In objecting to Arizona’s law, he presumes evil intent and abuse – or at the very least incompetence – on the part of law enforcement officers (not a new conclusion for Obama; recall the Cambridge police acting “stupidly?”) If, as the evidence suggests, Obama presumes that police officers in general can’t be trusted to apply laws correctly and without abuse, he should be directing his ire at Ohio as well.
Further, the Ohio law obviously, outrageously turns the innocent-until-proven-guilty protection on its head. The Arizona law is much narrower and more cautious. It does not, for example, permit a law enforcement officer to determine someone is an illegal immigrant just based on his best guess about the subject’s immigration status. If the President wishes to excoriate a state, its legislature, its governor, its state law, he’d have far more justification with this idiocy in Ohio than the measures of desperation in Arizona.
But Ohio’s governor is a Democrat and Arizona’s is a Republican, and not intimidated. And the Arizona law impacts a demographic that liberals see as natural Democrat voters, just as soon as they can grant them amnesty and citizenship.
Meddling in states’ rights is slippery slope. The U.S. Supreme Court is constitutionally charged with doing it to a limited degree. The president isn’t invited. But if he is going to invite himself in, fairness dictates he find an objectionable law unique to each state. For that matter, in every county, city, burb and burg, school board, school. Why not pick one in every locale, make a master list, organize a Presidential Task Force, and with an even hand and simultaneous assault, correct injustice far and wide?
Maybe the media could help. Instead of it joining the president in his assault on Arizona, They should undertake a state-by-state investigation and compilation of laws that might enable police abuses or otherwise be unfairly applied. They could gift the entire catalog of individual states’ offensive laws, rules and practices to Obama for him to fix.