Locally, everybody knows Kris Kobach. He's the granite-jawed savior of states struggling with large illegal-immigration populations that the federal government is too sheepish or ham-fisted to properly handle. Or he's the evil, scheming, nativist brown-people hater fixated on getting damnable aliens out of America's backyard. Whatever you think of him, you know who he is.
Nationally, however, Kobach isn't quite a household name. Folks in Chicago and Bangor probably aren't discussing Kobach's "papers, please" philosophy and shadowboxing with Kansas' nonexistent voter-fraud problems. But thanks to a solid profile in Newsweek, Kobach might be ready to make the jump to national anti-illegal celebrity. Maybe his handprints will be immortalized on the sidewalk outside FAIR's headquarters.
The piece dubs Kobach as "America's Deporter in Chief" and
describes him this way:
[A] Kansas-raised former lawAnd the magazine predicts, orprofessor who has emerged as the intellectual architect of the right's
fight against illegal immigration. The 44-year-old has authored, aided,
or officially defended almost every controversial stance in the country,
beginning with his work as chief immigration adviser in John Ashcroft's
Justice Department.
warns, depending on your opinion, that "This year may be Kobach's most
influential yet." Scribe Tony Dokoupil's reasoning behind the
prediction is sound. He notes that Kobach is gearing up for a one-man
war against illegal-immigrant-friendly legislation while also defending
the numerous laws he's written that are under assault in courts. Oh,
yeah, and doing his pesky day job as Kansas secretary of state.
Dokoupil
does his best work while describing Kobach's calculated
Harvard-to-Oxford-to-Yale-to-power rise to prominence. "His path to
public life is so pedigreed, it makes John Kerry seem
rough-hewn," he writes. Nice. He goes on to outline the classic
pro-Kobach and anti-Kobach. The Southern Poverty Law Center gets a
couple of jabs in (Kobach's running a "legal jihad"). Kobach
lands a couple of sturdy sound bites ("American sovereignty is at
stake"). And it's noted that certain legal experts think he's quite the
gifted litigator.
Overall, it's nothing new to those of us who live in close proximity to Kobach, but it's an excellent primer for the
nation. The piece did dig up one fact about Kobach that I hadn't heard.
He apparently won two rowing titles in the double scull rowing.
It's true, the man is infinitely interesting.
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