AZGOP: Going after the children

Just a quick hit as I'm sitting in the Senate gallery waiting for the floor session to start...

Not only are Arizona's Republicans (in the persons of Senate President Russell Pearce and his accomplices in the lege) going after brown-skinned children with their anti-14th Amendment/birthright citizenship bills (to be heard in Senate Judiciary later today, the real reason I'm down here today), they are working on indoctrinating white-skinned children with their ideology.

When I arrived in the Senate gallery, Sen. Don Shooter was addressing a group of children who were here on a class trip. 

One of the children asked "can the Governor tell the President what to do?"

Shooter responded "we'd like that" then went on to explain his view of the relationship between the states and the federal government as one where the state governments are the parents of a wayward child called the federal government and like many parents, sometimes there is a need to bring that child to heel (my paraphrase, not a quote.)

And when asked if he had any friends in the Senate, he answered "only the ones with elephants on their desks.

....On a related-to-the-Senate-Judiciary note:

There was a small protest outside the Senate when I arrived, protesting Russell Pearce and his bigoted agenda.  There were perhaps 50-60 protesters, and more than 20 were small children.

There were at least a dozen uniformed police officers (mostly DPS and Capitol PD) flanking the protesters, which is 11 - 12 more than is normally in evidence here, unless there is a LARGE protest (meaning 1000 or more folks.)