The author has already labeled Arizona, with its anti immigration legislation targeted at Latinos and Hispanics, as the equivalent of Mississippi in its treatment of African Americans in the 1960s.
Now, Arizona must also be compared to South Carolina, with its threat of nullification of federal laws and the Constitution, which went on from the 1830s with John C. Calhoun, all the way up to Fort Sumter and the Civil War in 1861!
It is extremely ironic that just as we are about to commemorate the tragedy of the Civil War’s beginning on April 12, we now have the Arizona State Senate passing legislation declaring the power to nullify federal laws and the US Constitution if they do not like what is being done!
This idea of defiance was supposed to be settled by the Civil War prosecution by Abraham Lincoln, and also supposed to be resolved by US National Guard intervention in Arkansas in 1957 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in Mississippi and Alabama in 1962 and 1963 by President John F. Kennedy!
Now, however, State Senator Russell Pearce of the Arizona legislature is promoting defiance of the federal government, not only on immigration matters and the health care law, but also on anything else that he and his followers believe is unconstitutional!
Apparently, they have learned nothing from history, and the reality that only the Supreme Court can declare actions of the executive and legislative branches unconstitutional!
To advocate anything else is TREASON, subject to prosecution by the federal government if action is actually taken, and if need be, Presidential control of the state National Guard to enforce federal laws and federal court decisions, just as in the South in the 1950s and 1960s!
Anyone living in Arizona should be ashamed of what their government leaders are advocating, a path that would lead to chaos and lawlessness and abuse of power by state outlaws, and it might be necessary at some point to enforce federal law by intervention by Federal authorities!
Hopefully, before we get into that kind of crisis, cooler heads will prevail, as states may not defy the US Constitution and be allowed to get away with it!
This is a warning to Governor Jan Brewer, State Senator Russell Pearce, and other radical right wingers: Shape up or else suffer the consequences of disobedience of constitutional law!