Written by Nathan Mitchell/El Independiente

• NATHAN MITCHELL
• Isabel Garcia, the leader of Derechos Humanos, protests against SB 1070 at Raul Grijalva's headquarters.

The new legislation, which Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law April 23, makes it a crime to be in Arizona without proper immigration documentation and requires police to check for legal status. Without legal documentation, a person can be fined up to $2,500, jailed and deported. The law also makes it illegal to knowingly transport illegal migrants or hire day laborers off the street.

The South Tucson Police Department has begun discussing the training necessary to properly enforce the law.

The legislative session has come to an end—and before the birther bill could get passed. On the plus side, lawmakers did ban human-animal hybrids.

More analysis in the days to come.

Nate Silver dissects the Rasmussen poll showing that 70 percent of Arizonans favor the immigration measure signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer last week:

But Rasmussen's portrayal of the law is very gentle. There's no mention of the provisions that liberals and civil libertarians find most odious: that the law would charge legal immigrants with trespassing for failure to carry documentation papers (although — note — this is already required under federal law); that it would give law enforcement officers new powers of detention (rather than mere "verification"); that it would allow officers, without a warrant, to arrest people who they suspected might be guilty of offenses that could lead to deportation, and that it would prohibit certain types of work-for-hire involving moving vehicles.

The Rasmussen poll says that 60 percent of Americans (and 70 percent of Arizonans) favor the new law, but how would those numbers change if people were read a longer or more complete description of the measure? Since there's been no other polling on the subject, we have no idea. It wouldn't shock me if the law indeed proved to be popular, especially in Arizona, if a fuller description were read. (Liberals, who uniformly seem to think that the law will be unpopular with certain key demographic groups, are a bit too sanguine about this). But this poll is so simplistic as to provide very little informational value.

It looks like House Speaker Kirk Adams' big tax-cut plan is on its death bed.

Mary Jo Pitzl lets us know that Senate President Bob Burns showed an admirable admission of fiscal reality:

On Monday, Burns said budget analysts estimate the state will be grappling with deficits for the next three years. If the tax cuts in the current version of HB 2250 were in place, he said, the state would need to see revenue growth of up to 24 percent a year to cover the projected deficit. That is an unrealistic growth rate, he added.

"I think we need to advance very carefully on this," Burns told senators as they met in their Republican caucus. "This is a bill with a potential tremendous impact."

Adams tweeted today that he was starting to lose hope and wanted to wrap up the session.

No longer confident Senate will pass, nor Gov sign, jobs bill with necessary tax cuts. Working towards Sine Die this week.

Cap Times reports that Burns wants to end the nonsense and get done by Thursday.

Arizona's new immigration law got a second shot as the subject of The Word on Colbert last night.

The Daily Show tackles the last week in Arizona politics. Those nuts at the Capitol, after years of trying, have finally made the Big Leagues of Crazy. Next up: Colbert's take.

Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr delivers another depressing dispatch from the Arizona Legislature:

Hi everyone! We keep hoping that the end is near for this legislative debacle known as the 49th Legislature, second regular session, but apparently there is yet more harm to be done. This week they passed along HCR2008 NOW: hunting and fishing; constitutional rights (JP Weiers, Gowan, Crump, et al) 18-9-3 in the Senate. It will now appear on the ballot in November. HCR2008 is a proposed constitutional amendment that, if passed, will put hunting in the basic Declaration of Rights in the Constitution and will have a significant and negative impact on wildlife and wildlife management in Arizona by elevating it

President Barack Obama has spoken out against the immigration bill now on Gov. Jan Brewer's desk:

President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized a pending Arizona law that would make it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and require anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant to produce identification.

Such legislation could "threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans," the president said during a naturalization ceremony for members of the United States Armed Services.

It's a good thing the Arizona House of Representatives solved all the state's problems (debt, immigration, etc.) so quickly. How else could they find time to send Obama back to Kenya innocently require all presidential candidates present a birth certificate if they want to appear on the Arizona ballot?

From the Associated Press:

The Arizona House on Wednesday approved a bill that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state's ballot when he runs for re-election.

The House approved the measure on a 31-29 vote, sending it to the Senate.

It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president.

Jim Small at the Arizona Capitol Times brings us the news that lawmakers are reversing the spending cuts they made to KidsCare and AHCCCC:

The bill would authorize the state to accept additional federal stimulus money to pay for the programs, which would allow 310,000 people to continue coverage under AHCCCS and another 47,000 children to receive coverage under KidsCare.

The AHCCCS eligibility reduction and the elimination of KidsCare were both part of the budget for the upcoming year, which lawmakers approved last month.

Lawmakers are trying to reverse both decisions because the cuts ran afoul of the federal health care law that was signed into law earlier in March. Under that law, changes to state programs would disqualify states from receiving federal health care money. That meant Arizona would forfeit $7.8 billion.

Republicans said they had no choice but to restore the health care spending, even though the state can’t sustain the spending long term.