"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, who is acting as a special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, on Thursday demanded that Donald Trump’s lawyers substantiate another one of the former president’s claims: that the FBI “planted” records.
Dearie ordered Trump’s legal team to submit by Sept. 30 a list of of specific items in the Justice Department’s 11-page inventory of documents taken from the Mar-a-Lago resort — including top secret files — that “plaintiff asserts were not seized from the premises.” They must also submit a list of any items seized that were not on the inventory, the order states.
“This submission shall be Plaintiff’s final opportunity to raise any factual dispute as to the completeness and accuracy of the Detailed Property Inventory,” Dearie said.
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Read the complete report at the above link.
Yes, “real Federal Judges” are one of the keys to ending the MAGA Clown Show 🤡 and saving democracy! Finally, an Article III willing to stand up to the un-American, totally dishonest ex-Prez and his sleazy and ethically challenged legal team.
A.G. Garland take note: Real judges matter! Right now the decks of EOIR are awash in Trump-era “Loose Cannons!”
Critics were stunned Saturday after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas scolded Americans for not accepting controversial rulings — after his own wife battled against the results of a legitimate presidential election.
Thomas chided a distraught public in comments Friday at a judicial conference in Atlanta following the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would gut Roe v. Wade and a half-century of the right to an abortion.
He complained that Americans are “addicted” to results they want — while “not living with” rulings they oppose. He warned that the court will not be “bullied” in the face of protest. Declining respect for the law and institutions, Thomas warned, “bodes ill for a free society.”
Thomas detractors were agog. Not only has his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, refused to “live with” the presidential election, he was the sole Supreme Court justice to vote that former President Donald Trump should not have to release his White House documents to the House committee investigating last year’s insurrection.
Thomas has also repeatedly attempted to rip up legal precedence set by the court.
“The irony is so thick you wonder if it’s maybe a Clarence Thomas impersonator,” former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said on MSNBC Saturday.
“Among other things, this is a guy who has spent a lifetime trying to take a battering ram to all the Supreme Court major precedents” of law, Litman added. “He’s now saying people don’t respect the law enough. That’s even leaving aside all the controversies he has engendered, as has his wife. It’s just … remarkable.”
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Read the full article at the link.
There is no end to the hypocrisy and subversiveness of the Thomas Clan and the far-right.
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.”⚰️
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!
He made the stunning comment while discussing how slavery should be taught in schools.
“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country,” Cotton said. “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.”
Cotton also noted that the “union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
Instead of portraying America as “an irredeemably corrupt, rotten and racist country,” the nation should be viewed “as an imperfect and flawed land, but the greatest and noblest country in the history of mankind,” he added.
Cotton delved into his twisted view of the history of slavery as he discussed his bill — the Saving American History Act of 2020 — that would cut off federal professional development funds from any school district that teaches a curriculum linked to the 1619 Project.
The 1619 Project — which refers to the year slaves were brought from Africa to colonial America — was a series of pieces by writers for the New York Times Magazine that examines the American history of slavery and its critical role in the nation’s founding.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter and director of the 1619 Project, blasted Cotton’s comments justifying slavery, “where it was legal to rape, torture and sell human beings for profit.” It’s “hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end,” she added.
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Read the rest of Mary’s article at the link.
So, Tommy, since you believe that slavery was necessary for America’s future prosperity and “goodness,” I assume that you are in the forefront of the movement to pay hefty reparations to the modern day ancestors of those who had to suffer for your White America to achieve greatness?
Cottonalmost always speaks rubbish and racist BS. This is just another prime example. Of course, there is always a choice on whether or not to abuse, exploit, torture, and kill fellow humans.
Undoubtedly, America as we know it was built on the minds, backs, suffering, misery, and uncompensated labor of enslaved African Americans. But, there were in fact in colonial and post-colonial America many individuals of various races who had the ability to farm their own land, practice their own crafts, trades, and professions, and engage in commerce that didn’t involve trafficking in human lives or the fruits of slave labor. Slavery represented a conscious choice by White Americans, not an inevitability that was unwillingly thrust upon them.
