☠️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY CLOSE-UP: When He Isn’t Busy Appointing Hate Groupers To Immigration “Judgeships,” The Lies Just Keep Flowing From Billy The Biogot’s Mouth — Laura Coates Reports On His Latest Whoppers For CNN!

Laura Coates says AG Bill Barr has some explaining to do

CNN Tonight

CNN’s Laura Coates argues that Attorney General Bill Barr has some explaining to do about a number of issues surrounding him and how he runs the US Department of Justice.

Source: CNN

Watch Laura’s report here:https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/07/25/laura-coates-case-attorney-general-bill-barr-has-explaining-to-do-ctn-vpx.cnn

*********************

Lies to Federal Courts, cover-ups, brutality, First Amendment violations, pretexts, misrepresentations, racism, it all just in a few days’s work for Billy.

The worst Attorney General in modern U.S. history, toady to the worst President in U.S. history, just keeps getting worse!

PWS

07-25-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻🤮HATE & BIAS RULE WHERE EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL IS SCORNED! —THE WORST OF THE WORST FIND A HOME IN AMERICA’S STAR CHAMBERS, THANKS TO BILLY THE BIGOT, ENABLED BY A CONGRESS & ARTICLE III JUDGES UNWILLING TO STAND UP AGAINST “HATE AGENDA” IN “AMERICA’S STAR CHAMBERS!” — Noah Lanard @ Mother Jones Reports!

 

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/he-defended-anti-gay-and-anti-muslim-causes-now-hes-an-immigration-judge/

Noah Lanard writes in Mother Jones:

He Defended Anti-Gay and Anti-Muslim Causes. Now He’s an Immigration Judge.

Brandon Bolling argued that Islam was incompatible with the First Amendment and homosexuality was not innate.

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.

During the 2014–2015 school year, Caleigh Wood started to learn about Islam as part of her 11th grade world history class. Upon discovering this, Caleigh’s dad, John, wrote on Facebook that he “just about fucking lost it,” adding in response to a commenter, “A 556 round [of ammunition] doesn’t study Islam and it kills them fuckers everyday.” John told the school’s vice principal that “you can take that fucking Islam and shove it up your white fucking ass,” according to federal court records. After saying that he was going to create a “shit storm like you have never seen,” he got banned from the La Plata, Maryland, high school.

That could have been the end of the story. Instead, Brandon Bolling and other lawyers from the Thomas Law More Center, a right-wing Christian group that declares itself “battle ready to defend America,” represented John as he sued the Charles County public school system for allegedly attempting to indoctrinate his daughter into Islam.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it had hired Bolling, a former Marine and federal attorney, to be an assistant chief immigration judge in Texas, even though he has no discernible immigration experience. During two stints at the Thomas More Law Center—neither of which is disclosed in his government bio—Bolling worked on numerous cases that pitted his clients against Muslims and the gay community. Now Bolling will help oversee the immigration cases of people detained in El Paso, and could be responsible for deciding whether victims of persecution based on their religions and sexual orientations receive protection under US asylum laws.

Bolling is one of 46 new immigration judges recently hired by the Trump administration. Another is Matt O’Brien, who served as the research director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, one of the country’s leading anti-immigrant groups. The decision to hire both men is an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to select judges sympathetic to its anti-immigration agenda. (The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Thomas More Law Center did not respond to requests for comment.)

As part of the Justice Department, immigration courts lack the independence of federal courts. The decisions they make can determine whether immigrants who have been in the United States for decades can remain, or whether asylum seekers will be deported to the countries they fled. Even when immigrants appeal their decisions, they generally stick, since the Trump administration has made a point of filling the Board of Immigration Appeals with judges known for denying nearly all asylum claims.

. . . .

************************

Read the rest of Noah’s article at the link.

As the world watches America spiral downward and our institutions, once admired by democracy advocates everywhere, spinelessly crumble in the face of tyranny, nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the clearly unconstitutional, bias-driven, and grotesquely unfair Immigration “Courts.”

Racial justice and equal justice in America will remain cruel illusions unless and until we demand an end to these Star Chambers and hold those responsible for creating and enabling their current toxicity accountable! 

Certainly giving Thomas More a bad name. And like lots of those caught up in the EOIR Star Chamber, he has no way of defending himself against the Bollings and Barrs of the world!

PWS

07-25-20

🎥🎞📺NEW NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES SHOWS DHS’S CRUEL, MISGUIDED, WASTEFUL ENFORCEMENT UNDER TRUMP — Not Surprisingly, The Regime Wants To Suppress The Truth — At Least Until After The Election — Caitlin Dickerson @ NY Times Reports 

Caitlin Dickerson
Caitlin Dickerson
National Immigration Reporter
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/trump-immigration-nation-netflix.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfq4hkT1UZACbIRp87tACDnb3Oxbk9iWX3MCmST3NExvgUBI7F_UrRa65id50zwzGfDpdnAYMYecZTnKVZLlA_DE6huIeFk5AIZC4_-Ni-B21ompyQB-x9rG6wYCywI-khgeXkskqLPTO-XaCM1WYzZ1ow-esTfl-h2nQJz6bBA7Q1joE4haF9c8g8ETQQZyCKvu3qDQF-PbiFbRLc7woxXYJJSG2Z3I7cu_9bLlIkWR-RR2h_4G0-9NpWJNoSWa7_JBUmc8b06q4DCJCm1elPvSY5zqibk_nysQ&smid=em-share

Caitlin reports:

In early 2017, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepared to carry out the hard-line agenda on which President Trump had campaigned, agency leaders jumped at the chance to let two filmmakers give a behind-the-scenes look at the process.

