On Monday, the US Supreme Court struck down most of the provisions of the Arizona law SB 1070. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports, the sections that were struck down were “provisions that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek or engage in work or to fail to carry documents proving they are in the country legally. Also struck down was the provision that authorized state and local law enforcement officers to arrest anyone based solely on the suspicion that the individual is in the country illegally.”

But the court “did uphold the so-called show-me-your-papers provision, which requires state and local law enforcement officers upon reasonable suspicion to check the immigration status of anyone stopped for any reason, no matter how minor… But in a clear warning shot across the state’s bow, the court suggested the law cannot be used to target racial or ethnic minorities, and it can’t be used to detain people for an unreasonable period of time. The court said it would wait to see how the state enforces the law.”

Arizona is a stronghold of Tea Party nutters and seems to be leading the nation in craziness. I have written before about how Arizona passed a law that says that women can be pregnant even before they have sex. Stephen Colbert commented on the Arizona pregnancy law.

(This clip appeared on April 23, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

As another example, the state legislature passed a bill criminalizing some aspects of internet speech.

The Arizona legislature also thinks that efforts to increase energy efficiency are just a pretense for a nefarious plot to establish a one-world order under the United Nations, and thus is advancing legislation to thwart those dastardly efforts.

They even passed a law specifically allowing people to bring guns into public buildings, because you never know when a gun-carrying citizen might come in useful in stopping the rampant crime that occurs in public libraries.

Arizona already sold the state house for $81 million as a short-term fix to raise money to solve its budget woes and now seeks to buy it back, at a higher price of course. The $105 million purchase price means that the state paid $24 million for a two-year loan of $81 million, or roughly an interest rate of 15%. Great fiscal responsibility, Tea Party!

The legislature even passed a birther law that required presidential candidates to prove that they are US citizens. One form of proof? That they have been circumcised! Yes, these people are so ignorant that they probably don’t know that Muslims also circumcise their children, and so if president Obama is the Kenyan Muslim they suspect him to be, he would easily pass their test. This bill was too much for even their crazy governor Jan Brewer and she vetoed it.

Al Madrigal of The Daily Show looked at their law banning ethnic studies that was targeted exclusively at the Mexican-American studies program.

(This clip appeared on April 2, 2012)

I wonder what it must be like to live in a state where people vote for legislators for whom nothing is too extreme and who seem to be borderline nuts.