"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
A watchdog group has filed a brief opposing the Justice Department’s push to keep secret former Attorney General William Barr’s memo concerning ex-President Donald Trump’s possible obstruction of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“The DOJ must produce the document, clean up the department, and show that it will not be used for the personal protection of any president,” the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a statement Friday after it filed the brief. CREW initially sought release of the memo through the Freedom of Information Act.
At issue is Barr’s decision to ignore any obstruction of justice issues concerning Trump despite strong evidence against him revealed by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. Critics said Barr misled the public by cherry-picking quotes from Mueller’s report to protect Trump. They accused him of making a political decision rather than a legal one.
Barr claimed that justification for the lack of any action against Trump was carefully considered and spelled out in the memo, which had previously only been made public in a highly redacted form.
But according to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who ordered the release of the nine-page memo earlier this month, Barr’s decision was a foregone conclusion. Barr had already made up his mind not to prosecute Trump before considering any of the advice or analysis that he claimed informed his decision, she said in her order.
Jackson added that the memo contained “strategic, as opposed to legal, advice” and that both the writers and the recipients already had a mutual understanding about what the prosecutorial decision would be.
A “review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” the judge wrote in the order.
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Read the rest of Mary’s article at the link.
If Team Garland has a plan to “clean up the Department,” as advocated by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in their brief, they are certainly keeping THAT a secret.
Nowhere has Garland’s failure to be the long awaited “Mr.Clean” been more notable and harmful to good governance than at EOIR. There, he has inexplicably continued to unconstitutionally promote a charade of a“court” system that lacks fair and impartial judges. Rather than bringing in the necessary expert progressive reformers from the NDPA to clean up the mess, restore due process, create quasi-judicial independence, and institute best practices, the dysfunction continues to get worse, progressive advocacy groups (who helped put Biden/Harris in office) are totally outraged and frustrated, the “same old, same old” deficient recruitment and hiring practices remain in effect, and the totally dysfunctional bureaucratic structure, comprised largely of Trump holdovers and bureaucrats, maintains its “death spiral.”⚰️
The Democratic senator has spent years calling for more public defenders and fewer corporate attorneys getting federal judgeships. Now Joe Biden agrees.
For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships.
“We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been largely in line with the prior statistics.”
Warren wasn’t talking about diversity in terms of demographics like race or gender; Obama made history on those fronts with his judicial nominees. She was talking about the problem with presidents and senators ― in both parties ― routinely picking corporate attorneys and prosecutors who went to Ivy League schools to be federal judges.
If you want the nation’s courts to reflect the people they serve, Warren has argued, we need judges who have been public defenders and civil rights attorneys, people familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on low incomes or otherwise marginalized. A diversity of legal professionals on the federal bench means more informed decisions on issues related to economic justice and civil rights.
At last, the times are catching up with Warren.
President Joe Biden is signaling he’s ready to make professional diversity central to his judicial selection process. He hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to Democratic senators in December urging them to recommend court picks to the White House as soon as possible, and said that Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”
Top Democrats in the House are putting a spotlight on the issue too, even though they don’t have a say in confirming federal judges.
“Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to judicial diversity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a Thursday subcommittee hearing on this subject. “There are ways in which the federal judiciary of 2021 looks uncomfortably similar to the federal judiciary of 1921 … Somehow, despite all our progress, today’s federal judges remain, for instance, overwhelmingly male, white, former prosecutors or corporate lawyers who went to a handful of law schools.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”
That’s basically a description of scores of immigration/human rights experts out here in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”). Yes, they should be a primary source of appointees to the Article III Judiciary! Absolutely! But, they should also be appointed to the BIA and the Immigration Courts — now!
At present, the Immigration Courts are “administrative courts,” not part of the Article III Judiciary; therefore, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary. They are “administered” by a now “evil-clown-like” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ DOJ bureaucracy called “EOIR.” We need to get the right progressive scholars and “disciples of due process” on the Immigration Bench — immediately, without further delay!
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Immigration Courts are one of most powerful tools in American law. Also, Constitution be damned, until we get a long overdue Article I independent Immigration Court, they are completely controlled by the AG — Judge Merrick B. Garland. This is a big, big deal — nearly 600 judgeships, almost the size of the entire U.S. District Court system, are at stake!
Sessions and Barr quickly figured: Why not aggressively weaponize EOIR to undermine American democracy, institutionalize racism and misogyny, and promote White Nationalist authoritarianism? And, that’s exactly what they did — to the max. Using EOIR judgeships to reward some of their unqualified, white, nativist buddies in the process was an “added bennie.”
G. Reaper Approaches ICE Gulag With “Imbedded Captive Star Chamber” Run By EOIR, For Their “Partner” Reaper Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
Even the totally incomprehensible incompetence with which they administered EOIR fulfilled their “negative dream.” Dysfunctional Immigration Courts became an important tool for debilitating the entire U.S. justice system and “Dred Scottifying” (dehumanizing) persons of color before the law.
Those with compelling cases for relief, many pending for years, were shuffled off to the end of the docket. Or, if they did get a hearing, incompetent or compromised “judges” at the trial and appellate levels often arbitrarily denied their claims for bogus reasons. This disgraceful mess of a “court” actually penalized those with strong cases for relief — many who should have been done and joined our society years ago instead linger in the largely self-created EOIR “backlog” of 1.3 million cases. Or, theyare condemned to endless litigation to vindicate their rights in a system intentionally rigged against them.
“Justice” Star Chamber Style
Looking for the underpinning for the idea that people of color have reduced rights to vote, political participation, and that their lives don’t really matter? Look no further than the ongoing “Dred Scottification” of asylum applicants and other people of color in Immigration Court, now enshrined in a number of bogus “precedents” issued by White Nationalist AGs and their wholly-owned BIA!
BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And, their job was “easy as pie” following the indolent stewardship of their Dem predecessors. When the latter finally got around to filling judicial vacancies at EOIR, every couple of years, they handed them out almost exclusively to government “insiders” — like they were “length of service” pins! Better-qualified progressive, due-process-oriented, experts, scholars, advocates, and others in the private/NGO/academic sector — folks who actually could have brought badly needed professionalism, excellence, and order to a system careening out of control — were basically “shut out” by the Dems. Interesting way to reward your potential allies!
The Dems’ “diverse recruiting program” for the Immigration Judiciary was to advertise the positions for about 10 minutes on the “insider online bulletin board” known as “USA Jobs.” Then, after an average two-year long, excruciatingly wasteful and mindless “Rube Goldberg-designed evaluation” by layer after layer of bureaucrats — few, if any of them actual sitting Immigration Judges — participating, in most cases they basically just selected “the next ICE prosecutor, EOIR staffer, or OIL litigator up.” But, the “beauty” of this system is that with so many layers of bureaucracy involved, nobody could be held accountable for the actual selections! Talk about a “finger-pointers’ dream.”
