Mostly Monday Reads: Merely Players

Posted: December 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked, Human Rights, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, New Orleans | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

“He’s so excited! Donald gets a Peace Prize! Happy Happy, Joy Joy!” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I was sent this link to The Bulwark this morning by a Sister Resister at Indivisible NOLA. We’ve had our own contingent of international and national reporters down here for some time. Between Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Spills, we are generally both newsworthy and jazzy enough to get headlines. Tim Miller, his husband, and their daughter relocated to this area in 2023. He’s been out of the game for a long time, even as a Republican staffer for numerous campaigns. New Orleans, like many big cities, is a safe haven for people trying to live their lives their way without hiding while still retaining a small-town feel due to its strong neighborhood culture.

His analysis of that “Wee Man Greg Bovino Wants Headlines—Not Criminals” just fits so nicely with the South Park Narrative of Pete Hegseth and Kristie Noam and their search to hold onto “Content” and basically appear costumed whenever they pop up anywhere. Miller makes a great argument that Greg Bovino craves that same Mojo.

Tim Miller takes on the ICE raids unfolding in Louisiana, exposing how the operation leans on cruelty, spectacle, intimidation, and political theatrics instead of real public safety.

You may watch this analysis below at the link to the Bulwark above.

I agree with that. Miller mentioned an AP Report in the podcast that elucidates the drama that underlies this cruel policy. I suppose it’s a no-brainer that all these people involved with this are certifiable sociopaths and narcissists, and that besides grabbing the headlines, they also seek to grab the attention of the Hair Furor. However, there still may be a more devious motive behind all the headline-grabbing cruelty and drama. Are they using our city to distract from their self-created messes like the Epstein files, the Venezuelan War Crimes, SignalGate, or their vast history of major incompetence? Are these productions wrapped up in distractions for us and red meat for the base? Are we just an exotic backdrop for a massive content grab? Are we New Orleanian mere players strutting about? This level of produced cruelty has to be organized by Stephen Miller.

Here’s the AP headline. “Records reviewed by AP detail online monitoring, arrests in New Orleans immigration crackdown.”  The analysis is provided by Jim Mustian and Jack Brook.

State and federal authorities are closely tracking online criticism and protests against the immigration crackdown in New Orleans, monitoring message boards around the clock for threats to agents while compiling regular updates on public “sentiment” surrounding the arrests, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Associated Press.

The intelligence gathering comes even as officials have released few details about the first arrests made last week as part of “Catahoula Crunch,” prompting calls for greater transparency from local officials who say they’ve been kept in the dark about virtually every aspect of the operation.

“Online opinions still remain mixed, with some supporting the operations while others are against them,” said a briefing circulated early Sunday to law enforcement. Earlier bulletins noted “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as “additional locations where agents can find immigrants.”

Immigration authorities have insisted the sweeps are targeted at “criminal illegal aliens.” But the law enforcement records detail criminal histories for less than a third of the 38 people arrested in the first two days of the operation.

Local leaders told the AP those numbers — which law enforcement officials were admonished not to distribute to the media — undermined the stated aim of the roundup. They also expressed concern that the online surveillance could chill free speech as authorities threaten to charge anyone interfering with immigration enforcement.

“It confirms what we already knew — this was not about public safety, it’s about stoking chaos and fear and terrorizing communities,” said state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents New Orleans. “It’s furthering a sick narrative of stereotypes that immigrants are violent.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the intelligence gathering and referred the AP to a prior news release touting “dozens of arrests.” The agency has not released an accounting of the detainees taken into custody or their criminal histories.

I immediately get validated reports of what’s going on out there. There have been instances of citizens being chased while walking home from their neighborhood grocery store. Children are harassed at Day Care, Parks, and Elementary Schools. This is from NOLA.com.  “In Kenner, Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino faces mixed reactions and police backup.”  That backup now includes many Louisiana Law Enforcement Agencies, including the State Patrol, the Fish and Wildlife Agents, as well as many local sheriffs and police.

As the U.S. Border Patrol conducted their third day of immigration raids in the New Orleans area, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, the agency’s leader, toured the streets of Kenner Friday to mixed reaction from the public, taking photo ops at one point to fielding protesters at another before ultimately using a Kenner Police blockade to leave the area.

Bovino and a team of at least six agents conducted operations at gas stations and in neighborhoods along Williams Boulevard, the main corridor of the city lined with Latin American restaurants and department stores. At one point Bovino’s team approached a vehicle at a gas station to question a passenger before letting him go. It’s unclear if they detained anyone on Friday.

