Kris Kobach Cries The Blues

Last week, Sarah Kessinger, of the Marysville Advocate, wrote this editorial about our renowned Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, and his contributions to Arizona SB1070, which was signed into law by Governer Jan Brewer in 2010 in an ongoing effort to keep Arizona white. It is disguised as a law to curtail illegal immigration, but it assumes that all illegal immigrants are of darker skin complexion than the average Northern European and required that police officers everywhere in Arizona stop and harass anyone with dark skin or dark hair and demand to see a birth certificate or a passport. This law also sought to restrict voting. The problem in enacting this law had to do with the concept of "probable cause". Anyone whose descent happened to be African, Indian, Asian, Mediterranean, Native American, Middle Eastern, or Latin was naturally suspect. Because so many problems were created by the application of this law and the Kobachian hate with which it is associated, quite a bit of it either has been repealed, or is being repealed. Sarah Kessinger simply stated that Kris Kobach's work appears consistently to contain a racist and oppressive slant, intimidating legitimate voters. She certainly is not the only American to point that out.

In his rebuttal to Sarah's editorial, Kris Kobach denies his contributions to Arizona SB1070 and throws out obscure references to Arizona citizenship laws enacted in 2004, which are not the subject of this editorial. He also confuses the issue by complaining about the editorial's statement that Kris Kobach helped to "convince" lawmakers and the Governor in Arizona to "pass laws" by claiming that no one was actually "convinced" because not all of his ideas were passed into law! Seriously, Kobach? Arizona SB1070 most certainly DID get passed; the ACLU would never have involved itself if it didn't!

Another point Sarah Kessinger ponders in her editorial, which has been pondered before by one or two Kansans, is this: how does Kris Kobach have so much time, while doing the job of Secretary of State here in Kansas, to hire out as a legislative word twister for any state in this country wanting to bring back the days before the Civil Rights Act of 1964?  It seems in many ways to be a conflict of interest for someone in Kobach's position to be more concerned about side interests than the postion to which he is elected. Is representing Kansas simply not lucrative enough for him?