But as the documentary neared completion in recent months, the administration fought mightily to keep it from being released until after the 2020 election. After granting rare access to parts of the country’s powerful immigration enforcement machinery that are usually invisible to the public, administration officials threatened legal action and sought to block parts of it from seeing the light of day.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

The filmmakers, Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, who are a couple, turned drafts of their six-part project called “Immigration Nation” over to ICE leadership in keeping with a contract they had signed with the agency. What they encountered next resembled what happened to Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, who was eventually sued in an unsuccessful attempt to stop her from publishing a memoir that revealed embarrassing details about the president and his associates.

Suddenly, Ms. Clusiau and Mr. Schwarz say, the official who oversaw the agency’s television and film department, with whom they had worked closely over nearly three years of filming, became combative.

The filmmakers discussed their conversations on the condition that the officials they dealt with not be named out of fear that it would escalate their conflict with the agency.

. . . .

******************

Read Caitlin’s full article at the link.

The multi-part documentary begins airing on Netflix on August 3. You can watch the trailer at this link:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjj05eA9eXqAhXagnIEHR5UBd4QwqsBMAJ6BAgKEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DX_xVKy58Yuw&usg=AOvVaw3B6_C_v-0f__UPQyLHJ-fy

See firsthand how your tax dollars are being largely wasted on cruel, unnecessary terrorizing of ethnic communities and populating the “New American Gulag” — “enforcement” that in too many cases actually harms our economy and our society and certainly diminishes both our integrity and humanity as a nation.

Catlin’s concluding paragraphs are worth keeping in mind:

The filmmakers said they came away with some empathy for the ICE officers, but became convinced that the entire system was harmful to immigrants and their families.

The problem, they said, was summarized in the first episode by Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Is a government agency evil? No. Is every single person inside ICE evil? No,” Ms. Heller told the filmmakers. “The brilliance of the system is that their job has been siphoned off in such a way that maybe what they see day to day seems justified, but when you add it up, all of the people just doing their job, it becomes this crazy terrorizing system.”

We have all been harmed by Trump’s racist-driven “weaponization” of DHS and the Immigration Courts, and that includes the DHS employees and the Immigration Court employees who are caught up in this grotesque, often illegal, and overall immoral abuse of government authority and resources. 

We should also be concerned about the First Amendment implications of Trump’s attempts to misuse Government authority to manipulate the election in his favor by, once again, suppressing truth in reporting.  Thank goodness we have courageous journalists like Caitlin and these filmmakers to keep exposing the ugly truth about the Trump/Miller/Wolf/Barr ongoing White Nationalist immigration charade.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-20

🤮☠️⚰️👎THE UGLY ROLE OF RACISM IN THE AMERICAN “RULE OF LAW” FICTION — Administrative Law & The Administrative State Deeply Rooted In Racism — When You Hear Racists Like Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, & Cotton Refer To The “Rule Of Law” They Actually Mean The Rule Of White Supremacy!

🏴‍☠️

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-racial-roots-of-the-federal-administrative-state-by-jonathan-weinberg/

The Racial Roots of the Federal Administrative State, by Jonathan Weinberg

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Federal administrative agencies have existed since this nation’s founding – the First Congress created the Patent Office, the Departments of War, Foreign Affairs, and Treasury, and more. But in the century that followed, Congress rarely tasked any of those agencies with adjudicating the status of individuals so as to hand out benefits and burdens.[1]  The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to be sure, broke that pattern. It established a set of federal commissioners to make the most consequential determination of individual status possible – a ruling that a person was or was not an escaped slave, to be handed over to a purported owner or his agent. The procedure established for that determination bore no relation to anything we would think of as modern administrative law. Slaveholders provided testimony ex parte, and the alleged slaves could say nothing; commissioners received higher fees for ruling in slaveholders’ favor than for ruling against them.

The next important time the federal government set up an agency to adjudicate the legal status of individuals, its methods were different. Like the Fugitive Slave Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 enabled a system of racial oppression. But in contrast to the Fugitive Slave Act, which covered freewheeling lawlessness with the barest fig leaf of administrative legality, the Chinese Exclusion Act gave rise to a body of administrative law, and a body of administrative mechanisms and methods, that survived and lie at the root of today’s administrative state.[2]

The Chinese Exclusion Act reflected deep racial prejudice. U.S. Congress members and others attacked Chinese people as disease-ridden, dishonest, degraded, and incapable of self-government; “a race of people,” in the words of the California Supreme Court, “whom nature has marked as inferior.” Legislatures enacted legal attacks including state laws (many struck down in court) forbidding them from securing business licenses, working for corporations, fishing in public waters, owning real estate, working mining claims, or indeed entering the state. Mobs engaged in anti-Chinese mass violence, such as the burning of Seattle’s Chinatown in 1885.

The 1882 federal statute forbade the entry of most Chinese into the United States, and directed the deportation of any Chinese person who had entered in violation of its requirements. This performance of racism, though, required a new bureaucracy facing new challenges.  The U.S. had never before enacted a large-scale restriction on entry of free persons. It had no passport or visa infrastructure; the law would not require white noncitizens arriving on our shores to present passports for another 35 years. So the bureaucracy had to break new ground in enforcing the statute and the fine distinctions it drew.

How were officers to adjudicate whether a person seeking to enter the U.S. was a forbidden Chinese laborer or a permitted upper-class “merchant”? a forbidden new entrant or a permitted returning resident?[3] or, indeed, whether the person was a U.S. citizen, since lower courts had ruled as early as 1884 that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen with full rights to leave the U.S. and return?

For that matter, how were federal officers to know whether any ethnically Chinese person living in the U.S. had legal status? The system’s underlying assumptions, repeated over and over by policy-makers, were first, that Chinese people would routinely lie to gain immigration benefits; and second, that they were physically nearly indistinguishable from one another. What sort of bureaucracy could be put in place to make their status visible?

