and mary bauer, legal director for the southern poverty law center, one of the groups that filed a lawsuit against the state. ms. bauer, the civil rights groups and the u.s. government went first today so let me ask you. what was the main thrust of their argument before the district court judge? >> well, this law, as you said, is an extreme anti-immigrant law. it contains a wide variety of provisions from the kind of controversial provisions that were widely discussed in arizona allowing the arrests and detention of people based only on the suspicion that they're undocumented but it has a number of provisions that have not been tested in other courts, including the provisions that make it illegal to contract with people, rent to people, that require school children to verify their immigration status, the immigration status of their parents. these are really extreme provisions that are not likely to stand up to sort of... under our constitutional provisions. they're clearly designed to send a message to immigrants and to foreigners in alabama that they're not welcome. the arguments today fo