Who do we have representing us at the State Department?   Is it a prerequisite that deputy secretaries must possess a need for self-flagellation?  Why would Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor have felt the need to apologize to the Chinese for an Arizona law that he personally might feel negatively about?   Why? 

We are talking about the Chinese who will put a person in jail for half a century because he might have been rumored to have said something negative about the government?   This is a country that requires a passport to move within the country.  This is a country that imposes limits on births that has resulted in aborted babies because the parents want their one child to be male.  This is a government that slaughtered many of its own citizens and that occupies its neighbor, Tibet.  This is a country that for generations has threatened their Chinese brothers and sisters who live on the island of Taiwan.   Yet, Assistant Secretary Posner believed he had a need to apologize to these people because a patrolman on duty who has legal contact with a person and then has reason to suspect a person he has detained might be in the country illegally, thus asks for identification?  The question of racial profiling is a political one that has been contrived to create opinion in opposition to the law.  It is not a legal interpretation.   The fact that the law forbids profiling does not mean that no one will be racially profiled but it does provide recourse to those who might consider themselves to be a victim of racial profiling by making such profiling illegal.  

I wonder whether Michael Posner explained this to the Chinese as well.   An even bigger question is how do the Chinese contain their laughter while still in the room with dignitaries like Michael Posner?