Arizona lawmaker lashes out at Cardinal Mahony over comments on illegal immigration bill [Updated]
April 21, 2010 | 4:18 pm


Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican whose bill would require immigrants to carry proof of legal status, lashed out at Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony on Wednesday for his criticism of the proposed legislation, calling the Roman Catholic leader a "guy who’s been protecting child molesters and predators all of his life."

[For the record, 4:24 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Pearce and Mahony himself had exchanged charges about who carried greater moral authority to speak out on the immigration issue. The cardinal's spokesman, Tod M. Tamberg, said he was speaking for himself, not on behalf of the cardinal.]

"He's the last guy that ought to be speaking out," Pearce said on the Michael Smerconish radio talk program, a nationally syndicated talk show which airs locally on KFWB-AM (980). "This guy has a history of protecting and moving predators around in order to avoid detection by the law. He has no room to talk."

Pearce's legislation, which has yet to be signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, has created a national firestorm as opponents and supporters call it the nation's toughest law against illegal immigrants. The bill would make it a crime to be in the state illegally and require law enforcement officers to check the legal status of those whom they suspect are undocumented. The legislation would also bar people from soliciting work or hiring workers under certain circumstances, a provision aimed at the day-labor trade.

But Pearce's remarks about Mahony, which aired live this afternoon and can be heard on tape delay at 7-10 p.m., drew an equally feisty retort from the cardinal's spokesman, Tod M. Tamberg.

"Mudslinging and fear mongering are the essence of Sen. Pearce's remarks," Tamberg wrote in an e-mail. "He desperately wants to change the subject, throwing up a wall of inaccurate statements about Cardinal Mahony because he has no good answer to the cardinal's challenge that this is a draconian and unjust law."

Mahony, a nationally influential figure who heads the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese with 4.3 million members, lambasted Pearce's bill on his blog this week, likening it to “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniquesâ€