Dear Arizona, Let's take a refresher course on that "innocent until proven guilty" thingie.

[struggle4progress]

Back in the day, when I was coming up, me and my friends all learned that the Man can't just arrest me and ask me to prove I didn't commit a crime. Sure, if there's some actual evidence -- lemme spell that for ya: a.c.t.u.a.l.e.v.i.d.e.n.c.e. -- that I knocked off the Mom-and-Pop down the street or peddled heroin on the playground or spied for North Korea, ya gonna have some investigatory options. But even if the Man has some reason to suspect me, he can't just demand I prove I'm innocent. Have I got a right to walk down the street without having to prove to Barney Fife every two blocks that I'm not committing a crime? Here's a little newsflash for ya, Arizona: oh, yeah, man, really, I do, by ancient right, being freeborn, ya know. Maybe ya might like to take that down as a little memo. Otherwise, I gotta say with all due respect, up yours

[midnight]

1. K&R.

[brentspeak]

2. Didn't the Nuremberg Laws require Jews to show their papers?

This Arizona legislation isn't too far removed from that requirement. Frightening. And I say that as someone who wants some sort of crack-down on illegal immigration -- just not this kind of crack-down.

[Confusious]

5. Looks like they didn't

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws

[brentspeak]

13. Then the law requiring Jews to carry ID cards came shortly thereafter

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html

[Confusious]

16. Or not

After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Nazis issued every person a permanent identity card. A "J" on the cover indicated that the person was Jewish. Each Jewish man's name was prefaced with "Israel" and each woman's name with "Sarah." Permanent yellow armbands were issued at a later time.

Card courtesy of the Neufeld Family Archive, a collection of Holocaust and family artifacts donated by Anne Neufeld Levin. The collection is housed at Special Collections in UCSC's McHenry Library.

http://www.ucsc.edu/oncampus/currents/97-98/04-13/holocaust.card.htm

In August 1938, German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first names of "non-Jewish" origin had to add "Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their given names. All Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage, and, in the autumn of 1938, all Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying letter "J".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_prewar_Nazi_Germany

[struggle4progress]

19. The 1935 Citizenship Law limited citizenship to those "of German or kindred blood"

and added "citizenship is acquired by the granting of Reich citizenship papers." Prompt supplementary regulations/decrees clarified "A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich." Special identification papers were required later. An entire detailed accurate account may be tedious and difficult to provide, because the Nazis in a rather sadistic manner began to vary the documentation requirements frequently and rather arbitrarily in order to confuse and disorient targeted populations: it eventually has the flavor of "No, last week we were accepting the yellow paper with the green stamp, but today we have been instructed to accept only the blue pass with the red stamp. If you have the yellow paper with the green stamp and a passport, you can get the blue pass with the red stamp by going to Office X, but if you have the yellow paper with the green stamp and no passport, you must go to Office Y where you will be issued a purple ticket that you can take to Office Z where they will give you a permit to take to Office X with your yellow paper with the green stamp to get the blue pass with the red stamp. If you don't have the yellow paper with the green stamp, you should go to Office Y next week to find out what to do"

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nurmlaw3.html
http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_HOLocaust/documents/part1/doc34.html
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/nurmlaw2.html

http://www.pbs.org.nyud.net:8090/wgbh/nova/holocaust/images/timeintro_krakow.jpg
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/timeprint.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_prewar_Nazi_Germany

[Dappleganger]

3. DICK Cheney made us believe it was ok to torture non-citizens...

I blame it all on him.

[shraby]

4. He didn't "make" anyone believe that..the ones who do

would believe it even if Cheney didn't say so..they are a bunch of sick unmentionables.

[sabrina 1]

10. Obama has done even better than Cheney. He has convinced

even some 'progressives' that's it's okay for a U.S. president to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen.

Every day we move closer and closer to having no use for any kind of silly, quaint documents known as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights etc. Kings never needed them, why should we? Just show your papers and stfu, that's the way it USED to be when Kings ruled the world, and before a bunch of dreamers got the crazy idea that people had rights! Rights? As our former ruler, The Decider and unitary executive once said 'If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

I have a feeling that while he was stupid enough to say it out loud, a whole lot of our so-called leaders are not too devoted to the idea of a democracy. Just look at what they are doing to it, or not doing to try to save it.

[EFerrari]

17. John Walker Lindh was a citizen and he was tortured

and he's rotting in jail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We're 'way far down that road. Remember, they showed us a video of him drugged and in pain? And no one questioned it.

[NanceGreggs]

6. Now that's one righteous rant!

:kick: and REC'D!!!

[struggle4progress]

8. I think I'm gotta practice saying "writ of habeas corpus"

[rustydog]

7. McCain, Hannity, Beckkk reply: what do you have to worry about

if you are doing nothing wrong? Oh yeah, they are WHITE.

[Cleita]

9. Oh that little protection of our civil rights went out the window when

Gitmo was instituted. And yes, American citizens were incarcerated in Gitmo.

[struggle4progress]

11. ... Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human

liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress ...
<“West India Emancipation”, Frederick Douglass, Canandaigua NY, August 1857>
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress

[Cleita]

14. You'd think our civilization would have evolved since 1857.

:eyes:

[struggle4progress]

15. Well, that's a nice optimistic thought. I like it. Optimism is good.

I try to maintain just a bit more than I need to counterbalance my healthy paranoia

:D

[EFerrari]

18. I was just reading that today.

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress"

[Arkana]

12. I believe it's been amended to "innocent until proven brown."