More.

Loving v. Virginia was decided two months before I was born. Marriage equality continues to evolve on a timeline that parallels my own; California's Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional today, twenty years on the dot--and almost to the hour--from my own state-sanctioned opposite wedding. It was a long time ago and I was young and clueless.

Tonight I'm sifting through the reaction online and watching Maddow while nursing my stitched-up elbow. Judge Walker's findings of fact echo every argument for equality made on this blog and countless others. It's a dream ruling, written in dream language--fuck, I could have written big chunks of it, save for the inability to use the word fuck in judicial documents--and it appears to be watertight at a level I never dared hope for. In a judicial equivalent of holding the playground bully at arm's length with a hand on the forehead while he flails away impotently with fists that won't hit the mark, Walker issued a stay on his ruling that gives the H8ers until Friday to take their best shot at filing their appeals. Given the laughable lack of coherence the defense exhibited in his courtroom during testimony, I don't think he's very worried about what will happen when the case hits the Ninth Circuit.

Walker's ruling was heavily based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the same 14th that Sens. McConnell, Graham, McCain, and Kyl are so anxious to overturn that they can't help hopping from foot to foot. So boom, in one fell swoop the 14th becomes a rally point for attacking fecund Latinas and domestic-minded gays. The more interesting things get, well, the more interesting they get.

Ted Olson, one half of the team that argued against Prop 8, on Maddow tonight:

We've got to stop thinking about equality in terms of conservative or liberal. We need to start thinking about the fact that gay and lesbian citizens are our brothers and our sisters; they're entitled to equal places in our society. That should be a conservative value, it is also a liberal value, it is not something that should split us.

Von dein Mund, etc. And on we go.

And the Moral Arc of the Universe Bends a Touch Closer to Justice

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.

Details and commentary will be everywhere soon. The full decision is here.

True Colors Revealed to be, Unsurprisingly, Blindingly White

I wish I had written this, because it's so well done, but really I wish no one would ever have to write anything even approximating this in America. Racism, xenophobia, sexism, and bullheaded deliberate ignorance of our own laws, all in one tidy package courtesy of Russell Pearce and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and assorted nutters from the east and west.

Now it's not enough to cluck about illegal immigrants while pretending you're really talking about the Irish and Polish and Russian alongside the Mexicans, er, the Latin Americans, not enough to rage about oprimando el numero ocho para servicio en espanol and insist English is the official national language even though it isn't. Now all the pretense that it isn't really racism is being dropped, and it must come as such as a relief to be able to talk this way, about breeding seasons and dropping young like livestock, and stop pretending they ever thought these people were human in the first place.

"We need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that's the way nature made it. Men don't drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do." That statement was being pushed by the author of Arizona's immigration law. He's not alone.

The neat distillation of current anti-immigrant thinking was in an email spread around by State Senator Russell Pearce, and cited by The Nation's Robin Templeton in a report on the recently revived, anti-immigrant rhetoric on birthright citizenship — the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that stipulates that babies born on American soil are automatically granted citizenship.

"It's invasion by birth canal," the leader of a California anti-immigrant ballot initiative told the Los Angeles Times. The head of an anti-immigrant group in Virginia called for an investigation into "whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season."

Read the full piece for the full revolting story.

America's Pastime Is Ripping My Heart Out

Goddamn baseball. Goddamn Cubs.

The Cubs ended a bad road trip that saw Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot traded, the bullpen setting a major-league record by giving up 11 straight hits in a 12-run inning, Carlos Gonzalez becoming the fourth player in history to complete a cycle with a walk-off home run and Silva's heart episode Sunday.

Garblarghphawhargle. [/random unintelligible noises] This season can't end soon enough.

And the Immigration Blowup Continues to, Well, Blow Up

If your attention has been focused elsewhere this week--say, on cut-up and sewn-together joints, as mine has--you may have missed the news that a federal judge put the kibosh on several provisions of Arizona's new immigration law, specifically, the parts requiring cops to double as immigration agents and demand papers from anyone they stop who they think might be here illegally. A lot of people saw some very big red flags snapping in that breeze, and so, too, did judge Susan Bolton.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents. Sections barred from being enforced include:

• Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;

• Forbidding police from releasing anyone they have arrested until that person's immigration status is determined;

• Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documentation;

• Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;

• Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.

"Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked," U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

The predictable response reared its head, right on schedule.

The federal judge who halted parts of Arizona's immigration law is getting "thousands" of e-mails and phone calls, many in opposition to her ruling - and a few threatening her life.

A guy I play soccer with did not threaten the judge, but did post a status update on his Facebook asking if Bolton would give him back the $5000 he paid to go through the immigration/citizenship process when he came here from Greece. Another soccer acquaintance, this one from Poland, chimed in and said she'd like her 5k back too. Both said they don't see anything racist about SB1070 as it stands, and don't know why the hispanics think it's just targeting them instead of the Greeks and Poles and Chinese, and the Greek guy said he wouldn't mind carrying his passport and being questioned by a cop every day if that's what it takes to stop illegal immigration.

I try to avoid this kind of discussion on Facebook, so I did not post a response pointing out that (1) SB1070 has absolutely nothing to do with the legal citizenship process and thus isn't handing out fee waivers to every dehydrated Guanajuate who stumbles across the border, (2) the reason the Greek guy and Polish girl had the opportunity to fork over five grand and be welcomed with open arms in the first place is because (a) they came from countries whose quotas aren't filled and oh yeah (b) are, respectively, a software engineer and a cardiac nurse, not the (c) unskilled laborers from Latin America who would find themselves on a citizenship waiting list several generations long, and (3) if the Greek and Polish underclasses could walk here instead of having to pay for a boat or plane ride, it wouldn't just be the Mexicans and Salvadorans feeling like they have a target on their backs.

The Greek guy's wife is having a baby any day now. I wonder if Yorgos would always remember to take his passport and naturalization papers with him on the inevitable 2 a.m. runs to Walgreen's when the baby has a fever and he might not stay under the speed limit or come to a complete stop at every sign before turning. I wonder how excited he would be then to cooperate with a cop who thinks his skintone, beard, and accent mean he's not supposed to be here. I don't know why he doesn't think this could have happened to him, or why he thinks he would welcome the impingement of the freedom he shelled out all that cash to have. It's moot in any case, since Bolton's ruling ensures that he won't be faced with that situation, but I almost wish it wasn't. Because lots of shit sounds like it's a good idea, or would at least be tolerable, until it actually happens to you.

...

We have been a tad under the weather since Monday, with "under the weather" here meaning "operating with one functional limb." And it turns out that one-handed typing isn't as much fun as I'd been led to believe--who knew?--so posting will be light for a while.

Burning Questions

The pre-op check-in nurse is very nice on the phone. She goes through the vaguely familiar litany of questions--it's been six years since the last knee mishap, so some parts are foggy--starting with the actual spelling of my name, rather than the common two-letter transposition that turns me from half-Czech to all-Cuban, progressing to allergies and abnormal neurological history (seasonal and none, in order) with a side trip to consult the travel guide to East Narcotia (they all make me puke, hellooooo Advil) and finally to detailed directions on how to find the outpatient surgery department. She is adamant that the correct elevator is no more than ten paces from the door. I feel like a pirate.

One last thing, she says. Would you like a chaplain to come say a prayer with you before surgery? Hmmm. No. No, I would not. I would like a bartender to come pour me a shot of bourbon before surgery, if it's not too much trouble.

So I'm off for an overhaul on Monday morning, armed with my lucky boxers and a Sharpie for scrawling helpful notes and reminders for the surgeon all over my legs and arms. Right knee? Scope here pls. Left knee? Insert cortisone here. Right elbow? Slice and splice here pls. Left elbow? THIS IS THE ONLY FUNCTIONAL JOINT LEFT IN MY BODY NO MOLESTAR POR FAVOR KTHXBAI.

Stay tuned for the Boltgirl Frozen Peas Rehab Journal, sure to contain such exciting entries as Stationary Bike Chronicles and Honey I'm Ready for Another Gin and Tonic and Holy Fuck This Hurts.

Reunion

A few days ago I took a break from the interminable parent information sessions accompanying new student orientation at my son's university and spent an hour wandering the grounds and gardens on campus, getting to know the cool-and-mist-loving Pacific Northwest flowers and trees that are new to me. One flower in particular caught my eye, a stand of tall stalks topped with spiky balls in varying stages of bloom that shimmered purple.




















Half-bloomed, with bee; click to make life-sized.




















Fully bloomed, sans bee.

"They're wonderful, aren't they?" came a voice behind me. I turned to see an elderly man who I had not met, but whose crooked-toothed, lopsided grin was familiar.

He told me the plants were called globe thistles, and, chagrined, I glanced down at the thorn-tipped leaves and spiky stalks and said Oh, of course, a thistle, I should have looked at the foliage. These aren't like the thistles I grew up with. He smiled and told me about the globe thistles in his back yard, how they used to be covered with bees every summer, but that he hadn't seen a single bee this year and was worried that the hive had died or moved on. He asked where I was from and asked questions about saguaros and their flowers, and after a pause regarded the thistles again. "They're so fascinating, how different they look at different times. See these new ones that are all spiky and silver with a purple glow, and then these that have bloomed and are covered in almost a periwinkle?"

Yeah, I said, and then inside they have such a deep purple at the base of the blooms. Really striking. He leaned closer to a flower, examining it, and said, "You know, you're right. I'd never noticed that before. Nature is so wonderful when you take a moment to stop and just look at it. You'll always see something new," and I heard his words in his soft, measured voice and looked at his kind, gauzy eyes and gentle smile, and on that cool, overcast day a thousand miles from home I saw my grandfather again.

He wished me a good rest of my visit, I wished him luck with his bees, and he continued on to wherever he was walking. It was a good day.

Placeholder Posts? We Got 'Em!

I am freshly back from Seattle and am trying to remember what I do for a living. Please bear with us.

Oh.

Apparently the Pentagon is only trying to decide if they'll go with bright colors, neutrals, or camo for the new ghey-proof shower curtains they'll have to order if DADT is repealed. No segregation after all, Marine Commandant James Conway's musings aside.

Well, now that that's all cleared up, I'm off to the Pacific Northwest for a few days of gentle weather, good coffee, and damp green scenery. Don't trash the place while I'm gone, 'k?

Offered Without Comment.

Well, other than Jesus fucking Christ, of course.

"We think it would be irresponsible to conduct a survey that didn’t try to address these types of things. Because when DADT is repealed, we will have to determine if there are any challenges in those particular areas, any adjustments that need to be made in terms of how we educate the force to handle those situations, or perhaps even facility adjustments that need to be made to deal with those scenarios."

Wait, I guess I do have one more thing to add. Hello, military? You have already been showering, sleeping, eating, shitting, training, and bleeding next to gay servicemembers since day one at Ft. Leonard Wood, since D-Day, since fucking Valley Forge. And your gay brothers- and sisters-in-arms have somehow managed to resist throwing themselves at the giant throbbing hunk of man/woman you apparently represent and just done their jobs. So you really don't need a fucking survey about how the delicate sensibilities of a Marine tank crew are going to be offended if their gay TC doesn't shuffle off to the gays-only rack at night. And you don't need to think about gay-only racks, showers, messes, or anything else in the first place.

If you want to segregate somebody, segregate the dumbasses who think they need to worry about dropping the soap into their own gobshite stupid facilities, and leave the professionals alone.

Because I Have Far Too Much Time

I think this template. The previous one with all the leaves was just too busy.

DOMA: Quick Hit

It will take a while to read through the details, but the short version is that a federal judge in Massachusetts found DOMA (well, specifically, Section 3 of DOMA) unconstitutional.

To further divide the class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning. And where, as here, “there is no reason to believe that the disadvantaged class is different, in relevant respects” from a similarly situated class, this court may conclude that it is only irrational prejudice that motivates the challenged classification.149 As irrational prejudice plainly never constitutes a legitimate government interest, this court must hold that Section 3 of DOMA as applied to Plaintiffs violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Both the Fifth and 14th Amendments are cited as being violated, which bodes well. However, the Tenth is cited as well, and that gives me pause. If states' rights to define marriage are being held as the major constitutional tenet being violated by DOMA, I am forced to (1) remember that I live in Arizona, and (2) conclude that my state's reaction will probably involve (a) passing a second, we-double-dog-mean-it marriage amendment, (b) criminalizing all non-procreative sex acts for people under 65, and possibly (c) seceding from the Union when the state legislature realizes suing the Feds to remove the 5th and 14th amendments from the Constitution ain't gonna fly, and it's the only way to avoid having to recognize the marriages of Tucsonans who might flock to Cedar Rapids for summer wedding junkets.

Another take on the potential Tenth Amendment can o' worms is at FireDogLake. Much reading to do!

Zzzzzzzz

There is something to be said for the lazy days of summer, and perhaps more to be said when such a day hits a level of lazy that is magical enough to knock our neuroses clean outta the park. About 7:30 last night, as we lounged on the couch having just wrapped up The Godfather and carryout pad thai, the girlfriend wondered if we should have had a party or something for the 4th, thrown a token hamburger on the grill, asked some people over to watch fireworks from the roof, anything. Nah, I said, not at all.

The Fourth has been a big deal to me for a long time, wrapped up in childhood memories of my grandfather and homemade ice cream and band concerts in the park and watermelon and fireworks, and more recent memories of my personal coming-out anniversary.

This year? Pfft. I hung out with my girlfriend and my son, lollygagging in the breeze from floor fans that made the hot day tolerable, sucking on Otter Pops, catching up on classic American films all of us managed to miss the first time around due to either not being born yet (him) or being busy with other things, apparently (girlfriend and me). Rocky, Godfather, pad thai, family, relaxing in the present instead of dutifully hauling out the memories of the past.

It was a good day.

Monsoon, Mon-not-soon-enough

The cicadas are in overdrive. Stepping from an air-conditioned office into the parking lot briefly feels good, like a basket of warm towels fresh from the dryer feels good, but the muzzy warm blanket feeling quickly cedes to holy fuck it's hot oppression. Clouds pause at the mountaintops, think about it for a while, and then text all their friends and it's a flash mob of cumulonimbus goodness spilling from the Catalinas over the edges of the basin, promising globs of dark gray there, and over there, and especially over there, rolling over and mercifully blocking the late-afternoon sun, but not yet right here overhead. The mob teases with a few flashes of lightning in the distance and some puffs of promising wind moist with creosote and water on soil, flings a sprinkle of droplets against the window, and then calls it a day.

Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we roast, and schedule hanging up the laundry for sometime after midnight when it might drop below 100 degrees, and glance up at the single cloud milling aimlessly on the horizon and hope its friends get their shit together a little more productively today.

In Defense of a Referee

Oh, England sucked yesterday, and the general quality of the refereeing might have sucked more (Mexico-Argentina AR, I'm looking at you particularly hard). Frank Lampard tied the game for England with a blast that bounced off the bottom of the crossbar and landed a full yard inside the goal before bouncing out, except that neither the center referee nor the assistant referee saw it. No goal, no tie, and, ultimately, no quarterfinals for England. Efan Ekoko noted that of the 40,000+ people in the Bloemfontein stadium, those two men were the only two who didn't see a good goal, and the replays from the camera positioned high in the stadium at the goal line, and the one in the back corner of the goal, make it blindingly obvious that the referees biffed it.

And we instantly howled for cameras on the goal line, or chips in the ball, or SOMETHING to keep blind referees from fucking up yet another match.

One thing, though, keeps me from being able in good conscience to string the Uruguayan crew up next to Koman Coulibaly: Because both of the referees yesterday were properly positioned, neither one of them had a good enough view of the goal line to be absolutely sure the ball crossed completely into the goal. Cue the BoltGraphics Generator, please:

The red dots are England attackers, the black dots are German defenders, the green dot is the German keeper, the blue dots are the referees, and the x is the spot where the ball smacked into the turf. The center referee was roughly 30 yards from the goal line, the assistant--who was properly lined up level with the next-last defender--was at least 40 yards from the goal line, and both were partially screened by at least one player (in the case of the AR, the keeper). So with a vantage point quite distant from the goal and maybe six feet off the ground, tops, neither man had much of an angle to determine if he saw green between the ball and the line during the split second bounce before the ball came out.

Of course it's an obvious call when you're positioned either on the goal line or thirty feet above it, and it's especially obvious in slow motion. But standing on the ground, thirty yards distant, in real time, without x-ray goggles? Not so much. ARs are required to follow every ball to the endline, precisely to ensure they'll be able to determine whether it has completely crossed the line and avoid controversial situations like this one, but it's physically impossible to get to the endline at the same time as a 40, 50, 60 mph shot taken from 18 yards away. So yeah, it was a goal, and yeah, I was pulling hard for England, but no, I can't fault the referees on this one because they're not fifty feet tall or wearing jetpacks and thus couldn't know without a doubt that the ball was over.

If FIFA really insist on staying in the dark ages and not employing video or microchip technology, they could at least put a line judge on each end of the field, opposite the AR, whose job would be limited to goal/no goal, corner/goal kick. The dirty hippie in me doesn't need situations to be set up for everyone to win, but really hates to see people unnecessarily set up to fail unless they're playing euchre against me, and FIFA's refusal to add extra eyes, either human or electronic, to a 110 x 75 yard field with 22 players moving at top speed does exactly that.

The Tevez "goal" in the second game, of course, from a good two yards offside, is a whole 'nother thing, and that thing is a giant bucket of suck. See, I'm not totally a reffy homer.

Stop the Presses

The bloggy bizness exposes me to a good deal of wankery, but I have inadvertently stumbled upon the biggest bunch of ginormous wankers in the history of forever. Otherwise known as Wikipedia editors. Oh my god, just go over there and read.

Side note: if Brave does ever get made (is it in production? pre-production? pre-pre-production? be prepared to back up your answer with several paragraphs of self-referential faux legalese and vaguely-remembered Logic 101 bullshit, or they won't let you be an editor any more), I'm going to have to see it several times. Girls with arrows! Emma Thompson!

A Scooby Snack for the Abby Wambach Girlfriend Contingent

Hello, intrepid Googlers. Trusty source K sent along this little tidbit for World Cup season: interactive Abby Wambach.

Enjoy.

World Cup Action: a Snapshot

Trident was packed, again, for the US match yesterday morning, with a raucous and nervous and finally triumphant crowd. Pity the poor Bud Light girl who was trying her damnedest to get people to own up to drinking Bud Light so she could hand them beads and official Budweiser vuvuzelas.

People weren't having it.

Bud Light girl: Who's drinking Bud Light?!?
Assembled patrons: *crickets*
Bud Light girl: Who wants beads?
Patron: Do I have to drink Bud Light to get them?
Bud Light girl: Yeah.
Patron: Oh. Never mind, then.
Bud Light girl: ...

Bud Light girl, trying again: Who wants a vuvuzela?
Assembled patrons: *crickets*
Bud Light girl: Do you guys want one for your man cave?
Guys at table: Sorry, what?
Bud Light girl: Do you have a man cave?
Guys at table: Uh, no.
Bud Light girl: ...

The US got shut out and shot down almost as badly for the entire match, until Landon Donovan finally put away a rebound in the 91st minute, and the crowd erupted and dissolved simultaneously in roars and tears. What a fucking heart attack of a match.

Note to Clint Dempsey: yes, you got royally robbed when your 21st-minute goal was disallowed on a phantom offside call. That does not, however, mean that you should spend the rest of the match carefully nurturing your hangdog pouty face and staying down on the ground a little bit longer each time you get bumped (yes, I saw that on the next-to-last one you took a forearm that split your lip; cool, but you're really going to be okay). Get the fuck up and play already.

On to Saturday!

Why Didn't They Think of This a Month Ago?

Because, much like John McCain having a foolproof plan to catch Osama bin Laden but refusing to reveal it unless he was elected president, God has a plan to zap the Deepwater Horizon's blowout shut. He just hasn't been asked nicely enough yet.

'Nuff Said

IANAL

I Am Not A Lawyer, but I am a referee, and Koman Coulibaly was crap today in the center of the US-Slovenia match. Sure, the US sucked in the first half, and the defense in particular wasn't alert enough to notice the Slovenian ballboy who apparently snuck into the 6-yard box and nailed Tim Howard's feet to the floor before the first goal, but goddammit, what a second-half comeback by the Yanks, and what utterly fascinating calls by Mr. Coulibaly.

The disallowed goal, in particular, featured at least three Slovenians hugging US attackers who were trying to run onto Donovan's serve, and after Maurice Edu destroyed the ball into the roof of the net, no explanation was forthcoming from the ref other than *shrug* no goal.

Fucking fuck. England need to beat Algeria this afternoon, and then beat Slovenia on Wednesday, and the US need to fucking start the Algeria game Wednesday like the devil hisself is holding a lighter to their Nike Dri-Fits.

Note to the guy in the striped polo at Trident this morning who is a clone of That One Guy who unfailingly shows up to every bar I've ever watched a game in: charging the television while screaming probably won't actually affect the outcome of the match, but please do take one more step forward and see if you can cram your head all the way through the screen, because I suspect having large shards of plasma screen stuffed into your mouth might shut you up, if only for ten or so blessed seconds.

Where Have We Seen This Before?

Hmmm. Execs from the top five oil companies were called on the congressional carpet yesterday to explain why they've all been using the same cribbed disaster response plan that was apparently originally written for a well located in an Inuit neighborhood a long time ago. Would saying the entire thing was made of weapons-grade awkward be a gross understatement? Yes. Yes, it would.