Oh yeah, and of course there was no room for public input and/or participation in this process. Some of the newly anointed judges actually had rather less-than-stellar reputations in the immigration community at large. Many would have drawn blank stares if mentioned to a panel of acknowledged immigration and human rights experts. Few were “household names,” except perhaps in a negative sense. No matter to the Obama folks!
During the Obama Administration, I attended a so-called “training-session” at an Immigration Judge Conference — this was “in person,” although for a number of years we got “home-video grade” training CDs. There, curiously, one of these “newbies” was selected to “educate” a group of us, many of us with decades of experience in the field and some with actual teaching credentials under their belts. Our “instructor” referred to the Government as “us,” to the respondent and counsel as “them,” and bragged that “our big wins from OIL” would make it easier to deny asylum.
Other “instructors” parroted cringingly mind boggling mis-statements of asylum law — apparently designed to fit into OIL’s preferred litigation positions. And, incredibly, this was with the “founding mother” of U.S. Asylum Law, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who had argued and won the landmark “well-founded-fear” case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca before the Supremes, effectively muzzled and holding her head in the audience.
In 21 years on the bench, during “EOIR training,” I was lectured to by a variety of BIA Attorney Advisors, OIL Attorneys, politicos, DHS Officials, State Department Officials, Ethics Officers, stress managers, and an occasional NGO advocate. Never, did I get to hear my colleague Judge Marks’s views on the development of asylum law since Cardoza. Sure, that didn’t stop us from carrying on a dialogue elsewhere, as we did. But, we were pretty much “on the same page.” The folks who needed to hear what Judge Marks had to say didn’t.
Hon. Dana Leigh Marks U.S. Immigration Judge San Francisco Immigration Court Past President, National Association of Immigration Judges
And, we wonder why Dems inevitably screw up immigration law, and end up defending highly regressive actions and “designed to fail” policies — try “baby jails,” indefinite detention, and non-English-speaking toddlers “representing themselves” in Immigration Court. I kid you not! Each of the foregoing were things that the Obama DOJ vigorously advanced and defended before Federal Courts!🤮
Will Judge Garland figure it out before it’s too late? Or, as his Obama predecessors did, will he fritter away his time with “more sexy,” but actually far less important initiatives and lofty ideals that will be effectively undermined by failing to create a progressive, expert, well functioning, professional Immigration Judiciary.
Judge Merrick B. Garland, U.S. Attorney General Official White House Photo Public Realm
Racial justice, equal justice, and due process for all persons in America start in the Immigration Court. And, right now they are dying there! If Judge Garland doesn’t pay attention, grasp the moment, aggressively clean house, and take the long overdue, radical, courageous actions to build a better Immigration Judiciary, the whole U.S. justice system might well come crashing down upon him! And, he will have only himself to blame!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it!
In an absolutely stunning statement, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) admitted in a radio interview that he wasn’t frightened by white insurrectionists’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — but said he would have been “concerned” had they been Black.
Johnson accurately predicted that his racist statement to conservative radio host Joe Pags on Thursday would get him “into trouble.”
The senator noted that he has been criticized for previous remarks that he “never felt threatened” by the attack.
He added: “Now, had the tables been turned, Joe, and this’ll get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
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Read the full article at the link.
Oh Wisconsin, how far you have fallen to inflict this racist idiot on our nation!
Judge Tipton in the Southern District of Texas enjoined the 100-day removal pause. The 105-page order has something for everyone. For the history fans, there are references or citations to John Marshall, Joseph Story, and James Madison. For the federalism aficionados, there’s a description of the three branches of government and an explanation about the relationship between the federal government and the states. For the administrative law scholars and Bluebook fans, the proposition that “ICE is an agency within DHS” is supported by a footnote, a citation, and a parenthetical explanation. And for anyone interested in bilingual education, you’ll note that “regular” students cost Texas one amount and students enrolled in the state’s bilingual program cost another amount.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Professor of Law
University of Denver crimmigration.com
(he/him/his/el)
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The case name says it all, particularly in light of the past two weeks. Indeed, “Texas v. The People” would be equally fitting. GOP misrule and the vile shenanigans of GOP politicos, like Texas AG Ken Paxton (who also fled the state during the crisis he and his party helped cause) has real life consequences. It kills and harms U.S. citizens of all political persuasions in addition to foreign nationals in our country.
Note that the order does not purport to stop DHS or EOIR from granting stays of removal on a case by case basis.
Notwithstanding the flaws in Judge Tipton’s reasoning, cogently pointed out by Cesar, I wouldn’t put much stock in the chances that the right-wing dominated Fifth Circuit or the Supremes will rein in Tipton and other righty jurists. I predict that GOP jurists oft-expressed grave concerns about the effect of nationwide injunctions will dissipate now that they are being used as a tool to undermine the Biden Administration’s attempts to return rationality and humanity to our justice system.
The deep problems in the Article III Judiciary, aggravated by four years of bad appointments by Trump & Mitch, reinforce the pressing need for immediate Immigration Court reform, starting with replacing the BIA. That is the most pressing task facing the Administration on the judicial front. The EOIR judiciary is one that the Biden Administration has complete authority to fix with better judges. Now, not later!
And, with better judges at EOIR, there will be fewer bad legal decisions thrown into the Article III “lottery.” Moreover, as I continue to point out, it will give the Administration a much-needed pool of diverse, readily identifiable, talented, experienced, progressive, due-process/human rights committed jurists to draw on for Article III appointments. Additionally, it sets the stage for legislation to create an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court.
Can advocates for racial justice, human rights, and immigrants’ rights finally get the message across to Judge Garland about the urgent need to act decisively? Or, like the Obama Administration, will this turn out to be another golden opportunity for justice squandered?
Unfortunately, I could find little in this week’s confirmation hearings to visibly show that Judge Garland “got” the connection between the refuge that he and his family were so grateful for and the continuing unconscionable mess at EOIR.
Indeed, if Judge Garland and his family showed up at our borders today seeking refuge from persecution, they would unceremoniously have been loaded onto a plane and “orbited” back to the persecution from which they fled without any process at all, let alone “due process of law.” Even if they had gotten a hearing, an EOIR “judge” somewhere along the line would undoubtedly have found a “reason to deny” regardless of the need for protection.