To answer those questions, Congress and the agency (first the Customs Bureau, then the Bureau of Immigration in the Treasury Department, then the same Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor) developed new techniques of bureaucratic investigation and control.  They provided for initial adjudications by line personnel with the possibility of internal administrative appeal. They provided for agency rulemaking and federal-state partnerships.  Their targets brought challenges in sometimes-sympathetic courts, leading to battles over the availability of judicial review, exhaustion, the “jurisdictional fact” doctrine, burdens of proof, standards of review, and the demands of due process. There were controversies over the scope of government’s enforcement discretion in light of resource constraints.

We can see, in other words, the seeds of nearly all of modern administrative law in the administration of Chinese exclusion. To bolster that system, Congress mandated that every Chinese migrant in the U.S. carry federally-issued identification papers with his or her photograph and identifying information. The Bureau put in place increasingly elaborate, searchable and cross-referenced, databases of information about Chinese individuals, to be used in connection with systematic and standardized interviews of would-be entrants and applicants for immigration benefits. For a time, it mandated that some Chinese individuals be subject to a system of precise body measurement developed for identifying criminals.

The Chinese exclusion regime worked badly, and was never very good at achieving its stated goals. It was effective in enforcing racial domination.  If you were an ethnically Chinese person in the U.S. in that time period, you lived subject to the possibility of arrest on suspicion of illegal presence. The exclusion laws enabled, on a broad scale, the humiliation, labelling, and arbitrary detention of individual Chinese.

But the system of Chinese exclusion was not just an exercise in domination and humiliation. It was conceived, rather, as embedding racial hierarchy within the rule of law. Its framers hoped to achieve accurate determinations, within a legal structure, regarding the racially-motivated categories into which individuals should be sorted. That legal structure incorporated the possibility of judicial review. It required a functioning system of federal administrative law. To that end, racial exclusion laid the groundwork for much of modern public administration and administrative law. That’s our heritage. Our current system grew from that soil.

Jon Weinberg is Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School. Follow him on Twitter here.

[1]           One exception: the U.S. military pension system: Congress as early as 1776 legislated pensions for disabled Revolutionary War veterans. In 1818, it extended pension eligibility to anyone who had served in the Continental Army and needed public assistance. This required it to develop procedures for determining whether claimants were disabled, whether their injuries were incurred as part of their service, whether they were indigent, and more. Most of that work, though, was done by local judges sitting as benefits adjudicators.

[2]           Gabriel (Jack) Chin first made this point in his pioneering Regulating Race: Asian Exclusion and the Administrative State, 37 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (2002).

[3]           Initially, the law allowed Chinese people already resident in the U.S. to leave here and return; the government would close that door in 1888 (stranding many U.S. residents outside the country), and then partially reopen it in 1894.

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Obvious solutions:

  • All Administrative “Courts” are inherently unconstitutional and should be abolished forthwith;
  • An expanded Article I independent judiciary;
  • Demonstrated commitment to equal justice under law and rejecting racism in all forms as an absolute requirement for future Article III Judicial appointments.

PWS

07-24-20

🤮👎🏻☠️CHILD ABUSERS ON THE LOOSE — Rosenstein & Sessions Still At Large Even As Those Whose Lives Were Destroyed By Their Unconstitutional Actions Continue To Suffer Irreparable Harm — A Complete Institutional Meltdown Across All Three Branches Leaves U.S. As A Major Human Rights Abuser! — How Low Will We Go Before We Finally Say “No” To Racist Abuses! — “The family separations that followed are seen today by experts as one of the gravest domestic human rights violations to have occurred under the Trump administration.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/23/child-separation-migrants-prosecutors-rod-rosenstein?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

Revealed: Rod Rosenstein advised there was no age limit on child separations

Former deputy attorney general’s 2018 conference call with US prosecutors in border states shocked some participants, Guardian learns

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

Published:

06:00 Thursday, 23 July 2020

Follow Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, advised US attorneys implementing the 2018 zero-tolerance policy that there could be no blanket ban on prosecuting migrant parents who had children under the age of five, the Guardian has learned.

The comments on a conference call in May 2018 privately shocked some border state prosecutors because, in effect, it meant that no child was too young to be separated from its parents under the policy, which called for all migrants entering the US illegally to face criminal prosecution.

‘Suddenly they started gassing us’: Cuban migrants tell of shocking attack at Ice prison

The family separations that followed are seen today by experts as one of the gravest domestic human rights violations to have occurred under the Trump administration.

The policy was in place for six weeks and resulted in the separation of 2,814 children from their parents and guardians, about 105 of whom were under the age of five and 1,033 under 10.

Rosenstein issued his guidance to US attorneys from states on the Mexican border about two weeks after the then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, issued an order that there would be an “escalated effort” to prosecute all illegal entries into the US along the southern border, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to the Guardian under the condition of anonymity.

Previously, under the Obama administration, most families who crossed the border illegally were detained together if they were arrested or were released pending an immigration trial, but were only separated if authorities deemed children to be in danger.

There were questions among the border state US attorneys at that time about how the zero-tolerance policy would be implemented and the conference call with Rosenstein sought to address those issues.

On the call, one US attorney, John Bash of the western district of Texas, said he had declined to prosecute several cases that had been referred to him by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that involved children under the age of five.

In response, sources familiar with the matter said Rosenstein told the US attorneys that they could not decline to prosecute cases based on the age of the children who would be separated from their parents because there was “no categorical exemption” under the order.

During the call, Rosenstein was also asked whether prosecutors could decline to prosecute parents with children who only spoke indigenous languages, meaning they were unable to communicate in English or Spanish, or those whose children had intellectual disabilities. Rosenstein said that prosecutors could opt to decline to prosecute individuals with children under those two circumstances on a case-by-case basis, sources said.

The comments were met with shock by some of the US attorneys, sources said, because there was concern that children who were under the age of five would not know their own names or their parents’ names and that it posed a risk of children potentially getting lost in the system.

. . . .

****************

Read the rest of the article at the link.

What does this say about firms like King & Spaulding who offer employment and “cover” to human rights abusers like Rosenstein? Why is serving a racist, neo-Nazi, would-be authoritarian regime considered “OK” by “big law” and other supposedly “legitimate” employers? Where’s the outrage?

