John McCain

Protest of Senate Bill 750, Would Allow Border Patrol Unregulated Access to Sacred Lands

Sarah M Donnelly
Advocates
Protesters gather August 13, 2015, in front of a meeting attended by Senator John McCain to protest Senate Bill 750 and mining at Oak Flat. Photo courtesy of Nellie David.

Link to media coverage here.

Full text of Arizona Borderlands Protection and Preservation Act here.

Native advocates protested a meeting today at Tucson Electric Power headquarters where Senator John McCain (R) was meeting.  The protest was largely a response to the passing of a rider on last December’s National Defense Authorization Act that transfered title to sacred lands over to mining companies.  It also passed along another message: No on S.R. 750.

Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake (R) introduced the Arizona Borderlands Protection and Preservation Act in March 2015 and it would allow unfettered access to federal lands in Arizona and parts of California.  It was voted out of committee in May, but has yet to make an appearance on the Senate floor.

The bill calls for the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to “provide U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel with immediate access to Federal lands for border security activities, including routine motorized patrols and the deployment of communications, surveillance, and detection equipment.”

Environmental and tribal advocates are perturbed by what Arizona representatives are suggesting: unfettered entry and occupation of reservations and national parks situated within a hundred miles of the border.

This bill would waive all laws on federal public and tribal lands for 100 miles north of the U.S. Mexico Border, affecting Apache, Tohono O’odham, Hia-Ced sacred sites and the very existence of all tribal people residing on those lands. – Nellie David, Tohono O’odham

McCain believes the border will not be “secure” until 100% of it is being monitored, but analysts are not so sure this is possible:

No state has ever prevented all attempted unauthorized entries into its territory. Roberts et al. (2013) review several historical cases, including East Germany during the Cold War, which experienced mass outmigration in the 1950s and attempted to stop it completely by establishing a “kill zone” on its borders and severely punishing those who were caught and not killed. Even under such an extreme approach, in the late 1970s, 5 percent of those trying to cross succeeded. -Bipartisan Policy Center Feb. 2015 report

Even the Department of Homeland Security has criticized previous bills that purportedly expand the Border Patrol’s powers without providing additional funding.

A community forum will meet August 20, 2015, at 7:30PM at the Alliance for Global Justice at 225 E. 26th St. in Tuscon where panelists include U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who introduced a house bill to repeal the Oak Flat giveaway.

Jeffrey Rosen on a “Judicial Apocalypse” if McCain Elected

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the New Republic:

During every presidential campaign for the last two decades, liberals have predicted an apocalypse in the Supreme Court. In their dire visions, as many as four justices are always about to retire, meaning that a Republican victory would turn the court radically to the right and lead to the certain overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In each of the past three elections, of course, these hyperbolic predictions have turned out to be wrong. Since 1996, Roe has been supported by a comfortable 6-3 majority, and the Court, controlled by two relatively moderate swing justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and now Anthony Kennedy, has remained fairly centrist. All of this had led some Court-watchers, including me, to conclude that the stakes for the Court in most presidential elections are less dire than many liberals fear.

Not this time. This year, for the first time since the New Deal era, a single election really does have the power to transform the Court–at the very moment that voters, rightly concerned about the tanking economy and the war in Iraq, are looking the other way. Given the fact that the older justices are liberal rather than conservative–and that the oldest, John Paul Stevens, is 88–it’s hard to deny that nominations by John McCain would change the Court far more dramatically than those by Barack Obama. An Obama victory would maintain the current balance of the Court, while a McCain Court could create a solid conservative majority.

What’s at stake is not only Roe v. Wade, but issues directly tied to the current concerns of the public: among them, Congress’s power to regulate the economy as well as limits on the president’s power to act unilaterally in the war on terrorism. Although McCain claims to favor justices who will defer to the political branches, the most likely Republican nominees are hardly consistent advocates of judicial deference. Voters who are hoping McCain will nominate relatively moderate judicial mavericks should think again.

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