For a good measure, they probably would have been mocked as “criminals, line jumpers, and job stealers” by GOP politicos and their toadies still stashed throughout our broken and compromised immigration bureaucracy. Their lives would have been treated as worthless; their removal to persecution, harm and possible death, just another “statistic” to tout in connection with false claims to having achieved “border security!”
Use the “overseas refugee program?” Probably not. Although Biden has pledged to restart refugee admissions, as a practical matter our once proud and highly efficient refugee processing system is currently in tatters after four years of intentional abuse inflicted by the defeated regime.
Every day that the ongoing problems at EOIR remain unresolved is another day of injustice for refugees and other migrants, as well as another day of frustration and abuse heaped on those attempting to help them achieve justice.
Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Sunday made history with their appointments to lead two separate Senate subcommittees.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), announced Booker will chair the subcommittee on criminal justice and counterterrorism. He’s the first Black chair of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
The committee also announced Padilla will chair the subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety ― the first Latino to do so. He became the first Latino senator from California last month when he took over Kamala Harris’ seat as she assumed the vice presidency.
In a statement Sunday, Padilla said he’s honored by the historic appointment, noting his roots as the “proud son of immigrants from Mexico.”
“While no state has more at stake in immigration policy than California, the entire nation stands to benefit from thoughtful immigration reform,” Padilla said. “I commit to bringing the urgency to immigration reform that this moment demands and millions of hard working immigrants have earned.”
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Read the full article at the link.
“Urgency” on immigration and human rights is exactly what’s needed and has been sorely missing from Dem leadership in the past. There is nothing more “urgent” than insuring immediate comprehensive Immigration Court reform at the DOJ, eventually leading to the creation of a progressive, independent, Article I Immigration Court.
Without dramatic Immigration Court reforms, most other immigration reforms will prove to be sporadic, inconsistent, and ineffective. Somebody has to insure that the Executive Branch complies with due process and other legal requirements. That’s been totally lacking over the past four years, and has also been problematic in past Dem Administrations!
Without addressing the institutionalized dehumanization inflicted on people of color (“Dred Scottification”) by the immigration system, there will be no real racial justice in America!
Supremes Sign Death Warrants For Vulnerable Refugees, Trash Refugee Act of 1980Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under licenseA girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. / Photo by David Maung
by Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz in BuzzFeed News:
After days of confusion about changes along the southern border, the Biden administration on Wednesday said immigrants should not try to enter the US because most will still be turned away under a Trump-era policy that has recently come under legal scrutiny.
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Confusion about who was being allowed into the US in recent days forced the administration to issue a stronger warning. Last week, reports of some families being allowed into the US after being apprehended at the border resulted in speculation that immigrants would no longer be immediately expelled and instead be allowed to fight their immigration cases from within the United States. In the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, immigration advocates have reported seeing about 100 people a day released by Customs and Border Protection. In other parts of Texas, shelters have also seen increasing numbers of immigrant families, but it is not clear why.
Attorneys and advocates who work with immigrants along the border have been bombarded with phone calls and texts about whether they should try their luck at getting into the US. Erika Pinheiro, policy and litigation director with the immigrant advocacy group Al Otro Lado, said it was “incredibly disappointing” that the Biden administration has continued to expel immigrants under the CDC order.
“We know now that the CDC order prohibiting asylum processing at the border did not arise from public health concerns but rather was part of Stephen Miller’s efforts to dismantle the US asylum system and was implemented despite opposition from CDC leadership,” Pinheiro said, referring to one of Trump’s former senior advisers. “US expulsions of asylum-seekers, including infants, constitute plain violations of domestic and international laws meant to protect vulnerable refugees. CBP absolutely has the resources to process asylum-seekers in a safe and humane way.”
The turnbacks, known as expulsions, are legally different from deportations, which would mean an immigrant had actually undergone the immigration process and found to not be legally allowed to stay in the US. Critics say the government is using the public health orders as an excuse to turn back immigrants at the border.
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“While we recognize that the Biden administration has been saddled with a lot of bad policy and structural problems, it cannot continue the Trump administration practice of turning away people in danger based on illegal policies, such as the notorious and pretextual Title 42 policy,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU.
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Read the full article at the link.
“Go suffer and die somewhere else, out of our sight,” might not be the best message for an Administration trying to re-establish its human rights and humanitarian leadership and credentials.Ever hear of the “St. Louis Incident?” It’s always easy to find a way to “just say no” to refugees — and the consequences are seldom pretty.
Those who won’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. Refugee and forced migration situations happen in the “here and now;” they can’t be “back burnered” — no matter how much policy officials might wish otherwise. In a forced migration situation, “doing nothing” is an action that produces consequences for both the forced migrant and those who ignore their plight.
There are many daily potentially deadly and dehumanizing consequences of continuing to ignore asylum laws and Constitutional due process for asylum seekers at our Southern Border.
One predictable one: Instead of turning themselves in at the border or to the Border Patrol shortly after entry, as had been happening until Miller & co. intervened, those seeking refuge apparently have gotten the message that our legal system is and remains a sham for them. Consequently, increasingly they are simply evading the Border Patrol and disappearing into the interior with no screening whatsoever — health, legal, or background. Also, by intentionally driving people out of the legal system, the Administration is totally blowing a chance to harness and build upon one of the most powerful known facts — represented individuals with asylum hearings scheduled show up for their hearings!
According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the estimated number of so-called “get always” — actually human beings seeking refuge — hit 1,000 on Sunday.
Sure, there are many aspects of this problem. But, it has been “out there” for nearly a year!
Sure seems to me that with the right experts in charge, including folks like Lee Gelernt and Erika Pinhero, this issue could and should have been addressed more constructively and with much more urgency by the Biden Administration by now. Why not harness the expertise and proven problem solving abilities of folks like Lee, Erika, and many other members of the New Due Process Army rather than fighting with and resisting them?
Instead, it looks like time and resources will continue to be wasted on forcing policy changes through litigation. Meanwhile, vulnerable asylum seekers and their families will continue to suffer as illustrated by this recent article from HuffPost about the human consequences for those caught up in the Government’s scofflaw border policies.
NOTE TO PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SECRETARY JEN PSAKI: Sorry, Jen, but those fleeing for their lives don’t generally respond well to “don’t come right now, we don’t want you” messages, particularly from folks who have never been in that situation themselves. It’s actually pretty insulting to think that folks fleeing to the U.S. 1) aren’t smart enough to know the dangers involved; 2) don’t realize that the the U.S. Government doesn’t want them; and/or 3) have choices about their travel as Jen and her buddies might have when planning a summer vacation.
