Thursday, March 22, 2007


CNN Lou Dobbs - video:Hazleton Trial is About More than the Facts The trial against Hazelton, Pennsylvania, now in its fifth day, has generated enormous controversy. The mayor defends his laws saying that basically the city cannot handle the infrastructure of influx of illegal aliens and the crime rate was soaring. This trial is operating at two levels. The legal issue itself, the main legal issue, is narrow and technical. It's called preemption: Is the matter of immigration something that is reserved exclusively for the federal government and is it something that Hazelton or any other town simply can't regulate. And that has almost nothing to do with the facts of the case itself. It's really an abstract legal issue. But what the plaintiffs, the ACLU, the Chamber of Commerce are trying to do is show the judge that this is a bad idea and it is vaguely racist. But Mayor Barletta says it's very important to enforce this law because the city can't sustain this influx of illegal