Bovino and his entourage wore green uniforms and face coverings, and he dismissed a request Friday from New Orleans Mayor-Elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat, that federal agents remove masks as part of a broader demand for more transparency.

“I think this is about as transparent as it gets right here,” Bovino told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in response to Moreno’s demands.

At a Star Gas Station on Williams Boulevard where Bovino’s team stopped for a break, customers asked to take pictures with him while he waited to purchase pork cracklins and an energy drink. He offered to buy one of them their coke while a gaggle of photojournalists took pictures.

In the parking lot outside, a man in a camouflage jacket and a red “Make America Great Again” hat held up a makeshift metal sign saying “THANK YOU I.C.E ❤︎ U D.H.S. U.S.A!” in blue paint.

“We love you and we work for you,” Bovino told the man before entering his SUV.

But in Kenner, a suburban city of about 65,000, the political landscape is much different from its more progressive anchor. While having the largest Hispanic population per capita of any Louisiana city at 30%, its government is almost entirely Republican. Its police chief, Keith Conley, has in recent years complained about the increase in undocumented immigrants and is one of the only officials in the parish that’s been a vocal supporter of Border Patrol’s efforts in the city.

Our Mayor-Elect, Helena Morena, was born in Mexico.  The former news anchor is a formidable presence for the Sociopath Squad. As for me, I rarely leave the confines of Orleans Parish because I know the minute I do, I’m in Sleazy Steve Scalizelandia with all the KKK, Evangelical Fascists, and NAZI shit that implies.

Today’s headlines brought one from Boston that truely is truely cruel and unhinged. This is reported by People Magazine. “Immigrants Approved for Citizenship ‘Plucked Out’ of Line Moments Before Pledging Allegiance: Report. As of Dec. 2, USCIS is halting all applications for immigrants from the 19 countries the Trump administration has deemed high-risk.”

Immigrants were moments away from pledging allegiance to the United States in Boston — the final step of the long process to becoming a U.S. citizen — when government officials pulled them out of line, according to a new report.

The scene unfolded at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on Thursday, Dec. 4, according to the report from WGBH, a National Public Radio member station.

As people who were already approved to be naturalized — having completed the lengthy U.S. citizenship process — lined up to pledge allegiance, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials told them they could not continue due to their countries of origin, the outlet reported.

USCIS officials took individuals from the line because the federal agency has directed its employees to halt all immigration applications for nationals from the 19 countries that already faced travel restrictions since June due to a proclamation from President Donald Trump, per WGBH and NBC News. The Trump administration designated the list of largely African and Asian countries as high-risk.

Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship, a nonprofit that helps immigrants apply for citizenship, told WGBH that many of her clients received cancellation notices for their citizenship ceremonies and appointments — but for many, it was too little too late.

“People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony,” she said of the Dec. 4 scene at Faneuil Hall, which WGBH noted is similar to instances playing out at naturalization events across the U.S.

One of the nonprofit’s clients, a Haitian woman who has had a green card since the early 2000s, “said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time,” Breslow told the Boston outlet.

Haiti is on the list of 19 countries with full or partial restrictions, which also includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

“She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled,” Breslow said of her client.

“People are devastated, and they’re frightened,” she added.

You can also read more about this in BB’s post from Saturday. She directly quotes from the WGBH. This is all so awful that it deserves a thorough review.

This reminds me a lot of hearing the stories from my mother’s childhood in Kansas City, MO., where they frequently read in magazines and Newspapers that the Irish and the Italians shouldn’t be allowed in the country. That was because all Italians were characterized as Mafia Gangsters and all Irish were Drunk Brawlers. Oh, isn’t Bongino the kid of Italian immigrants? I also heard of them being called Papists. What’s the difference between this and getting ugly with Somali immigrants? Heather Cox Richardson finds the similarities astounding as well.  This is from her Friday post on Facebook.

In place of the post–World War II rules-based international order, the Trump administration’s NSS commits the U.S. to a world divided into spheres of interest by dominant countries. It calls for the U.S. to dominate the Western Hemisphere through what it calls “commercial diplomacy,” using “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools” and discouraging Latin American nations from working with other nations. “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” it says, “a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.”

