And weakening the rule of law out of fear doesn’t make anyone any safer
Timothy Snyder has a good piece here on the dangers involved in the “commentariat” pushing SCOTUS to a “pitchfork” ruling on Colorado ‘s pushing Trump off the ballot. By saying Colorado Supreme Court should be overruled because its ruling is “divisive” or will “inflame” the January 6th folk who were carrying around virtual torches and pitchforks, the politicos and pundits on both sides of the aisle would fundamentally weaken the rule of law … and simply encourage the folk waving pitchforks to wave them more, knowing they will get their way.
Haley and DeSantis belittle the rule of law by preemptively declaring they would pardon Trump were they elected President
Is it must me, or is there something deeply unserious about both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis pledging they would, of course, pardon Trump of any federal convictions. Regardless of any further evidence. Regardless of what judges and/or juries decide.
Sure, DeSantis insists it’s just akin of Ford pardoning Nixon to help “re-unite a divided country.” Except, pardoning Trump wouldn’t reunite anything. For Trump opponents it would be seen as complete and utter politics. For Trump, and his mob, it would be taken as an exoneration. And Trump would be stirring up the next insurrection, unabashed and emboldened.
Ford could barely get away with pardoning Nixon — and, in fact, it sank his chances of a second term — because he was respected and liked going into the job, and wasn’t seen as being part of Nixon’s corrupt coterie. He was deeply criticized for poor judgment in pardoning Nixon, but it wasn’t seen as as partisan corruption. That would hardly apply to either Haley or DeSantis doing the same thing for Trump — especially, in the circumstances they describe, he would already be convicted, something Nixon never was.
Do I really think that Haley and DeSantis think Trump shouldn’t be punished for what he did, or that they are seeking some sort of cleansing national unity? Of course not. At the most obvious, they are hoping to garner presidential votes by appealing to the Trumpist mob. More likely, they simply want to tee themselves up as being part of the MAGA movement that, however the election in November turns out, will propel them to future power.
And the state’s done the minimum amount to fix that.
Alabama has been an outlier in the US for allowing rapists to assert parental rights — child custody, visitation, etc. — over the offspring their assaults result in.
That particular bit of local charm slipped lawmakers’ minds when Alabama gleefully passed its new anti-abortion law, which provides no exception for cases of rape. The state legislature has since had to scramble to put some sort of provision into state law to deal with the presumed increased number of cases where women who are raped are forced to carry their baby to full term … and then potentially forced to associate with their rapists for the next couple of decades.
Scramble they did, and now Alabama will prevent that from happening. Kind of. Sometimes. Maybe. Their new “Jessi’s Law” only allows a court to terminate or restrict parental rights of rapists when there’s a conviction for first degree rape or incest.
Given the dramatic underreporting of rape, and the low numbers of convictions even when reported, that dependency on conviction makes it a minor comfort indeed.
And the limitation to first degree rape means second degree sexual assaults — which includes statutory rape — are excluded from the law. So when Mom’s skeevy boyfriend assaults and impregnates her 13-year-old daughter, he can still ask for parental rights for the baby (or, more likely, threaten to do so to get them to drop any possible charges).
Should disrupting pipeline construction draw multi-decade jail terms? (No.)
I have no great problem with punishing those who vandalize pipelines, either during construction or, especially, during operation.
States and the feds moving to punish protesters that impede or disrupt construction with multi-decade prison terms? Yeah, that seems (sadly typical) pressing of the government’s thumb down on the scales in favor of a highly lucrative (and controversial) big business.
I mean, it’s not like there aren’t other laws on the books — for vandalism, for trespass, etc. — that can address such protesters in a more balanced fashion. But twenty years? That’s beyond penalties for Assault with a Deadly Weapon (felony) using a machine gun.
If the only accusations allowed are those that are guaranteed to result in a conviction, then who will dare accuse?
There is a a massive difference between an accusation that is a lie and an accusation that is not sufficiently proven, or that a DA chooses not to pursue. This bill ignores that difference. What do you think will be the result? https://t.co/LBqDyQgX1n
There is a a massive difference between an accusation that is a lie and an accusation that is not sufficiently proven, or that a DA chooses not to pursue. This bill ignores that difference. What do you think will be the result?
https://t.co/LBqDyQgX1n
Alabama is looking at a law to make it a felony to falsely accuse someone of a sexual crime.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Dickie Drake, R-Leeds, would make falsely reporting a sex crime a Class C felony and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If the accused is found not guilty, the accuser would be responsible for paying the accused person’s legal expenses.