As one of my esteemed colleagues once told me: “Desperate people do desperate things.” What about people who keep repeating the same policy mistakes over and over while expecting different results and failing to grasp either the absolute urgency or the human side of forced migration issues? It’s sort of like going to the emergency room with a burst appendix and being told, “Why don’t you just sit in the waiting room until we doctors figure out what to do? Get back to you later!”
Somewhere out there, Stephen Miller must be gloating about how he totally outsmarted and outflanked the Biden Team!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Oh, when will they ever learn, when will they learn?
PWS
02-11-21
UPDATE: THE CONTINUING REAL TRAUMA CAUSED BY THE “REMAIN IN MEXICO PROGRAM” (A/K/A “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO”) WHILE THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “STUDIES” THEIR NEXT MOVE:
Emily Green writes in Vice, as reposted in ImmigrationProf Blog:
By Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig
January 22 at 10:38 PM ET
Then-President Donald Trump in early January entertained a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a different Justice Department lawyer who was more amenable to pursuing his unfounded claims of voter fraud, nearly touching off a crisis at the country’s premier federal law enforcement institution, people familiar with the matter said.
The plan — if enacted — would have pushed out Jeffrey Rosen as the acting attorney general and installed in his place Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump had appointed to lead the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and who later would come to lead the Civil Division. Clark, then, could have taken steps to wield the Justice Department’s power to help keep Trump in office. But the president was ultimately dissuaded from moving forward after a high-stakes meeting with those involved, the people said.
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter. The move was first reported by the New York Times. Legal analysts said it amounted to a disastrous attack on the Justice Department’s independence, and perhaps something worse.
“Before the insurrectionist assault on the US Capitol, there was an attempted coup at the Justice Dept. — fomented by the President of the United States,” former Justice Department official David Laufman wrote on Twitter.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Rosen.
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So, here’s the deal!
“Billy the Bigot” was pushed out because his thorough corruption and well-established toadiness did not extend as far as plotting treason against the nation. He was replaced by misogynist Jeffrey Rosen who used his brief time in office to dump on a courageous abused refugee woman from El Salvador who had already been screwed by racist, White Nationalist, misogynist and notorious child abuser Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions.
But, wait, there was an even more slimy and treasonous scumbag hiding in the halls of “Justice.” A dude named Jeff Clark, who apparently believed in the Q-Anon/Ted Cruz/Josh Hawley/Kevin McCarthy election conspiracy theories and wanted to make a name for himself by sucking up to the Big Orange Traitor, disenfranchising voters of color, and, oh yeah, incidentally, overthrowing the US Government.
Meanwhile, a few folks in the White House were desperately trying to talk the unhinged traitor out of his harebrained scheme for committing treason in public view.But, nobody thought this plot against our Constitution and our Government was important enough to blow the whistle, inform then Vice President Pence or the U.S. Congress, or join the call for invocation of the 25th Amendment!
Oh, and it gets worse! Insurrectionist Traitor and House Leader of the Party of Treason, Kevin McCarthy wants to assure you that YOU, that’s right YOU, caused the insurrection, not just Trump, his supporters, and those GOP crazies who actually planned, encouraged, and carried it out. And, of course, not Kevin the Traitor himself. “Accountability” and “honesty” just aren’t terms within the lexicon of modern day Republicanism! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-everybody-capitol-attack_n_600b9785c5b6f401aea48948
It’s not like some morning guys like McCarthy, Cruz, Hawley, Graham, et al are going to wake upand find they actually believe in American democracy, equal justice, and our Constitution.
The majority of us are going to have to learn to live with, beware of, and develop strategies to consistently overcome the “Party of Insurrection and Treason” and their followers. Otherwise, there will be no America for future generations!
Ever think it’s strange that the cowardly “Party of Jim Crow” that happily abridges the voting rights, civil rights, and due process rights of people of color and the most vulnerable among us falls all over itself with concerns about “full due process” for the Big Orange Traitor — who of course gets mondo due process — in the incoming impeachment trial?
Yeah, holding a former President accountable for inciting a treasonous, violent insurrection would be “divisive.” I guess lies, insurrection, and treason are the only real “unity” that the GOP will recognize! So far, President Biden’s calls for national unity have been met with more lies, threats of obstruction, and condescending BS from the GOP. We can’t “unify” with those who seek our nation’s destruction and steadfastly refuse to apologize, acknowledge truth, and comport themselves with simple human decency.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was unanimously reelected on Friday for another term. Her message to the party: “I am mad and I’m not going to let socialism rule this country.”
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Newsflash: It wasn’t the radical left that stormed the doors of the Capitol on Wednesday. It wasn’t the radical left that told a group of known white nationalists to “stand by” during a nationally televised presidential debate. It wasn’t the radical left that addressed the soon-to-be rioters and declared to members of Congress that “we’re coming for you.” It wasn’t the radical left who on the eve of the Capitol siege announced their plans to walk the path to sedition.
The only “radical” elements America sees now are the words and actions of the Republican Party. Yet Republicans have forever gotten away with throwing around the label “radical” to characterize the Democratic Party.
How many times in political ads have Republicans used the words “radical” and “dangerous” to describe their Democratic challengers? How many Fox News segments have Sean Hannity and friends devoted to the Democrats’ “radical extreme socialist agenda”?
What happened on Wednesday was an inevitable culmination of years of extreme and alarmist rhetoric from the Republican Party and their propaganda platforms. Watching Republicans act shocked that the people they have relentlessly and unapologetically pandered to for years is appalling.
With every tweet, every soundbite, every campaign ad, Republicans have been signaling to their supporters that it’s time to take matters in their hands. When you label something as “radical” or “extreme” or “dangerous,” you are telling people they need to defend themselves against a threat. You are telling them they need to be ready to fight. You are telling them their impulse to resort to violence and destruction is justified and righteous.
There is absolutely nothing radical or extreme about protesting racial inequality, social injustice and a culture of police brutality in America. There is nothing radical or extreme about speaking out for gender equality and women’s rights. There is nothing radical or extreme about advocating for universal healthcare coverage. There is nothing radical or extreme about supporting action to address the growing threat of climate change. There is nothing radical or extreme about wanting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. There is nothing radical or extreme about embracing the need for gun reform in the wake of mass shootings. There is nothing radical or extreme about wearing a mask and social distancing amid a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 365,000 Americans.
The extremists are the ones who egged on the insurrectionists with four years of lies. Republicans may be abandoning the sinking Trump ship, but don’t let this 11th-hour maneuver fool you. That even after Wednesday’s events Republicans in Congress and in the media are still clinging to the “radical socialist agenda” narrative shows they haven’t changed — though they are scurrying to launder their tattered reputations.
Don’t believe me?
Just watch how many of them will vote to support articles of impeachment if the Democrats bring those to the House floor next week.
