ICH BIN EIN ARIZONAN – AT 8:03 A.M. ET:   Even the Washington Post must now admit it:  Most Americans polled continue to support Arizona's new illegal-immigration law.   Oh, the pain in the editorial offices:

Most Americans support the new, controversial Arizona law that gives police there the power to check the residency status of suspected illegal immigrants. But most also still back a program giving those here illegally the right to earn legal documentation, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

I love stories that begin that way.  The liberal writer is saying that we're bad, but there's still some good in us.

Oh, now we have to go down seven paragraphs to find the basic statistic we're looking for:

In all, 58 percent of Americans say they are supportive of the new law.

The rest of the story breaks the statistics down, apparently trying to soften the blow.  But the bottom line is that most Americans do support Arizona, although the Justice Department will probably take Arizona to court, trying to overturn the law. 

Another finding from the poll:  Some 51 percent of those polled give Obama negative marks on  how he's handled the issue of immigration.  I don't know how the question was phrased, and whether the word "illegal" was inserted, but the figure cannot thrill the White House.

June 17, 2010