Adios, "Papers Please"?

While it won't entirely be going away, Arizona's SB 1070 definitely won't be the same after today.

In a 5-3 ruling handed down by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the high court held that most of the provisions being challenged encroached on turf that is constitutionally reserved for the federal government. The court overturned parts of the law that criminalize one’s presence in Arizona without documentation, criminalize working or looking for work without legal status, and permit police to arrest people without a warrant if there’s suspicion that they’ve committed a deportable crime.

But the provision of the law permitting police to check a person’s immigration papers during lawful encounters was deemed valid and not a preemption of federal law.

Joining Justice Kennedy in the majority were John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan, who worked on the issue as Obama’s solicitor general, did not participate in the case.

Arizona argued that the law cooperatively assists the U.S. with immigration enforcement, but the court mostly agreed with the Obama administration that key parts of the law encroach on the federal government’s exclusive right to make policy on the matter.

So apparently, Mitt Romney's immigration guru, Kris Kobach, isn't as good on abiding by the US Constitution as he is in using xenophobia to further his political career. I wonder what Mittens thinks about this.

And I wonder what Dean Heller thinks about this. After all, he was also on that Kris Kobach/Joe Arpaio anti-immigrant crazy train... Until it was no longer politically convenient for him.

And now, we're finding out that crazy train is unconstitutional. And we're supposed to be surprised? The State of Arizona clearly encroached upon federal jurisdiction, and it clearly violated many Americans' civil rights. We'll just have to wait and see if this is a wake-up call for Republicans. Will they ever see that their zeal for harrassing people that don't look like them is really alienating all the rest of us? Or is that just too much of a "clown question"?