If human lives and human dignity matter, why is Rosenstein on anyone’s payroll? Why is he still licensed to practice law?

On the bright side: Unapologetic White Nationalist racist “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions is finally off the public dole, hopefully for good.

PWS

07-23-20

 

 

 

PWS

07-23-20

👍IT’S A START, BUT STILL A LONG, LONG WAY TO GO: House-Passed Bill To Begin Removing The Stain Of Trump’s White Nationalism Is Also A Long-Overdue Exposure & Put Down Of Roberts’ Court’s Abject Failure To Stand For Equal Justice For All & Against Trump’s Overtly Unconstitutional Bigotry & “Dred Scottificaton” Of The Other!  

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/23/house-votes-remove-moral-stain-trumps-immigration-policies/

Jason Rezaian writes in WashPost:

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged sweeping changes to immigration policy. As president, Trump has succeeded — despite a broad public outcry and many legal roadblocks — in implementing many of his proposed restrictions through a series of executive orders.

Now Congress is pushing back. On Wednesday the House passed the No Ban Act, legislation introduced last year by Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). The act aims to repeal Trump’s ban on arrivals from majority-Muslim countries and prevent future presidents from issuing discriminatory bans on foreign nationals or followers of specific religions.

“Throughout the history of the U.S., we’ve had a series of tragic nativist chapters in our history,” Coons told me this week. “Did I think we’d be facing another one? No. But when Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I remember thinking I am so glad I live in a country where a man like this couldn’t be president. I was wrong, and we’ve seen how damaging that has been.”

In recent months, the novel coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic downturn, and protests over police killings of African Americans have diverted public attention from Trump’s immigration policies. But they must not be forgotten.

Trump’s plans for an immigration ban have inspired widespread outrage. Some dismissed Trump’s words as empty threats, noting that they were probably unconstitutional. But Trump pressed ahead as soon as he took office.

The first iteration of what became known as the Muslim ban halted entry into the United States of citizens from seven countries, five of which are majority-Muslim.

Since then we’ve watched as immigration officials have separated kids from their parents in detention centers, with at least one of them dying in custody. The images of children in cages provoked an intense backlash and could end up costing Trump at the polls — to the extent that his policies have led his own voters, especially college-educated white Republican women, to question his xenophobic and racist policies.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Jason’s op-ed at the above link.

Somewhat like Sen. Coons, I originally thought that there would be some institutional integrity and moral courage even among the more conservative members of our Judiciary, particularly among the Supremes. After all, there have been at least a few times in our history when judges across the ideological and political spectrum have stood together against the evils of racism, religious bigotry, and hate.

It’s not like Trump, Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Ross, and their hate-mongering cronies were ever particularly subtle about their invidious intent (although, to be fair, I was at the very beginning willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt,” until I saw that his assurances to the Senate were lies under oath in the face of the deep moral corruption and bigotry that infected his whole being).

Boy was I wrong! Right from the git go, even with the advantage of clear evidence of invidious intent, ridiculously transparent and overtly dishonest “pretexts,” (some publicly contradicted by Trump in mid-stream) and the vast majority of lower Federal Court Judges pointing the way with cogent opinions standing up to the Trump charade and endless parade of hate, the Supremes majority tanked. Where the rights of “the other” particularly Muslims and persons color are concerned, they fully embraced Trump’s unconstitutional and tyrannical program of hate and bias thinly disguised as legitimate exercises of Executive Power.  They became willing “Dred Scottifiers!”

Perhaps just as seriously, the Supremes’ “normalized” demonstrable lies, false narratives, and dishonesty as attributes that were to be expected and tolerated from our Chief Executive. What a crock! Ordinary persons are held to basic standards of honesty and candor when dealing with the Government and with Government tribunals. But the President is above it all. While, later on, the Supremes fecklessly claimed that “nobody is above the law,” their actions have shown a disturbing and intellectually dishonest unwillingness to require Trump and his regime to comply with the basics of the rule of law and to act with even a minimal level of candor and honesty.

We can’t vote the “JR Five” out of their lifetime sinecures. But, our democracy does enable us to take the actions necessary to insure that folks like the “JR Five” and other Federal Judges who embrace racism, bigotry, and political corruption over the “equal justice and real due process for all persons” required by our Constitution are not selected to serve in the future in positions requiring legal experiences and moral qualifications that they so obviously lack.

Better judges for a better America. This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

 

07-23-20

 

 

🤮👎☠️SCREWED:  ICE, Advocates, Judge Conspiring To Sell Out Refugee Kids & Families To Illegal Racist Scheme Called “Binary Choice” To Disguise Invidious Intent!

Michelle Hackman
Michelle Hackman
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal
Alicia A. Caldwell
Alicia A. Caldwell
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/A4SQ_qG_DSme90hH0KK4C4g

 

Michelle Hackman and Alicia Caldwell report for the WSJ:

 

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is nearing a deal with some immigrant advocates that would present a choice to jailed parents fighting denial of asylum: let their children be released without them or remain detained together indefinitely, according to federal court filings and lawyers for the children.

The deal is being negotiated between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and attorneys representing roughly 100 children in detention, a development that has divided the pro-immigrant advocacy community.

If enacted, the “binary choice” plan, as it is known, would realize a long-sought goal by the Trump administration not to release immigrant families seeking asylum together in the U.S. Many of these families report fleeing gang violence, poverty or corruption in Central American countries. The plan would allow parents to choose between releasing their children to relatives in the U.S. or long-term foster care, or keeping their families in detention, waiving rights given to the children under a 23-year-old court settlement.

That settlement, known as the Flores agreement, requires ICE to release migrant children in its custody, not entire families, though past administrations, including the Trump administration until last year, largely complied with it by releasing children together with their parents.