The document calls for “closer collaboration between the U.S. Government and the American private sector. All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”

It went on to make clear that this policy is a plan to help U.S. businesses take over Latin America and, perhaps, Canada. “The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program,” it said, “including but not limited to those within the Departments of State, War, and Energy; the Small Business Administration; the International Development Finance Corporation; the Export-Import Bank; and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.” Should countries oppose such U.S. initiatives, it said, “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.

The document calls this policy a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, linking this dramatic reworking to America’s past to make it sound as if it is historical, when it is anything but.
President James Monroe outlined what became known as the Monroe Doctrine in three paragraphs in his annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The concept was an attempt for the new American nation to position itself in a changing world.

In the early nineteenth century, Spain’s empire in America was crumbling, and beginning in 1810, Latin American countries began to seize their independence. In just two years from 1821 to 1822, ten nations broke from the Spanish empire. Spain had restricted trade with its American colonies, and the U.S. wanted to trade with these new nations. But Monroe and his advisors worried that the new nations would fall prey to other European colonial powers, severing new trade ties with the U.S. and orienting the new nations back toward Europe.

So in his 1823 annual message, Monroe warned that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” American republics would not tolerate European monarchies and their system of colonization, he wrote. Americans would “consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” It is “the true policy of the United States to leave the [new Latin American republics to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course,” Monroe wrote.

This is a replay of the Manifest Destiny era. It also erases many rights given to all by the U.S. Constitution.

So, this is the Project 2025 Agenda, the white christian nationalist agenda, and what appears to be parts of the Confederacy with its inherent ideas that only white men are truly equal, wrapped into one big bomb threatening our democratically-based republic.  This administration might as well be Sociopaths-R-US.

And, of course, the wrinkled old WIPO on the Supreme Court are playing for their billionaire pay again. This is from AXIOS. “Supreme Court seems ready to let Trump fire independent commissioners.”  Say goodbye to an Independent Federal Reserve Bank, among many others.

The Supreme Court appeared poised to allow President Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission during oral arguments Monday.

Why it matters: A win for the president in Trump vs. Slaughter would be a major blow to a 90-year-old precedent that has kept the job of independent agency commissioners safe from being fired for political reasons.

Driving the news: Trump teed up the case when he fired Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, Democratic FTC commissioners, earlier this year.

  • The case focuses on the precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 ruling which holds that independent agency commissioners cannot be fired without specific cause.

What they’re saying: The conservative majority on the court seemed hesitant to deny presidents the power to fire agency commissioners.

  • “Once the power is taken away from the president, it’s very hard to get it back in the legislative process,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not appear to support an argument that the protection of independent agency commissioners has gone back to the country’s founding. Chief Justice John Roberts said the FTC has a lot more power today than it did in 1935, making the precedent less powerful.
  • U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued that Humphrey’s Executor, which has been weakened but not eliminated in recent years, limits presidential powers in an unconstitutional way. He described some agencies as “headless” and “junior varsity legislatures.”

Liberal justices asked why the court would overturn a longstanding precedent and imply the president does not trust Congress to give agencies the right amount of power.

  • They also argued that independent agencies have roots in the country’s founding, and most are formed just like the FTC.
  • “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said to Sauer. “Independent agencies have been around since the Founding…. This is not a modern contrivance.”
  • “Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” said Justice Elena Kagan, arguing that the “real-world consequences” of handing Trump a win here would give presidents too much power.

And this is only Monday morning.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Friday Night Reads: Disappearing Democracy

Posted: May 9, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, due process, Habeas Corpus | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

“Blockbuster Trade Announcement.” John Buss @repeat 1968

Good Evening, Sky Dancers!

I was late getting this post started today. I’ve had two doctor’s appointments the last two days, and I’m just exhausted.  I guess I have one more test to go next week, and they’re leaving me alone until September. The good news is that I finally got to pick up my new glasses, so I can see clearly now! There is so much news today surrounding habeas corpus and free speech that I can’t believe what I’m seeing live on TV.  I’m going to start with this headline from PBS. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus.”

Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said the administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.

Watch Miller’s remarks in the video player above.

“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” he told reporters. “So it’s an option that we’re actively looking at.”

Miller added that “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

Habeas corpus refers to people’s right to challenge their detention in court.