Sexual assault and molestation are already known to be underreported, due to skepticism and calling into question motives to make the accusation and the fact that such cases often get reduced to a they-said-they-said. Given that our criminal justice system (not unwisely) requires criminal guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, even when someone is brave enough to make a true accusation, it may not be provable in court.
This particular law turns all of that on its head. If your accusation doesn’t end up being sustained before a jury, or if the DA decides not to pursue the case (i.e., where “allegations are proven to be false”), you are instead then presumed guilty of filing a false charge and are now on the hook for the defendant’s legal costs and, potentially, jail time yourself.
The result? One more reason for rape and molestation victims to stay silent, unless they can be absolutely certain that a DA or jury will agree with their accusations.
Nobody wants to encourage false accusations … but this is a law that will demonstrably discourage true accusations. Is that what we really want?
Bottom line: Trump is guilty as sin. Now what do we do?
The conclusions of the (redacted) report, as I read them:
Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.
Trump’s campaign knowingly expected to benefit from that interference, and Russia knowingly expected to benefit from Trump winning. But Mueller couldn’t demonstrate active cooperation, so conspiracy charges could not be placed against anyone.
Trump repeatedly and (probably) clearly attempted to obstruct justice, but didn’t manage to successfully do so because enough people — out of principle or out of fear — didn’t follow his orders.
The above is only probably because Mueller couldn’t file charges against the president, obedient to Justice Dept. policy that the sitting president cannot be indicted, and so also, due to legal principle, he couldn’t accuse Trump without Trump’s being able to demonstrate his innocence in court. Yet. Hey, Congress + Posterity, here’s all the evidence I uncovered — when you have the power to do something, you decide what to do.
At the very, very best, Trump (et al.) demonstrated himself as a reprehensible individual, more focused on his continued power than justice, ignoring the law and ethics and shame, and acting just the way you would expect the guiltiest man in the world to do if he could. If Trump didn’t (arguably, but implausibly) didn’t break the law, that’s the best that can be said of him. Which is a terribly low bar to crawl under.
William Barr is a political hack. His redaction, as far as we can see, appears to be legit (to the extent that we can judge that with an eighth of the document blacked out), but his editorializing on the results both in his original four-page not-a-summary, and in his pre-release press conference, is spins in directions against what Mueller actually said, and when you include the pre-briefing that he gave to White House lawyers, he has clearly demonstrated that he sees himself as the President’s lawyer, not the nation’s.
Trump says the report fully exonerates him of everything, but also calls it a horrible witch hunt out to get him. Trump crows that he isn’t being prosecuted for anything because the report proves him innocent, but also calls the report the product of a bunch of evil partisans who were did nothing but lie. How his head doesn’t ‘splode is impossible for me to understand.
Should he be impeached? Almost certainly he could be impeached by the House, and almost certainly he could not be convicted the Senate. Because of party — and you can point that finger both ways, sure, but from my perspective, these are in fact impeachable offenses (bearing in mind that impeachment doesn’t require a federal crime be committed, though the obstruction efforts pretty clearly constitute such).
On the other hand, it may be worth on principle forcing those politicians, of both parties, to announce their stand, to let the voters and posterity judge their actions. Not that I want a President Pence by any means, but I’ve turned the corner on deciding that Trump’s narcissistic sociopathy is a greater threat to the nation than Pence’s Christian dominionism.
Regardless of impeachment, there’s Election 2020, in “only” 19 months. And that’s the moment this nation will announce its stand … and posterity will judge us, too.
Charles Rhines killed a man while in the middle of robbing a doughnut store in 1992. And for that he deserves to be punished.
But should that punishment be determined because Rhines is gay?
New evidence shows that at least one juror sentenced Rhines to death because he thought, as a gay man, he “shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison.” One juror recalled another commenting that “we’d be sending him where he wants to go if we voted for [life without parole].” And a third juror confirmed that “there was lots of discussion of homosexuality. There was a lot of disgust. … There were lots of folks who were like, ‘Ew, I can’t believe that.’”