Most immigrant advocates oppose “binary choice,” arguing it is tantamount to a new family separation policy, akin to a policy the administration adopted briefly in 2018 to prosecute all adults crossing the border illegally. The policy resulted in children being taken away from those adults. The government halted those family separations after a broad bipartisan outcry, though it has been looking for other ways to deter migrant families from seeking asylum ever since.

“Asking a parent to choose between indefinite detention in a place where there is already a Covid outbreak and being separated from your child for an undetermined length of time, that is a coercive situation,” said Stephanie Alvarez-Jones, a staff attorney with Proyecto Dilley, which provides legal representation to families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

The lawyers working with ICE, who represent the children in continuing enforcement of the Flores agreement, say they are left with little choice and aim to protect the best interests of the migrant children.

“By negotiating, we’ve been able to substantially lessen the harshness of ICE’s proposal,” said Peter Schey, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which has managed the Flores Agreement.

ICE declined to comment on the details of the case, citing the pending litigation.

 

. . . .

 

*********************************

Those with full WSJ access can read the complete article at the link.

It’s not rocket science. “Binary choice” is nothing but a racist scam designed by Stephen Miller and other White Nationalists in the regime primarily to punish asylum seekers of color and their children for seeking legal protection, to traumatize and duress them into giving up potentially valid claims, to inflict lasting psychological harm on non-white populations, and to serve as an example and deterrent to others who might dare to exercise their legal rights in the face of tyranny by a racist Executive. All of the foregoing are in clear violation of the 5th, 8th, and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, not to mention our asylum statutes and international instruments to which we supposedly are party. You don’t need a law degree to figure that out.

Those who have engineered, furthered, and gone along to get along with these gross abuses of children and betrayals of the human rights and dignity of the most vulnerable among us will not escape the judgment of history. Sadly, that will be small consolation for the multitude of broken bodies, traumatized minds, and damaged souls that they leave in their ugly wake!

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

 

—— Matthew 25

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

07-23-20

 

 

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻🤮CONSTITUTION IN RUINS: Egged On By Feckless Supremes, Trump Rolls Out Another Racist Attack On Our Constitution & Our Nation By Declaring Undocumented Residents “Non-Persons!” — The “Dred Scottification” Of People Of Color By Trump & His Supremes Continues To Bear Ugly Fruit! 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-executive-order-immigrants-redistricting_n_5f1709e0c5b615860bb7f415

The Constitution says the congressional apportionment should be based on the “whole number of persons” in each state. But the president wants to change that.

Reuters, By Alexandra Alper & Nick Brown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a memorandum that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are redrawn in the next round of redistricting.

U.S. Census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious. In theory, it would benefit Trump’s Republican Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the U.S. illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian.

. . . .

***************************

Read the full article at the link.

The Supremes allowed Trump to rewrite the immigration and refugee laws without benefit of legislation.

They allowed him to abrogate the due process clause of our Constitution for persons of color who had the bad fortune to be asylum seekers or immigrants.

They allowed the GOP to revise the Constitution and abrogate the Voting Rights Act to make it more difficult for minorities to vote and to insure that their votes counted for less than their White counterparts.

Now, empowered by Supreme complicity, Trump is going for yet another “do it yourself” Constitutional rewrite.

We have only ourselves to blame for allowing unqualified Justices like the “JR Five” to gain control of our highest Court — what was supposed to be our “final bastion” against Executive tyranny, but has instead become an enabler of “Dred Scottification” — that is “de-humanization” of large segments of our population — disproportionately people of color. Another term used for the Supremes’ majority’s defective performance in the face of Trump’s lawlessness is “Constitutional Castration” (assuming, arguendo, that the Constitution is “male”). Either way, it’s an ugly process.

It’s worth noting that enslaved Africans Americans, those originally subjected to “Dred Scottification,” and still feeling the adverse effects of the Supremes “renewal” of the concept, were counted for “3/5 of a person” under the original Constitution. Undocumented individuals, according to Trump, count for zero, even though they have consistently been counted in the past.

Of course the difference is that the original “3/5 rule” was designed to benefit the racists of the post-colonial South. The “new zero rule” is intended to benefit GOP racists of today.

The “Census case” actually went to the Supremes once. It’s the one where Wilbur Ross perjured himself. Rather than earning disbarment for the DOJ Attorneys who brought that mess before the Court and sanctions against the Administration, Trump got only a mild rebuke from Roberts. Heck, some Justices actually voted in favor of the regime’s racist inspired fraud!

In the process of soft-peddling the Administration’s gross misconduct and intellectual dishonesty, the Supremes’ majority also engaged in a largely fictional “historical analysis” deemed by commentators from the Brennan Center to be “preposterous.” 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/citizenship-questions-are-not-historically-normal/593014/

That’s strong language. But, actually, it comes to mind frequently with respect to the Roberts’ Court’s various attempts to defeat equal justice and diminish the humanity of non-white -populations under our laws.

This latest Trump memo makes it crystal clear that the original subterfuge for the “citizenship question” — that it was necessary to enforce civil rights laws — utterly laughable — was a complete fraud on the Court. But, don’t expect that exercise of bad faith (“death” to any private party before the Supremes) to make any difference to Trumpian Justices who long ago sold out nation and our Constitution along with their own humanity and integrity.  

This latest systemic failure by all three branches could well leave future Congressional apportionments and elections in chaos. 

A better America for all requires better, more intellectually honest and morally courageous Justices who stand for the Constitution and against racism in all forms, be it promoted by the Executive, Congress, or their fellow judges. Unhappily, we’re a long way from there right now!

Due Process Forever! 

PWS

07-21-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🤮KAKISTOCRACY KORNER:  Chase, Schmidt Rip Billy The Bigot’s Appointment Of Hate Grouper To Arlington “Bench” – Failed System Drops All Pretenses Of Fairness & Due Process As Feckless Congress & Complicit Article IIIs Flunk Constitutional Duties! –

 

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1293543/ex-fair-research-director-among-46-new-immigration-judges

Hannah Albarazi
Hannah Albarazi
Federal Courts
Reporter
Law360
Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges
Me
Me

Ex-FAIR Research Director Among 46 New Immigration Judges

By Hannah Albarazi

. . . .

