Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
One of Arizona's twin embarrasments in the U.S. Senate, "Not intended to be a factual statement" Jon Kyl, has really been making a supreme ass of himself since SCOTUS ruled on SB 1070.
Steve Benen has two reports on our embarrassing senator. What Jon Kyl considers a factual statement:
Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's anti-immigrant law, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R), who represents Arizona, issued a curious press release.
"I note that in his response to today's Supreme Court ruling, President Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I also note that the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill I helped draft in 2007 was killed -- in part -- by then-Senator Obama."
Clearly, expectations for honesty are low when it comes to the politician who made "not intended to be a factual statement" famous, but even by Kyl's low standards, this is unnerving.
First, Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2007, didn't vote to kill comprehensive immigration reform; he voted for it. Kyl's version of reality is the opposite of the one the rest of us live in.
Second, though Kyl bragged yesterday about the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill he "helped draft" five years ago, if we actually look back at the Senate record, we see that the Arizona Republican voted to filibuster the bill. Jon Kyl is falsely accusing Obama of doing what Jon Kyl actually did.
Maybe yesterday's press release wasn't intended to be a factual statement, either?
Then Tuesday morning on Bill Bennett's radio show, Kyl cavalierly brought up "impeachment" over a policy disagreement on immigration. Impeachment is not a toy, redux:
[T]his morning [Kyl] appeared on Bill Bennett's radio show and used the "i" word.
The host asked about compelling the Obama administration to "cooperate" with state immigration efforts, like those in Arizona. Kyl walked through the options.
"If the president insists on continuing to ignore parts of the law that he doesn't like, and simply not enforce that law, the primary remedy for that is political. And you have it two ways: one is oversight through the Congress to demonstrate what they're doing wrong and there are some potential criminal charges there for dereliction of duty. Although, I haven't looked that up yet. And the other part of it is people need to react through the ballot box to turn out of office those people who are not doing their duty.
"Now if it's bad enough and if shenanigans involved in it, then of course impeachment is always a possibility. But I don't think at this point anybody is talking about that."
Obviously, Kyl didn't push for presidential impeachment, but the fact that a member of the Republican Senate leadership is willing to even use the word when talking about disagreements over immigration policy is a little unsettling.
* * *
To be sure, no one is seriously pursuing this, but the sooner lawmakers realize that impeachment is not a toy, the better.
Read the SCOTUS opinion. States must cooperate with the federal government to the extent that the federal government seeks their cooperation. The federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over immigration matters. SCOTUS entirely rejected the Neoconfederate "states' rights" Tenther fantasies in its opinion. Only rogue Justice Antonin Scalia bought into the bogus Tenther fantasies; none of the other Justices joined him.
I am soooo sick of this asshat, Kyl. Arizonans can't get rid of "Not intended to be a factual statement" Jon Kyl soon enough.
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