Yes, the 1993 South Dakota jury decided that Rhines should be executed, rather “just” than sentenced to life in prison … because they thought it would be fun for him, stuck behind bars with all those men! In prison!
Yeesh.
Will the Supreme Court see this particular sentencing for the injustice it is?
The judge apparently “walked into the jury room after the jury’s deliberations, said he had been praying about the case, and informed the jurors God told him the defendant was innocent.” He went on to ask them to change their verdict. They declined.
After a flurry of complaints over the incident, he ended up with only a public reprimand from the Texas Judicial Commission.
[Robison] wrote that he had been suffering memory lapses and couldn’t explain why he’d broken protocol to try to inappropriately influence the case, but he said he’d been under extreme stress due to ongoing medical treatment and the recent death of a close friend.
He also provided letters from doctors.
The doctors determined Robison’s actions were driven by delirium, a “temporary, episodic medical condition,” according to the court papers. The doctors argued Robison’s “fitness for duty” was not impaired.
Um … that sounds like his fitness was, in fact, kind of impaired. Certainly his behavior overall doesn’t seem to be advancing the cause of justice. On appeal “a new judge ruled the sex trafficking case a mistrial, on grounds that Robison had made multiple biased comments throughout the trial.”
I feel sympathy for someone who is under such stress that he suffers memory lapses — but that sounds like something that would render him unfit to judge a case as well, especially as he’s still consulting with doctors on the matter.
Apparently the Texas Judicial Commission disagreed.
This Constitutional Law Moment brought to you by This Is Why We Need More Civics Education. Yeesh. https://t.co/bwreHhSeWP
Diamond and Silk are, of course, bestest buds of both the President and headliners at last weekend’s CPAC. They are not, however and quite clearly, lawyers.
The ICC was set up by international treaty to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide charges around the world. The US was one of seven countries to vote against the treaty, alongside such other stalwarts of the rule of law as China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen.
Over the last 15+ years, the ICC has been going along, doing its thing. It’s not an unproblematic body, hamstrung in many ways, with concerns about both politicization of how it selects cases and debate about how those cases intersect with national sovereignty and constitutional protections.
That said, the US attitude towards the court has been, at the very least, unseemly for a supposed champion of world justice and human rights, largely, it seems, for fear that actions by the US or US officials might be investigated and indictments handed down.
And, in fact, word that the ICC is considering opening an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan, as well as crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians, has led to Donald Trump, the guy who can’t stand indictments, others’ judgment, or international cooperation, to strike preemptively at the organization. In a draft letter put together by unilateralist John Bolton, the Trump Administration is threatening sanctions and prosecution of ICC judges and prosecutors who have the temerity to investigate the Afghan War.
“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton will say, according to a draft of his speech seen by Reuters. […] The draft speech says the Trump administration “will fight back” if the International Criminal Court formally proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. service members and intelligence professionals during the war in Afghanistan.
If such a probe proceeds, the Trump administration will consider banning judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, put sanctions on any funds they have in the U.S. financial system and prosecute them in the American court system.
Man, remember the good old days when the US at least tried to seem like the Good Guys? I mean, make that a country like “China” or “Iran,” and it would sound tonally perfect.
On the other hand, one has to appreciate the melodramatic flourishes involved.
“We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us,” says Bolton’s draft text.
Yeesh.
Trump administration to take tough stance against The Hague’s ICC
The United States on Monday will adopt an aggressive posture against the International Criminal Court in The Hague, threatening sanctions against its judges if they proceed with an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Americans in Afghanistan.
The Supreme Court recently asserted that the efforts to assert that violent crimes were grounds for deportation were unconstitutionally vague as to what crimes were deemed violent. In response, Republicans in the House have pushed through a law more clearly defining crimes of violence… except that a bunch of stuff got thrown in as “violent crimes” that… well, aren’t.
Like, say, burglary of an unoccupied dwelling. Not that anyone says that’s a good thing to do, but that’s not something that most people would consider to be a violent crime.
The bill was passed, along party lines, with no committee meetings or opportunity for amendment.
Donald lashed out yesterday (once again) at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for having the audacity to run a Justice Dept. that dared file charges against two of Trump’s earliest Congressional supporters. (The charges against Rep. Collins and Hunter were not for that particular lapse of ethics and taste, of course, but for a variety of securities fraud, insider trading, campaign finance violations, etc.)
Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……
For Donald, the great crime here seems to be that … well, Sessions wasn’t partisan enough. Because of course the Attorney General should be partisan, otherwise what is the point of having the President being able to nominate him?
I mean, look at the “charges” Donald is lobbing:
1. This was a “long-running” investigation — because Donald wants to be able to just accuse people of things and have it go directly to trial. Long-term investments, careful gathering of evidence, careful consideration of what charges can be prosecuted, that’s all just namby-pamby process to him. Which, as we all know, is something Donald abhors.
2. These were “Obama era” investigations — therefore it is immediately suspect, probably evil, and certainly something out to get Donald Trump. The Justice Department should clearly only prosecute crimes the President wants them to prosecute, and any investigations still ongoing from a previous administration should be immediately dropped as soon as someone new is in the White House.
(Note: the Duncan Hunter investigation actually began during the Trump Administration. But why cavil over dates, amirite?)
3. The accused are “two very popular Republican Congressmen” — because being very popular should make one immune to prosecution (careful of the implications of that line of thought, Donald), and the fact that they are Republicans should make them doubly immune, right?
4. This came out in “a well publicized charge” — because of course only the “Fake Media” would have any interest in publicizing that two members of the US House of Representatives were facing federal charges.
5. The charges came out “just ahead of the Mid-Terms” and when “there is not enough time” for them to be fully prosecuted / defended / dismissed before the election — There’s an informal rule at Justice that you don’t release charges and stuff like that within 60 days of an election (thus Democratic outrage at Comey’s “October Surprise” — which Donald loved at the time) — but not only is that not actual law, these charges came out well before that informal 60 day limit before the November midterms.
I mean, what does Donald think should represent a go/no-go point for charges to be filed? 60 days? 90 days? 180? Or does Donald thing that charges should never be filed against the President’s co-partyists?
Does anyone truly think that Donald would be pitching a fit if these charges were against Democratic Representatives? That, right there, is telling.
6. These Congressmen were facing “Two easy wins now in doubt” — That may or may not be so (Donald, of course, is convinced that the GOP are going to blow the Dems away in November, because he knows this is a referendum on him, too), but this accusation only makes sense if one assumes that these charges are made up out of whole cloth, presented and timed solely for political reasons.
Bottom line, Donald Trump thinks the Justice Dept. should serve the interests of the party in power in the White House — and not only thinks it, but is willing to say it.
That, right there, should be grounds for gelding any influence he has by getting rid of GOP majorities in both houses. I’d even suggest it shows a disrespect for the rule of law that should be impeachable, though I doubt that will actually happen.
Just to add to the mix, he later tweeted:
….The Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting – UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in fact. Really sick!
Again, remember that all politics is personal to Donald, not unlike a Mafia capo. The idea of a mixture of loyalties, of appreciating things about a person vs not appreciating other things, is foreign to him. You are either loyal to Donald Trump, or a traitor to him.
Speaking personally as a Democrat, I do not love Jeff Sessions. His policy positions are, generally, loathsome. I do feel sorry for the guy sometimes — he gave up an influential Senate seat to take on a cabinet position he thought would be at the forefront of (legally) implementing a conservative reign over American law, only to become a perpetual punching bag for his boss because of one, very public ethical stance he took: recusing himself from any oversight of the Mueller investigation because of his own role in the Trump campaign.
I admire that stance. I don’t love the man. But, then, not understanding that kind of nuance seems to be Donald’s way.
Similarly, I (like many others) still strongly disagree with Comey’s disclosure of more possible stuff to investigate just prior to the 2016 election — one more factor in how that election played out — but can do so without considering him a foul fiend, or without appreciating his apparent candor and ethics regarding Trump’s shenanigans. Again, it’s nuance, something that With-Me-Or-Against-Me Donald doesn’t recognize.
Which is ironic. Because just as Trump accuses the Dems of flip-flopping on Comey (“hating” him until suddenly they “loved” him), so Donald flip-flopped on him, “loving” him for his October Surprise, until he refused to bow knee and kiss the ring sufficiently; then Donald suddenly “hated,” him, fired him, and has released unrelanting vitriol toward him.
Which should be a lesson to us all: when Donald is accusing someone of something, look to see how that reflects is own behavior.
