Arizona has been getting more than the usual level of national media attention this week because of the controversial immigration bill and the so-called "birther" bill, with descriptions from the Beltway ranging from "dumb" to "nutty."
The White House dismissed the effort, with spokesman Bill Burton saying, "I can't imagine Arizona voters think their tax dollars are well served by a Legislature that is less focused on their lives than on fringe right-wing-radio conspiracy theories."
The Economist called the immigration bill "hysterical nativism," while conservative Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard warned in a Fox News debate, "I think Arizona should not act out of frustration. As a general rule, when politicians do, they go farther than they should, and that's the problem with this bill: It goes way too far."
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said there's some "irony" in that the states are doing rear enforcement because the federal government is doing its job on the front end. "So they are trying to pass laws where you catch somebody already in the U.S., and it's really hard to discern who is and who is not illegal. But if you are at the border and someone is climbing over the fence, you have a good idea they're illegal. And if someone is outside a Home Depot and he doesn't speak English, he could be or could not be, and that could lead to a lot of civil-rights abuses."
Meanwhile, here's a roundup of other reaction:
• Comedy Central said Arizona passed some "groundbreaking anti-brown-person legislation" only to follow up with the bill requiring presidential candidates provide a birth certificate before getting onto the state ballot. "I guess this means that Arizona is gonna start forwarding all of us every crazy conspiracy e-mail it gets, and we'll all be nice for a while and just quietly delete them until we can't take it anymore and end up responding angrily to one of them. And then Arizona will act all mad at us on Thanksgiving."
And Stephen Colbert from Comedy Central's "Colbert Report," said of the immigration bill: "Harassing Latinos with racial profiling isn't an inevitable side effect of Arizona's anti-immigration law - it's the entire point."
• Wonkette had Arizona winning "America's Dumbest State" contest. Calling Arizona "America's Wingnut Paradise for half a century," the site notes even Barry Goldwater was too subtle, so Evan Mecham became governor and moved to kill the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. "Then a lot of other ridiculous stuff happened: Walnuts McCain releasing Sarah Palin upon the nation, the sheriff of Phoenix running pogroms against Latinos, the state officially endorsing racial profiling to finally clear its territory of Mexicans. What could come next? Oh yeah, birthers."
• Robert Schlesinger, opinion editor at U.S. News and World Report, wrote on his blog that "members of the Arizona state House have made a strong bid for this year's coveted 'nuttiest legislative body' award, voting to enshrine birtherism as state policy (would that make it the state's official neurosis?)." Before Arizona's bold move, Georgia appeared to be leading the pack, he said, for its efforts to stem microchips being involuntarily implanted in people. While "the Arizona House is blazing a trail into the fringe," he noted similar legislation has been introduced in a few other states.
CNN's Anderson Cooper is scheduled to discuss the bill tonight on his show, "AC360."
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