Arizona is REALLY taking heat from some places in the U.S. over this law. Imagine that, someone following the law and catching fire for it. On a religious note, Christ was a perfect Man who never broke a single law, yet a pious and religiously devout mob demanded he be killed. So, in this world, I'm not always surprised when someone does what's right and they get reviled, and when millions of someones do something wrong and they find they have all the support in the world.
At any rate, now that LA has called for a Boycott of Arizona, Arizona is threatening to cut power to LA which receives 1/4 of its power from AZ if they are serious about the boycott.
I'll include the link because it includes some transcripts of the exchanges between the government agencies on this and it's getting pretty entertaining and too good not to include a link.
What I find interesting in all this, and somehow I doubt anyone has noticed this in our day is how we refer to our country nowadays. In its earliest days up through about the 1940's, when referring to anything the nation did, people would say "The United States ARE...." as in "The United States ARE abandoning the gold standard." Now the identity of the individual, free and sovereign states have been lost in the national identity and we say "The United States IS at war in Iraq."
I'm wondering though, over the interstate commerce clauses in the constitution, whether the federal government will intercede and declare boycotts unconstitutional between the states. This kind of behavior wasn't uncommon in the late 1700's and even early 1800's as the identities of the states were much more individual and states were much more passionate about their identities and causes and heritages than now.
If you wish to take a bit of a peek into a forgotten event in American History, look back at the Whiskey Rebellion, in terms of how people regarded the federal government and individual and states rights at the birth of our (once?) great nation.
