By RUFUS G.W. SANDERS

Register columnist

Wednesday, I listened to the breaking news that the core provisions of the Arizona Anti-immigration law were temporary blocked, clearly the sign of a death knell for the law now is destined to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

I hate to be the one to say it, but I told you so. I wrote May 24 the Arizona immigration law would not stand. Of course I was blasted, maligned and generally demonized. I was accused by letter writers of being misguided, emotional, full of drama, of being a racist and using my column to fan flames. One letter writer threatened to pull his subscription to the paper.

Of course, there were many other critics. Whenever I write about anything remotely related to race or the perception thereof, I always get these kinds of emotional outbursts.

I liken this immigration fight to the Dred Scott case in the 19th century or the Civil Rights battles of the 1950s and '60s. The controversy over this law has been overwhelming. It has divided this country around the issues of immigration and has raised the issues of race, discrimination, the suffering economy and racial profiling -- and even more importantly, the constitutional issues of state rights versus federal supremacy. But as far as I am concerned. this is a great day in the history of civil-right jurisprudence for our country. I celebrate along with my Hispanic brothers and sisters and all who love American freedom, equality, and justice. Democracy has triumphed again, even if this injunction is only a temporary one.

The provisions of Arizona Senate Bill 1070 would have done primarily four basic unconstitutional things:

n Determine the immigration status of a person who is simply stopped without the suspicion of criminal activity;

n Create a crime for the failure of not carrying immigration papers;

n Stop an undocumented person from applying for and performing work; and

n Warrantless arrest.

What it also would have done, which probably has cost the greater concern, would have been to violate the supremacy clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution by usurping the authority of the federal government. The federal judge put a dagger in the heart of this bill. She ruled virtually the same as I had perceived back in the May column: that the law was flawed and thus a bad law. It was oppressive, ethnically chauvinistic, discriminatory and tantamount to racism. It would lead to racial profiling. Many of these provisions do nothing but possibly increase the intrusion of police presence into the lives of all people living in America, citizens included.

Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Today it's them. Tomorrow it's us! You can't stop or arrest a person in this country simply because they are brown. And that's where this was heading.

So the reason the core of this law was blocked was not simply on the grounds that it was racial in its construction, but on what I also said back in May: it violates the supremacy clause of the Constitution. This one item will cause the Supreme Court to overturn the law eventually and completely. I predict conservatives court members Roberts, Alieto, Thomas and Scalia will all see this. This concern will trump the racial concerns and force the judges to declare the law unconstitutional.

Conservatives are right: The Obama government has not properly dealt with the immigration issue -- but neither did the conservatives when they were in power, even though President Bush must be given credit for really trying for comprehensive immigration legislation.

The present federal government must deal with it soon. The president will have to take a more proactive role in assuring this immigration problem is dealt with, like he did with the passage of health care. But that does not give state governments such as Arizona the right to do whatever they want. It is that kind of arrogance and audacity that caused the Civil War. There is a reason why this place is still called the United States of America -- respect for the rule of federal laws.