The second squirming executive at 0:57 is very familiar, but I just can't put my finger on where I've seen him and that look on his face before. Oh. Wait.

Yep, that's it.

Michael told me to write a disaster response plan, but I spilled my gallon can of Cheez Whiz on it. Costco, nine bucks. So I copied this other plan I found on the internet, and if anyone asks about it, two words: Caribbean. Walruses. It could happen. That's five words. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. [/kevin]

General Announcement to the World

Except for the opening match and the US matches, I am at work during the World Cup, during which time I have my DVR set at home and am carefully avoiding any website that might contain the slightest whiff of scores so that I can watch the games when I get home and experience them fresh out of the package.

Please, world, do not text and e-mail me asking what I think about the latest upset, because what I am thinking is FUCKING HELL, PEOPLE, DO NOT TEXT ME SCORES!

*deep breath*

That is all.

Hmmm

President Obama, on Gulf Coast peeps adversely affected by the volcano of oil:

He said, "I will be their fierce advocate to make sure they are getting the compensation they need to get through what is going to be a difficult season.''

Well, they're fucked. Good luck, Gulfies! Hope that works out better for you than it did for The Ghey.

Fucking Hell

More cutting-edge oil cleanup tech from BP.



That'll help. Jesus fucking christ.

Jan-Jan and R-Pea Explain It All For You

A facet of the immigration debate that tends to be overlooked is the impact on families when half the people in a household are citizens or legal residents and half are not, and the undocumented half get deported--specifically, when the undocumented people are parents, grandparents, or other caregivers and the citizens are minor children who were born here. It's such a problem in Tucson that the Sunnyside Unified School District has joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB1070, Arizona's "papers please" law that compels municipal law enforcement to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop who they think is Mexican may be in the country illegally.

State Senator Russell Pearce (R-Fuck Mountain) and Governor Jan Brewer (brrrrrrr) floated competing solutions in which they both attempt to be Solomon, but without getting that Solomon wasn't really serious with that whole chop-the-baby-in-half thing. Brewer--who, by the by, has perfected the facial shrug like nuthin' you've ever seen over the past couple of months--says that deported parents should just take their kids with them back to Mexico (cannot embed; go watch) Problem solved!

It is illegal to trespass into our country. It has always been illegal. And people have determined that they want to take that chance, and that responsibility, it's not gonna tear them apart. They can take their children back with them.

We are a nation of laws. That's why we are America.

Of course, this is the same Jan Brewer who explained her refusal to sign a bill banning texting while driving this way:

"You can write all the laws that you want," Brewer said. "But it sometimes doesn't make a whole lot of difference. People don't follow them."

O_o.

Pearce, on the other hand, thinks the best way to alleviate the problems faced by mixed-status families is to eliminate them altogether. What's that you say? 14th Amendment to the what? I do declare, sir; you may force me to brandish my cane in anger! Jesus.

Pearce needs a civics refresher--preferably in any state other than the 50th-ranked for education, of course, so OMG ROAD TRIP TIME--if he really doesn't understand the Constitutional issue in play here.

First of all, that's not the law. It's an unconstitutional declaration of citizenship for those born, uh, in the Wong Kim, uh, decision before the Supreme Court, it made it very clear in the statements from the senators at the time that the 14th Amendment was written, made it clear it did not pertain to aliens and those we did not, who did not have legal domicile in the United States. It's the most irrational and uh, uh, self-defeating provision you can have.

True, the 14th Amendment was written specifically to ensure that the children of freed slaves would be automatically accorded citizenship, without thought to waves of people coming to the US from points south 100 years later, but, just as the 1st Amendment has been interpreted to apply to forms of speech media and the 2nd to high-power firearms that were inconceivable when the amendments were originally penned, the 14th is interpreted to apply to all people born within our borders. In fact, that interpretation comes from the very Wong Kim decision Pearce erroneously cites as proof that anchor babies are really alien babies who should be sent home on the next saucer outta Roswell.

The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, according to the court's majority, had to be interpreted in light of English common law tradition that had excluded from citizenship at birth only two classes of people: (1) children born to foreign diplomats and (2) children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country's territory. The majority held that the "subject to the jurisdiction" phrase in the 14th Amendment specifically encompassed these conditions (plus a third condition, namely, that Indian tribes were not considered subject to U.S. jurisdiction) - and that since none of these conditions applied to Wong's situation, Wong was a U.S. citizen, regardless of the fact that his parents were not U.S. citizens (and were, in fact, ineligible ever to become U.S. citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act).

Pearce appears to be construing "subject to the jurisdiction" as "have a green card in their pocket," which isn't mind-bogglingly narrow and stupid (although it is) so much as it is so incredibly transparently hypocritical as to barely merit a response. Because, in Pearce's book, undocumented people are double-dog subject to every other jurisdiction in the US, especially the ones that are now empowered to dump them on the other side of the fence from the Nogales Burger King if they don't have their birth certificates on them when they're pulled over for a busted taillight.

So there you have it. Pack up your kids and walk away from the better life you came here to give them, or... well, or forget about the better life thing altogether, because the Constitution only applies to people we think it applies to. And there's no point in writing laws, because people ignore them, unless, of course, it's a law that white people don't need to worry about, in which case WE ARE ALL ABOUT THE LAW, PEOPLE. Oh, Arizona. You never fail to disappoint.

An Addendum.

One indelible memory of my buddy Dave, and then we move on.

Waaaay back in the day, a bunch of archaeologists would hit the bar by the office on Friday afternoons for a beer or three over an hour of bullshitting. My son was tiny then, and liked coming along because the bar had a nice walled patio with a koi pond and room to roam, and on one particular Friday--he was three years old--he hopped up into Dave's lap for a while while we drank and yapped.

The next morning, he climbed into his seat at the breakfast table.

Boltgirl: Oatmeal? Cheerios? What sounds good?

Boy: All I need for breakfast is a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Boltgirl: O_o

Boy: Well, that's what Dave says.

Boltgirl: Um, whatever Dave says, you just do the opposite of that, okay?

The man was the embodiment of if you can't be a good role model, be a dire warning. And now we move on.

And We're Done

Dave was a bastard.

He was brilliant, but had a quick mind and a quicker temper. He did not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise, and had little patience for people who were slower on the uptake than he was, or for people who he thought were lazy, either intellectually or physically. A fierce intellect in a tempestuous man. Many people loathed him, several feared him, not many liked him.

But he liked me, and somewhere underneath that writhing mob of demons he wrestled daily, I saw somebody I could connect to. I did the analysis for a couple of his projects and spent occasional weekends working on papers with him at his cabin in the White Mountains. For all his failings--and it would take a separate blog with its own server to catalog them all--he was unfailingly generous with me, unfailingly kind and nurturing with my son. We fished, he cooked, we talked, I learned how to be rigorous in thinking about archaeology.

About nine years ago, after an adult lifetime spent alienating colleagues and screaming, drunk, at underlings in the field, he hit bottom. It wasn't hard enough to either kill him or render him amnesiac, but, as he put it, the inter-ocular impact was fairly high, so--with the help of our boss, who is the finest human on the planet--he started to work on getting his shit together.

