And where exactly is that constitutional right to privacy, Judge?

Taking questions at her confirmation hearing today Supreme Court aspirant Sonia Sotomayor says she considers the question of abortion rights “settled law” and asserts there is a constitutional right to privacy.

She obviously reads the same version of the Constitution that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a former ACLU attorney, has tucked away in her chambers.

In responding to questions on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion, Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee “there is a right of privacy” –  that the court has found it in “various places in the Constitution.”  Specifically she says the right is stated in the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure and in the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection of the law.

The often reversed appeals court judge Sotomayor said that “all precedents of the Supreme Court I consider settled law.”

During Ginsburg’s 1993 confirmation hearing, she provided a strong and unequivocal defense of a woman’s right to abortion, saying it was based on the Constitution’s explicit guarantee of equal protection — as well as an “unstated right of privacy.“

“It is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision maker, that her choice be controlling,” Judge Ginsburg told the Senate Judiciary Committee at that time.  “If you impose restraints, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex. The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.”

No word from Ginsburg on the full equity of the pre-born human infant or its father.

The threat from within

Last month, a Saudi Arabian man named Raed Abdul-Rahman Al-Saif, placed three bags on the Tampa, Florida airport security conveyor belt as he made his way toward his gate to board US Airways flight 1077 to Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon. He never made it to the gate.

Read the rest of this compelling article titled The County and the School of Hate, by David R. Stokes, a Virginia-based minister and broadcaster.

Earlier this year, Seeing Red AZ posted a video and article on this subject. We urge you to read Rev. Stokes article and revisit our post. This is vitally important information.

Resuscitating “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” to the detriment of American workers

Illegal immigration is once again front and center in today’s Arizona Republic‘s editorial. Nothing surprising there.

But before getting to the meat of this unpalatably re-heated meal, readers are served the appetizer litany of deaths of “migrants” succumbing to desert heat, kidnappings and drop-houses along with the gnawable bone for the ecology minded: “devastation to the borderland ecosystem.”  These are today’s initial reasons put forth as key to the pressing need for ‘immigration reform.”

The real story in Linda Valdez’s editorial titled Arizonans Can Help Obama, is the role of  the hometown crowd.

The editorial enthuses that Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl will join forces with Democrats Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano turned Homeland Security Chief, to “lead a bipartisan group assigned to advance reform.” 

According to Valdez, McCain’s immigration credentials are “beyond reproach, since he recognizes that reform is necessary to facilitate an orderly future flow of migrant labor that is adequate to meet the need.”

Valdez’s assertion stands in direct contradiction to an above-the-fold, front page article in same issue of the newspaper detailing the growing number of churches and synagogues across the Valley forming support groups to assist with networking, career coaching and attempts to restore hope to desperate unemployed citizens. How does importing foreign competition, willing to work for lower wages, aid frantic American citizens who are jobless and losing their homes to foreclosure at record rates?

FOX News reports that liberal Democrat Chuck Schumer, steering an immigration overhaul through the Senate expects to have a bill ready by Labor Day. This time Arizona Republicans Kyl and McCain are deviously letting the Democrat take the flak for a bill on which they have previously been the architects and leading cheerleaders — along with their now ailing liberal cohort, Ted Kennedy. They are keenly aware their own Republican party has had its fill of their duplicity on this crucial issue.

According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, Arizona’s unemployment rate has risen from 6.6 percent in December to 8.2 percent in May. And home foreclosures  in Arizona rose to 16,865 properties with foreclosure filings in May, a 4 percent increase from the previous month and 31 percent ahead of May 2008.

And we need to import workers, Linda?

Barto lays down her hand — and gets trumped

In the back and forth emails making the rounds after six defectors left the Capitol building to avoid going on record as opposing HB 2280 –  a bill which would have ended sanctuary city policies –  Rep. Nancy Barto (R-Dist.7) attempts to defend her actions.  

She writes: “Rank and file officers are not calling for this bill — they want and need true discretion to perform their duties.”

How, then, does she explain this?

The bill authored by Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Dist.18) was endorsed by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, AZ Fraternal Order of Police, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), Maricopa County Deputies Association, Border Patrol Officers Association, Arizona State Republican Party, Maricopa County Republican Party, Arizona Highway Patrol Association. It also gained the support of  the Arizona African American Republican Committee, Arizona Republican Assembly, The Pachyderm Coalition, NumbersUSA, and F.A.I.R.

