The New York Times reports today that “the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether Arizona may impose tough anti-immigration measures. Among them, in a law enacted last year, is a requirement that the police there question people they stop about their immigration status.”

ABC News reports ”the case will be argued sometime this spring,” adding that, “although deeply opposed to the law, the Obama administration had asked the Supreme Court to refrain from taking up the case at this juncture.”

Kris Kobach, current Kansas secretary of state and the coauthor of S.B. 1070 and other immigration enforcement-only efforts, wrote in May 2010: “[S.B. 1070] makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration violations while in Arizona.”

S.B. 1070 was passed by the Arizona Legislature in the first months of 2010, and was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer in April; the measure was immediately challenged by the Obama administration.

The Times adds that the Obama administration “challenged four provisions” of S.B. 1070: “The most prominent was a requirement that state law enforcement officials determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if officials have reason to believe that the individual might be an illegal immigrant.”

According to ABC News, “similar legislation is pending in Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Alabama.”

The Supreme Court of the United States Blog writes today: “The Arizona measure, and one in Alabama that goes even further, were passed by state legislatures with the specific intent of making life so difficult for undocumented aliens that they would choose to leave the state. Other states are also passing similar measures.”

“Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law, SB 1070,” and other similar state laws, according to the Immigration Policy Center, ”impose unfunded mandates on the police, jails, and courts; drive away workers, taxpayers, and consumers upon whom the state economy depends; and invite costly lawsuits and tourist boycotts. These are economic consequences which few states can afford at a time of gaping budget deficits.”

Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason (Photo: personhoodusa.com)

Undaunted by the failure of similar initiatives across the country, Virginia legislator Bob Marshall has introduced a bill that would define life as beginning at the moment of conception.

As the law reads, unborn children at “every stage of development” would enjoy “all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the commonwealth, subject only to the laws and constitutions of Virginia and the United States, precedents of the United States Supreme Court, and provisions to the contrary in the statutes of the commonwealth.”

Marshall is known for being outspoken when it comes to abortion, but many pro-lifers find fault with personhood initiatives like his. Critics, including the group National Right to Life, say passage of such a bill could backfire, further strengthening Roe v. Wade.

A similar personhood initiative recently failed in Mississippi, despite a significant amount of support from state leaders — some of whom didn’t necessarily endorse it, but voted for it anyway.

In Georgia, two state lawmakers recently announced their intention to file similar measures, which would grant full individual rights to fertilized without the vague language of Mississippi’s Amendment 26. The leader of Florida’s Personhood affiliate told The Florida Independent that his group would begin a two-year push for a personhood bill in 2012, aiming for ballot placement on Florida’s 2014 ballot.

Former Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce — one of the most recognized architects of that state’s immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070, and who recently lost a recall election — writes today that his defeat had nothing to do with S.B. 1070.

Pearce writes at Politico:

My Republican opponent was Jerry Lewis, who stated he was opposed to SB1070, supports the DREAM Act and believes illegal aliens do the jobs that Americans won’t.

In a normal election, Lewis would have had no chance in the primary. And with a large GOP registration edge in my district, I would likely have won easily against the Democrat.

Pearce argues that Democrats supported Lewis and, “looming over the campaign was a prolonged smear campaign against me for accepting (with dozens of other legislators) free college football tickets.”

He also reiterates his immigration track record:

We have inspired other states to take action. More than 34 states are now proposing legislation modeled on SB1070. Alabama, South Carolina, Utah and Georgia have already passed bills.”

The immigration enforcement state laws passed in Arizona, Alabama and Georgia have been challenged in court.

According to the Tucson Citizen, Republican Jerry Lewis, who defeated Pearce, “participated in a national teleconference to mark the Nov. 11, 2010, adoption of a document called the Utah Compact, which advocates a more humane approach to immigration issues.”