And in doing so, he gave me the courage to get my own shit together.

He got serious about finishing the cabin, so I lugged tools up over the Rim and hammered floorboards into place and stained paneling and raked cinders. We fished. He cooked. He delighted in my son. He started finishing projects that had languished for years, and started making amends with people he had insulted and abused in the years when the drink and the hot temper and the unbalanced brain chemistry had the upper hand. He wanted to know what I was working on, and was excited to collaborate on new research with a colleague who not two years ago was ready to shoot him on sight. He was slowly turning things around.

But all the years of booze and cigarettes won out in the end. The last five years brought multiple heart surgeries, each leaving him more debilitated than the last. I visited him in the hospital and found a hollowed-out shell with a rat's nest for hair and the sunken, glittering eyes you see in daguerrotypes of Civil War soldiers. He had lived for field archaeology and walking his dog in the woods, but his now-trembling legs and failing eyes kept him from all but largely ceremonial trips out to stumble around Las Capas, where he no longer terrified the workers but instead mostly left them wondering who that shaky old man was. Two weeks ago he went under for a final time to correct a kink in his gut. He went septic and then he went comatose. He finally died last night. He was 61 years old. He leaves behind no family except a Rottweiler named Lovey.

Dave was a bastard. But he was my bastard, and he loved me unconditionally and believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

Rest well.

In Which Afghanistan Suddenly Becomes Far More Interesting

This could go one of two ways.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

I wonder how long it will take to find out which way our road will fork.

La La La La Football

It is World Cup time, people.

La Familia Bolt hit Trident Bar & Grill this morning at 6:20 to secure a table and get a breakfast order in before the rush. Which was a good thing, since the place was packed by kickoff.

Breakfast of champions. Eggs may also have been involved.

The first three minutes had me expecting an ocho-zero blowout for Mexico, but the Bufana Bufana shook off the early pressure--thanks in large part to their 22-year-old keeper, who stuffed one shot from a yard away and brilliantly parried a long-distance strike--and built a steady head of momentum on midfield possession leading to clever through balls. South Africa scored first on an excellent counterattack and crazy-angled shot to the upper corner, far post, and then Mexico put in 90-year-old Cuatehmoc Blanco and we figured it was all over, but then four guys busted into the six yard box uncovered and there wasn't much the keeper could do about it. Game 1 final: 1-1.

And we're off!

Cooties.

My new go-to video.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh, if you want the whole thing, it's here.

For Damien

...and for everyone else who is being driven to despair by the news of the day, a stop-the-presses moment that doesn't involve catastrophe: I like something David Brooks wrote.

Yes, I know. Take a moment to absorb that little bit of oil-water interplay, and then trundle over to read Brooks' thoroughly pleasant defense of the humanities.

In other happy news, the start time for the World Cup can be counted down in double-digit hours now, and both Jozy Altidore and Gooch Onyewu have been declared fit for the US, meaning we might make it out of pool play after all. And--and--the completely civilized +10 time difference between Tucson and South Africa means we will not need to drag our sorry carcasses out of bed at two in the morning to watch the matches. Indeed, not only will we be awake, but we can have breakfast! And breakfast beers. Vladimir Weiss, Jr. (Slovakia) is my player to watch in Group F; you heard it here first.

And Now for Something Not at All Different

Do you need a break from reading about the Gulf of Mexico and weeping? Well, go read this and continue weeping for what we have become. Or maybe for what humanity has always been, what we were supposed to leave behind when George Washington built that city on the hill, but what we have been unable to escape.

Physicians for Human Rights has released a 27-page report which clearly documents what we already know: The Bush Administration tortured detainees. The more startling conclusion is this: The Bush Administration experimented on those detainees in order to refine, define and justify their torture regimen.

Nothing like setting the bar, jumping over it, then defining that bar for everyone else as some sort of standard. Yet that's exactly what they did.

We're not supposed to overreach in our metaphors, in our stark comparisons, for fear of understating the horrors of the Inquisitors and the Nazis while simultaneously overstating the evils perpetrated by our government, in our name. Because we're not that bad. We can't be that bad and still be us, because Americans don't do those things. Except that they have, and they do, and it's been utterly without hesitation or reflection beyond wondering exactly how much shit they--we--can get away with before the stench becomes so bad that even the most resolutely entrenched-in-denial among us can't look the other way any more.

This is not what my grandfathers fought for in World War II, to borrow a meme that's currently popular among right-wing Arizonans aghast that their forebears sweated and bled to allow Mexican gardeners to prune the oleanders in Scottsdale for three bucks an hour. That aside, this is not why they fought, not why my great-uncle Jim was shot down and killed over Hildesheim, not why my grandfather's friend Virgil took a bullet in the spine at Anzio and came home in a wheelchair. It's also not why my brother left the better part of his spirit in Baghdad and not why his best friend bled out in Kandahar. Unfortunately, his buddy's death and the rest of the deaths and maimings he saw on a daily basis mean torture is simply, to him, justified retribution. The rage and hatred of war left him not giving a rat's ass about torture as long as it happened to the bad guys.

Our leadership is supposed to rise above the blood in the eyes of the guys on the ground. It didn't.

I Stand Corrected

In the last post I waxed concise about being able to write about the human condition due to a fundamental belief that bullshit is not immutable.

I apparently forgot I was living in Arizona.

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town's most prominent intersections.

"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of [epithet for Blacks] and [epithet for Hispanics]."

Thanks, I guess, to K for the Wonkette tip; the comments there are the only thing keeping my gallows humor over this fucking state alive, which in turn is about the only keeping me sane.

On a Particular Silence

I have written maybe five words about the oil spill. Not because I love lightly regulated offshore drilling leading to the destruction of an entire ecosystem, but because I just can't do it. I can write about human rights abuses and injustices and crap Supreme Court decisions like the inversion of Miranda because they are, at least in theory, reversible.

I'm not sure the apocalypse in the Gulf is. And I can't deal with that much sadness.

Rachel's on it; go there and weep.

Conflicted

Raging atheist here, recovering Catholic, lapsed Catholic, collapsed Catholic, Imagine No Religion, the whole deal. Every time Pope Palpatine and his minions make a new pronouncement about Teh Ghey being the biggest threat to humanity since ebola and Hitler combined, I think my jaw can't drop any farther through the floor, then Papa Ratzi flaps his yap one more time and I resign myself to losing my lower mandible until the Deepwater Horizon relief well hits it sometime this coming August, we hope.

For some reason, though, I can't shake the hold some of this stuff has on me. Way back when, I went to the 10:00 Smells 'n' Bells mass (at Sacred Heart Basilica on the campus of Notre Dame) every damn Sunday, always sat in the same spot next to the second column from the sanctuary on the right, next to Emil Hofman, and soaked up the incense and stained glass and the incomparable sensation of being surrounded by the biggest fucking pipe organ on the planet and 1,200 voices raised in song, led by the forebears of these kids.

So yeah. Today I racked up all the YouTube videos of the Lit Choir I could find, and spent the day writing archaeology against the background of the voices of angels, while from time to time mulling the latest bit of WTF sent along by K. The source of solace is simultaneously the source of so much pain. Well, I guess that's Catholicism in a nutshell for you: on the one hand being so enraged and bitter that this had me delightedly snorking coffee out my nose, and on the other hand having a part of my heart so deeply tied to place and past that this brought tears to my eyes.

