Lest you thought Fox News' interviews with Republicans couldn't get more useless ...

Today, Fox & Friends hosted Kris Kobach, a law professor and Republican candidate for Kansas Secretary of State who helped write Arizona's controversial new immigration law. Introducing Kobach, Steve Doocy said:

DOOCY: We've got some misconceptions that people are repeating a lot in the media. We want you to respond to them. How about for people who say it is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them? Is that a misconception?

Doocy also asked Kobach:

DOOCY: What about the suggestion that it is unfair to demand that people carry a driver's license?

How did Doocy come up with those questions? Well, it appears that they were written by Kris Kobach.

From Kobach's April 28 New York Times op-ed purporting to “rebut the major criticisms” of the Arizona law:

The arguments we've heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. As someone who helped draft the statute, I will rebut the major criticisms individually.

It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them. It is true that the Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to fail to carry certain documents. “Now, suddenly, if you don't have your papers ... you're going to be harassed,” the president said. “That's not the right way to go.” But since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens to fail 000-.html" title="blocked::http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001304000-.html Federal law on carrying alien registration cards">to keep such registration documents with them. The Arizona law simply adds a state penalty to what was already a federal crime.

[...]

It is unfair to demand that people carry a driver's license. Arizona's law does not require anyone, alien or otherwise, to carry a driver's license. Rather, it gives any alien with a license a free pass if his immigration status is in doubt. Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.

Needless to say, Doocy did not disclose the source of his questions. So not only did Fox fail to fact check Kobach's claims, they fed him questions that he wrote himself, and didn't tell their viewers that they were reading from his op-ed. Small wonder that Kobach left the interview with a smile:

DOOCY: Kris, we thank you very much for stopping by to clear up some of those misconceptions. Thank you, sir.

KOBACH: My pleasure. Thank you.

Reminds me of the time Fox aired "FOXfacts" that were nearly identitcal to a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), or the time Fox passed off a GOP press release on the stimulus as its own reserach -- typo and all.

From the May 3 edition of Fox & Friends: