B) could be read to avoid these concerns. To take one example, a person might be stopped for jaywalking in Tucson and be unable to produce identification. The first sentence of §2(B) instructs officers to make a “reasonable” attempt to verify his immigration status with ICE if there is reasonable suspicion that his presence in the United States is unlawful. The state courts may conclude that, unless the person continues to be suspected of some crime for which he may be detained by state officers, it would not be reasonable to prolong the stop for the immigration inquiry.

      "Although the Court technically does not reason a decision on this question, under today’s opinion, prolonging a person’s detention simply to verify their immigration status is almost certainly not allowed."

       http://thinkprogress.org/tag/immigration/page/2/

        Remember this is the WSJ, more or less the RNC's Ministry of Information. So yes, they do try a little superfical Obama bashing:

        "The 8-0 rebuke to President Obama turns on what Justice Samuel Alito describes in his dissent as "an astounding assertion of federal executive power." The White House argued that Arizona's laws conflicted with its enforcement priorities, even if state laws complied with federal statutes to the letter. In effect, the White House claimed that it can nullify any otherwise legitimate state law that it disagrees with."

          However, the rest of the op-ed contradicts this. Again the Court may have voted against  invalidating the one provision right now-it left the door open to doing so in the future-but the rest of the Court's actions seems to belie Robert's words-indeed he himself voted down the other laws.

          "In Arizona v. United States, the majority overturned three of the four contested planks of Arizona's controversial plan to have state and local police enforce federal immigration law. The Constitutional principles that Washington alone has the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" and that federal laws pre-empt state laws are noncontroversial. Arizona had attempted to fashion state policies that ran parallel to the existing federal ones."

           This is the WSJ's own words-there is nothing controversial about the fact that federal laws pre-empt state laws on immigration questions.

          "Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court's liberals, ruled that the state flew too close to the federal sun. On the overturned provisions—like making it a misdemeanor to apply for a job without citizenship or a visa—the majority held that Congress had deliberately "occupied the field" under pre-emption doctrine, and Arizona had thus intruded on federal prerogatives."

           As Kennedy himself said that Arizona has intruded on federal prerogatives and the WSJ is admitting there's nothing controversial about this how it that Obama has made any "astounding assertion of federal power?" It's actually the opposite-the state of Arizona has made the power grab. Just to underscore just how perfunctionary the WSJ's wrapping of the President's knuckles is here it finishes off the editorial this way:

          "We happen to share the Obama Administration's desire for a welcoming, non punitive immigration policy, but it can't accomplish that by asserting power it doesn't have. Full marks to the Court for striking the proper Constitutional balance."

           So after all this the WSJ sounds like in principle it's taking the President's side it just can't do this so it quite contradictionary in light of this censures him for a "power grab" that's "astonishing" when in reality it has very little substantial disagreement with him. This is as close as the WSJ editorial page goes to saying that the Arizona GOP needs to come down off the ledge.