We sit through months and months of discussion of the Arizona immigration law, but 99/100 of those reports didn’t bother to mention one crucial detail – the state doesn’t actually have the autonomy to deport people themselves; only the federal government can do that.  So they can ask for their papers, they can detain them, they can report them, they can force them to appear in front of an immigration judge, but they can’t actually send them home.

A fact conveniently omitted from most discussions, because it makes the story far less salacious, and thus less interesting to the gossip-loving, drama-hungry throngs of broadcast and cable TV news viewers.

Ugh.