Trump blasts Sessions over GOP congressmen indictments – CNNPolitics
President Donald Trump on Monday blasted his Attorney General Jeff Sessions and lamented the indictments of two lawmakers who were his earliest supporters in Congress during the 2016 election, suggesting they should not have been charged because they are Republicans.
I've never been fond of hate crime laws, just because the seem to be so subjective, esp. along the fringes. Here's another reason against them: abuse of such laws by the police.
❝ On Sept. 23, 2016, Robbie Sanderson, a 52-year-old Black man from North Carolina, was arrested for retail theft by in Crafton, a small town near Pittsburgh. During the arrest, Sanderson called police “Nazis,” “skinheads” and “Gestapo,” according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by the Crafton Borough police. For that, he was charged with a hate crime. ❞
That stemmed from this part:
❝ After Sanderson called the police derogatory names, the affidavit states, he also told them “that’s why motherfuckers are killing y’all out here” and “all you cops just shoot people for no reason.” And police said that Sanderson told one officer, Brian Tully, that he was going to find his wife and have sex with her. ❞
That part qualified for 1st degree misdemeanor "terroristic threats" — but Pennsylvania's ethnic intimidation / hate crime law boosts the severity by a tick. Since the police claimed that the ethnic intimidation showed a racial bias behind the terroristic threats, the crime was filed as a 3rd degree felony.
All of which sounds very different from what most people would call terroristic threats, or how they might view the normal way that ethnic intimidation works.
Of course, as the article notes, the ethnic intimidation part is sort of there more as a bargaining chip than anything else. The vast majority of such cases reviewed showed the charge was dropped, usually (as in this case) as part of a plea deal. That's how a lot of these charges are used by police and prosecutors — "Well, you're looking at 25 years when we put you away, but if you cop to this graciously reduced reduced set of charges, it means you'll only do 5" — and thus why they are tossed around so easily and quickly and imaginatively.
First, the political. There’s been all the brouhaha these past few weeks about the de facto family border separation policy that the Trump Administration enacted. He ended up by the end of this week giving at least the motions of backing down in the face of opposition from the public and from even his own party in Congress, party protest that provoked seeming to finally get off the pot in voting on immigration reform.
Trump then pivoted and told Congressional Republicans that they were “wasting their time” talking about immigration before the Mid-Terms, which is particularly zany when they were talking about it only because he had stepped on himself in the news on the topic. And he did that even as he was meddling in Congressional discussions about the two competing bills that were in Congress, a hard-right version and one that is only awful.
And all of that in the bag, we now get this:
❝ President Trump on Sunday explicitly advocated depriving undocumented immigrants of their due-process rights, arguing that people who cross the border into the United States illegally must immediately be deported without trial …. ❞
So in many ways, we can do a full stop right there. This is a direct attack on the rule of law, and on the Constitution.
The Executive Branch does not get to simply say, “You’re guilty” and pass judgment. That’s precisely why we have courts.
Among other things, just look at the 14th Amendment, which says the government may not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
It doesn’t say “citizen”. It doesn’t say “person legally present”. It says any person.
That in turn includes the very question of determining if someone actually is in the country properly. That’s why, in part, we have immigration courts, and we don’t just have cowboys on horses riding around and picking up people who look funny or talk funny or do something else that attracts xenophobic reaction, and hauling those people to a border crossing and booting them out.
In many ways, this is parallel to the case of prisoner in Gitmo. Folk like Trump wave their hands and say, “They’re terrorists! Why do they need a trial? Lock ’em up and throw away the key.”
Except that the determination of someone being a criminal is not being arrested or picked up or apprehended or accused. We have courts and trials to decide that under the rule of law. The stereotype of the rogue cop acting as “judge, jury, and executioner” is villainous precisely because it subverts that separation of powers that promote actual justice.
Because it all boils down to, “How do you know?” How do you know they’re a terrorist? Well, they are being treated like one. How do you know they are an illegal alien? Well, they don’t speak the language well, or we picked them up doing something funny, or they look just like the illegals we arrested last week.
And if you can’t answer “How do you know?” better than that, then you’re advocating for extending the same logic to any criminal matter. How do you know they are guilty? Well, the police arrested them. How do you know they committed the crime? Well, look, they’re in jail, where the police put them.
