Arizona's Police Check of Immigrant Status on Hold

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Arizona was barred from enforcing portions of a law set to take effect tomorrow that would have required police to ascertain the immigration status of individuals they stop for questioning, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix held today that the state can’t mandate that police make a “reasonable attempt” to determine whether a person is legally in the U.S. and then detain him if there is “suspicion” that he is not. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said she will appeal the ruling. Read more:

Arizona's Police Check of Immigrant Status on Hold

U.S. Congress Sends Obama War Bill

The U.S. Congress sent to President Barack Obama a $60 billion war-funding bill amid attacks on his Afghanistan policies newly provoked by leaked reports suggesting that Pakistan secretly aided aiding Taliban forces. The House voted 308-114 yesterday to forward the measure to Obama for his signature. It cleared the Senate last week after lawmakers in that chamber deleted $23 billion in unrelated spending. House Democrat leaders who had sought that additional money said they wouldn’t delay the long-stalled war funds any longer with the Pentagon warning of impending personnel furloughs. Read more:

U.S. Congress Sends Obama War Bill

Jonah Goldberg - The New Journalism

"The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as a national immune system, zapping scandal mongers and quashing wild rumors," wrote former "green jobs czar" Van Jones in Sunday's New York Times. This may be one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines in recent memory. Jones, you may recall, left the White House when his background -- not just as an alleged 9/11 truther but as a self-confessed "Communist" and "revolutionary" -- became grist for the Fox News mill. Mainstream publications mostly ignored the controversy until after he was fired, and then focused on the fact that he directed an expletive at Republicans in a YouTube video.  Read more:

Jonah Goldberg - The New Journalism

Blago Trial - In Hands of Jury

"It was my first time inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and I entered with the hope that the next time I was inside, I would be carrying a hundred million dollars out to my nice Jeep." So reads the first sentence of "Money to Burn." Kay Osborne was reading the 2002 crime thriller as she waited in line at 4:50 a.m. Monday for the trial of impeached former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
The judge wrote this novel, Osborne said outside downtown Chicago's federal courthouse. What judge? Judge James Zagel. You know, the one presiding over Blagojevich's trial, she said. As it turns out, U.S. District Court Judge Zagel dreams of robbing the Federal Reserve Bank and he doesn't even work on Wall Street. Read more:

Blago Trial - In Hands of Jury

Walter Williams - Racism or Stupidity

A black or white person, now dead, who lived during the civil rights struggles of the 1930s, '40s or '50s, might very well be appalled and disgusted by black behavior accepted today. Yesteryear, it was the Klan or White Citizens Council who showed up at polling places to intimidate black voters. During the 2008 elections, it was the New Black Panthers who showed up at a Philadelphia polling place to intimidate white voters and tell them, "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker." What's worse is the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to not to prosecute. Read more:

Walter Williams - Racism or Stupidity

Holder Says U.S. Probing Leaks of Afghan Documents

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (left) said the Justice Department was investigating the source of the leaking of secret U.S. military reports on Afghanistan to the WikiLeaks website. “The Justice Department is working with the Department of Defense with regard to an investigation concerning who the source of those leaks might be,” said Holder, who spoke at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo today. “Whether there will be any criminal charges brought depends on how the investigation goes.”
WikiLeaks published more than 91,000 secret military reports from Afghanistan which cover the period from about 2004 up to a change in war strategy initiated by President Barack Obama last year. The U.S. and Pakistan have dismissed portions of the documents that indicate the American military suspects Pakistan’s main intelligence agency of secretly aiding the Taliban and other Islamic extremists battling the U.S. in Afghanistan. Read more:

Holder Says U.S. Probing Leaks of Afghan Documents

Yachting Anyone? - (In Rhode Island)

Senator John F. Kerry announced yesterday that he will voluntarily pay $500,000 to Massachusetts tax collectors on his luxury yacht, a pledge made hours after state officials had begun inquiring into whether he had attempted to evade the payment by docking the boat in Rhode Island. The state Department of Revenue had just started looking into Kerry’s use of the $7 million sloop and into reports that it had been spotted repeatedly in Massachusetts since it was registered in March. Officials could have subpoenaed the ship’s log to see where the yacht had been, according to a Department of Revenue official who declined to be identified by name because tax cases by law are confidential. Read more:

Yachting Anyone? - (In Rhode Island)

Rangel Seeks to Avert Hearing in Ethics Case

    U.S. House Democratic leaders are trying to broker an agreement with New York Representative Charles Rangel in which the former Ways and Means Committee chairman would accept a penalty for ethics violations without undergoing a trial, a Democratic aide said. Two Democrats in the House leadership, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, have talked with Rangel about a possible settlement, the aide said today. Resignation hasn’t been discussed, according to the aide. Rangel’s spokesman, Emile Milne, declined to comment. Read more:

Rangel Seeks to Avert Hearing in Ethics Case

Poll Shows Barela on the Lead

From NMPolitics.net - If you had asked me over the weekend where the 1st Congressional District race stood, I would have told you Democratic incumbent Martin Heinrich was probably leading Republican challenger Jon Barela by about 10 points. So I was as shocked as anyone when KOB-TV released its new SurveyUSA poll Monday evening that shows Barela leading by six points. The poll has Barela leading 51 percent to 45 percent. It was conducted Thursday-Sunday, surveyed 559 likely voters and has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points. Barela led among all age groups and among men, Anglos and independents. Read more here:

Poll Shows Barela on the Lead