Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, must enjoy a good ghost story.

 
I mean, she's certainly good at telling them. To defend her endorsement of the anti-immigrant SB-1070 bill Brewer told the press in July that 'law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.'
 
Decapitated in the desert? Yikes, well, since you put it like that Jan.
 
'I believe today, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in,' Brewer said.
 
Apparently it's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in Arizona now, every single goddamn day.
 
But wait, didn't the Arizona Republic recently publish an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics supplied by the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been 'essentially flat for the past decade.'
 
Woops.
 
Then last month the Pima County sheriff who patrols the territory and knows it better than anyone in America reported that 'the border has never been more secure.'
 
Again, woops.
 
Why does this matter? It matters because fears of drug cartels and decapitations were the blocks that Brewer's SB-1070 law were built from. If those stories are false - and if South American drug cartels are not in fact chopping the heads of fair skinned citizens of Arizona every day - then Brewer's law is built on a fallacy.
 
Scary claims of violence gave us the SB-1070 bill and they also explain the American public's support for it. But if those scare tactics aren't true it starts to look like you've bought a bazooka to pluck a daisy. It starts to look like the powers that be talked up the threat to get a bill they liked.
 
No wonder the reporters in her home state are chasing her down corridors insisting she admit she was wrong about the non-existent beheadings. Horror tales like the one's she's been telling are bad for Arizona, bad for the state's tourism, bad for it's image and profoundly bad for the nations political climate too.
 
It's time for Jan Brewer to tell the truth instead of run from it.