If you can do this to accused terrorists, to accused border-crossers — you can do it to anyone. For anything.
You know, like in those countries that we used to criticize for doing just that very thing.
Of course, Donald Trump is an old hand at this. The case of the Central Park 5 stands out in this. [1] For him, the fact of arrest and his own snap judgment (or something he hears on Fox) determines actual guilt.
Except, of course, when it’s one of his friends and cohorts. At which time, the accusations are dismissed as a witch hunt, the law enforcement agency is accused of being corrupt, and Donald notes that the person is only accused which doesn’t mean that they are guilty.
Due process for me, but not for thee.
(This assumes that Donald is being, at least, honest. The whole thing could be simply red meat thrown to his xenophobic base, whatever he actually believes.)
Moving on.
❝ In a pair of tweets sent during his drive to his Virginia golf course, … ❞
Remember when Trump used to criticize Obama for how much time and money was spent on his golf playing. Yeah, those were good times.
❝ … Trump described immigrants as invaders … ❞
I’m sure all those evangelical supporters of Trump will hasten to point out to him all the biblical verses calling on the faithful to welcome foreign strangers, sojourners, non-natives, and the like.
I’m waiting …
❝ … and wrote that U.S. immigration laws are “a mockery” and must be changed to take away trial rights from undocumented migrants. “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump wrote. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.” ❞
So if we think a part of our government is a mockery, it’s okay to want it gotten rid of? Okay, making a note of that …
Anyway, again, here’s Trump saying that because he doesn’t like the results or the processes, he’s just plain old happy to strip people of due process. “Hey, you’re illegal, get out.”
That doesn’t strike me as particularly, um, respectful of the law, or of the legal principles this country was founded upon. Almost, one might call it, a mockery.
He continues with the non sequitur:
❝ “Most children come without parents.” ❞
So …?
I mean, is the argument that because their children they should be summarily kicked out? Or is he suggesting that his border separation policy is okay because still more kids are dealt with as unaccompanied minors who haven’t had their parents dragged away from them?
Neither is particularly coherent.
❝ The president continued in a second tweet, “Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years!’ ❞
If there’s one thing Donald is sensitive about, it’s the idea that someone might be laughing at him, esp. some peer that he thinks should be showing him respect. He’s sort of like a Mafia Don in that way.
So, one must wonder, who precisely has been laughing at our immigration policy. I mean, the laughter is happening “all over the world,” so clearly we should see some headlines about it, or reports of how all his fellow world leaders make fun of him.
Now, Donald does have a point that a mathematician from, say, Norway, who has been going through the legal immigration process, might resent someone hopping the queue, as it were. But, then, that person probably isn’t fleeing abject poverty, drug cartel or political violence, disease, sickness, and death.
People don’t cross the Southwest Desert on a whim. People don’t bring their families with them through northern Mexico just because they’ve heard they can live on Easy Street in the US and get an Obamaphone. People don’t take all those risks just because they’ve heard it’s easy to be a rapist up in America. I’m not going to encourage illegal immigration, but I’m also not going to make up libels about those doing it, as our President does.
❝ Immigration must be based on merit — we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!” ❞
Maybe so — but I don’t trust Donald or his cohorts to define “merit” … or “Great.” Among other things, respect for the rule of law should be considered important, and if people committing a crime in coming here have demonstrated some question as to quality [2], so too are politicians who want to treat “arrest” as “guilt” and act accordingly.
Trump loves pardoning. He loves it so much, he skips all that annoying “process” stuff, and just does it directly.
He especially likes pardoning folks prosecuted by the previous Administration, because he can. And because of the message it sends to his own people under indictment or investigation, and to the investigators and prosecutors pursuing them.
Because you can definitely cut down on the amount of illegal immigration if you just … lose … some of those immigrants:
In 2014, at least 10 trafficking victims, including eight minors, were discovered during a raid by federal and local law enforcement in Portman’s home state of Ohio. As FRONTLINE examined in the recent documentary Trafficked in America, HHS had released several minors to the traffickers. The committee said the case was due to policies and procedures that were “inadequate to protect the children in the agency’s care.”
[…] Between October 2016 and December 2017, he said, the agency was unable to locate almost 1,500 out of the 7,635 minors that it attempted to reach — or about 19 percent. Over two dozen had run away, according to Wagner, who said the agency did not have the capacity to track them down.