Surely, individuals like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and other slave-owning founding fathers who risked it all on the unlikely chance of winning a war against the British Empire, had the knowledge, ability, and creativity to have said “no to slavery.” They just lacked the moral courage as well as the self-confidence to believe in their own abilities to earn a living without exploiting others.
It’s sad, true, but neither “unavoidable” nor “forgivable.” Indeed, the only ones qualified to “forgive” the sins of the founders would be those no longer with us — generations of enslaved African Americans who suffered so that the White Guys in power could build a better country for themselves.
Cotton has no legitimate place in this debate. He should shut up, get off the public dole, anddevelop some useful skills that would help all Americans toward a more just, equitable, and intellectually honest future as well as an understanding of the reality of past mistakes.
I have previously characterized Cotton as one of the most vile and dangerous public figures inAmerica, with racism, ignorance, and willful falsity in his heat and mind. He just keeps proving my case!
As I predicted, the death of true courageous American hero Congressman John Lewis (whose briefcase Cotton wasn’t qualified to hold) was met by “crocodile tears” and the usual litany of disingenuous tributes by GOP politicos (other than Trump who simply made his pathetic “condolence” as brief as it was dishonest). But, now we get a real look at how the GOP “honors” Lewis and the African American community:
Not extending Voting Rights protections undermined by right-wing GOP politicos serving as Supreme Court Justices;
Dragging their feet on coronavirus relief while Trump bobbles the national response, communities of color are disproportionately adversely affected, and the GOP instead obsesses about providing unnecessary liability protections for their business buddies who promote unsafe conditions for their workers and customers;
Falsely trying to blame “Black Lives Matter” for protesting a broken justice system while Trump’s misallocated “stormtroopers” fan unrest and racial tensions;
Pretending not to hear as Trump sows more unrest by casting doubt on whether he will leave office if and when voted out by the people.
That’s the “real GOP.” A bunch of “not so closet” racists and misogynists who are scared silly that their White privilege finally might be “on the ropes” and that the real majority could not only triumph this Fall, as they did in 2016, but this time that majority might actually get the political power denied them last time.
This November, vote every GOP candidate out of office! Under Trump, and with folks like Cotton in the wings, the GOP has become the largest threat to our national security, health, unity, prosperity, humanity, and future as a democratic republic. Vote ‘em out, for a better America!
Today’s biggest story set the scene for news that continues to develop about the Ukraine scandal.
The big story, in terms of its ability to frame the crazy events coming at us at top speed, happened last night, when Attorney General William Barr gave a speech to the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who argue for an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The conviction of members of the Federalist Society that courts should not do anything that is not listed in the original Constitution makes them great friends to business and to white men, since they focus on the protection of property and deny that laws can regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, or protect minority or women’s rights. The Federalist Society organized in 1982 to push back against what its members felt was an activist court system that tried to reorganize society from the bench. It has been extraordinarily successful in taking over the courts: currently five members of the nine-member Supreme Court are current or past Federalist Society members: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
In his speech, Attorney General William Barr claimed he was going truly to be an originalist, and explained by taking American history back to its roots. In contrast to every single American historian in, well, American history, Barr argued that Americans had rebelled not against King George III in 1776, but rather against Parliament. What the Founders feared, he said, was not a strong executive, but rather a strong Parliament. (You can tell where this is going, right?) Barr was setting up the idea that Congress has grown far too strong lately (in fact, virtually every scholar will tell you that it is the Executive that has grown terribly strong since 1981) and that it is badly hampering the president’s ability to do his job. The president should be able to act on his own initiative, and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight, Barr insisted, in a theory known as that of the “unitary executive.”
