Well, now we know how much time

As I noted in a post on February 23:

Were gambling legal in this state [yeah, sure] it would be interesting if somebody made book on how long it will be before Pawlenty or one of his allies, hot-dogging politically to appeal to others' [and likely their own] bigotry uses this as justification for more cracking down on aliens [which also inherently means darker-skinned people who might be thought of as aliens], especially as to regards driver license labeling.

Well, now we know. House Minority leader Marty Seifert whose area the accident took place in, today introduced the idea of penalizing local taxpayers whose police agencies fail to check the legal status of people they contact.

I know that I carry neither birth certificate nor passport [which I have never even had] with me, so if I am ever in a traffic stop, I could be putting the taxpayers of our city in jeopardy. I could suggest that they just decide to never stop me, that it isn’t worth the hassle or risk to the city, but that is not the responsible approach.

What would be responsible is to learn that immigration problems are national problems, if they are problems at all, and to let the local authorities, police and others, work to keep our neighborhoods.

We all learn bigotry when we are young and most of us spend the rest of our lives fighting to unlearn it. To that we are continually and mutually educating each other at every age that people are people and that strangers are people also and that just they have different pigmentation or speak differently doesn’t mean that they are an exotic species.

This education would happen a lot easier were people like Seifert and Pawlenty willing to play less to the bigotry we all fight, willing to pass up the chance to hot dog it for a vote or two.