ALABAMA: Gov Signs Anti-Immigrant Bills

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.

WND Poll Of The Day

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

Natural Born Citizens

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.

OKLAHOMA: Sally Kern Votes To Approve Her Own Reprimand For Racism

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.

Eviscerating Donald Trump

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.

NAACP To Sally Kern: Resign Now

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.

World Net Daily: We Still Can't Believe There's A Black Man In The White House

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

Quote Of The Day - Sally Kern

"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.

Book Fail

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.

Quote Of The Day - Marilyn Davenport

"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: Birther Bill Passes

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.

NEW YORK: Tea Party House Candidate Wants To Bus "Lazy Blacks" To Farms

Tea Party-backed House candidate Jack Davis has New York's GOP leadership spinning in full reverse to disassociate themselves from racist remarks he made in recent interviews.

Congressional candidate Jack Davis shocked local Republican leaders in a recent interview when he suggested that Latino farmworkers be deported -- and that African-Americans from the inner city be bused to farm country to pick the crops. Several sources who were in the Feb. 20 endorsement interview with Davis confirmed his comments, which echo those he made to the Tonawanda News in 2008, when he said: "We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms] and pay them a decent wage; they will work." When Davis repeated those sentiments in the recent interview, the Republican leaders -- who later delivered the party endorsement for the vacant seat in the 26th Congressional District to Assemblywoman Jane L. Corwin of Clarence -- said they couldn't believe what they were hearing. "I was thunderstruck," said Amherst GOP Chairman Marshall Wood. "Maybe in 1860 that might have been seen by some as an appropriate comment, but not now."

Davis is running in the special election to replace disgraced GOP Rep. Chris "Craigslist" Lee. He's run unsuccessfully for the U.S. House three times as a Democrat, but is running this time for the GOP/Tea Party.

Christians Taunt Praying Muslim Man

Video taken outside the White House.

CALIFORNIA: Teabaggers Heckle And Protest Muslim Charity Event

The UK Guardian reports:

As the video shows, the rhetoric of the protesters became increasingly venomous toward the families and children who came to attend the ICNA Relief fundraising dinner. Protesters shouted invective statements such as "Go home terrorist," "Muhammad is a pervert, Muhammad is a child molester," "Go home and beat your wife, she needs a good beating," at the event-goers.

A local city councilwoman spoke to the protesters: "I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise."

(Tipped by JMG reader Russ)

About Maine Gov. LePage's Black "Son"

Over the weekend, newly-elected Tea Party-backed Maine Gov. Paul LePage called the NAACP a "special interest group" and told them to "kiss my butt" when they requested his presence at an event honoring Martin Luther King. LePage then offered up his black adopted son as proof that he isn't a racist. Only, wait. That black "son" of his is actually the son of LePage's golf caddy and was never adopted, although he did begin living with the LePage family in 2002. A spokesman for the governor said Raymond, now 25 and living in Louisiana, is not available for interviews.

I Have A PowerPoint

An NYU professor has turned Martin Luther King's famed I Have A Dream speech into a PowerPoint presentation.

NORTH CAROLINA: Tea Party-Backed School Board Reinstitutes Segregation

Wake County, North Carolina Republicans swept onto the Raleigh school board with the backing of the Tea Party are abolishing the busing of minority students from poor neighborhoods into better-funded school districts.

The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy - which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools - for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools. "This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s - my life is integrated," said John Tedesco, a new board member. "We need new paradigms." But critics accuse the new board of pursuing an ideological agenda aimed at nothing less than sounding the official death knell of government-sponsored integration in one of the last places to promote it. Without a diversity policy in place, they say, the county will inevitably slip into the pattern that defines most districts across the country, where schools in well-off neighborhoods are decent and those in poor, usually minority neighborhoods struggle.

The NAACP has filed a lawsuit. Wake County's school superintendent has resigned in protest. His expected replacement is a Tea Party activist and retired general who lists himself as a fan of Glenn Beck on his Facebook page.

Birther Interrupts Constitution Reading

As Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) read the Constitution's stipulation that the president must be a natural-born citizen, a woman in the gallery of the U.S. House shouted, "Except for Obama! Except for Obama! Help us Jesus!" She was immediately removed. So much for the sanctity of our nation's most-revered document. UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, World Net Daily is ecstatic.

Censoring Mark Twain

In an effort to get school kids to read Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, a new version edited by a Twain scholar will excise the novel's 219 usages of the n-word. Finn is rarely taught in public schools anymore due to discomfort with the word, even though most agree its use is meant as an attack on slavery.

Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don't read." Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave." "This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

Winona Ryder On Mel Gibson

"I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!" - Winona Ryder, speaking to GQ Magazine.

(Via - Towleroad)