This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding . Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, writes this at his Substack One First. “148. Suspending Habeas Corpus. In response to adverse rulings in numerous immigration cases, Stephen Miller is raising the specter of suspending habeas. His argument is factually and legally nuts, but it’s worth explaining *why.*”

“I was going to wait until Monday’s regular issue to note the sad news out of the Supreme Court on Friday (that retired Justice David Souter passed away Thursday at the age of 85). But then Stephen Miller went on television Friday afternoon and made some of the most remarkable (and remarkably scary) comments about federal courts that I think we’ve ever heard from a senior White House official. Reacting to a series of high-profile losses in immigration cases this week, Miller raised the specter of President Trump suspending habeas corpus:

Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.

I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:

First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.

Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Ozturk … poses no threat to public safety.

Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.

Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact,about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.

There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from NBC News and Dan Mangam. “Top White House adviser Stephen Miller says ‘we’re actively looking at’ suspending due process for migrants. The “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller told reporters outside the White House.”  How on earth they keep insisting that immigration is an invasion is beyond me.

Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller told reporters Friday that the administration is “looking at” ways to end due process protections for unauthorized immigrants who are in the country.

“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller said in the White House driveway.

“A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether he was referring to a specific group of people who’ve entered the country illegally, or all the people who have. It also did not comment on what he meant by the courts doing “the right thing.”

In his remarks, Miller maintained that the courts don’t have jurisdiction in immigration cases. “The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch; the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well too. So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes,” he said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced frustration about constitutional due process protections slowing down his efforts at mass deportations.

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said in an interview with Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Welker pointed out the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and that the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights, but Trump complained that those protections take too much time.

“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said, adding that some of the people the administration wants to deport are “murderers” and “drug dealers.”

Welker then asked if he needs to uphold the Constitution.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

A clause in the Constitution says due process protections can be suspended during an invasion: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Trump claimed the U.S. was being invaded back in March, when he invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to send alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a prison in El Salvador.

What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark.  This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. reminds me of some prehuman creature picked up by explorers in some version of the Land Time Forgot.  Kristen Noem is the enforcer in just about any movie about a fascist dystopian you’ve ever seen.  It’s ICE ICE BABY.  “New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says.”  Which century and country do we live in these days?

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting its opening this week, a federal prosecutor said.

Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka committed trespass and ignored warnings from Homeland Security personnel to leave Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group.

Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law” and added that he was taken into custody.

Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration.

He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.

Linda Baraka, the mayor’s wife, accused the federal government of targeting her husband.

“They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave. They wanted to make an example out of the mayor,” she said, adding that she had not been allowed to see him.

A crowd gathered to protest outside the building where Baraka was being held, with many chanting, “Let the mayor go!”

Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, in attempting to enter the facility.

So if you want the laughable and extremely sad headline today from our GOOBERment, here it is from Homeland Security. “Members of Congress Break into Delaney Hall Detention Center, Delaney Hall Currently Holds Murderers, Rapists, Suspected Terrorists, and Gang Members. “  How exactly do we know all that if none of them have been before a court yet?  I’m not going to excerpt that, but do recommend you read this and realize it’s from OUR government.

Here’s Insider NJ with a more truthful angle. “Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, Menendez, Exercise Oversight Authority in Visit to ICE Detention Facility.”  I watched the entire event live on MSNBC today. Again, it’s why I was even later than I originally had planned to be today.  I was watching and listening to the representatives demand that the masked ICE thugs take their hands off them.

Today, following an inspection of the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez, Jr., Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman released the following statement: 

“At around 1pm today, my colleagues Rep. Lamonica McIver and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. and I arrived at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark to exercise our oversight authority as Members of Congress.

“Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not “storm” the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.

“Reopening Delaney Hall won’t make us safer and it won’t create an immigration system that is fair and secure for all families.

“Private Prison companies like GEO Group create a perverse incentive to increase incarceration to increase corporate profits. It’s no accident that GEO Group was the first corporation to max out donations to Trump’s Super PAC, to the tune of $500,000 dollars. And they’re being rewarded with huge contracts to imprison immigrants like we’re seeing here at Delaney.

“New Jerseyans don’t want more private prisons just to increase shareholder income at the expense of taxpayers. They want a fair and secure immigration system that reflects our values and respects our Constitution.”

Meanwhile, judges continue to free students arrested by ICE under the weird ass interpretations of Habeas Corpus put forth by Miller. “She was arrested for an op-ed. Now a judge has ordered her freed. Her detention “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” a federal judge said.”  This is from VOX’s Andrew Prokop.

A Trump administration spokesperson anonymously claimed in March that “DHS and ICE investigations found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But to this day they have conspicuously failed to produce any evidence of that — including, when Öztürk filed suit, before a judge.