Seeing Red AZ covered the spineless misadventures of these legislators in this post: Keep these folks in mind when elections roll around.  Maricopa County Republican Chairman Rob Haney voiced his concerns in this letter sent to GOP political activists.

Haney wrote: Last week nine of our Republican state representatives opposed a SOVEREIGNTY bill which would have attempted to end sanctuary city policies. Six of the nine did not even have the courage to vote their convictions. They chose to attempt to protect their political future by not voting. This lack of courage, as well as the failure to understand that the well-being, if not survival, of our citizens and our country is so intricately tied to this invasion is unconscionable. The billed failed by five votes. It was within the power of these nine Republican representatives to protect you and enforce Constitutional mandates. They failed you.

Point well taken, Chairman Haney.

Keep these folks in mind when elections roll around

This is a special message for NumbersUSA members in Arizona

Dear Arizona friends,

Before adjourning for the year on July 1, the Arizona House defeated a bill (HB 2280) authored by Sen. Russell Pearce that would have cracked down on pro-illegal alien “sanctuary” laws and aided in immigration enforcement by expanding the state’s trespassing law. The House voted 26-15 for the bill, five votes short of the 31 needed for passage. The Senate had approved the bill 16-11 earlier that day.

Although most Democrats were expected to oppose the bill, they were joined by three Republicans – Reps. McComish, Tobin and Jones.  An incredible 19 members of the House did not vote on the bill at all.

On the Republican side, these included six members – Reps. Driggs, Barto, Konopnicki, Crandall, Mason, and Quelland — who all left the Capitol building so they didn’t have to go on record as opposing HB 2280.

This legislation, in its original form as passed by the Senate a few days prior, was SB 1175. Rep. Driggs, a long-time opponent of immigration enforcement, derailed that bill’s chances by refusing to hear it in his committee. In order to keep the measure alive, Sen. Pearce placed the bill’s language on HB 2280, which had already passed the House and only needed a “concurrence” vote to clear the measure. The Senate passed HB 2280 on July 1, but when the House voted on the bill a few hours later, Republican opponents left rather than vote.

For years now, certain Republicans have fought responsible enforcement legislation, while at the same time denying their anti-enforcement positions. In fact, some even purported to be concerned about enforcement as they carried water for open-border and cheap-labor groups. The time has come to hold those Republicans accountable for their actions.

Seeing Red AZ wrote about these defectors in this July I, 2009 post Your legislators hard at work, taking a dive — we name names.

 Rob Haney, Maricopa County Republican Committee Chairman has boldly written this article in which he holds accountable those who are responsible for this malfeasance.

Rick Warren goes off the deep end

Defying some of his fellow conservative Christian critics, one of the nation’s most prominent religious leaders told several thousand American Muslims over the weekend that “the two largest faiths on the planet” must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems, according to OneNewsNow.

“Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them,” evangelical mega-church pastor Rick Warren said as he addressed the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Warren said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls “the five global giants” of war, poverty, corruption, disease, and illiteracy.

Warren urged Muslims and Christians to speak out against stereotyping of any group and to respect each other even while disagreeing.

Disagreeing? The group currently uses its website to propagate violent hatred against Christians and Jews.

The Muslims who detest Christians, deny the Holocaust and have pledged to drive the tiny nation of Israel into the sea, must all have nodded in agreement as Warren blathered.

This Canada Free Press article details ISNA’s ties with Hamas and other terrorist organizations. According to the article, the group’s website is laced with quotations such as: “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him’” and “I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim.”

As far back as 1996, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell stated, “One of the groups with Hamas ties is the Dallas-based Islamic Association for Palestine in North America, which, in turn, is allied with the Islamic Circle of North America in New York.”

Terrorism analyst Steven Emerson reports that ISNA has close ties to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological forebear of all radical Islamic movements — including Hamas and al Qaeda. Documents show that Hamas officials have participated in previous ISNA events. “The ISNA’s hatred of the Jews is so fierce,” writes Emerson, “that it taunted them with a repetition of what Hitler did to them.” In his book American Jihad, Emerson expounds: “The ISNA openly supports militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations, praises terror attacks, issues incendiary attacks on western values and policies, and supports the imposition of Sharia [Islamic law].”

