Astropro's Website Of the Week Award ©2010 by Richard Nolle

MAY 3, 2010 - SB1070 is the Grand Canyon State's recently enacted "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," signed into law during a Mercury Max by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010; within a few days (and minutes of arc) of the April 26 Saturn-Uranus opposition. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s the alignment which I predicted over a year ago would herald "panic in the markets, panic in the streets, people in need of rescue, just a whiff of revolution in the air." Look at the media hype and the May Day demonstrations, and tell me it isn’t so.

SB1070 is scheduled to go into effect on July 28 (90 days after the end of the legislative session) – again, within a few days (and minutes of arc) of the fifth and final (July 26) Saturn-Uranus opposition of the current series. It’s clear from the media frenzy how the world at large regards the law. From the actual text of the law, it’s just as clear that the hype stems from and feeds on complete ignorance of what the law actually says.

Anyone who carefully reads that text will see that, contrary to media hysteria, nobody can legally be apprehended by law enforcement simply for ‘looking like an illegal immigrant.’ There must be a "lawful contact" prior to a peace officer asking for identification. If you or I break the speed limit and get pulled over by an officer, that’s a lawful contact. Once that lawful contact is initiated, we can expect to furnish identification. There’s nothing smacking of Gestapo tactics in that process, media hype notwithstanding. No law-breaking means no legal contact by a peace officer, end of story. Read the bill, and you’ll see that you’re being misled by people who either don’t know better or don’t care about the truth.

Speaking of the Gestapo, some demonstrations against SB1070 have taken to brandishing a rather artful but nonetheless totally despicable poster of Governor Brewer in Nazi drag. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the first one to accuse their opponent of Nazism is the de facto loser of the debate. (It’s a corollary to Godwin’s Law, people!)

And don’t give me that whiney crap about the term "illegal alien," either. That’s a technical legal and historical English language definition that goes back centuries. In that context, it means precisely one thing: a non-citizen who is in the country without legal authorization. It’s not a pejorative term; it’s a precise legal term of art. Get over it. My wife Maria is a naturalized US citizen. Prior to the point when she became a citizen, had she snuck into the country she’d have been an illegal alien.

While you’re getting educated, get up to speed on the reason why the legislature passed that law. Every day, around 1,000 illegal aliens cross Arizona’s southern border. That makes them criminals. Most of them come here to work illegally, because of the dire poverty in Mexico. (A not inconsiderable percentage aren’t Mexican at all, it should be noted. They’re just taking advantage of Arizona’s porous southern border – the one our federal government doesn’t defend.) I know some of these people, and I admire some for their courage and nobility. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re criminals by virtue of being here. I also know some of their children, who were born here and by that fact, are US citizens. Some of them are bright over-achievers, who will suffer if one or both of their parents are caught and deported. The children of citizens who rob banks and get sent to jail will suffer too.

These human tragedies visited on illegal aliens and their children are compounded by the tragedies some of them visit on innocent legal residents (and aliens too), who are raped and robbed and killed by the invaders; or injured (or worse) by them driving around uninsured and unable to read our traffic signs. (Like the ones who caused a crash in a roundabout because they couldn’t read the sign that says “Yield to Left.”) You don’t hear about that, but we Arizona citizens live with the miscreants, the drug smugglers, the human traffickers, the Mexican Mafia and the MS-13 thugs on a daily basis. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars they're costing us every year for medical care, jail and prison housing, and judicial expenses; or that our cops are being shot dead, the National Guard helicopters are taking fire from drug smugglers with AK-47s, and virtually nobody outside of Arizona seems to know about the fairly quiet war going on down here. (Even fewer Anglos outside of the Southwest US are cognizant of La Raza and their Aztlan reconquista ideology.)

I confess to having worried for years now about my Latino friends being harassed by rogue cops, just as I’ve worried about my black friends being pulled over for DWB, and my female friends who face getting pulled over by sexual predator cops, etc. Bad cops are, thankfully, rare. But it’s horrible when one rears his ugly head, and may the courts bury them under the jail. If anything, I may be able to worry just a little bit less if ever SB1070 takes effect, since it specifically empowers checking immigration status only after a peace officer makes a lawful contact. Don’t give ‘em a reason to mess with you, carry your ID regardless, and you should be fine. And if they do mess with you unlawfully, SB1070 throws the bad cop under the bus: see Article B, Paragraph I, line 32 and Paragraph J, lines 34-37 of the bill.

As an astrologer, seeing that Mercury was in its Max phase when the bill was signed into law, I’ll be very surprised if it goes into effect as scheduled. And I’m sure the public hysteria over SB1070 is only going to grow from one Saturn-Uranus opposition to the next. Meanwhile the aliens ambushed and shot a Pinal County Sheriff Deputy on Friday the 30th, and opened fire on the National Guard helicopters sent in to hunt them down. With all these Mars aspects coming up in July, I suspect this will get a whole lot worse before it gets any better at all.

Richard Nolle, Certified Professional Astrologer consultations/orders (AmEx/Discover/MasterCard/Visa) 1-800-527-8761 data/fax 480-753-6261 - email rnolle@astropro.com Box 26599 - Tempe, AZ 85285-6599 - USA on the World Wide Web at http://www.astropro.com