No sooner do we note that South Carolina wants its Douchebag Trophy back from Arizona, than Arizona steps up to the plate:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

No, nothing at all. Not the “people shouting racial slander from their cars” while children painted, not the city councilman who complained that “the biggest picture on the building [is] a Black person” (actually Latino, but who’s counting), none of that.

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Jan Brewer (shown above) asks whether critics of Arizona’s immigration law have even read it.

Yes.

Our guest columnist this afternoon is Gary Pierce of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa:

I was dismayed to learn that the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based companies — a vote you strongly supported — to show opposition to SB 1070 (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act).

You explained your support for the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona. Our intent is to use our dollars — or the withholding of our dollars — to send a message.” (emphasis added)

I received your message; please receive mine. As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.

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“California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina voiced support Friday for Arizona’s new immigration law even as she deplored a ‘racist tone’ that’s developed in some corners of her party over the highly charged issue.” [Politico, via TPM]

No, Arizona’s not done yet:

State senators approved legislation aimed at the curbing the ethnic-studies program in Tucson Unified School District.

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

By our reading, Arizona legislators want to throw you in jail for insulting white people. After which they’ll throw you out of the country.

Legislators take aim anew at ethnic-studies programs [Arizona Daily Star, via ThinkProgress]

“Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin on Tuesday night declared that there is ‘no ability or opportunity’ for the new Arizona immigration law to encourage racial profiling, and blamed Barack Obama for ‘perpetuating this myth.'” Let’s check with Marco Rubio on that. [Politico]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ohsvJHkbY

Tim James, Republican candidate for governor: “This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here — learn it.”

[Newsweek, via RomeGirl]