Democrats and liberals of the late 1940s and early 1950s had Harry S. “Give ’em Hell” Truman. Conservatives and Republicans today have Antonin “Give ’em Grief” Scalia.
Grief is just about all Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave Solicitor General Donald Verrilli during questioning this week about Arizona’s SB 1070.
Arizona’s legislature passed the law two years ago. Gov. Jan Brewer signed it, and the ink on the darned thing was barely dry before the Obama administration hauled Arizona into court.
The statute allows, among other things, for Arizona law enforcement personnel to inquire about the immigration status of anyone legally stopped in the state.
This didn’t sit well with liberals, many Democrats, so-called progressives, America’s open-borders crowd — who advocate open borders for anybody not white — and those who think our immigration policy should be dictated by Mexico. The naysayers screamed racism, their first — and, in many cases, last and only — card in the deck.
The cry of “racism” is also the first, last and only refuge of those who have no legitimate argument.
So Attorney General Eric Holder, no doubt at the behest of his feckless leader, President Obama, hauled Arizona into court and left Verrilli with the thankless task of defending the administration’s position.
Verrilli must have known his day would go badly when an Obama appointee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, told him, “Your argument — that this systematic cooperation [between Arizona and the federal government] is wrong — is not selling very well. Why don’t you come up with something else?”
The “something else” that occurred to Verrilli was to whine about how SB 1070 might lead to “mass incarceration,” according to news reports. That prompted this retort from Justice Anthony Kennedy.
“So you’re saying the government has a legitimate interest in not enforcing its own laws?”
Kennedy cut straight to the chase with that question. It’s not the government that has a legitimate interest in not enforcing immigration laws; it’s the Obama administration, which hauled Arizona into court for one reason, and one reason only: to get Latino votes.
Scalia sees right through such shameless, spineless pandering. His questions showed that he treats the Obama administration’s lawsuit against Arizona with the contempt it deserves.
Here are some of the questions Scalia put to either Verrilli, attorney Paul Clement, who argued for the state of Arizona, or both:
* “But if, in fact, someone who does not belong in this country is in Arizona, Arizona has no power? What does sovereignty mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?”
* “The state has no power to close its borders to people who have no right to be there?”
* “Are you objecting to harassing the people who have no business being here? Surely you’re not concerned about harassing them?”
* “We have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico?”
Liberals, many Democrats, so-called progressives, America’s open-borders crowd and those who think our immigration policy should be dictated by Mexico have their noses way out of joint about Scalia’s questions.
One of them is Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who’s in a snit because Scalia’s questions weren’t, in Milbank’s view, “fair and impartial.”
It occurs to me that justices should be fair and impartial most of the time, but not at all when there is a case before them that is a waste of taxpayers’ money and the justices’ time. And that’s doubly true when the case was brought by an administration not to seek justice, but to cravenly pander to a particular ethnic or racial group for its votes.
What’s unfair is that Arizona was hauled into court in the first place. Scalia may have realized that and asked his questions accordingly.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