What did the judge say? Judge William Sessions III ordered Öztürk released “immediately.” Ruling from the bench, he sounded appalled by the Trump administration’s conduct, which he said “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens.”

He said Öztürk had made “very substantial claims of First Amendment and due process violations,” and that, furthermore, the government had offered “no evidence” about their motivation for detaining her other than the op-ed

Is this case over, then? No. Öztürk was ordered released from detention. But the question of whether the US government can legally revoke her visa remains unresolved. While Sessions sounds very likely to rule in her favor, it’s unclear if conservatives on the Supreme Court will do the same, should the case reach them. Still, this case has been an embarrassment to the Trump administration, and perhaps there’s a faint glimmer of hope they’ll decide to just drop it. Too optimistic? Probably.

Films of her release from the Louisiana ICE Detention Center have been shown on all the news stations today. Meanwhile, WAPO reports that “ICE moves detainees to Texas facility where judge declined to halt deportations. One Philadelphia man was transferred to Texas in apparent violation of a court order requiring that he be kept in Pennsylvania as his case played out there.”  

As the Trump administration battles to use awartime law to speed deportationsof alleged gang members, it has moved dozens of detained Venezuelans to the one court district in the nation where a federal judge for now has declined to stand in its way.

U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee sitting in the Northern District of Texas, refusedlast month to pause removals under the Alien Enemies Act of detainees who the government says are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang — even as judges in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and other parts of Texas have done so.

The administration views Hendrix’s district as a “favorable venue,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Macdonald alleged at a recent court hearing in Denver. He and other immigrant advocates say the rush of relocations to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has forced targeted Venezuelans to contest their removals in a court they see as ideologically aligned with the president.

“What the government was doing,” Macdonald said in the hearing, “was finding Venezuelan men, rounding them up and shipping them to the Northern District of Texas.”

The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about how many Venezuelan migrants are housed at Bluebonnet. It also would not say how many had been moved there from other facilities in recent weeks or why those transfers were made.

For now, the Supreme Court has indefinitely paused all Alien Enemies Act deportations in Hendrix’s district as it weighs whether migrants there are being given adequate opportunity to challenge their designations as “alien enemies.” The administration does not appear to have deported any migrants under the law from anywhere in the country since it first sent more than 130 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.

I want to end with Senator Murphy reading the riot act to Cos-Playing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.  It’s really worth watching.

ABC News also had this write-up on the Senate Committee’s visit with her. “Democrats slam DHS secretary as Noem says Abrego Garcia ‘not coming back’ to US. Noem was in front of the Senate testifying on the 2026 DHS budget.”

“Senate Democrats sparred with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s spending.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, asked if the Trump administration would comply with the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.S. government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Noem replied that the government is following the law but didn’t say yes or no.

“What I would tell you is that we are following court order,” Noem shot back. “Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming.”

Van Hollen said he isn’t “vouching for the man” but rather due process.

“I suggest that rather than make these statements here, that you and the Trump administration make them in court under oath,” he added.

Van Hollen then accused Noem of a political speech, and Noem said she would suggest Van Hollen is an “advocate” for victims of illegal crime.

Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.

No one in this administration appears to be ready to comply with court orders to return Albrego Garcia.  I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts has already offered up his balls to .  We haven’t heard a peep from him since the court sent out the ultimatum to return Garcia.

So, there is so much here to cover that I’m hoping BB can pick up where I leave off.  All of this is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American.  It’s about time someone defangs them all.

What’s on your reading and writing list?

 

 

 

 

It Can Happen Here

Posted: January 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, court rulings, George W. Bush, Gitmo, Human Rights, legislation, torture | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Lakhdar Boumedienne

Now that President Obama has signed the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, what happened to Lakhdar Boumediene could happen to any of us.

In a horrifying op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times Boumediene described how he was arrested in Bosnia in 2002 and held in Guantanamo for seven years without due process. At the time of his arrest Boumediene was working as a humanitarian aid worker focusing on helping children. During his imprisonment, he was never allowed to see his wife or his children, and received only a few of the many letters they sent him. The ones he did receive were cruelly censored.

Boumediene writes:

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted — how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? — they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.

Eventually he went on a hunger strike that lasted two years and was brutally force fed twice a day. Finally, in 2008, his case reached the Supreme Court.