The Citizen adds: “During an Oct. 6 campaign debate with Pearce, Lewis said Arizona’s focus on strict border enforcement has made the state a paraiah in some national and international quarters. Drawing boos from Pearce supporters, Lewis said Arizona now suffers from an image akin to that of ’1964 Alabama.’”

Photo credit: Protesters demonstrate against Arizona S.B. 1070 (Pic by ProgressOhio, via Flickr)

Former Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce — one of the most recognized architects of that state’s immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070, and who recently lost a recall election — writes today that his defeat had nothing to do with S.B. 1070.

Protesters demonstrate against Arizona S.B. 1070 (Pic by ProgressOhio, via Flickr)

Pearce writes at Politico:

My Republican opponent was Jerry Lewis, who stated he was opposed to SB1070, supports the DREAM Act and believes illegal aliens do the jobs that Americans won’t.

In a normal election, Lewis would have had no chance in the primary. And with a large GOP registration edge in my district, I would likely have won easily against the Democrat.

Pearce argues that Democrats supported Lewis and, “looming over the campaign was a prolonged smear campaign against me for accepting (with dozens of other legislators) free college football tickets.”

He also reiterates his immigration track record:

We have inspired other states to take action. More than 34 states are now proposing legislation modeled on SB1070. Alabama, South Carolina, Utah and Georgia have already passed bills.”

The immigration enforcement state laws passed in Arizona, Alabama and Georgia have been challenged in court.

According to the Tucson Citizen, Republican Jerry Lewis, who defeated Pearce, “participated in a national teleconference to mark the Nov. 11, 2010, adoption of a document called the Utah Compact, which advocates a more humane approach to immigration issues.”

The Citizen adds: “During an Oct. 6 campaign debate with Pearce, Lewis said Arizona’s focus on strict border enforcement has made the state a paraiah in some national and international quarters. Drawing boos from Pearce supporters, Lewis said Arizona now suffers from an image akin to that of ’1964 Alabama.’”

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam told state citrus industry leaders Monday that Florida GOP elected officials should be credited for not passing the “mistaken” state immigration laws now in place in Georgia and Alabama.

Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam (Pic via Facebook)

The Ledger reports that Putnam spoke at the 78th annual meeting of Citrus World Inc. on immigration, saying: “There’s just no good news here. … The best news would be if nothing happens.”

The Ledger adds:

“Thank God for Georgia and Alabama because they’ve given us examples of real-world consequences of these mistaken policies,” he said. “Because of the work done last year, I think this issue is taking a back seat in the Legislature, and I do not anticipate it taking such a large role next year.”

The arguments that alternatives such as unemployed U.S. workers or prison labor will make up for the loss of immigrant harvest workers has not come to pass in those states, Putnam added.

Alabama and Georgia both approved immigration enforcement laws that require police officers to verify the immigration status of anyone they stop, detain or arrest, and prohibits the enforcement of any contract with an unauthorized immigrant. Alabama’s law also requires that K-12 schools check the immigration status of their students.

Gov. Rick Scott recently said:

I tried to get an [immigration] bill passed last year. It got through the Senate. It didn’t make it through the House. It will happen this session.

State Senate President Mike Haridopolis said his chamber would pass the same immigration bill it passed in the 2011 session.

Citrus World Inc. is a cooperative that represents 13 Florida citrus growers associations: “The entire cooperative is made up of more than 1,000 grower-members who own more than 50,000 acres of fine citrus groves in the heart of central Florida.”

According to Open Secrets, from 2000 through 2008, the crop production and basic processing industry (which includes fruit growers) gave Putnam more than $428,000 in congressional campaign contributions.

Putnam was also the lead recipient of campaign contributions in the 2002, 2004 and 2008 election cycles from the vegetable and fruit industry, which have him a total of about $225,000.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “Republican Russell Pearce, lost by 53 percent to 45 percent with all precincts reported, according to the Maricopa County Elections office. Pearce, 64, was defeated by Jerry Lewis, a Republican school administrator who has said he opposes Pearce’s enforcement-only approach to immigration policy.”

