Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post's Post-Partisan

Eugene Robinson, the name-calling scourge of all critics of Obama who writes one of the anti-conservative columns at the Washington Post and serves the same function on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” has just provided another example of what post- — or in this case, Post– — partisanship looks like in Obama’s Washington.

According to the Post-partisan Robinson, Arizona’s embattled S.B. 1070 “amounts to a prescription for racial profiling on a scale not seen in this country since the days of Jim Crow laws in the South.” It is “anti-Latino” and “patently unconstitutional.” Those who support it are “xenophobes” and “demagogues … who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities.”

It appears as though the vituperative Mr. Robinson hasn’t gotten the message — stated by pre-presidential Obama on the Rick Warren show in 2008, repeated (with increasing shrillness, as it has turned out) ad nauseum during the campaign, and just recycled on “The View” this week — that “we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

As one can clearly see, there is never any shortage of political invective in Eugene Robinson columns, but there frequently is a severe fact shortage. In the column under review (“Immigration Helps Dems Long Term,” July 30), for example, he asserted that:

[a]side from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — a grandstanding publicity hound who already stages immigration raids for the television cameras — virtually all prominent law enforcement officials in the state opposed the law.

Really? Presumably, just to pick one example, the Arizona Police Association, which “represents nearly 9,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers in the state of Arizona” and strongly supports S.B. 1070, contains no “prominent law enforcement officials.” I guess not, since there couldn’t be any “prominent law enforcement officials” among its members, including:

• Arizona Corrections Association
• Arizona Highway Patrol Association
• Arizona Police Officers Association
• Avondale Police Association
• Buckeye Police Association
• Chandler Law Enforcement Association
• City of Peoria Police Supervisors
• Copper Corridor Police Association
• Deputies Law Enforcement Association
• Gilbert Police Leadership Association
• Glendale Police Officers Association
• Goodyear Police Officers Association
• Mesa Police Association
• Peoria Police Officers Association
• Peoria Police Officers Association
• Phoenix Law Enforcement Association
• Surprise Police Employees Association
• Tempe Officers Association
• University and College Law Enforcement Association.

Even Time and the New York Times recognize that many, perhaps most, law enforcement officials in Arizona support the law. As the Times noted,

…some of the largest rank-and-file police groups have come out strongly in favor of the bill.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the city police department’s largest union, has promoted the bill as a “common sense proactive step in the right direction in the continuing battle on illegal immigration.”

The Fraternal Order of Police, which represents 6,500 officers statewide, endorsed the bill but said it had reservations over the potential costs to departments and the lack of training for local officers to identify who might be in the country illegally.

Bryan Soller, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said if officers ended up arresting large numbers of illegal immigrants, that could add to already crowded jails and costs. Mr. Soller also said departments were worried about the expense of defending any lawsuits by people contending that the law was not being enforced.

But he said he thought many concerns were overblown. His group initially opposed the bill but endorsed it after language was included that he and sponsors believe give officers discretion to use it, in part to ward off federal civil rights claims.

Mr. Robinson, like so many of the post-/Post-partisan Obamanauts, seems congenitally incapable of recognizing that many — perhaps most — smart, decent, reasonable people disagree with him and his Dear Leader. Perhaps he should learn to disagree without being so disagreeable.