Uri Lerner

Estas son imágenes frescas de los festejos espontáneos que iniciaron esta mañana frente a la Casa Blanca, en un espacio bautizado oficialmente por la ciudad como Plaza Black Lives Matter durante las recientes protestas y la plaza McPherson

Using actual urban police to teach Marines so that they can train Afghan Police is an excellent and somewhat obvious idea. After-all, there is only so much a soldier in his early 20s can reasonably be expected know about reaching out to a community, especially one in a foreign nation.

Laws like SB1070 may not only decrease the community's cooperation with the police department. In the long run, they may actually lead to more crime.

While both SB 1070 and the Schumer-Graham plan propose to push illegal aliens out of the shadows of the economy and the law, the Arizona law would push them right into jail while the immigration reform plan would allow them to work toward citizenship.

Even if the calls to legalize all can be reconciled with history and the reality of modern international politics, domestic politics in this country make them impossible to actually implement.

Democrats cannot legislate immigration reform if they are not in office and Republicans are unlikely to implement a reform that most immigrants' rights activists agree with.

In fact, the bigger parties are probably more likely to put forward several candidates, because they cover a large ideological spectrum, than are the smaller third parties, which are much more focused.

This story provides a stark anecdote of what can happen when relations between police and their communities sour; be they middle class, working class, immigrant, or homeless populations

Amendments to SB 1070 have made even violations of municipal codes grounds for questioning resident status. These include even skateboarding on school property or the degree of tint in a car window.

It may be that the best defense against racial profiling is to require all Arizonans to carry their proof of citizenship or legal residency and that the requirement of "reasonable suspicion" be abandoned. A national identification card would also need to be created in order to account for out-of-state visitors.

Does the Pasadena City Council have the legal authority, as some called for, to impose a boycott on Arizona? For this, one could point to the University of California Board of Regents divestment in South Africa during Apartheid as a precedent.

If America allows such an important part of it's creed to slip away, the result would be a transformation to an entirely different national tone. The result would be unrecognizable as America of today.

Steele's comments will likely help to fuel an already yawning divide between the Republican Party establishment and it's increasingly agitated and pseudo-Libertarian supporters. The Tea Party movement, based most discernibly on nationalist patriotism than any one platform, will not tolerate such a perceived lack of support for our Armed Forces.

Ultimately, the question of Republican advantage in November depends on how appealing Tea Party candidates can be to mainstream voters in general elections. Many have suggested that such candidates have a very narrow political base and can even alienate moderate Republican voters.