Kurt Bardella is a senior advisor to The Lincoln Project. He is a former aide to California Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray and was an aide in the California State Senate and Assembly. @KurtBardella
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
The opposition to be sure! “Loyal” — no way! The “Party of Treason” — the GOP — is exactly what its lies, vile rhetoric, lack of values, and insurrectionist actions tell us it is — the gravest existential threat to our nation and our national security since the Confederacy of Traitors.
Beware and be prepared for their continuing assaults on our democracy, our nation, truth, and humanity!
I’m angry, too, Ronna, about your lies, false narratives, and scurrilous attacks on my country! I’ll do everything possible to insure that your party of cowardice, immorality, treason, disloyalty, studied stupidity, racism, and insurrection is removed from political power at every level of our democracy. Clearly, American democracy and equal justice under law are “radical” concepts to you, Cotton, and rest of your party of lying, cowardly Putinist puppets and traitors!
Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under licenseAmanda Holpuch Reporter The Guardian
Erika Pinheiro, Litigation & Policy Director, Al Otro Lado, speaks at TEDSalon: Border Stories, September 10, 2019 at the TED World Theater, New York, NY Photo: Ryan Lash / TED, Creative Commons License
Amanda Holpuch reports from the Gulag for HuffPost:
. . . .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bars asylum seekers and refugees from the US under an order called Title 42. People who attempt to cross the border are returned, or expelled, back to Mexico, without an opportunity to test their asylum claims. More than 250,000 migrants processed at the US-Mexico border between March and October were expelled, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.
The situation is dire. Thousands of asylum-seekers are stuck at the border, uncertain when they will be able to file their claims. The camps they wait in are an even greater public health risk that before.
Outside the border, Al Otro Lado has fought for detained migrants to get PPE and medical releases. Prisons are one of the worst possible places to be when there is a contagious disease and deaths in the custody of US immigration authorities have increased dramatically this year. They have also provided supplies to homeless migrants in southern California who have been shut out of public hygiene facilities.
Pinheiro said there will be improvements with Trump out of office, but some of the Biden campaign promises to address asylum issues at the border will be toothless until the CDC order is revoked. It’s a point she plans to make in conversations with the transition team.
A prime concern for advocates about the Biden administration is that it will include some of the same people from Barack Obama’s administration, which had more deportations than any other president and laid the groundwork for some controversial Trump policies.
While it is a worry for Pinheiro, she has hope that the new administration will build something better. “I would hope a lot of those people, and I know for some of them, have been able to reflect on how the systems they built were weaponized by Trump to do things like family separation or detaining children,” she said.
Family separation, which has left 545 children still waiting to be reunited with their parents, was a crucial issue for many voters and Pinheiro hopes that energy translates to other immigration policies.
“How did you feel when your government committed the atrocity of family separation in your name?” Pinheiro said. “The next step is really understanding that similar and sometimes worse atrocities are still being committed in the name of border security and limiting migration.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
I totally agree with Erika Pinheiro that there is no excuse for the continuing violations of our Constitution, statutes, international obligations, and simple human decency. The regime’s policies are nothing more than “crimes against humanity” thinly disguised as “law enforcement,” “national security,” and “public health” (from a regime whose “malicious incompetence,” cruelty, and callous intentional undermining of medical advice during the pandemic have contributed to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans).
Even more disgracefully, the Supremes and other Federal Courts have failed in their Constitutional duty to stand up to the abusers and hold the regime’s scofflaw “leaders” (to where, one might ask?) accountable. What’s the purpose of life-tenured judges who lack the training, wisdom, ethics, and most of all courage to enforce the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable against lawless, dishonest, and fundamentally cowardly “Executive bullies” hiding behind their official positions? Not much, in my view! There are deep problems in all three branches of our badly compromised and ailing Government!
I have also spoken out on Courtsideagainst the dangers of putting the same failed Dem politicos who thoroughly screwed up immigration policy, and particularly the Immigration Courts, back in charge again. I agree with Erika’s hope that some of them have gained wisdom and perspective in the last four years. But, why rely on the hope that those who failed in the past have suddenly gotten smarter, when there are “better alternatives” out there ready to step in and solve the problems?
Why not put in place some talented new faces from the NDPA with better, more progressive ideas, tons of dynamic energy, and the demonstrated willingness and courage to stand tall against bureaucratic tyranny? Give them a chance to solve the problems! Erika looks like one of those who should be solving problems and implementing better immigration policies “from the inside” in the Biden-Harris Administration!
The “deterrence only paradigm” that has driven our border enforcement policies over the past half century has been a demonstrable failure, both in terms of law enforcement and the unnecessary and unjustifiable human carnage that it has caused. Why keep doing variations on discredited policies and expecting better results?
We know that ugly, racist rhetoric, jailing families and kids in punitive conditions, weaponizing courts as enforcement tools, suspending the rule of law, denying hearings, and even summarily, illegally, and immorally returning asylum seekers to death won’t stop folks from fleeing unbearable conditions in their native countries! They will continue to seek protection in America, even in the face of predictable abuses, life-threatening dangers, and little chance of success in a system intentionally “gamed” to mistreat and reject them while denying their humanity.
Desperate people do desperate things. They will continue to do them even in the face of inhuman abuses inflicted by those whose better fortunes in life have not been accompanied by any particular compassion, understanding of the predicament of others, or recognition of an obligation to abjure the power to bully and torment those less fortunate in favor of addressing their situations in a fair, reasonable, and humane manner.
Human migration is far older than nation states, zero tolerance, baby jails, family incarceration, biased judging, national selfishness disguised as “patriotism,” and border walls. It has outlasted and outflanked all of the vain attempts to artificially suppress it by force and gimmicks. It’s time for some policies that recognize reality, see its benefits, and work with the flow rather than futilely in opposition to it.
It’s past time to look beyond the failures of yesterday to progressive solutions and new leadership committed to solving problems while enhancing justice, respecting human dignity, and enhancing human rights (which, in the end, are all of our rights)!
Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽🇺🇸 Same old, same old never!
Trump Administration Ordered To Stop Expelling Children Who Cross Border
At least 8,800 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March.
Nomaan Merchant
HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to stop expelling immigrant children who cross the southern border alone, halting a policy that has resulted in thousands of rapid deportations of minors during the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction sought by legal groups suing on behalf of children whom the government sought to expel before they could request asylum or other protections under federal law.
The Trump administration has expelled at least 8,800 unaccompanied children since March, when it issued an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus as grounds for barring most people crossing the border from remaining in the United States.
Border agents have forced many people to return to Mexico right away, while detaining others in holding facilities or hotels, sometimes for days or weeks. Meanwhile, government-funded facilities meant to hold children while they are placed with sponsors have thousands of unused beds.