And our hearts, forever.

Uhhhh.

Well, this is lovely.

Nowhere to go. Nowhere! Won't someone please think of the oppressed white people for a change?

Geek Week Highlight

And now, a bit of sunshine. I will most likely never get on the Maddow show, but at least now I can say I know somebody who did, and he rocked it. Or pooped it, whatever.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And While We're Discussing the Catholic Church in Arizona

Remember the nun who got booted from the Mother Church for having the audacity to value a woman's life to the extent of authorizing an abortion to end a pregnancy that was virtually guaranteed to kill both the woman and her 11-week-old embryo? Nothing new to report except that a pro-life group in Virginia is asking people to send letters of support to fucktard Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmstead.

Olmsted has come under criticism for his swift excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride, a longtime administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix after she authorized an abortion for a 27-year-old woman.

McBride apparently had learned that the pregnancy would be fatal to both the woman and the baby if carried to term. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant. The abortion occurred in December 2009.

Critics have noted that none of the Roman Catholic priests in Arizona who have been disciplined and/or defrocked for sexual abuse (including rape) have been excommunicated.

I got nuthin' else to add. Oh, except that the Arizona Daily Star has some of the most vile commenters on the planet. Almost as vile as the Church's apologists.

"The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic," the Population Research letter says.

The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix is also backing Olmsted's decision.

In a question and answer press release distributed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, diocese officials say abortion is never permitted "as an end or as a means."

Sister McBride, "automatically excommunicated herself from the church," Phoenix diocese officials say.

Can the rest of us would-be escapees get in on that action?

And Here We Go

Not sure how this slipped past me the first time, but, um, pardon me; are you one of the people who thinks physician and pharmacist conscience clauses aren't a big deal because you can just go to some other pharmacy, some other hospital? Yeah, sometimes the Catholic Church takes over the only hospital in town, as it did in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and it suddenly becomes a very big deal.

Southern Arizona's Carondelet Health Network is about to join forces with Sierra Vista Regional Health Center.

The two health-care providers will execute an "integrative network agreement" April 17, which will allow them to share resources, officials from both say.

Trustees with Sierra Vista Regional Health Center say one of the major concerns has been a prohibition on sterilization procedures that will occur at the hospital as a result of the agreement. They say the prohibition is part of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services used by Carondelet, a Catholic, nonprofit network.

And there you have it. Well, maybe it's not all that bad, right?.

On Sunday, the Sierra Vista hospital ran an advertisement in the Sierra Vista Herald that says the only services that will be discontinued are direct sterilization procedures and IUD insertion, except for directly therapeutic purposes.

The hospital will continue to treat ectopic pregnancies and will still use Plan B (the morning-after pill) for rape victims, says the advertisement, which was signed by hospital President and CEO Margaret Hepburn and board of trustees chair Larry Kope.

Abortion for ectopics and Plan B for rape is great, although I'm not sure why I should be turning handsprings for legal procedures and medications remaining accessible to women who need them, but abortion and emergency contraception for people in different circumstances? It's difficult to conclude otherwise that the level of specificity in the hospital's statement is intentionally exclusive. And that's just fabulous news for the women of Sierra Vista who don't have the means or time to drive the hour and a half to Tucson.

It's a two-year agreement. Maybe the economy will improve enough in that time to allow the Sierra Vista hospital to get back on its own feet and go back to operating under a general humanist code of ethics, not one dictated by the Catholic Church./p>

Archaeology Interlude

Sometimes there are no more compelling explanations for chronological trends.

Click to embiggen.

Geek Week Is Upon Us

And here we go!

Other highlights of “Geek Week” include: Robert Wallace, a former CIA agent who reveals the secrets of a once-classified CIA manual written by a former magician; a tour of the Iwo Jima helicopter carrier in honor of Fleet Week here in New York City; a geek-level tour of the massive rebuilding project underway at Ground Zero; geek-rapper Baba Brinkman, whose most recent project is “The Rap Guide to Evolution”; Infrastructure! - a trip underground with the sandhogs to tour the construction of the Second Avenue subway line, an infrastructure project more than 50 years behind schedule; and Dr. Jim Mead of East Tennessee State University, who oversees the largest collection of prehistoric dung in the world.

One of these segments involves a dear member of la familia Bolt. Living vicariously FTW!

At the End of the Day

When I am woman king of the universe, utterances of the phrase "at the end of the day" will bring a $1000 fine for the first offense, with Fibonacci-ally increasing fines for each subsequent use when the speaker is not talking about about something that is actually going to happen at the end of the current day.

Let's review.

At the end of the day, we will stop by the bar for a beer and then go home. ==> dandy.

At the end of the day, it will come down to who wants it more. ==> $1000, please, plus $50 for "who wants it more" because I don't like that either.

At the end of the day, I decided I had to stand up for the people of Pennsylvania, the working families... yes, I stood up to the party establishment when I thought they were wrong for you, and I just want to re-emphasize, at the end of the day, I'm like all Pennsylvanians, pretty independent-minded. ==> that will be $3000, Rep. Sestak, since you've been warned and the first thousand is just assumed to kick-start the fine escalation.

Drives me fucking insane. At the start of the day, and in the middle, and even at the end. Of the day.

You have GOT to be Fucking Kidding Me

Okay. If you're a semi-regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I have a mild fixation on someone who may or may not be named Rachel Maddow. Just search for posts tagged "squeeee" and you'll get the picture. I have so many things to offer, so many brilliant insights, and she's never called me! Not even once!

So my girlfriend did call me this afternoon, and told me she'd gotten an e-mail from her ex. That in itself is no more unusual than the sun coming up in the east; they're still very close and I consider him my brother-in-law, in some weird lesbian extended-family sense. He's a scientist with a fairly significant reputation, rightfully so, and elements of his research have landed him in Popular Science and on the National Geographic channel from time to time. No stranger to the media, this one; Nature Valley Granola even considered using him in a commercial that scheduling conflicts nixed.

Anyway, the e-mail. It seems he'd been contacted by some TV producers for the Geek Week segment their boss wants to run. They're showing up in his town with a live remote crew next week. So he can be interviewed.

By. Rachel. Maddow.

Excuse me while I go shoot myself now.

It's the dung. He has amassed the world's preeminent collection of ancient dung, and Rachel wants to talk to him about it. My son asked me what the chances are that she might want to talk to me sometime, and I said, zero. But aren't you the world's leading expert on some archaeology thing, he asked? Yeah, I said, but nobody cares about Empire points. They care about giant sloth dung. Huh, he said, so that means your work isn't worth shit?

Ha. Ha ha. He'll be here all week, folks; don't forget to tip your waitress.

The Boltgirl Typing Primer

I did not take typing in high school. I'm not even sure if they offered typing at my high school. So I hunted and pecked well into grad school, and even though I (mostly) type now without having to peek at the keyboard, certain words just refuse to come out right every goddamn time. Especially archaeology words, which is troublesome given that archaeology is necessarily the number one subject in my work writing.

Here is a handy translation guide, should you ever find yourself editing one of my chapters.

1. steon. This actually is supposed to be "stone," and since my specialty is stone tools, it's a problem.

