National Geographic

In Alabama it's now a crime to "knowingly give a ride" to an undocumented immigrant. It's also a crime to enroll your undocumented child in public schools. And cops are now permitted to research the immigration status of any person stopped for any reason.

Gov. Robert Bentley said the law is the nation’s toughest, and groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center agree. The groups say they plan to challenge it. The legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mary Bauer, said Thursday that she expects a lawsuit to be filed before the provisions of law are scheduled to take effect on Sept. 1. "It is clearly unconstitutional. It’s mean-spirited, racist and we think a court will enjoin it,” Bauer said. Bentley, who campaigned on passing the toughest anti-illegal immigration bill possible, said he believes the measure can withstand legal challenges.

So far over half of World Net Daily's readers agree that the children of immigrants are not eligible to be president.

World Net Daily is upping the birther ante, now claiming that presidential candidates must have been born to U.S. citizens in order to be eligible. And that lets out two major GOP figures.

Are U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal natural-born citizens of the United States, and thus eligible for the presidency? It's a simple question, but the answer may not be so easy. While the Constitution does not define "natural-born citizen," there is strong evidence that the Founding Fathers understood it to mean someone born of two American citizens. The next national election is less than 18 months away, and both rising Republican stars have been touted as potential contenders for either the No. 1 or No. 2 spot on a presidential ticket. But their eligibility is in doubt since both men's parents were not U.S. citizens at the time their future political children were born, WND can reveal. That factor is important because the Constitution mandates a presidential candidate to be a "natural-born citizen," a requirement that has dogged President Barack Obama since the 2008 campaign.

And what do Jindal and Rubio and Obama all have in common? Bingo.

After facing calls for her resignation by GLAAD and the NAACP, Oklahoma lawmaker Sally Kern has voted to approve her own reprimand by the state House for racist remarks made last week. Kern preceded her vote with another apology, this one delivered to the full chamber.

"Last Wednesday night while debating a bill, I said some words that were not well thought out and that offended many African Americans and many women," said Kern, who fought back tears and quoted several Bible passages during her apology. "That was not my intent, but sadly it happened, and I take full responsibility for it and I'm truly sorry. While my words were not expressed well and implied things I did not mean, they were not spoken with any contempt or malice."

The meaningless reprimand then passed 76-16.

UPDATE: Here's Kern's apology.

Onion staffer Baratunde Thurston's evisceration of Donald Trump has gone viral in the last couple of days. Watch the clip, then click over to the Village Voice for Stephen Thrasher's interview with Thurston.

The NAACP is calling for the resignation of Sally Kern after the Oklahoma legislator said that black people have higher rates of imprisonment because they are lazy. Via Advocate:

NAACP state president Anthony Douglas wants Kern to resign. “This is an outrage. We're calling for her to go today. She needs to step down now," he said. Under the leadership of Benjamin Todd Jealous, the NAACP has accelerated its support of gay rights and sought to recruit more gay leaders and people from diverse racial backgrounds. Kern apologized for her remarks Thursday. While the speaker of the House Kris Steele said he disagreed with her, he accepted the apology, reports KOCO TV. State representative Mike Shelton said he wants Kern reprimanded. "There is no place for those kind of comments on the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives or the Oklahoma State Senate," Sheldon said.

RELATED: Buzzfeed today posts 25 of Kern's most outrageous claims.

The top two dozen stories on World Net Daily today are all new or revived birth certificate conspiracies.

"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison and that’s tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don’t want to study as hard in school? I’ve taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them." - Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern, outdoing even herself. Oklahoma's GOP-dominated House has just voted 59-14 to place a ban on affirmative action on this year's ballot.

For weeks World Net Daily has been flogging nutjob Jerome Corsi's coming birther book, encouraging readers to pre-order it on Amazon so that it debuts at the top of bestsellers lists. Even though it doesn't come out for weeks, today Corsi's now-doomed title ranks at #29 on the overall chart and is #1 on several of Amazon's niche categories.

"Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people–mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it. You're not going to make a big deal about this are you? It's just an Internet joke." - Marilyn Davenport, Tea Party activist and Orange County GOP committee member, after being busted for having emailed the above image with the caption: "Now you know why there's no birth certificate."

Arizona's GOP-dominated legislature has passed its bill requiring all presidential candidates to provide proof of being born in the United States in order to have their names placed on the ballot.

Lawmakers in 10 states introduced birther bills in their state legislatures at the beginning of this year's sessions, but the Arizona bill is so far the only one to make it to a governor's desk. The measure had failed twice in the last two years to make its way through the legislature, but this time was shepherded by a compliant Republican leadership that had not been eager to advance the issue before. The Republican speaker of the state House supported the bill this time, he told The Arizona Republic, because he believes it does not "add to or detract from the qualifications for president as stated in the United States Constitution." Brewer has not yet indicated where she stands on the bill, but has five days to choose whether to sign or veto it. If Brewer decides to not take a position and let the five-day period lapse, the bill will become law.

As you might expect, World Net Daily is doing ecstatic backflips and is directing readers to a website calling on Brewer to sign the bill.