Sullivan’s order bars only the expulsion of children who cross the border unaccompanied by a parent. The government has expelled nearly 200,000 people since March, including adults, and parents and children traveling together.
“This policy was sending thousands of young children back to danger without any hearing,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Like so many other Trump administration policies, it was gratuitously cruel and unlawful.”
The Justice Department did not immediately say whether it would appeal. It has appealed another federal judge’s order barring the use of hotels to detain children.
The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden has not directly said whether it will keep trying to expel immigrants under public-health authority. Biden is expected to roll back several Trump administration policies restricting asylum as part of a broader shift on immigration.
Hopefully, the Biden Administration will not only not only withdraw the large body of frivolous immigration and asylum litigation and bogus positions being pursued in bad faith by the regime, but also clean house at the DOJ, DHS,and deal with those at the CDC who have aided and abetted these outrageous illegal actions.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to release a report by the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, finding that the group ― comprised entirely of current and former members of law enforcement ― had been “far from transparent.”
Senior U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a 45-page ruling finding that commission ― which President Donald Trump announced with fanfare at a police conference last year ― had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires that committees be “fairly balanced” in the viewpoints represented.
Attorney General William Barr said there was a need to hear from a “diversity of backgrounds and perspectives,” but the commission was full of law enforcement officials. Bates’ order requires Barr “to ensure the Commission has a fairly balanced membership.”
Last month, as HuffPost previously reported, an elected prosecutor quit one of the commission’s working groups because he worried that it was “providing cover” for a predetermined law-and-order agenda that “will only widen the divisions in our nation.”
Bates wrote that the commission’s membership “consists entirely of current and former law enforcement officials” and that no commissioner “has a criminal defense, civil rights, or community organization background.”
“Especially in 2020, when racial justice and civil rights issues involving law enforcement have erupted across the nation, one may legitimately question whether it is sound policy to have a group with little diversity of experience examine, behind closed doors, the sensitive issues facing law enforcement and the criminal justice system in America today,” he wrote.
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Read the full article at the link.
YOUR tax dollars being squandered by corrupt AG on White Nationalist political propaganda. But, given that Billy the Bigot is siphoning off money from the public to fund the campaign of a racist President and his racist GOP “party,” that should be little surprise!
Billy is a one-man illegality machine. 🏴☠️ But, rarely does a Federal Judge call out his personal illegal and unethical conduct this clearly!
“I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going,” she said.
Although the women are told that they have severe menstruation issues requiring the procedure, Wooten doubts that is really the case, saying, “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.”
“Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy ― just about everybody. He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman],” Wooten said in the complaint. The patient was supposed to have her left ovary removed due to a cyst, but the doctor allegedly took out her right ovary.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Not surprisingly, DHS brushes off the complaint. Among other BS, they incorrectly refer to the allegations as “anonymous.” That’s an outright lie. The allegations are being made by Dawn Wooten, an experienced LPN who worked in the DHS Gulag. There were anonymous sources who confirmed the truth of Wooten’s complaint, quite a difference from “anonymous allegations.”
Of course, lies, misrepresentations, cover-ups, and distortions are endemic at today’s DHS.
Here’s the section of the complaint relating to the “uterus collector.” Judge for yourself.
D) Detained immigrants and ICDC nurses report high rates of hysterectomies done to immigrant women.
Several immigrant women have reported to Project South their concerns about how many women have received a hysterectomy while detained at ICDC. One woman told Project South in 2019 that Irwin sends many women to see a particular gynecologist outside the facility but that some women did not trust him.93 She also stated that “a lot of women here go through a hysterectomy” at ICDC.94 More recently, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five different women detained at ICDC between October and December 2019 who had a hysterectomy done.95 When she talked to them about the surgery, the women “reacted confused when explaining why they had one done.”96 The woman told Project South that it was as though the women were “trying to tell themselves it’s going to
89 Project South Interview with Detained Immigrant, Summer 2020. 90 Id.
91 Id.
92 Id.
93 Project South Interview at the Irwin County Detention Center, October 2019. 94 Id.
95 Project South Interview with Detained Immigrant, Summer 2020.
be OK.” She further said: “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies.”97
Ms. Wooten also expressed concern regarding the high numbers of detained immigrant women at ICDC receiving hysterectomies. She stated that while some women have heavy menstruation or other severe issues that would require hysterectomy, “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.” Ms. Wooten explained:
Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody. He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman]. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids… she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary.
Ms. Wooten also stated that detained women expressed to her that they didn’t fully understand why they had to get a hysterectomy. She said: “I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.” And if the immigrants do understand what they’re getting done, “some of them a lot of times won’t even go, they say they’ll wait to get back to their country to go to the doctor.”
The rate at which the hysterectomies have occurred have been a red flag for Ms. Wooten and other nurses at ICDC. Ms. Wooten explained:
We’ve questioned among ourselves like goodness he’s taking everybody’s stuff out…That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly…is he collecting these things or something…Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out. What in the world.
Intertwined with the issue of the reported high rates of hysterectomies is the issue of proper informed consent. Regarding the hysterectomies, Ms. Wooten explained: “These immigrant women, I don’t think they really, totally, all the way understand this is what’s going to happen depending on who explains it to them.” Ms. Wooten stated that the sick call nurse tries to communicate with the
detained immigrants and speak Spanish to detained immigrants by simply googling Spanish or by asking another detained immigrant to help interpret rather than using the language line as medical staff are supposed to.
One detained immigrant reported to Project South that staff at ICDC and the doctor’s office did not properly explain to her what procedure she was going to have done.98 She reported feeling scared and frustrated, saying it “felt like they were trying to mess with my body.” When she asked what was being done to her body, she was given three different responses by three different individuals. She was originally told by the doctor that she had an ovarian cyst and was going to have a small twenty-minute procedure done drilling three small holes in her stomach to drain the cyst. The officer who was transporting her to the hospital told her that she was receiving a hysterectomy to have her womb removed. When the hospital refused to operate on her because her COVID-19 test came back positive for antibodies, she was transferred back to ICDC where the ICDC nurse said that the procedure she was going to have done entailed dilating her vagina and scraping tissue off. The nurse first told the detained immigrant she was going to get this procedure done because she had heavy bleeding, but then told her it was because she had a thick womb. The woman quickly responded that she never had heavy bleeding in her life and was never told by the doctor that she had a thick womb. Instead she stated that the doctor had described an entirely different procedure that did not involve scraping her vagina. She stated: “I tried to explain to her that something isn’t right; that procedure isn’t for me.” The nurse responded by getting angry and agitated and began yelling at her. She told Project South that seeing the nurse’s nervous and angry response confirmed “that something was not right.”