“It would be impossible for one to receive a fair hearing before Matthew O’Brien,” Jeffrey Chase, a New York City immigration lawyer and former immigration judge, told Law360. Chase said O’Brien has expressed a view of asylum law that is at odds with the controlling circuit case law that he would be tasked with applying from the bench.

Chase said O’Brien has “basically spouted propaganda for an organization openly hostile to immigration.”

His appointment, Chase said, shows that the Trump administration doesn’t want a fair and independent immigration court and is proof that the Executive Office for Immigration Review needs to be taken out of the control of the Department of Justice, an enforcement agency.

The administration “has repeatedly emphasized to classes of new immigration judges that they are above all employees of the attorney general, who does not believe most asylum seekers are deserving of protection,” Chase said.

These appointments could negatively impact the immigration courts for decades, Chase said.

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired U.S. immigration judge who chaired the Board of Immigration Appeals in the Clinton administration, also slammed the recent wave of appointments.

“The idea that these are the 46 best qualified individuals in America to discharge these awesome responsibilities in a fair, impartial and expert manner, in furtherance of due process of law and with recognition of the human rights and human dignity of the individuals whose lives are at stake, is beyond preposterous. It’s a fraud on American justice,” Schmidt told Law360.

Schmidt didn’t mince his words about O’Brien’s appointment either.

“As someone who has helped FAIR spread its racially biased, anti-immigrant, and anti-asylum propaganda and false narratives, O’Brien is not qualified to be a fair and impartial quasi-judicial decision maker as required by the due process clause of our Constitution,” Schmidt said.

.  .  . .

**********************************

Those with Law360 access can read Hannah’s complete article at the link.

The U.S. Justice system, once the envy of free nations throughout the world, is disintegrating before our eyes. If there is no justice for those whose lives are at stake, there will be no justice for any of us in the Trump/Barr Third World kakistocracy.

Due Process Forever! Corrupt & Feckless Institutions Parodying Justice, Never!

 

PWS

 

07-21-20

DRED SCOTTIFICATION OF “THE OTHER” — Supremes’ Anti-Constitutional “De-Personification” Of Asylum Applicants of Color With Lives At Stake Shows Why America Is In A Constitutional & Racial Mess Right Now — Analysis of Thuraissigiam By Professor Elliott Young!

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176454

Elliott Young is a professor of History at Lewis & Clark College and the author of a forthcoming book Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the Largest Immigrant Detention System in the World (Oxford University Press).

. . . .

For more than one hundred years, the entry fiction has enabled the US government to deny immigrants due process protections that the 14th Amendment clearly indicates apply “to any person within its jurisdiction.” Although Justice Alito seems to restrict the ruling to people who entered the country within the previous 24 hours and within 25 yards of the border, the logic of the decision poses a more ominous threat to all immigrants who were not lawfully admitted.

 

As Justice Sotomayor writes in her dissent, “Taken to its extreme, a rule conditioning due process rights on lawful entry would permit Congress to constitutionally eliminate all procedural protections for any noncitizen the Government deems unlawfully admitted and summarily deport them no matter how many decades they have lived here, how settled and integrated they are in their communities, or how many members of their family are U. S. citizens or residents.”

 

It is this threat to more than 10 million immigrants living in the United States without authorization that makes the Thuraissigiam decision such a blow to the basic principles of freedom and justice. It would be odd for a country that imagines itself to be a beacon of hope for people around the world to deny basic constitutional protections to asylum seekers when they finally cross our threshold.

***********************

Read the full article at the link.

It’s not rocket science. The Constitution is clear. The “fog” here has to do with the disingenuous “reasoning” and legal gobbledygook cooked up by the majority Justices to deny Constitutional rights to people of color. Better judges for a better America! From voting rights to immigration, the current Supremes’ majority has too often undermined the right of all persons in America to equal justice under law. That’s exactly what institutionalized racism looks like.

Without major changes in all three branches of our failing Federal Government, equal justice for all in America will remain as much of an illusion as it has been since the inception of our nation. We have the power to do more than talk about equal justice — to start taking the necessary political action that will make it a reality. But, do we have the will and the moral courage to make it happen?

This November vote like your life and the life of our nation depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-21-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎AS TRUMP LITERALLY KILLS AMERICA, “WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE,” ASKS CHARLES M. BLOW @ NY TIMES? — Good Question!

Charles M. Blow
Charles M. Blow
Columnist
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/opinion/trump-coronavirus-us.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 

So again I must ask, where is your outrage? How is this happening? How is it being allowed to happen? Real people, Americans, are being allowed to get sick and die while Trump plays a political game. How long can this continue?

***********************

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

No wonder the rest of the world is aghast at the massive failure of American democracy and our public institutions that were supposed to protect us from an evil, “maliciously incompetent,” totally unqualified “leader!”

PWS

07-20-20

 

 

☠️⚰️🤮INSIDE THE GULAG: ICE’S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: Scofflaw Faux “Law-Enforcement” Agency Operates Outside Feckless U.S. Legal System Afraid to Crack Down on Deceit & Hold Officials Accountable For Illegal Actions — Outlaw Agency Leaves Trail of Health Threats, Broken Federal Judicial System In Its Wake!

https://apple.news/AK1rxkwd-SjSaeHO4DA1r8w

Spencer Ackerman writes in The Daily Beast:

At the end of April, Florida federal Judge Marcia Cooke ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement prisons were such a tinderbox for the novel coronavirus that ICE had to begin efforts at letting people out. The dangers of the pandemic inside three immigrant-detention centers in the state threatened to put ICE on the wrong side of constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment. 