Perhaps before we expand on tearing more minors away from their families when they enter the country illegally (and are still being processed or have applied for refugee status), we should fix the current system to not lose kids or discover that, whoops, they’ve been handed over to human traffickers. A crazy, radical idea, I know, but, jeez.
HHS Official Says Agency Lost Track of Nearly 1,500 Unaccompanied Minors
A top official from the Department of Health and Human Services came under fire in a congressional hearing on Thursday over how the agency tracks unaccompanied minors after they are released to family or other sponsors inside the United States.
No, wait, the real cause of school shootings (per Fox News commentators) is … the Common Core curriculum?
“Something that I don’t think anybody has mentioned and it’s probably not going to be popular, but we have to look at this Common Core curriculum, which takes emotionally disturbed kids and learning disabled kids and mainstream them in to the general population of students where they really don’t get the kind of attention they need. And I don’t know that that’s the case here but it’s another aspect of this thing that we really have to take a look at.”
“The curriculum made me do it!”
We have nothing to fear but learning disabled kids. Who have access to their fathers’ guns.
It would be a depressing discussion over beer as to which is worse, torture or covering up torture, because torture is a depressing subject regardless of how you approach it.
But that aside, and regardless of “just following orders” or “yeah, we checked with legal first” excuses, the argument below is spot on here: covering up torture makes future torture more likely, if not inevitable.
So does rewarding someone who did so with the top job in the agency.
Believe it or not, her involvement in the enhanced interrogation program (or, as John McCain and I call it, the torture program) really isn’t enough to disqualify her. Shocking, I know.
No, the reason to oppose her nomination goes deeper than that, and is something worse than torture. Yes, worse than torture: something so foul it’s considered the truly unforgivable sin of the intelligence professional.
Rule Number One is thou shalt submit thyself for judgment. Everything the spook does the spook must be accountable for, somewhere, to someone. It might be to an oversight committee, it might be to a DOJ investigation, it might be to the Inspector General’s office, it might be to a civil lawsuit, it might be to a FOIA request.
In the absence of being judged, intelligence agencies spiral out of control. There is always a risk intelligence agencies will lose sight of American values. By passing judgment on their acts we force the agencies to stay connected to the touchstone of our principles. To lie to Congress, to destroy documents of a scandal, to help people escape our society’s judgment — these are the unforgivable sins of the intelligence professional.
Torturing someone is bad enough. But concealing a torture program from Congressional oversight is even worse, because it means we’ll keep on torturing. It means that incoming agents will hear about Bob who was quietly allowed to retire after something, as opposed to seeing Bob hanging in a gibbet by the front door with a plaque beneath reading “TORTURER”. Incoming agents notice things like that and adjust their conduct accordingly.
Gina Haspel made it hard to hold people accountable for the torture program.
That’s worse than torture. She should not be nominated as Director of the CIA.
C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations
Despite requests and amid scrutiny about its secret detention program, the C.I.A. did not give the videotapes to a federal court hearing or to the Sept. 11 commission.
Prison serves three purposes: to incarcerate (segregate criminals from the general population), to punish (discouraging criminals from committing crimes in the future), and to rehabilitate (to give criminals the ability to rejoin society someday in a productive fashion).
The American penal system — supported, sadly, by a large chunk of the American public — have largely given up on that third purpose. And as a result, prison becomes more harsh, and more likely to create repeat offenders.
This latest set of policy changes in the federal prison system is emblematic. Books are no small thing in prison. They can be materials that help train or inspire a prisoner in changing their life. They can be a way to occupy oneself that isn’t a communal TV or causing trouble.
And now, by federal fiat, they will be much, much more expensive, and much less convenient to acquire.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that prisoners should have it easy. But I’m not sure making it harder on them in this way is helpful.
In parallel, federal prison regs now make it more difficult to stay in touch with people on the outside, by forcing all prisoner email contact lists to be unique — two prisoners with the same friend on the outside, or family member, or pen pal (or, perhaps, journalist associate) will have to go through a special process for both of them to be able to correspond.
Because further isolation of prisoners is surely going to help them have lives to return to outside.
And making it harder for journalists to stay in touch with prisoners will certainly improve prison conditions, too, right?