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that Arizona does not have the right to create its own laws on immigration.

The original law was enacted in April 2010 after Arizona officials argued that they needed their own immigration law to deal with the growing problem of unauthorized immigration from across the Mexican border. In general, the law establishes a variety of immigration-related actions as state offenses and defines what local and state officials can do to enforce the new law. The law immediately sparked boycotts and protests across the nation as immigration activists argued that Arizona was trying to usurp a federal prerogative to define immigration rules and had proposed unconstitutional actions, including profiling. The law also required police to check immigration status when enforcing other laws. The Obama administration's Justice Department sued to block the law from going into effect. It argued that the federal government had the responsibility for immigration law.

Among the now-banned policies put forth by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was an instruction to the police that they were to stop and demand the papers of anybody they "reasonably suspected" of being in the country illegally.

Today World Net Daily published a lengthy column claiming that Barack Obama had been photoshopped into the top photo with his white grandparents. Because he couldn't have been with them in New York City and in Kenya/Indonesia/Pakistan at the same time. However Media Matters points out that in fact it's WND's image that is photoshopped, as evidenced by the fact that they didn't even take out the president's leg. Hilarious. Sad and repulsive, but hilarious.

(Via - Andrew Sullivan)

Tomorrow Donald Trump will meet with Arizona state legislators to discuss their pending bill which would require the submission of a birth certificate in order to be placed on the state presidential ballot.

Lawmakers in Arizona confirmed their plans to meet with Trump at his invitation, and Rep. Carl Seel, whose bill is one of those pending in the state legislature, said he was surprised and pleased to be invited to a meeting. Trump, who has been expressing his concerns about the absence of proof of Obama's eligibility for weeks, said on the "Today" show this morning there are "real doubts" about whether Obama was born in the U.S. His comments have placed the issue squarely in the middle of the 2012 presidential election race, and, meanwhile, his poll numbers – he's considering a bid for the GOP nomination – have soared to the point he's now trailing only Mitt Romney in some polls.

Twelve states are presently considering "birther ballot bills," with Arizona and Oklahoma closest to passage.

Public Policy Polling asked self-identified Mississippi Republicans how they feel (PDF) about interracial marriage. And 74% of those who'd like to ban interracial marriage also have a "favorable view" of Sarah Palin.

"Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. Welfare has subsidized illegitimacy by offering financial rewards to women who have more children out of wedlock. We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it’s no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits." - American Family Association spokesbigot Bryan Fischer, earning his hate group stripes every day. And all of the GOP presidential candidates continue to appear on his radio show.

"Immigration is obviously a matter for Congress, since authority to control immigration is vested by the Constitution in Congress. But we must never forget that immigration to the United States is a privilege, not a right, and that we should follow the wisdom of the Founders who urged that we only admit to our shores those who will strengthen our nation and assimilate themselves into it, adopting our flag, our history, our heroes, and our values. This is something that devout Muslims simply cannot do. The privilege of immigration should be reserved for those willing to integrate into our culture, become unhyphenated Americans, and adopt American values." - American Family Association spokesbigot Bryan Fischer, renewing his call to ban all Muslims from immigrating to the United States.

Fischer's radio show is heard daily on almost 200 stations nationwide and has become the favorite stopping place for prospective 2012 GOP presidential candidates.

Right Wing Watch reports that today Tea Party Nation emailed its followers with a warning that the "uniquely American culture" of WASPs is in danger of extinction. Because shameful white women are having fewer children. Also: Too many brown people! Also also: GAYS.

What is keeping America's fertility rate up are immigrants - both legal and illegal. There are those in America who are continuously attacking the family, bent on redefining marriage and have established anti-family government programs. This has led to downward pressure on our national total fertility rate. All of these actions are done in the name of various causes such as: reducing unwanted pregnancies, delaying child bearing to further career goals and even promoting childlessness and promoting adoption as a better option. Child bearing has become something distasteful to many women, an unwanted and painful experience to be avoided rather than embraced. All of these programs, ideals and ideologies are doing one thing and one thing only - reducing America core TFR to the point of no return. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) population in America is headed for extinction and with it our economy, well-being and survival as a uniquely America culture. This county is dying not because it is aging, it is dying because of infertility as public policy.

I mentioned Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins' racist history and affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan a couple of years ago, but this bears repeating for those that missed it.

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins against Mary Landrieu, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide their link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, but it had been widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation, because in 1999 — two years before Perkins’ speech to the CCC — Republican House Speaker Trent Lott had been embroiled in a national scandal over his ties to the group. GOP chairman Jim Nicholson then urged Republicans to avoid the CCC because of its “racist views.” The Duke incident surfaced again in local press in 2002, when Perkins ran for the Republican nomination for the Senate, dooming his campaign to a fourth-place finish in the primaries.

This is the same man now regularly invited to make anti-gay testimonies before Congress. This is the same man now regularly invited to spew his bigotry on national news networks. This is the same man who almost every day emails his millions of followers about the evil of homosexuality.