Thousands of miles away, in Arizona, several lawsuits on behalf of people detained by ICE were in various stages of advancement. One, brought in April by the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, sought to release at least eight people at risk of contracting COVID-19 into sponsor custody.

But instead of preparing to release migrants in detention, ICE did something both the Centers for Disease Control and the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons had warned against. They transferred 74 detainees to a for-profit prison in central Virginia called ICA Farmville.

Both medical staff and already-overtaxed employees at ICA Farmville, according to court documents and interviews, had warned ICE against taking in new detainees. ICE had even assured Farmville staff it would use a different Virginia prison as a way-station to quarantine people should transfers have to go through.

Instead, in early June, ICE sent the 74 people—from Arizona’s Florence and Eloy detention centers and Florida’s Krome—directly to ICA Farmville. Staff fears manifested almost immediately. Fifty-one detainees tested positive for COVID-19.

A month later, ICA Farmville is in crisis. It has at least 268 out of around 360 detained people positive for the virus, making the jail by far the most stricken facility in ICE’s network of lockups. While ICA Farmville is claiming that vanishingly few are symptomatic, detainees, backed by medical records seen by The Daily Beast, say in dire terms that isn’t true.

“We think we’re going to die at any time. The help we need we’re not getting,” said a man detained at ICA Farmville whom The Daily Beast will call Michael. “We think we’re going to die without seeing our families. A lot of people here are suffering.”

Former employees say the coronavirus has exposed longstanding failings at ICA Farmville—namely, a company that values making money over protecting either detainees or its staff. At least 22 guards have contracted the coronavirus; others have responded to desperate, panicked and agitated detainees with at least three incidents of violence between June 20 and July 1. “There was no reason to intake any more detainees,” one former employee said, “but it’s all about profit.”

To immigration attorneys and advocates, the cause of the disaster unfolding at ICA Farmville is clear: ICE’s decision to transfer detainees into the facility rather than releasing them in accordance with current and likely future judicial rulings.

ICE “appears to be shifting people around to avoid having to let people out, through being forced in lawsuits,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

“In my opinion, to avoid releases, they’re shifting people around the country or moving them to other detention facilities outside of south Florida,” said Heriberto Hernandez, a Florida immigration attorney who had a client at Krome in Miami, one of the jails cited in Judge Cooke’s ruling, moved into ICA Farmville.

Hernandez said his client at Farmville has tested positive for COVID-19 and “all they did was give him cold medicine.”

“There’s no question whatsoever that this [transfer] was the result of the lawsuits,” said Marc Van Der Hout, an Arizona attorney who sued ICE to release a husband and wife from the “tremendous outbreak” at the Eloy detention center. “There are four lawsuits I’m personally aware of, and possibly more. There’s no doubt in my mind they were doing this to avoid the repercussions of the lawsuits.”

ICE denies conducting any legal shell game over the detainees, and says its motivations were about the health of the detainees.

. . . .

********************

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Of course, this a is a shell game! You don’t need a law degree to figure that out. And, the claim that this is all about detainee heath is patently absurd. The best interests and health of detainees never enter into it except to the minimal extent necessary to avoid wrongful death suits (not very difficult given the Supreme’s tilt in favor of protecting officials who kill people of color).

There is an even more serious problem: The failure of the Federal Judiciary to throw scofflaws like DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf and ICE Acting Director Matt Albence in jail for contempt for their agency’s overt efforts to avoid lawful court orders while endangering the health and safety of both the detainees and the public. 

What  ICE is doing in the “New American Gulag” is essentially a “crime against humanity.” We need better Federal Judges and Justices who will take their oaths to uphold our Constitution in the face of such grotesque and obvious Executive abuses seriously!

Due Process Forever! The New American Gulag, Never!

PWS

07-20-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮 NOT ROCKET SCIENCE: When A Country Allows Itself To Be Governed By An Evil Moron & His Sycophantic Followers, Bad Things Happen!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/19/coronavirus-update-us/

By Derek Hawkins and Felicia Sonmez @ WashPost:

With coronavirus cases rising across the country and the U.S. death toll topping 137,000, President Trump on Sunday dismissed concerns about the spike in infections, telling Fox News that “many of those cases shouldn’t even be cases.”

“Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,” the president told Fox News host Chris Wallace in an interview. “They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.”

While young people make up an increasing share of new cases, the virus has affected people in all age groups. A surge of infections is driving deaths back up again after months of decline, and hospitals in hard-hit states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona are facing an influx of patients that health officials say could soon overwhelm medical systems. Nationwide, hospitalizations were on track to exceed their previous peak of roughly 60,000, reached in the pandemic’s early months.

Here are some other significant developments.

• The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in an upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday. The administration is also trying to block billions that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the people said.
• A growing number of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Currently, 38 percent approve of his handling, and 60 percent disapprove, according to a new Post-ABC News poll.
• A study from South Korea could bolster those who argue that reopening classrooms in much of the United States is too risky, suggesting that while children under 10 are less likely to spread the coronavirus, those between ages 10 and 19 will spread it similarly to adults.
• Georgia’s presentation of its coronavirus data is again under scrutiny, with a viral tweet pointing out how the color-coding of a government map has evolved. At the beginning of the month, for instance, a county needed at least 5,959 coronavirus cases to be colored red in the state’s map of the outbreak. Now, a county needs at least 9,597 — with the result that no other county has newly joined the four that have been colored red since July 1, even as the state’s cases have jumped by more than 37 percent in that period.
• Health authorities are seeking to conduct testing faster while conserving resources. The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday reissued an emergency use authorization to Quest Diagnostics for a coronavirus test to be used in pool testing, which involves combining samples from several people and testing them all at once.

Trump’s remarks came after another week of grim data highlighting the uncontrolled spread of the virus. Infections rose in states from every region of the country, with more than a dozen states on Saturday reaching record highs in their seven-day averages for new daily cases.