This is just a portion of the Project South official complaint. It’s chock full of disgusting and disturbing details about the grossly deficient “health care” in the Gulag, much of it focusing on the now-well-established in ligation DHS systemic failure to take anything approaching adequate COVID-19 precautions.
Notably, although the DHS’s failures are systemic (some would say intentionally calculated as part of a concerted effort to punish asylum seekers and migrants with cruel and inhuman treatment and, in some cases, death) emergency causing, and health and life threatening, our broken legal system has chosen to deal with them on a piecemeal basis. Our justice system is simply not up to effectively confronting the avalanche of illegality, dishonesty, frivolous litigating positions, and other shenanigans launched by the Trump regime in its attempt to crush oversight, eliminate accountability, and blow the Constitution to smithereens.
That means that in some cases, the regime is literally “getting away with murder.” The Trump regime is full of dullards. But, apparently not so dull or incompetent that they haven’t been able to figure out how to “outflank and co-opt” a Federal Judiciary where backbone, creativity, common sense, duty, and urgency, particularly at the Supremes, have “flown the coop.”
We should also remember that these women should never been have been prisoners in the Gulag in the first place! They idea that they are either “security risks of threats to abscond” is preposterous! They are imprisoned in heath and life threatening conditions for the “crime” of asserting their legal right to due process. Is this really the America we want to pass on to future generations?
This Fall, vote like your life and the future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!
Hundreds of Americans are dying every day from COVID-19. Unemployment is at 8.4%. Everything is fine.
By Jennifer Bendery
WASHINGTON ― The Senate is back in session after a month of recess and Republicans’ first order of business isn’t a comprehensive coronavirus relief bill. Or emergency stimulus in response to high unemployment. Or legislation addressing nationwide unrest over police violence targeting Black Americans.
It’s confirming more judges.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has long said his top priority is getting President Donald Trump’s nominees settled into lifetime federal court seats, didn’t disappoint on Wednesday. At a time when nearly 190,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and unemployment is at 8.4%, the Senate kicked off its first full day of business with a vote to confirm a district court judge, procedural votes to advance two more district court nominees, another vote to confirm one of those nominees, and two more procedural votes to advance two more district court nominees.
Democrats and Republicans are in a standoff over coronavirus relief legislation. The House passed a sweeping $3 trillion package in May that has gone nowhere in the Senate, where Democrats are ready to pass the House bill but Republicans don’t even agree with each other on what to do. Some prefer no action at all on another coronavirus package because it would add to the growing federal deficit.
McConnell will try to pass a narrowly focused COVID-19 relief bill this week, but it’s purely a political exercise ― an effort to give vulnerable Republicans something to run on ahead of the November elections. It includes funding for small businesses and schools and enhanced $300-a-week unemployment benefits. It leaves out another round of stimulus checks, which Republicans previously supported, and does not include rental assistance or aid to cities and states, which Democrats have insisted on. And it’s not even clear if a majority of Republicans will support the bill.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also met Wednesday for the first time in more than a month. The panel, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has jurisdiction over a number of issues related to the health and economic fallout from COVID-19. Graham could, for example, hold hearings that looked at the needs of state and local law enforcement on the front lines of the pandemic. He could hold hearings on the health and safety of corrections staff and incarcerated people. He could hold hearings on changes in immigration policy tied to the pandemic.
Instead, the committee held a hearing to advance five more of Trump’s judicial nominees.
One of those nominees isn’t even qualified to be a federal judge, according to the American Bar Association. Just as the hearing got underway, the ABA released an embarrassing “not qualified” rating for Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, Trump’s nominee for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
“The nominee presently does not meet the requisite minimum standard of experience necessary to perform the responsibilities required by the high office of a federal trial judge,” reads the ABA’s review of Mizelle’s nomination.
. . . .
Mizelle, 33, is eight years out of law school and has practiced law for four years. She has participated in a total of two trials (as a law student) and has not tried a case, civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel.
. . . .
“This nominee has been put forward not only because she is an ultraconservative ideologue, but also because she is a Trump loyalist, having worked in the Trump Justice Department to dismantle many critical civil rights protections,” reads a Tuesday letter to senators from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 220 national civil rights groups. “The Senate must reject her nomination.”
Trump’s most lasting legacy will arguably be his judges, who will sit on the nation’s courts for decades after he’s left the White House. He has had confirmed a total of 204 Article III judges, including two Supreme Court justices, 53 appeals court judges and 147 district court judges. A common thread among his court picks is that many are young, white, male and hold extreme ideological views on abortion, LGBTQ rights and other civil rights.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Why The Private Sector Immigration Bar Holds The Key To A Better Article III Judiciary For America
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Sept. 10, 2020
Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, the Trump regime🏴☠️ has got to go!
And that includes Moscow Mitch and every GOP Senator on the ballot this Fall. The serious long-term damage they have inflicted on our nation is already catastrophic! Let’s not let it become fatal!
Our sinking “Ship of State,” including the failing Federal Judiciary that is largely unrepresentative of our diverse nation, too often lacks engagement with the “human face” of our justice system, and sometimes demeans our best humane national values, can still be saved and put the on the correct course.
It won’t be easy. It won’t happen overnight, particularly with the life-tenured judiciary. But, it must start in November. Remember, the law is about humanity, fairness, and equatable human relations, as embodied in the due process and equal protection clauses of our Constitution.
It’s not the dusty, musty, wooden, racially tone deaf, sometimes intentionally unfair, anti-civil-rights, anti-human rights, and often contrived “anti-social ideologies of the right” that blind a disproportionate number of Trump-Mitch appointees and enable lawless, fundamentally anti-American tyrants like Trump and his cult of sycophants to run roughshod over our country, our national values, and human decency.
Yesterday, Courtside highlighted the monumental achievements of a real American legal heroine and superstar, Attorney Sarah Owings of Atlanta, Georgia. She could have done other things with her skills and her career. Instead, she devoted herself to “working in the trenches of the law,” laboriously making an intentionally unfair and dysfunctional system fairer, and preserving the rights and saving the lives of some of the most vulnerable among us.
That’s what a real lawyer does. Disgracefully, these are the folks now largely missing from our elitist, out of touch with humanity Federal Bench.
Compare her “real life” qualifications, contributions, and courage with those of a strikingly unqualified, lightweight right wing dilettante like Mizelle. That’s one reason why our nation and our judiciary are in failure right now. Lack of leadership and lack of moral courage and human values. It’s literally killing individuals across our nation, a disproportionate number of them people of color. It must stop. Social justice can no longer be demeaned and demolished by those in charge!