In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”

When he was finally freed, France took him in, and he was reunited with his family. Boumediene writes that there are 90 prisoners at Guantanamo who have also been cleared to leave the facility, but they are being held because they are from countries where they would be tortured or killed if they returned.

So there they sit, not guilty of any crime but held in indefinite detention. Just as you or I could be held if this president or the next one decides we somehow helped or supported terrorism.

TGIFriday Reads

Posted: October 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, morning reads, New Orleans, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!

Wow!  It’s Friday!  The week has sort’ve whizzed by for me and I have to admit to feeling like the days are blending together.  The weather is great down here right now.  October in New Orleans is usually a nice blend of perfect weather and no real surge in tourists so that’s a good change.  We had an Occupy New Orleans march–I didn’t make it–that seemed well attended and non-eventful.  I had a lot of friends that showed up and they took a lot of pictures.  I think we all should try to share the events in our individual cities if we get a chance. I’m really hoping this movement doesn’t get captured by the political establishment.

Taking its cues from the New York protest, Occupy New Orleans makes all its decisions through “general assembly,” a series of votes that aims to reflect the views of everyone involved. The process can be lengthy — simply selecting the march’s route took three hours for the group of about 100 to decide.

That’s one reason the group has not made a list of concrete goals, though it intends to in the upcoming weeks, said participant Michael Martin, 25. The movement also has no leader or spokesperson — each member is allowed one vote. The resultant lack of a coherent message has drawn skepticism even from would-be sympathizers.

Organizers of the New Orleans protest say they expect hundreds to participate; the group has more than 1,000 followers on Twitter and more than 4,100 fans on Facebook. The group received permits Wednesday allowing them to march, according to New Orleans Police Department spokeswoman Remi Braden.

In light of 700 protestors’ arrests in New York City on Saturday, Occupy New Orleans held a training session for legal observers Tuesday that drew 20 people, mainly law students.

We really need to have a huge conversation about the idea that a “secret panel” can put an American citizen on a kill list without actual due process in the courts.  Here’s a start at that discussion from Reuters.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama’s toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki’s killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism,” is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Yeah, that’s the word I’m thinking …. ironic… not!!  I am very much attuned to the situation in Europe.  The banks have pretty much done it to us again and it looks like there will be more bail outs coming.  There’s a lot of talk that it could be worse than 2007-2008.  Here’s ZeroHedge’s take on a BBC insider interview with an IMF advisor that says: “In The Absence Of A Credible Plan We Will Have A Global Financial Meltdown In Two To Three Weeks”.  The interview is posted there if you’re more curious.

A week after the BBC exploded Alessio Rastani to the stage, it has just done it all over again. In an interview with IMF advisor Robert Shapiro, the bailout expert has pretty much said what, once again, is on everyone’s mind: “If they can not address [the financial crisis] in a credible way I believe within perhaps 2 to 3 weeks we will have a meltdown in sovereign debt which will produce a meltdown across the European banking system. We are not just talking about a relatively small Belgian bank, we are talking about the largest banks in the world, the largest banks in Germany, the largest banks in France, that will spread to the United Kingdom, it will spread everywhere because the global financial system is so interconnected. All those banks are counterparties to every significant bank in the United States, and in Britain, and in Japan, and around the world. This would be a crisis that would be in my view more serious than the crisis in 2008…. What we don’t know the state of credit default swaps held by banks against sovereign debt and against European banks, nor do we know the state of CDS held by British banks, nor are we certain of how certain the exposure of British banks is to the Ireland sovereign debt problems.”

But no, Morgan Stanley does, or so they swear an unlimited number of times each day. And they say not to worry about anything because, you see, it is not like they have any upside in telling anyone the truth. Which is why for everyone hung up on the latest rumor of a plan about a plan about a plan spread by a newspaper whose very viability is tied in with that of the banks that pay for its advertising revenue, we have one thing to ask: “show us the actual plan please.” Because it is easy to say “recapitalize” this, and “bad bank” that. In practice, it is next to impossible. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy this brief relief rally driven by the fact that China is offline for the week and that the persistent source of overnight selling on Chinese “hard/crash landing” concerns has been gone simply due to an extended national holiday. Well, that holiday is coming to an end.

Some of the weaker Spanish banks have been nationalized.  It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this.

Austrailia's Status of Women Minister, Kate Ellis

 Australia’s Status of Women Minister, Kate Ellis says that “mindless bias” holds women back in her country.  She’s been making the rounds arguing about a report that shows that gender differences in salary and position cannot be explained away by either occupational choices or other factors. Can you imagine Valerie Jarret holding US corporations to account for not promoting and hiring women? Oh, wait, the Prime Minister’s name is Julia … hmmmmm.