Georgia, Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Kentucky reported new single-day case records on Saturday, while states from Vermont to North Dakota to Oregon showed significant increases in their weekly averages, according to tracking by The Washington Post.

More than 20 states are reporting seven-day averages in coronavirus-related deaths that are higher than at the end of June, underscoring the turnaround since May and June, when deaths declined nationally — which Trump had touted as a sign of progress.

Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), whose district encompasses parts of Miami with widespread infections, pushed back on the notion that the new cases were limited to young, healthy people and weren’t a cause for concern.

“It’s the working poor, it’s seniors, it’s now young people, and it’s totally out of control,” Shalala, a former health and human services secretary, said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “We need to close down again … That’s our worst nightmare, and we’re going to have to do that.”

. . . .

************************

You can read the rest of this article about the Trump kakistocracy in action at the link.

It’s a dark and disturbing tale of unrelenting stupidity, evil, corruption, and cowardice on the part of those who refuse to stand up to a would be emperor who has never had any clothes.

PWS

07-19-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY GONE WILD: Billy The Bigot Adds 46 More To America’s Star Chambers — Long on Government Backgrounds, Particularly Prosecutorial — Short on Immigration Expertise or Reputations For Fairness &  Scholarship — CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT: Asylum, Human Rights Expertise & Experience Representing Humans Seeking Justice!

Here’s the list with bios:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1295301/download

This list includes what appears to be a municipal traffic court judge and someone who spent the last four years working for a white nationalist hate group (per the SPLC). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mesbqxTSzEM

Due Process Forever! America’s Star Chambers, Never!☠️⚰️🤮

PWS

07-19-20

☠️👎🏻🤮GOODBYE GONZO! — Notorious Racist, Bigot, Homophobe, Misogynist Loses GOP Primary — Blinded By The Fog of Hate, Gonzo Never Understood Trump’s Sole Overriding Concern — Eventually, His Failure To Put Shielding Trump’s Corruption First Made Him “the only monument to the Confederacy that Trump was eager to remove.” (Pema Levy @ Mother Jones)

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Exclusive for Courtside

July 14, 2020

Back before the 2016 election, GOP backbench Jim Crow hate monger Senator Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions saw a kindred spirit who would help him realize his whitewashed, faux Christian view of America: Donald Trump. Becoming the first Senator to endorse Trump got Gonzo a ticket to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, where he quickly established himself as probably the worst inhabitant after the Civil War and before Billy Barr ( a period that notably includes “John the Con” Mitchell).

During his tenure, Gonzo separated families, caged kids, targeted vulnerable Latino refugee women for abuse, illegally punished “sanctuary cities,” expanded the “New American Gulag,” diverted prosecutorial resources from real crimes to minor immigration violations, expanded the “New American Gulag,” advocated discrimination against the LGBTQ community under the guise of religious bigotry, encouraged police brutality against Black Americans, aided efforts to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters, spread false narratives about immigrant crime and asylum fraud, dissed private lawyers, stripped Immigration Judges of their authority to control their own dockets, multiplied the Immigration Court backlogs, illegally tried to terminate DACA while smearing Dreamers, spoke to hate groups, issued unethical “precedent decisions” while falsely claiming to be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, interfered with asylum grants and judicial independence, put anti-due-process production quotas on Immigration Judges, attempted to dismantle congressionally mandated “know your rights” programs, to name just a few of his gross abuses of public office. Indeed, other than Stephen Miller and Trump himself, how many notorious child abusers get to walk free in America while their victims suffer lifetime trauma?

Despite never being the brightest bulb in the pack, his feeble attempt at “legal opinions” sometimes drawing ridicule from lower court judges, Gonzo is generally credited with doing more than any other Cabinet member to advance Trump’s agenda of hate and White Nationalist bigotry. He actually was dumb enough to believe that his unswerving dedication to a program of promoting the white race over people of color and Christians over all other religions would ingratiate him with Trump. 

That would assume, however, that Trump had some guiding principle, however vile and disgusting, beyond himself. Sessions might be the only person in Washington who thought racism would trump self-protection. I’m not saying that Trump isn’t a committed racist — clearly he is. Just that his commitment to racism is subservient to his only real defining characteristic — narcissism. Just ask his niece, Mary.

Gonzo failed in the only thing that ever counted: Protecting Trump, his family, and his corrupt cronies from the Mueller investigation. It wasn’t, as some have inaccurately claimed, a show of ethics or dedication to the law.

Even Gonzo realized that participating in an investigation involving a campaign organization of which he was a member and therefore both a potential witness and target, would be an egregious ethical violation that could cost him his law license as well as a potential criminal act of perjury, given that he had testified under oath during his Senate confirmation that he intended to recuse himself. Apparently, that was on a day when Trump was too busy tweeting or playing golf to focus on the implications of that particular statement under oath by his nominee.

After Trump fired him, Gonzo’s political fortunes took a sharp downturn. A guy who polled 97% of the vote in running unopposed for the Senate in 2014, polled only 38% of the vote in overwhelmingly losing the GOP primary to former Auburn Football Coach Tommy Tuberville. Tommy, a “Trump loyalist” with extreme far-right views and no known qualifications for the job, is not much of an improvement over Sessions.

Perhaps the only good news is that Alabama currently has a very decent and competent U.S. Senator, Doug Jones (D), who represents all of the people of the state. Everybody should support Doug’s campaign to maintain decency and commitment to equal justice in Government.

For those who want a further retrospective on Sessions’s grotesque career of promoting a return to Jim Crow while on the public dole, I recommend the following articles from Mother Jones and the Advocate:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/jeff-sessions-ends-his-political-career-in-a-blaze-of-racism/

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2020/7/14/career-racist-homophobe-jeff-sessions-over

Goodbye and good riddance to one of America’s worst and most disgusting politicos not named Trump or Steve King.

Due Process Forever! 

PWS

07-15-20