Businessweek adds: “Pearce, the first state officeholder in Arizona to face a recall election, became prominent nationally after lawmakers passed an immigration law in 2010 that sparked national boycotts.”

Pearce was not alone in his defense and support of S.B. 1070. Kris Kobach, current Kansas secretary of state and the coauthor of S.B. 1070 and other immigration enforcement-only efforts wrote in May: “[S.B. 1070] makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration violations while in Arizona,” adding that, “far from inviting racial profiling, the Arizona law actually makes racial profiling less likely.”

The Federation for American Immigration Reform — known as FAIR, a stong supporter of S.B. 1070 — writes:

“Alabama is now the number one state for immigration enforcement,” stated Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach, who is also of counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), helped draft Alabama’s new law along with the bill’s sponsors, State Sen. Scott Beason and State Rep. Mickey Hammon.

Alabama, Georgia and several other states have followed in Arizona’s steps, passing similar immigration enforcement laws.

The National Immigration Forum writes: ”Pearce was one of the most powerful politicians in Arizona. Citizens in the very conservative district elected him six straight times,” adding that, “the defeat of Russell Pearce sends a loud and clear message that American voters are tired of politicians exploiting the immigration issue for cheap political points instead of focusing on real solutions to our immigration system.”

Pearce writes:

I believe it is wrong to allow liberal special interest groups to overturn the voters’ will. I was elected less than one year ago as the State Senator representing District 18. Liberal special interest groups from outside of District 18 and with funding from undisclosed sources organized a recall petition drive to overturn the will of the voters. If my Republican opponents wanted to replace me, there is a method — run in the primary and general elections in less than a year.

Businessweek adds that another candidate,

Olivia Cortes, pulled out after her candidacy was challenged as a sham. A judge found in October that Pearce’s supporters helped get Cortes on the ballot to draw votes that might otherwise go to Lewis. While votes for Cortes didn’t count, ballots had already been printed with her name. She polled about 1 percent of the vote.

Leaders from a dozen or so faith affiliations submitted the open letter Wednesday as pastors and rabbis lobbied lawmakers. Religious leaders denounced in the letter the “hate-filled rhetoric” surrounding the debate over attempts to repeal the law.

Holly Beaumont, Director of Interfaith Worker Justice New Mexico, said around 115 pastors, clergy, rabbis and other religious leaders signed the letter.

Religious leaders have proven a strong ally to immigrant rights activists seeking to prevent the rise in immigration enforcement legislation across the country. In Alabama, an immigration enforcement law of unprecedented scale has been greeted with protests which include many religious leaders, and the ongoing lawsuit to block implementation of the law has multiple bishops from different faiths in the state as plaintiffs. In Georgia, a similar law prompted religious leaders to embark on a self-described “pilgrimage” across the state to spread awareness about the law’s potential effects and their belief that religious people should oppose it.

“The refusal…by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Troy Davis clemency underscores the vast systemic injustices that plague our death penalty system,” Denny LeBoeuf, the director of the Capital Punishment Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement. “The death penalty system in the United States is arbitrary, discriminatory and comes at an enormous cost to taxpayers, and it must be ended.”

Instances of doubt, such as the case of Troy Davis, first and foremost highlight the grave cost of taking the life of a man who has continued to proclaim his innocence since the start of his prosecution. But additional housing and prosecutions costs, especially heavy in death penalty cases, add up in cash-strapped states that continue to use the death penalty. In California, keeping an individual on the maximum-security death row costs $90,000 annually per inmate, and with the state’s current death row population of 670, the cost is $63.3 million annually, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The cost of the entire system in California, including prosecutions and court cases, is $137 million per year — if the number of crimes that encompass the death penalty were narrowed, a report by the Center notes, the cost of the system would narrow to $130 million per year.

The Federal Office of Defender Services found that defending a murder trial in which the death penalty is sought — an average of $620,932 per prisoner — is eight times that of a murder case where is it not sought.

State Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka (Pic by Meredith Geddings, via myfloridahouse.gov)

Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, will speak at an upcoming event for Personhood Florida, the group aiming to outlaw abortion and some forms of birth control in the state.

On Fri., Sept. 16, the group will host the head of Georgia Right to Life, Dan Becker. Under Becker’s leadership, the group has lobbied against abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and euthanasia.

On July 20, the group placed a straw poll question on Republican primary ballots in 47 counties in Georgia, which served as a barometer of sorts on anti-abortion beliefs. “Do you support an amendment to the Georgia state constitution so as to provide that the paramount right to life is vested in each human being from the earliest biological beginning until natural death?” read the poll. The poll passed in every county.

Becker will be introduced by Florida Rep. Van Zant, a vocal anti-abortion advocate. Van Zant filed a bill last January echoing some of the language in many “Personhood” measures, but was more overtly religious in its tone.

The legislation — known as the “Florida for Life Act,” House Bill 415 (.pdf) — aimed to prohibit induced abortions and punish abortion doctors as felons should they violate the measures included in the bill.

The bill also stated that “all life comes from the Creator and begins at conception,” and included language explicitly stating that the United States Supreme Court is not qualified to “determine, establish, or define the moral values of the people of the United States and specifically for the people of Florida.”

“Florida state representative Charles Van Zant, author of the Florida for Life bill, is the first statesman in our history to introduce a bill in our state that would end abortion without exception,” states a press release for the upcoming Personhood Florida event. “Van Zant will provide an update on his bill.”

Kent’s critics have started a petition drive to oust him from the Immigration Enforcement Review Board. Started by Steve Golden of the Young Democrats of Georgia, the petition calls Kent a “nativist” who uses “intense racist imagery to convey his terrible beliefs.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the petition had attracted more than 1,800 signatures. Golden said he plans to present them to Deal. A spokesman for Deal declined to comment Thursday. Kent dismissed the petition as a “fundraising tool” for one of his other critics, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he calls a “radical left-wing group.”

Kent’s board has been attracting controversy since last Friday, when Deal announced Kent and the other six men who have been appointed to serve on the panel. That same day, the SPLC condemned Kent’s appointment. The SPLC has long labeled the organization for which Kent is the national spokesman – Americans for Immigration Control – a hate group.

The Anti-Defamation League is pointing to columns written by Kent which bemoan the growing number of non-white people in America as evidence that he should be removed from his new job:

In one column regarding estimates that minorities could overtake the white population by 2050, Kent wrote: “What will be the values and ideas of a multicultural America? What will it mean to be white after ‘whiteness’ no longer defines the cultural mainstream?” Kent also predicted “many whites ‘will flee into whiteness.’ They will move to where other fair-skinned brethren are to retain their identity — nostalgically yearning for an American authenticity where everyone speaks English.”

According to Media Matters, Kent at one point accused President Barack Obama of being a  ”dangerous, anti-white multiculturalist.” Before working for Americans for Immigration Control, Kent was a press secretary for the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Under Georgia’s new immigration law, which went into effect on August 1, the review board hears complaints from citizens about whether the law is being enforced by all relevant state and municipal government agencies. It has the power to subpoena witnesses, write new regulations and penalize officials, with punishments including “revocation of qualified local government status, loss of state appropriated funds, and a monetary fine of not… more than $5,000.00.” The intent of the board is to prevent the emergence of so-called “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants, a common fear of conservatives and restrictionist groups.

The board is also being criticized — for being composed exclusively of white men — by the head of Georgia’s Legislative Black Caucus, State Sen. Emanuel Jones (D-Decatur). The governor appointed three of the board members, including Kent, and the lieutenant governor and state House speaker each chose two.

Although two provisions of the Georgia immigration law were blocked by a federal judge pending a decision on the constitutionality of the “papers, please” laws by higher courts, other parts of the law have already gone into effect. These include a provision criminalizing applying to a job with a false I.D., punishable by up to 15 years in jail.