The Arizona legislature and the Arizona governor have enacted a law of which a sizable majority of Arizona citizens approve. And in today’s political environment, where the needs of citizens and the wishes of citizens are largely ignored, that alone is both remarkable and worthy of praise.

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Wouldn’t you know it?  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s ink is hardly dry on Arizona’s new illegal immigrant law, and it has ignited a national outcry with all the usual suspects saying all the usual things.  We’ve seen this movie before, and it’s getting really old.

What is getting even older is the abject failure of the federal government to protect our Southern border, to the abject frustration and palpable fear of all who legally abide there.  It’s been promised, time and again, mostly to temporarily protect the political skins of those doing the promising.  Regardless, no one other than that hopeless, hapless Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (who didn’t exactly solve the problem during her tenure as Arizona Governor) would think, let alone say, that any system is working.

Where’s the fence?  One of the rallying cries that brought down the last attempt at “comprehensive immigration reform” produced...well, where the hell is it?  Somewhere floating in the CO2 mist, a virtual fence existing only in the virtual imaginations of those who wouldn’t – or couldn’t – even get that done.

In what is fast becoming the new political regimen of ignoring the law itself to concentrate solely on exploitative talking points, no matter how inaccurate, there is ample spectacle, much of it disgusting, some of it humorous, most of it indicating how few worthies we have on the national stage with any capability of graduating from side show freaks to big top aerialists.

There was, almost instantaneously, the Yale Law School lecturer (and former New York Times Supreme Court reporter) Linda Greenhouse opining vividly in said Times, based on a discarded version of the bill that did not become the law.  There are those, yet today, embarrassing themselves by beyond-the-bend criticism of language in the Arizona law that is word-for-word duplication of longstanding federal law that has stood unchallenged (as well as unenforced, mind you) for decades.  There are those who have seemingly never traveled within or without this country (or bought an alcoholic beverage while looking young) working themselves into high dudgeon over the very idea of being asked for identification.

Far more dismaying than the garden-variety goofs are elected officials of more jurisdictions than we can keep track of who are threatening or are in the process of enacting boycotts of all things and places Arizona, a far more revealing statement regarding the immaturity and irresponsibility and political pandering (not to mention intentional interference with a sovereign state act) of those individuals than it is about Arizona law.

Arizona has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants who have broken the law – federal law...and now Arizona law.  Opponents of the Arizona law pledge to delay implementation by putting repeal on a ballot for voter referendum.  It is far too early to make any informed pronouncement on ultimate effectiveness of the law.  We are among those, supporters as well as opponents of the law, who believe that trying to predict the outcome of legal challenges is a fool’s or exhibitionist’s errand.

One thing we do believe.  The Arizona legislature and the Arizona governor have enacted a law of which a sizable majority of Arizona citizens approve.  And in today’s political environment, where the needs of citizens and the wishes of citizens are largely ignored, that alone is both remarkable and worthy of praise.