[Crossposted from Latino Político]

President Obama has announced his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as the candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court that will open after the retirement of Justice David Souter.  Sotomayor, a self-described ""Newyorkrican", grew up in the Bronx and worked her ass off to get to Yale Law School where she graduated summa cum laude and served as editor of the Yale Law Review.

I could go into how excited I am to see a Latina be considered for the SCOTUS, the first in this country's history and only the third woman (because I am beaming), but the buzz-kill has been rather abrupt from the seeing this accomplished and competent judge attacked for those very things that I consider a source of pride.

It should be a source of pride to everyone.

Conservatives like to talk about bootstraps and how important it is to refrain from whining about ones situation.  Well...Sonia Sotomayor couldn't be a finer example of putting the nose to the grindstone despite all the societial odds stacked against you and making it.

But as we'll see in the coming days, she is an "intellectual lightweight" despite having a long and stellar career on the bench.  She will be attacked as a person of color who has the audacity to uphold affirmative action laws not because they're the law, but because she's looking out for her people.  The media's whiteness will show in all its unholy glory.

An example of this mindset can be found during today's broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition.  Ed Whalen, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wasted no time on getting that talking point out into the mix right at the onset.  There will be no holds barred with this nomination process.

The conservative movement's success at derailing Sotomayor's placement on the Supreme Court is hinged on causing white backlash against her identity and making her out to be a token latina/affirmative action candidate instead of the qualified, capable judge that she has proven to be over the years.

As a blunt blogger friend of mine likes to say, "Bet on it."

Crossposted from The Sanctuary

Torture has been in the news lately, masquerading in the Witness Protection Program under the alias "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" and "not-torture", but there are too many of us who recognize its darkness no matter what the CYA Campaign declares.  These lowest of standards are not reserved especially for prisons outside the United States, however; many instances of abuse have occurred right here on U.S. soil within the profitable network of migrant detention centers.

That particular violation happened at the notorious T. Don Hutto "Family" Prison in Taylor, Texas.  Across the way in Tennessee, another woman was shackled like an animal as she gave birth, with agents claiming she was a flight risk:

As you may know, Joe Arpaio was re-elected this past November as sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, the most heavily populated county in the state, encompassing most of the Phoenix metro area.  Supporters of Sheriff Joe would have you believe that he was given another term based on competence, but really, his reelection was due to "Get 'Em" politics.  

Those of us who follow immigration headlines and live in communities affected by hardlined tactics know Arpaio's name very well.  He has morphed the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in to a full-time immigration enforcement posse at the expense of doing his real job as Maricopa County's top law enforcement agent.  Racial profiling is par for the course under Arpaio's leadership and he does it unapologetically.

"Get 'Em" politics, as in "Let's Get 'Em" is made possible by media sources who give nativists like Arpaio open platforms to spew xenophobia, racism and hate.  This dark wave is not something that members of immigrant or latino communities are imagining, the numbers tell the tale.  Hate crimes against latinos have surged recently, prompting grassroot movements to demand action from the government.

With news that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is being given his own reality television show on the FOX network, it is clear that pro-migrant and pro-human rights people of all colors, creeds and political ideology need to unite to say, "Enough!"  There is blood being shed in the streets, and this latest example of nativist celebrity worship will only guarantee more violence against latinos and migrant workers.

America's Voice has launched a petition calling for the Department of Justice to investigate the tactics and malfeasance that has given Sheriff Joe such notoriety.  Instead of being rewarded with more media attention (which he loves), here is an opportunity to demand accountability:

(full text of the petition is below the fold)

[Crossposted from Latino Político]

What is it going to take, America™, for you to snap out of your complacency to see that in your furvor to deport and criminalize people in your midst, the goon-squad deigned to carry out the mission are serial human rights abusers?  Quit thinking that this is about Mexicans or Central Americans or any other unwanted hordes of brown menaced invaders.  As long as that mindset continues to fester, stories like this will continue to be a blight upon the pure and spotless homeland you are so want to protect, yet only exists like a deceiving mirage.

