The clip below is long but it's the EPITOME of everything that is wrong with political discourse right now. The issue at hand is the immigration bill and Maddow decides that the best way to get to the truth about the bill is to look at the group that was behind it. And now look at the group but look at some problematic connections that it and some of its employees have had in the past. Sometimes WAY in the past. A quarter century in the past.

Now this isn't to say that a little history on groups isn't important but I'd personally like to judge groups on what they've done and not necessarily who they've run with. I think Maddow's attack is as pointless as Fox News bringing up William Ayers and Van Jones as evidence that President Obama is anti-American. I was literally talking to the TV during the interview, getting annoyed that Maddow wouldn't discuss the actual bill or discuss things that the actual group FAIR had done in the past. In fact, Rachel said that they posted some reading about the group on their blog but all I could find was the same age old facts that she brought up on the show.

This isn't to say Stein is the victim. Instead of trying to get the focus back on the bill, he dismissed everything and either lied or played the semantics card. Either that or he blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for everything.

But back to the main point, if Maddow wanted to really grill Stein, she should have talked to him about the bill because there are a lot of flaws with it. On its face, I don't think the bill is as evil as many people say but it has enough problems that there's no need to bring up stuff from the 70's. I would have liked to hear Stein's response to things like: How are officers supposed to gauge whether a person is potentially an illegal if they aren't supposed to judge by "RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN " as the law states? Won't making state cops do the job of Federal Border Control agents cause a divide between the community and the cops, thereby making the officers' actual duties harder?

There are so many questions that need to be asked about this law and Rachel Maddow asked none of them. Whether or not FAIR has employed or helped fund people with racist ideas doesn't change my opinion of the law. It's a law that, if it wasn't for the controversy, probably would have been ignored by most law enforcement entities. In fact, the Sheriff of Pima county in about two minutes did a better job arguing against the law and pointing out ridiculous flaws (like people can sue if they don't think the cops are enforcing the law well enough.)

In the end, I'm now 100% against this law, not because it's evil but because it's stupid, unnecessary, and doesn't do a damn thing to address the immigration issues in Arizona and the US in general.

On the bright side, kudos to Chris Matthews for actually discussing the law and asking about potential changes that could be made to fix the current situation. After the Maddow bit, it was a breath of fresh air.