Kobach on Ruling of Racist Arizona Law: "We'll Take This"

From Talking Points Memo 6/25/12. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), an architect of the Arizona immigration law partially struck down by the Supreme Court Monday, told Fox News  he was happy to see the provision allowing police to check the citizenship status of people they stop was allowed to go into effect. The provision, known as 2B, was at the heart of protests against the law -- opponents said it amounted to legalized racial profiling -- and Kobach said the Court ruling on 2B was a victory.  Kobach is an "informal adviser" to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "The provisions struck down were less important than subsidiary provisions," Kobach told Fox. "Obviously I would have loved to have every aspect of the Arizona law upheld by the court. We'll take this."

He works for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), recently listed as a nativist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [MORE] 

Justice Scalia Gives Right Wing Stump Speech in Court's Opinion

Dana Milbank from the WashPost 6/25/12 noted, the vitriolic dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia. He said "in an extraordinary display of judicial distemper, Scalia departed entirely from the law at one point and attacked an Obama administration policy that wasn't at issue in the case. Footnoting a New York Times news article rather than case law, Scalia opined on a recent news conference by President Obama. 

Scalia's dissent, more campaign speech than legal opinion, claimed that the Obama administration "desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers" and is acting with "willful blindness or deliberate inattention" to Arizona's illegal immigrants. Saying the majority opinion "boggles the mind," Scalia suggested that states are "at the mercy of the Federal Executive's refusal to enforce the Nation's immigration laws." This dicta served no meaningful purpose. It is simply political and has no place in the Judicial branch. It is an example of the fact that this man is just a hack and is inappropriate to sit on the bench.