Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law on May 13 an "Arizona style" anti-illegal immigration bill, HB 87, that allows law enforcement officers to ask about immigration status when questioning suspects in criminal investigations. The law also imposes fines and prison sentences of up to one year for anyone who knowingly transports illegal immigrants during the commission of a crime, and requires businesses to use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of potential employees, providing that workers convicted of using fake identification to gain employment could face up to 15 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. A CNN report described the measure as "one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration measures enacted by an individual state." In addition to demonstrations outside the capitol, the legislation has drawn threats of both lawsuits and boycotts, as have similar recent measures in other states.

Republicans going in for the kill on public radio were notoriously dealt a coup by the secretly taped sting interview given by NPR top fundraiser Ronald Schiller to undercover conservatives posing as potential donors from a non-existent Muslim group. Both Ronald and NPR executive Vivian Schiller (no relation) stepped down in the aftermath—part of an almost uniformly craven response on the part of public broadcasters and liberals in general. Those who aren't retreating are merely crying foul. Among lefty commentators, Jason Linkins on Huffington Post March 14 charges that "deceptive editing" made Ron Schiller's comments seem worse than they really were. That strikes us as somewhat beside the point. It would also be a little beside the point to complain about how widespread this game of "gotcha" has become (the left having pulled off similar stings of Scott Walker and Sarah Palin), and the effect this is having on our intellectual climate—although it is pretty funny to watch right-wing websites and left-wing websites each complaining that the "biased" media are giving coverage to the other side's stings at the expense of their own. But there are some far more serious points here that nobody seems to get.

Muslim student Yasir Afifi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a lawsuit against the FBI on March 2 after Afifi discovered a global positioning system (GPS) device on the undercarriage of his car. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Afifi's rights were violated when FBI agents attempted to retrieve their tracking device, without explanation for why Afifi was being tracked. Afifi's suit alleges civil rights and constitutional violations, specifically unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment, chilling and recording of First Amendment activities, and unlawful agency action:

Last month, Louisiana's Sen. David Vitter and Kentucky's Sen. Rand Paul introduced legislation aimed at amending the Fourteenth Amendment—specifically, denying birthright citizenship to those born to undocumented immigrants. (The State Column, Jan. 30) This idea was notoriously broached last year ("worth considering," he said) by then-House Minority Leader—today House Speaker—John Boehner. (CNN, Aug. 8, 2010) This would be an alarming enough development, if it were not happening amid a sinister mainstreaming of pro-Confederacy revisionism...

For the second year in a row, a federal court in Columbus, Georgia, has sentenced activists to six-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base during protests against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). This is the maximum sentence for the offense, and US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth surprised observers when he imposed the penalty on three activists in January 2010.

The right-wing chattering and blogging classes are squealing with unanimous denial that Jared Loughner was influenced by their recent effluence of ultra-bellicose thunder. Timothy P. Carney on the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog takes issue with Paul Krugman's sensible call in the New York Times ("Climate of Hate," Jan. 9) for partisans to refrain from "eliminationist rhetoric." Writes Carney:

Although no other evidence is given, Fox News on Jan. 9 quoted a Department of Homeland Security memo stating that Jared Lee Loughner—primary suspect in the previous day's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson—is "possibly linked" to American Renaissance, a self-styled far-right think-tank that DHS says promotes views that are "anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG [Zionist Occupational Government], anti-Semitic."

Sholom Rubashkin, former CEO of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa—which made national headlines when it was the target of a massive ICE raid of undocumented workers in 2008—this week filed an appeal of his conviction to the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Rubashkin was convicted in November 2009 of 86 counts of fraud stemming from a $26.8 million loss to lenders after the immigration raid found nearly 400 undocumented workers at his plant. Although the indictment included charges of harboring unauthorized immigrants for profit, federal prosecutors opted not to pursue the immigration charges after the fraud conviction. A state trial acquitted him of knowingly employing underage workers.