Police in Berry Hill, Tennessee decided that Juana Villegas DeLaPaz needed to be arrested after a routine traffic stop even though she produced proof of insurance and her consulate card to the officer that stopped her.  Since local officials have decided that federal immigration law enforcement is the new hip, and she didn't have the necessary paperwork to prove citizenship, Juana was detained like an animal.

Nine months pregnant and in labor, she was shackled until two hours prior to the birth of her child and then re-shackled afterwards.  Following the birth of the baby, authorities denied her the ability to breast feed the newborn, who was at a high risk of jaundice as a result of it.

So far, this story has been confined to NewsChannel 5 out of Nashville (their story was the sanitized version) and pro-migrant blogs.  Tim Chávez of Political Salsa has been doing yeoman's work to cover this horrific tale of torture and human rights abuse in Tennessee.

sígame...

When Arthur Mkoyan was two years old, his family fled Armenia to escape the climate of Soviet Union rule.  They've been working since 1992 to claim asylum in the United States while their son has excelled in the classroom.  This week, the Fresno-area high school senior with a 4.0 GPA should be focusing on final exams and his Valedictorian speech to his fellow graduates; instead, he and his mother are facing deportation while the father sits in a migrant worker concentration camp in Arizona.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean has announced the representatives for the 2008 Democratic National Convention's State Blogger Corps in Denver, Colorado this coming August.

"Similar to the record-breaking voter turnout our Party has seen during the primary season, the demand for these coveted blogger positions is yet another indicator of the tremendous interest in this historic Convention," said Governor Dean.  "The Internet has played a critical role in connecting Americans to elected officials and candidates seeking office.  The DemConvention State Blogger Corps will continue to foster this dialogue - in all 50 of our states and our territories too - as we head towards this year's historic election and elect a Democrat to the White House."

The selected blogs are listed below the fold.  Congratulations to all of the citizen journalists that make up each site's writing team:

Crossposted from Latino Político

An all-star cast of stars united in 2007 for this powerfully-told tale of the ongoing disappearance and murder of women in El Paso's sister city of Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico.  The film reunited director Gregory Nava with leading-actress Jennifer Lopez ten years after their collaboration on Selena.

Lopez' character, Lauren Adrian, is an accomplished U.S. journalist who has been put on assignment in Juárez to investigate the alarming number of murders of female maquiladora workers.  The story line takes the audience into the very real settings of the NAFTA-spawned slave industry, as well as the improvised living conditions of the factory workers that have flocked to the border region from all parts of Mexico.  While the film boasts acclaimed Hollywood actors such as Lopez, Martin Sheen, and Antonio Banderas; a powerful performance by one of Mexico's leading ladies, Maya Zapata, draws viewers into the horror that thousands of families have experienced as the numbers of desaparecidas (dissapeared) grow without the clamor of outrage it deserves.

Cuz BooMan is probably on the toilet or somethin  :D looking up Super Bowl odds.

Today is Blog Action Day for the environment.  Gracias to Smartypants for the heads up and her contribution to this blogswarm that centers on an area of Peru that is polluted from a nearby copper smelter.

For my part, I would like to highlight something that I read over the weekend that disturbed the hell out of me.  Growing up, the political system was always something that intrigued me.  At least, the law-making aspect of it.  The way the checks and balances of the U.S. government worked in theory seemed like a good way to pierce the cáscara of any one person's overinflated ego.

Well...

One of the hallmarks of conquistador mentality is the treatment of minority/ostracized groups as savages.  The belief that there is something inherently deformed in the being of these others, therefore their very existence in the wider scope of things is judged using different rules.  If they have something that the conquistador wants, then it is taken; if a crime is committed by one of them, then the conclusion drawn by the majority Voice is that all within the minority group is prone to exhibit the same animalistic behavior.  An ugly cycle of thinking, but prevalent.

Take, for example, the recent manhunt that was underway in the Miami, Florida area for a suspect that killed a cop.  The caption of his picture reads: