Former Arizona state Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of his state’s draconian anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, is notorious for making outrageous claims about the supposed dangers posed by immigrants – both documented and not.

In major speeches at least, Pearce usually tries to maintain some modicum of decency. In private (or at least semi-private), his taste has long been known to run even more extreme than he lets on. That’s likely one reason he became, last November, the first sitting state senate president in the U.S. and the first ever Arizona state legislator to be defeated in a recall election.

Now, a series of E-mails – released to a coalition of civil rights organizations that filed a public records request with the state of Arizona – shows just how deep his loathing of immigrants runs. ( continue to full post… )

As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week concerning Arizona’s controversial immigration law, a racist patriarch of the anti-immigrant movement once again found a mainstream platform for his hate-filled, conspiracy-mongering extremism.

CNN posted a report that contrasted two perspectives on the hot-button issue: that of Phoenix police officer David Salgado, and that of Glenn Spencer, who heads the hate group American Border Patrol.

“No better symbol of the deep political and social divide over illegal immigration exists than here on the Mexico-U.S. border, along Glenn Spencer’s rural desert property,” CNN reported. “And no better symbol exists of the contradictions and conundrums from an unresolved government enforcement policy.” ( continue to full post… )

Apparently, it’s a lot easier to declare victory than to actually win it.

At least that’s my takeaway from a comment today from Vanderbilt University law school professor Carol Swain, who I debated, along with two others, this Tuesday at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Nashville, Tenn. The four of us formed a panel to discuss “Anatomy of Hate: Free Speech Implications.”

In a story at OneNewsNow, a “news” service run by the gay-bashing hate group American Family Association, Swain, a black religious conservative who claims that Christians’ speech is being stifled in America, is quoted like this: “I thought it was great to see Mark Potok make concessions and to admit that we have a right to religious freedom and to actually be in a situation where even he has to admit, whether he says it overtly or not, that there’s a problem with labeling individuals and groups as ‘hate groups’ just because they express their religious beliefs.”

Come again, professor? I “conceded” that Christians have a right to religious freedom? I “admitted” that it’s bad to list hate groups? Are you smoking something? ( continue to full post… )

A recent fundraising letter from the Conservative Caucus Foundation bears an interesting warning for subscribers: Not only are “illegal aliens” “stealing American jobs,” “DEMANDING amnesty” and having “jackpot babies” so they can “get on the welfare gravy train” – they’re also endangering U.S. citizens with the filthy diseases they carry over the border.

“Some illegal aliens bring diseases we thought were long gone,” the letter proclaims. “Tuberculosis (TB), dysentery, typhoid, malaria, tapeworm, river blindness and guinea worm come into America with illegal aliens.” Elsewhere, it warns of polio. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-Latino hate crimes in California spiked up by almost 50% last year, the state’s attorney general’s office reported Wednesday. That dramatic rise, from 81 such crimes in 2009 to 119 in 2010, followed a decade of declines.

The numbers may be indicative of a renewed national rise in hate crimes directed at Latinos, who are often assumed to be undocumented immigrants. Nationally, FBI hate crime statistics showed a 40% rise in such crimes between 2003 and 2007, but that was followed by decreases in 2008 and 2009. The national numbers for the year 2010 are not expected to be released until November of this year.

The national hate crime numbers are notoriously sketchy, and only give a very rough indication of trends in hate crimes. However, many experts consider California particularly good at reporting hate crimes, so that state’s statistics are considered much more accurate than most others’. California, along with Arizona, has been the scene of much conflict between native Americans and immigrants, and if that conflict is heating up there, a similar pattern may be developing nationally. ( continue to full post… )

Amidst much fanfare and immigrant-bashing, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Wednesday presented Tucson Weekly reporter Leo W. Banks with its annual Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration.

CIS is the research arm of an intertwining network of groups started by John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern immigration movement. Its reports, heavily skewed to show that immigration – both legal and illegal – is a scourge on the U.S., are often cited in the lobbying efforts of the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Introducing Banks, CIS head Mark Krikorian cited the journalist’s refusal to stick with the “predictable sob stories” as one of the main reasons he had been chosen for the award. Krikorian praised him for getting “real stories” rather than “the formulaic pap we see too often” and complimented him for being “non-PC.” ( continue to full post… )

Perhaps the time has come to state the obvious.

The people who have been selling claims that President Obama is not American — the Donald Trumps, the Orly Taitzes, the miserable state legislators hawking their snake-oil laws insisting that presidential candidates prove their citizenship — are mostly a pack of racists. In the cases where they are not, they are shameless opportunists perfectly willing to exploit racism for their own personal benefit, proponents of a second Republican “Southern strategy.”

And let’s not give a pass to the 25% of Americans who a Harris poll found last month believe Obama was not born in this country despite endless knockdowns by serious news organizations. Common sense — along with an important new study revealing the high levels of racism among those who make such claims — make it obvious what’s going on here. These people are either plainly stupid, or, far more often, whites who see Obama as the Other, the dark-skinned person who represents a racially changing society that they loathe and fear and resent. ( continue to full post… )

Tomorrow, the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement will hold a hearing at the Rayburn House Building entitled, “Making Immigration Work for American Minorities.” On the witness list are two figures whose views of immigrants are less than charitable: Carol Swain, an African-American professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, and Frank Morris, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a board member of the anti-immigrant hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Swain has some very odd views for someone selected to lecture Congress on immigration and minorities. In her 2002 book, The New White Nationalism in America, Swain argued, in essence, that America doesn’t need to reject white nationalists — people who want the U.S. to be run by and for whites. Rather, it needs to start talking to them, and taking their ideas seriously, particularly when it comes to immigration and racial preferences. In the book, Swain says that white people have been muzzled by political correctness, while African Americans are allowed “to verbally assault and slander whites with racial epithets and false charges without suffering any serious loss of respect or any financial or social damage in the public arena.”

In 2009, Swain endorsed a slick 58-minute documentary, “A Conversation About Race,” devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites. In a blurb that was posted on the documentary’s website, Swain called the film “outstanding” and “meticulously done.” “[I]t offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue,” she wrote. “I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.” When it turned out that Swain’s much-lauded filmmaker had long posted regular comments on YouTube and a number of other websites, repeatedly describing blacks as “monkeys” and black men in particular as “EVIL monkeys [who] are DESTROYING” America, and even suggesting that a black former White House adviser be lynched, “[p]ossibly with the aid of a noose,” Swain continued to heartily recommend the film, with its “poignant” scenes, to “multicultural forums across the country.” ( continue to full post… )

Ever since he was bounced from his high-profile gig at CNN nearly nine months ago, we have seen a kinder, gentler Lou Dobbs than the commentator who became synonymous with vilifying undocumented immigrants.

The latest from Dobbs came this week, when he told Megyn Kelly at Fox News and George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he disagreed with the growing number of Republican senators calling for amending or repealing the 14^th Amendment, which grants citizenship to babies born in America. Critics complain that illegal immigrants take advantage of the amendment to come to the United States to have “anchor babies” who are eligible for welfare benefits and who are used to eventually get citizenship for their parents. (The key words in the amendment are these: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Congress adopted the 14^th Amendment after the Civil War, in part, to guarantee the citizenship of freed slaves and their descendants.)

“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14^th Amendment, I part ways with the senators on that because I believe the 14^th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important,” Dobbs said on Fox. “It lays the foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.” On ABC, Dobbs said, “It is not in the interest of the American people, in my judgment at least, to roll back the laws … because the result may be inconvenient to some and their political views.”

This is the same Dobbs who often made spurious claims about undocumented immigrants on his CNN program — that there was a surge of leprosy cases likely due to immigrants, that immigrants filled one-third of American prison cells, and so on. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others called for Dobbs’ firing after the CNN host suggested that the president had not proved he was born in the United States. In November, Dobbs left the network at a reported cost to CNN of $8 million to buy out his contract. ( continue to full post… )

In an Arizona Senate campaign in which immigration and border security have been center stage issues, it’s no surprise that Chris Simcox managed to insert himself back into local headlines. Since reinventing himself in 2002 as the charismatic founder of the vigilante border-watch group Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. (MCDC), Simcox has always found a way to command attention.

But the latest chapter in the Simcox saga has been more low-comedy soap opera than high-desert drama. It’s been years since Simcox was the subject of national media attention and a regular guest on Fox News and CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” He began his most recent attempt at a comeback with big ambitions, his goal nothing less than unseating sitting Republican senator John McCain. When his efforts went nowhere and he dropped out of the race, Simcox found himself back in the familiar position of issuing pleading E-mail messages to his remaining (and most gullible) supporters, begging them not to abandon him in his latest hour of financial and legal need.

As Hatewatch noted in early June, Simcox’s estranged wife, Alena Lyras Simcox, has accused him of threatening her and their children with loaded handguns on two occasions in late 2009. He also allegedly threatened to shoot police if his wife called them to their home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Although Simcox denies the allegations, in April a Phoenix judge ordered Simcox to move out of the Scottsdale house, surrender his guns and maintain a distance of 200 yards from his family. His next court hearing in the custody dispute is scheduled for August.

Now, in the July 9 edition of his increasingly self-pitying E-mail newsletter, “The Simcox Report,” Simcox accuses his wife of having been involved in an adulterous relationship with Stacey O’Connell, a former member of the MCDC with whom Simcox has been feuding for years, since November of 2009. (O’Connell has denied the allegation.) Simcox charges that ever since O’Connell was thrown out of the MDCD in 2007, the self-described (but unlicensed) “bounty hunter” has “been engaged in an obsessive, devious plan to ruin my personal life.” In mid-June, in fact, O’Connell’s Fugitive Recovery Services of Arizona issued a “Wanted” poster for Simcox, saying that O’Connell had been hired by Lyras to serve the protective ordered granted to Lyras by the court. In the E-mail, Simcox treats his supporters to a large selection of text messages he says O’Connell has sent him in recent weeks, including one taunting, “i chased your skinny little ass right out of the state, youre such a little man (sic).” ( continue to full post… )