Warren shared the podium with Ingrid Mattson, president of ISNA and professor of Islamic Studies at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies. She is a convert from Roman Catholicism to Islam

At present, Ms. Mattson participates in ‘Live Dialogues’ on Islam Online.  The website supports suicide bombings, mandates attacks against American troops, prescribes murder for homosexuals, and discusses poetic beheadings of human beings.

Rick Warren certainly has a knack for picking friends.

More news than we want. It’s time to step down, Mark

 Admitting he lied about his lies, he wants to feed us the same load of horse pucky he tried to serve up to his wife.  She apparently isn’t buying and neither are we. And the people of South Carolina, who deserve better than the abandonment and spectacle in which Gov. Mark Sanford appears to be reveling, should show this fool and his stories of  “sparking” and “crossing the line…but never the ultimate line,” (with anyone but his Argentine girlfriend, Maria) – the door.

His wife, Jenny said that he actually asked her several times to visit the mistress and she refused.

Good for her.

The Post and Courier carries the update to this pathetic saga.

Find the missing word

The article in the daily began this way: Two years after engineering the nation’s toughest employer-sanctions law, state Sen. Russell Pearce has taken the lead in a new round of anti-immigration reforms that could have long-lasting effects on Arizona.

One would require school districts to collect data on any student who can’t prove legal residency. Another would require state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws, thus making sanctuary [city] laws illegal.

The report, centered on Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Dist.18), is rife with the term “anti-immigration.” 

The missing word is “illegal.”

Anti-Americanism passing as education in Tucson

Republic columnist Doug MacEachern has written a must-read column titled Defenses of “ethnic studies are feeble.” He discussed the taxpayer funded LaRaza programs being taught in the Tucson Unified School District’s public schools.

His piece includes several excellent links, and this stunning quote from Augustine Romero, the director of the program, which MacEachern describes as happily expressed to him last year: “Our teachers are left-leaning. They are progressives. They’re going to have things that conservatives are not going to like.”

I have written a fair bit about TUSD’s innocent, little set of survey courses in world history and governments. I’ve written about the instructors’ obsession with the United States as a land of racism and oppression, writes MacEachern.

 MacEachern continues: I’ve written about Romero’s annual summer symposiums that constitute a freak show of radical education theorists. And about their unhinged obsession with Marxism. Really, you simply must see the Web site of the featured speaker at last year’s symposium: www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ pages/mclaren/.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne,  is correct in sponsoring legislation to ban such programs in Arizona’s public schools.

Seeing Red AZ has previously written about this travesty in Tucson where the Marxist agenda is alive and well.

Human Events carried this exposé of La Raza by former Georgia U. S. Rep. Charlie Norwood who wrote about “the dark side of our current illegal immigration crisis.”

Phil’s folly: Phoenix’s Light rail transient transit is a no-go

Was your home one of the many along 19^th Avenue whose sale was forced through eminent domain to make room for Phoenix’s light rail transient transit system?

That’s a shame — especially now that the city is unable to afford to complete the three-mile 19^th Avenue extension and has completely abandoned plans for other routes.

So the desolate, empty lots and chain-link fences along 19^th Avenue will greet you until at least 2014. And according to the daily, other stretches face delays until 2019, 2021, and even 2030, ensuring that many Valleyites will never lay eyes on the tracks and trains.

If you read the article, you’ll see that many of the priorities have changed, along with the boastful stories of start dates and enlarged routes. The delay of at least 16 months on 19^th Avenue means the earliest the light-rail extension can begin service is 2014, about six years after the starter line opened. Don’t hold your breath.

Last week Scottsdale City Council voted to resign from the Valley Metro board, strongly signaling that community’s disinterest. Also scrapped is the 12-mile track toward Paradise Valley Mall.

Mayor Phil Gordon’s sister and brother-in-law Gail Gordon and Ron Ober were recently discovered to have been awarded lucrative contracts through their Phoenix-based Policy Development Group to help guide transportation principles through the bidding process. Revealing the cozy racket for what it is might have impacted the continuation of the routes as much as the declining tax revenues in the slowed economy.