SB 1070 and Critical Thinking

In late April, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed bill SB 1070 into law, mandating that state and local law enforcement officials check the immigration status of anyone they had "probable cause" to believe might be in the country illegally. A flurry of lawsuits ensued, including a July 6 filing by the United States Justice Department. On July 29, US District Court judge Susan Bolton stayed implementation of the most controversial provisions of the law.

Wikipedia states that "Arizona is the first state..." While technically correct, Prince William County in Northern Virginia passed an almost identical law three years earlier, on July 10, 2007. It caused a mass exodus of immigrants, both legal and illegal, resulting in an economic crash. The chart below shows the foreclosure rate in Prince William County was 3.5-7 times higher than surrounding counties in April of 2008. That same month, the county repealed the probable cause clause of its law.

This post is not about the merits of SB 1070 or the Prince William County law. The question I want to raise is, "How do we evaluate information we get when anyone can post anything on the web at anytime?" The effort to create the law in Prince William County was spearheaded by conservative blogger Greg Letiecq. Among other things, he claimed on his website, Black Velvet Bruce Li, that Zapatistas potentially capable of armed insurrection were living in Northern Virginia. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Mexican politics knows that this is patently ridiculous, but most people don't keep up with Mexican politics. In this post, I have claimed that the economy of Prince William crashed because the migrants left and put up a chart to bolster this idea. It may well be true and I believe it, but all the chart proves is that Prince William County was in a deep hole relative to its neighbors, not why. In an age when we can find "facts" to support any position that we are emotionally pre-disposed to, how do we maintain a sense of obligation to the truth? And if have that, how do actually sort through the noise to get some reasonably accurate picture of reality?