2. Cieneha. Looks plausibly Southwestern, but should be Cienega. It is the name of one of the more significant time periods I study--lots of fascinating steon tools going on, of course--so, again, needs some help.

3. poitn. Uh, "point." As in projectile points, which, alas, were typically made of steon, and there were shit-tons of them in the Cieneha phase.

4. preshitoric. Need I say more?

So apparently the left hemisphere of my brain is rebelling against my career choice. I'm amazed sometimes to get to the office and find that they haven't changed the locks overnight.

As Previously Reported

Arizona joined several other states in collectively punching women in the ladybits when Governor Brewer signed SB1305 (previously noted here).

An obscure part of the law allows states to restrict abortion coverage by private plans operating in new insurance markets. Capitalizing on that language, abortion foes have succeeded in passing bans that, in some cases, go beyond federal statutes. "We don't consider elective abortion to be health care, so we don't think it's a bad thing for fewer private insurance companies to cover it," said Mary Harned, attorney for Americans United for Life, a national organization that wrote a model law for the states.

Not content to be bandwagon-jumping posers, our legislature managed to set us apart by not including the usual sops to what passes for reason--you know, the holy triumvirate of exemptions (rape, incest, mother's life) that let the misogynists behind this tripe convince themselves they're not being total bastards about things. Those exemptions are for pussies, apparently, and Arizona's not having it.

Exceptions are made only under extreme circumstances in which the procedure saves the life of the woman or will "avert substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the woman."

No rape exception here, bucko! Unfortunately, Tennessee promptly trumped Arizona by making their insurance law completely void of exemptions, meaning that if you're a Volunteer female you'll need to set up and pay for a separate rider covering the possibility not only that you'll be raped, but that a pregnancy might kill you, and since that last bit there about the potential for maternal mortality applies to every pregnancy across the board, every woman in Tennessee will need to pay extra for essential coverage that had been included in her insurance right up until this moment. Tell me again, Mary Harned, how abortion is not healthcare?

One more question, this one for Governor Brewer. Is my uterus state-owned property? No? It isn't? Then stay the fuck away from it. And everyone else's.

Graduation Day

When I learn from my son the lesson I spent his lifetime to this point trying to teach, I know I did my job.

His team went into the state volleyball semifinals on Friday as the number two seed, riding a 24-match winning streak, and five sets later exited the gym as moderate upset victims. They took the first two sets reasonably handily, but in the third fell behind early and lost their momentum, started hitting serves wide and long, started letting balls fall in bounds, failed to cover on tips. The fifth set went back and forth, with neither team pulling out more than a two-point margin, and his team fought off match point three times before finally succumbing.

Great, I thought, he's going to be a mess for a week. This is a kid who was devastated as a freshman when he missed a must-convert penalty kick and his soccer team lost a tournament championship, a kid whose confidence took a kick in the gut when he didn't make varsity volleyball as a junior, a kid who spent his entire junior season grabbing his head when he missed a hit and fighting back tears when the missed hit came on match point. He made varsity this year but didn't expect to play, and I spent the first half of the season watching him ride the bench and holding my breath the few times he got into games because I knew a mistake would mean he was (1) back on the bench, (2) with his head in his hands.

But after the halfway point stuff started to change. He wasn't hanging his head, even if he messed up, and he worked his way into the starting lineup and stayed there.When the last ball on match point fell short of the kid who dove for it in vain, they left the floor and huddled under the bleachers with the coach for a long time, and when they started trickling back to their parents I took a deep breath. And was pleasantly surprised. Despite the red eyes and the long hug, he was okay. They were all okay.

They got on the bus and headed back to Tucson, and when he got home he told me everyone got over it on the ride. He wished things had gone differently, but he was happy about specific things that had been a problem for him in the past, that he had done well in this match. He hit every one of his serves in, and returned every serve hit to him the way he wanted to. His Facebook update just said guess you can't win them all.

Acknowledge the bad and leave it behind, take the good with you and move on. He's doing it now, finally  not letting small slips morph into capital-eff Failures that keep spiraling. Finally doing as I say instead of as I do.

And in doing so, he becomes the teacher. My work here is done.

Uh, No.

Not me, Bucko. And I fucking live here.

As calls spread for an economic boycott of Arizona, the state’s governor enlisted the help of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday to defend a new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Brewer and Palin blamed President Obama for the state law, saying the measure is Arizona’s attempt to enforce immigration laws because the federal government won’t do it.

“It’s time for Americans across this great country to stand up and say, ‘We’re all Arizonans now,’” Palin said. “And in clear unison we say, ‘Mr. President: Do your job. Secure our border.’”

And with that, the We Are All _______ meme mercifully croaked away its last breath and disappeared forever. What? A girl can dream, can't she?

Never-ending Nightmare Never Ends

Ever had a nasty 24-hour stomach bug? The kind where you feel increasingly miserable and then puke and feel much better, but then have your blissful, blessed relief cut short by another wave of nausea, and then another, until you are certain that you will be vomiting every 20 minutes for the rest of your life?

Welcome to Arizona, where the legislature and governor have just heaved our collective shoes into the bucket with a prohibition against ethnic-studies curricula that don't meet Tom "the most fun chant for me was 'drill, baby, drill' used by three separate speakers" Horne's approval.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill limiting what kind of courses schools can offer in the name of cultural diversity Tuesday.

Without comment, Brewer signed the controversial legislation, which declares students "should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.''

The law, aimed specifically at the ethnic studies program at Tucson Unified School District, is far more complex than that goal.

It makes it illegal for public schools to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people. It also bars any programs "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group."

My 7th grade social studies teacher would be in deep shit on this one, given how his World War II lectures made me resent the hell out of the Nazis. And my son's Native American Literature teacher made the class read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee this semester, which left him feeling not that great about--gasp--the United States government! Well. That's a bit of hyperbole. Tom Horne isn't going to march in and string up teachers who might give white students a moment of pause when they consider the atrocities perpetuated by governments on this continent and in Europe, but if you get the Mexicans riled up, you're toast. Oh, and by the way, if you're trying to teach the Mexicans to speak English, make sure your accent isn't too thick. Because Arizona doesn't like that either.

You'd be perfectly justified, at this point, to ask who the fuck thinks all this is a good idea. There's an obvious and troubling answer, and now, this morning, a less obvious and possibly more troubling answer. First, the no-brainer: the white supremacists, of course, think this is all kinds of awesome. But it's more than just them, and that keeps me from my rest. Large chunks of the country are going nativist now, or at least large chunks of slightly more than a thousand registered voters with landlines who happened to answer their phones and take part in a poll are, and that should give us all pause.

A strong majority of Americans support Arizona's controversial new immigration law and would back similar laws in their own states, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll found.

A separate Pew Research Center poll on the Arizona law released Wednesday found similar sentiments.

In the McClatchy-Ipsos poll, 61 percent of Americans - and 64 percent of registered voters - said they favored the law in a survey of 1,016 adults conducted May 6-9.

Strikingly, nearly half of Democrats like the law, under which local law enforcement officers are tasked with verifying people's immigration status if they suspect them of being in the country illegally.

Swell. And here's the best part:

In addition, about 69 percent of Americans said they wouldn't mind if police officers stopped them to ask for proof of their citizenship or legal rights to be in the country; about 29 percent would mind, considering it a violation of their rights, and about 3 percent were unsure.

Hell no, I wouldn't mind if a nice police officer stopped me and asked me for proof of citizenship! People who say this are people who have never been hassled by a cop in their entire lives for having the wrong skin color or wrong kind of clothes for the neighborhood they're walking in or the car they're driving. It's very, very easy to hit play and blast out the title track from Unexamined Privilege's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1: If You're Not Doing Anything Wrong (You Don't Have Anything To Worry About), until the day comes when you really aren't doing anything wrong and get busted anyway. If you're white enough and not screaming in Farsi at the top of your lungs, no, you probably don't have to worry about it, and if for some unfathomable reason you were stopped and questioned and didn't have your ID or birth certificate (long form, please) on you, you could talk your way out of it. And hey, if you don't have to worry about it on a personal level, you get a pass from having to worry about it on a conceptual level. It's not just the Arizona way any more. It's the American way, bucko, and don't you forget it.

Pass the pepto, if you please. Every time I think it's got to be over, another wave comes.

Mid-May Panic Attack

Oh Christ. Things we are panicking about, in no particular order:

(1) Did the boy choose the right college? Should we have pushed for Gonzaga?

(2) Elena Kagan? Who's correct here, Greenwald or Lessig?

(3) Maggie Gallagher is spewing her anti-gay venom over on the west side tonight! Is asphyxiation likely if I stay in midtown? How sure are you? I am fresh out of plastic sheeting and duct tape.

(4) Cubs, 6 1/2 games back and in 5th place.

(5) The ability to string more than two archaeology-related sentences together has deserted me just in time for being over budget on the current work project.

(6) Is it payday yet? No? Crap.

NOM Descends on Tucson

Oh, this is exciting. The National Organization for Marriage's own hellhound-in-chief and all-around horrible person Maggie Gallagher is coming to Tucson tomorrow night.

What: Same-Gender Marriage and Religious Freedom: A conversation with Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance and Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage. Rev. Gaddy is the author of Same-Gender Marriage & Religious Freedom, which argues that discussion of this issue should be rooted in the Constitution rather than in scripture. Maggie Gallagher has been a longtime and vocal opponent of legalizing same-gender marriage.

When: Tuesday, May 11, 2010
7:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.

Where: Berger Performing Arts Center
1200 West Speedway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85745
(located on the campus of the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind)

I can't go to the "conversation," unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, but my friend Homer will be there in full force, and I will be very anxious to hear about the evening and her responses to the questions he plans to ask. Gaddy should mop the floor with her, although, as I mentioned to Homer, the woman wouldn't recognize a rational thought if it bit her in the ass. And, frankly, being both deaf and blind is about the only way I would be able to spend an hour in her presence without ending up in a holding cell.

Stop the Presses

Frank Antenori and I fully agree on one thing. I may need to lie down for a while.

Under current law, residents and visitors in Arizona can buy beer, wine and liquor every day beginning at 6 a.m. through 2 the following morning.

At one time there were no sales before noon [on Sundays]. That was changed to 10 a.m. more than a decade ago to accommodate demands by Bill Bidwill who had brought his Cardinals football team to Arizona and wanted to be able to sell beer in the stands when games had to start early because of TV schedules.

Antenori said he doesn't buy the argument that the rules should be different on what some people believe is the Lord's Day.

"For a certain specific religion you can't carve out a special exemption,'' he said. "I don't think that's right.''

Knock me over with a feather, and then hand me an IPA if you'd be so kind. It'll be after 6 a.m.--we do not get up that early on Sundays for anything--so we're golden. I'd even think about buying Frank a beer, except that his pesky state-funded insurance plan prevents me from buying him alcohol just on principle. But hey, it was close for a second there.

Geek Orgasm

Ion fucking propulsion, bitchez!

"Standard orbit, Mr. Sulu." Captain Kirk barks out the order with such confidence. He knows the USS Enterprise can slip in and out of planetary orbits with ease. But it's only easy in the realm of science fiction. In the real world, such maneuvers have been impossible --until now.

Enter Dawn, NASA's cutting edge mission to the asteroid belt.

Powered with a futuristic sounding new technology called "ion propulsion," this spacecraft will perform space moves rivaling those of the Enterprise.

Ion propulsion! Woot!

(via Americablog)

Another Kind of Migrant

I can't tell you how many times I've heard anti-immigrant (read: anti-Mexican) people in Arizona complain about the immigrants' refusal to assimilate into mainstream (read: white) America. These people, they come into our country and still speak Spanish and wave their Mexican flags and eat at taco trucks and play their goddamn mariachi music full blast and have fucking picnics in graveyards and this is AMERICA goddammit so why don't they act like Americans?

I'm not from here either. Well, I am from the US, but I'm not from Arizona. I'm from the midwest, Illinois and Indiana, mostly the greater Chicago area. I spent my middle school and high school years in South Bend, Indiana, and grew up with the grandkids of Polish immigrants. When the Poles came over, they built their own parish church a block away from the existing church so they wouldn't have to go to mass with all those annoying Irish people, lived in their own neighborhood, and ran their own grocery stores and butchers, some of which were still operational enough in 1984 that if you went in and asked the butcher in Polish, you could get the quart of duck blood you wanted for soup. Now those folks have retired to Phoenix and brought as much of the midwest with them as they could cram into their Winnebagos, but since they're saying ya hey dere and flying a Packers windsock instead of si se puede and El Tricolor, no one notices a thing.

My midwestern grandparents spend the winters in one of these Phoenix-area giant senior citizens' communities, surrounded by fellow snowbirds from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. They frequent the Hoosier Cafe, decorated with Indiana University and Purdue memorabilia, and another cafe that is named Red Mountain but might was well be U.P Michigan Central, this one plastered with Packers, Vikings, and Proud to Be a Yooper flags, and order coffee from waitresses with unmistakable upper midwest accents and look at the Michigan license plates on the wall and wonder why the Mexicans won't just try to fit in.

Meanwhile, fifteen years and counting in the desert and my wardrobe still consists mostly of t-shirts proclaiming my allegiance to various Chicago sports teams and Notre Dame. My license plate and the Cubs magnet on the back of my car scream Chicago. When I go hiking here I seek out running streamcourses that are lined with trees, and in the springtime long to hit the higher elevations of the Catalinas just so I can see some familiar wild geraniums and smell damp rock and feel, for a moment, that I'm back home. The pens on my office desk sit in an ancient beer cup from the Taste of Chicago. Steve Goodman, rest his soul, headlines my iPod; WGN News at Nine is not an infrequent visitor to my living room; about once a week you can find me clutching an Old Style at Rocco's Little Chicago in the booth under the CTA centennial poster.

For good measure, Boltgirl's office ceiling decoration.

In short, I in many ways--unconscious, conscious, sometimes downright gleeful--have stayed within the cultural milieu I grew up in instead of completely assimilating into my new home. My right-wing fellow Arizonans probably just haven't really noticed, or, if they have, haven't taken offense at my Loop-centric tastes because they aren't terribly far afield from their own. I'm allowed my trappings of home because home's on the right side of the Rio Grande. The Mexicans who want to do the same? My stars, what a terrible affront to Arizona sensibilities.