”We are saying very clearly to corporate Australia, we want to work in partnership with you to change this – and it’s an offer that I hope corporate Australia will take that up and we don’t have to take that conversation any further.”

Asked yesterday about the portrayal of women in the media, Ms Ellis said there was sometimes unequal treatment ”handed out”, and said the treatment of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was ”a case study before our eyes”.

”I think there’s a really interesting issue, where often I will be encouraging people where if you see unfair treatment, if you see discrimination you should stand up and call it out for what it is,” she said.

”In politics, there’s often the opposite pressure, where if you do that constantly it looks like female politicians are whingeing and they’re not tough enough to handle the environment.”

She said her office was collating examples of the media dealing with gender issues in ways that were not ”acceptable”.

According to the government’s latest census of women in leadership, last year females made up just 8.4 per cent of directors and 8 per cent of executive managers in ASX200 companies.

The report calls for companies to adopt a range of reforms, including making their workplaces more flexible and setting targets for gender diversity.

The Guardian has a killer interview up with retired US General McChrystal who says the US is only about 1/2 done with the war in Afghanistan.  That means 10 more years if he’s right.

The US began the war in Afghanistan with a “frighteningly simplistic” view of the country and even 10 years later lacks the knowledge that could help bring the conflict to a successful end, a former top commander has said.

Retired US army general Stanley McChrystal said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that the US and its Nato allies were only “a little better than” 50% of the way to reaching their war goals.

Of the remaining tasks to be accomplished, he said, the most difficult may be to create a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans could believe in and that could serve as a counterweight to the Taliban.

McChrystal, who commanded coalition forces in 2009-10 and was forced to resign in a flap over a magazine article, said the US entered Afghanistan in October 2001 with too little knowledge of Afghan culture.

“We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he said. “Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

US forces did not know the country’s languages and did not make “an effective effort” to learn them, he said.

McChrystal said the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq less than two years after entering Afghanistan made the Afghan effort more difficult.

Well, that’s some depressing things to think about which is about what’s on my mind today.  What’s on your reading and blogging list?

DOJ Prepared Secret Memo Enumerating “Legal Arguments” for Assassinating U.S. Citizens

Posted: October 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Human Rights, Team Obama, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

In April of 2009, President Obama released the secret “torture memos” prepared in 2002 and 2005 by the Bush Justice Department. From Huffpo:

President Barack Obama says the release of legal opinions governing harsh questioning of terrorism suspects is required by the law and should help address “a dark and painful chapter in our history.”

Obama issued a statement accompanying Thursday’s release of four significant memos written by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2005. The president said that the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos “undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer.”

Now we learn that Obama’s Justice Department has produced a secret memo to authorize the killing of American citizens by order of the President.

The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials.

The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.

“What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war,” said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closely held deliberations within the administration.

So if this is all on the up and up, no violations of the Constitution involved, why can’t we see the legal arguments?

The operation to kill Aulaqi involved CIA and military assets under CIA control. A former senior intelligence official said that the CIA would not have killed an American without such a written opinion.

A second American killed in Friday’s attack was Samir Khan, a driving force behind Inspire, the English-language magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. An administration official said the CIA did not know Khan was with Aulaqi, but they also considered Khan a belligerent whose presence near the target would not have stopped the attack.

But if they needed a legal opinion in order to target Aulaqi, then why didn’t they need one of Khan? None of this makes any sense to me, and frankly, I’d like the ACLU lawyers to review this Justice Department memo.

At the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf writes:

What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they’re asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn’t a military secret. It isn’t an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress’ post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”

Obama hasn’t just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set. It’s time for the president who promised to create “a White House that’s more transparent and accountable than anything we’ve seen before” to release the DOJ memo.

What I’d most like to know is who is making these decisions? I’m still slogging through the Suskind book, and again and again I’m learning that Obama had the right instincts–at least about economics–but then was thwarted by his supposed underlings. Is that happening in the area of counterterrorism as well?

We need to know, and that is why this memo must be released. Obama has shown that he has no ability to lead or even to stand up to his own “advisers” when they ignore his orders. We need to understand who really made the decision that American citizens must be murdered, rather than arrested, charged, and given fair trials. And that person needs to be fired immediately.