It’s past time to stop “undervaluing and ignoring” the outstanding ”practical scholarship” (see, “Law You Can Use”), great courage to speak truth to power, energy, dedication, “retail level litigation skills,” and creative problem solving abilities of the private sector immigration bar, many serving in pro bono, low bono, clinical, or NGO capacities, in Federal Judicial Selection.
As tell law students, “if you can win an asylum case in today’s conditions, everything else you do in law will be a piece of cake.” There are good reasons why some of the largest law firms in America have found pro bono Immigration Court work to be some of the greatest “real life legal training” out there! Also, good reasons why some of the best legal minds and legal strategists in America are working pro bono on amicus briefs for our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges!
A new, independent, Article I Immigration Court with a “merit-based” judicial selection system should be the ideal training ground and future selection pool for a better, fairer, more efficient, more diverse, more representative, and more effective Article III Judiciary. One that would have an unswerving commitment to Constitutionally required “equal justice under law.” A judiciary that would fairly and efficiently solve problems rather than avoiding and often aggravating them! An Article III Judiciary that would actually understand and appreciate immigration and human rights laws and their fundamental connection to the goal of equal justice for all!
The talent necessary to stop the bleeding and vastly improve the American justice system is out there. What’s lacking right now is the leadership and political power to make a better future a reality, for all Americans.
We must take back our nation, before it’s too late for humanity!
The following is excerpted from “The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus,” by S.V. Dáte.
A pandemic never occurred to them. The idea that Donald Trump would ever be required to sit still, pay attention and make rational decisions that would determine whether hundreds of thousands of Americans would live or die not once crossed the minds of those who put him into the Oval Office.
Oh, they all had their various reasons for wanting him there. For white evangelical Christians, he had explicitly promised to appoint the federal judges they had so longed for to turn back the nation’s cultural clock. For Mitch McConnell, a Trump win — as unlikely as it seemed — was the only real path to making sure Republicans retained control of the Senate and he himself remained majority leader. And for Vladimir Putin, having Trump in the White House — as unlikely as it seemed — would be a dream come true, an opportunity to wreak havoc on his longtime adversary and weaken its historic alliance with Western Europe.
Russia’s dictator, of course, was not remotely interested in what Trump’s ascension might mean for Americans in the event of an actual calamity. If they were dumb enough to vote for him, well, they deserved whatever they got. In any event, it was not his problem.
As for Trump’s American supporters, perhaps so much time had passed since Sept. 11, 2001, that the idea of a genuine national emergency was but a faded memory. Perhaps the quiet competence that President Barack Obama’s team had employed with the 2009 flu pandemic and later with the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak had diminished the perceived threat that a simple virus could present.
For whatever reason, even as they watched the noise and chaos and nonsense generated by candidate Trump for a full year and a half, the consequences of a real crisis requiring real leadership actually happening on the watch of a President Trump had never really dawned on them.
True, there existed then — and continues to exist today — a significant cadre of Republican voters who genuinely believed that the Trump they watched on “The Apprentice” was the real Donald Trump. That he was a real billionaire, based on his own efforts and smarts. That he was capable of making rational, quality decisions based on the facts presented to him.
That excuse, though, does not work for those Republicans from McConnell on down to the congressional candidates who had occasion to speak with Trump in person. As one top Republican National Committee member told me after his first face-to-face encounter with Trump two months before the 2016 election: “OK. Our guy is insane.”
His was not a minority view, by the way. Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance — all of it was well-known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery. But for them, it was simply a challenge to overcome, another hurdle that fate had placed between them and their holy grail of judges and tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot, with absolutely zero leadership qualities one ordinarily looks for in someone aspiring to become the chief executive of the world’s remaining superpower.
It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country. In our two-party system, both have a duty to weed out candidates who fail the threshold test of commander-in-chief and, relatedly, emergency-manager-in-chief. Through the summer and fall of 2015 and then the early nominating contests of 2016, it was clear as day that Trump was not credible in those roles, and yet neither the remaining candidates nor the party leadership made a serious effort to ensure his defeat.
True, there were some who voiced warnings. Jeb Bush called Trump a “chaos candidate” who would bring us a “chaos presidency.” But there was also Ted Cruz, who literally praised Trump for the better part of a year, refusing to criticize him in the hopes of one day inheriting his voters. By the time Cruz did unload on him, it was seen as sour grapes. Such was the cynicism and game-playing that put us where we are.
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Read the full article at the link.
It’s what happens when immoral and unprincipled GOP politicos can’t tell the difference between a “useful idiot” and a “total blithering (racist) idiot.”
“It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country.” As usual, it’s left for the Dems and the majority of us to clean up the the GOP’s disgraceful (and fundamentally un-American) mess! That’s why in addition to expelling the “Clown Prince” it’s essential to remove the GOP and “Moscow Mitch” from their abusive and destructive control of the Senate!
Check out this page from “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson:
“Caste” By Isabel Wilkerson Random House
Sound familiar? It should! Trumpism and Nazism share a common “core strategy:” Racism based on “dehumanization” of “the other” before the law — otherwise known as “Dred Scottification.” It’s in full operation by the Trump regime. And, most shockingly, a majority of our Supremes have “gone along to get along!” Very similar to the cowardly, complicit, and ultimately disastrous and deadly performance of the German judiciary in the face of Hitler’s racism!
There is no excuse for Trump, and there is no way that our our democratic republic can withstand another four years of his lies, bias, racism, “breathtaking ignorance,” corruption, cowardice, bullying, and “malicious incompetence!”
This November, vote like your life and future of the world depend on it! Because they do!
Vice President Mike Pence raised eyebrows with his latest praise of President Donald Trump, which critics described as “ridiculous” and “embarrassing.”
“I always tell people that to know President Trump is to know someone whose word is his bond,” Pence claimed Thursday during a “Life Wins!” event in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Read the full article at the link.
Perhaps what Mikey Moron meant to say is “whose word is as bogus as a $3 bill” (isn’t that the one with the Liar-in-Chief’s picture on the front?)
I actually think words like “ridiculous” and “embarrassing” are far, far too kind to this shameless butt-kisser, moral coward, incompetent executive, and betrayer of American democracy and human decency! He’s part of the “Evil Clown Show” ☠️🤮🤡 that has killed tens of thousands of American citizens as well as an untold number of refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants, put innocent kids in jail, and caused unfathomable pain and suffering to name just a few of the gross misdeeds in which he has had a supporting role.
Has there ever in history been a more outlandish incumbent ticket of “proven malicious incompetency?”
This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it! Because they do!