Barr did not stop there, though. He went on to blame “The Resistance” for sabotaging the Trump administration, and claimed that its members were “engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.” More, he claimed “the Left” is “engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.” Conservatives, he said, were at a disadvantage against progressive’s “holy war” because they “have more scruple over their political tactics” especially when facing “a hyper-partisan media.” (You might want to reread those last two sentences.)
Richard Painter, who was George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, called this a “lunatic authoritarian speech.” Attorneys General are supposed to be non-partisan, and Barr lumped all opposition to Trump as the dangerous far left. The “Left,” in America, generally refers to those few people who advocate for communism—a system in which the government owns and controls all industries and businesses– or anarchy, a system in which there is no central authority at all. It’s actually a pretty small group. But Barr, and other recent Republicans, have included in “the Left” everyone who believes that the government has any role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure, all those things the Federalist Society opposes. In fact, most of us, regardless of whether we vote Republican or Democratic, want some basic regulations, social welfare programs, and infrastructure development.
But now the Attorney General, who is charged with overseeing our justice system, has declared that anyone standing in the way of Trump is not just a member of “the Left” but also is waging war against America. Painter is quite right: this is the language that enables a leader to imprison people he considers his enemies.
Barr is not saying all this in a vacuum. More news dropped today about the Ukraine scandal, filling in the lines we already suspected. Congress released transcripts today from Tim Morrison and Jennifer Williams, both of whom were deeply involved in the Ukraine mess and were on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. A long-time career official in the State Department, Morrison replaced Fiona Hill as the Senior Director for Russia and Europe in July 2019. Williams is another long-standing career officer in the State Department. Since April 2019, she has been the Special Adviser for Europe and Russia for Vice President Mike Pence. Morrison said that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland made it clear that aid was being withheld until there was an announcement about an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat.
This jibed with the opening statement of David Holmes, the political counselor at the Embassy in Kyiv, who testified for seven hours yesterday behind closed doors. Holmes was an eye-witness to the efforts of Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuiliani, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, to pressure the new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Holmes’s opening statement was explosive. It was not only first hand, but also it tied Trump directly into the efforts, and it made very clear that the administration was demanding the announcement of an investigation before it would release the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s fight against Russian incursions. Holmes also said that he had reported what he had heard to John Eisenberg, Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, the same man to whom Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had reported the July 25 call, and, once again, Eisenberg had done nothing. (Eisenberg is refusing to honor a subpoena to testify.)
Then, CNN dropped the story that at last year’s White House Hanukkah party Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman met privately with Trump and Giuiliani. After the meeting, Parnas told two people that the president had given him a secret mission to pressure the Ukraine government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukraine President at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and his Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, offering to invite Poroshenko to a White House State dinner if he publicly announced an investigation. As I wrote here two days ago, this would have boosted both Poroshenko’s and Trump’s reelection campaigns. In March, Lutsenko smeared U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to an American reporter and Sean Hannity ran with the story on his show, but the scheme fell apart when voters elected Zelensky instead of reelecting the corrupt oligarch Poroshenko. Then they had to scramble to come up with a new plan, and the whole ham fisted Ukraine scandal took off.
The Ukraine scandal is fleshing out, and it is truly astonishing that there is not more evidence that can be read in Trump’s favor. This increasingly just looks like a shakedown that weakened national security to help Trump rig the 2020 election. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, where Turkish and Russian troops moved in when we moved out, the Russians boasted yesterday that they have now occupied a former U.S. air base.
Trump spent several hours today at Walter Reed hospital. The visit was unexpected and unannounced, but the White House said he had decided to have portions of his annual physical done three months early.
Attorney General Bill Barr Is Getting Roasted for His Outrageous Speech Blasting Progressives
As the impeachment hearings continued, Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday trash-talked Democrats for attempting to “drown the executive branch with oversight demands,” saying they were working for political gain without thinking of the consequences.
“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr told a room of attorneys at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has been influential in determining President Donald Trump’s nominees for federal judges.
The remarks about Democrats ignoring the rule of law were especially ironic because they came a mere hours after Roger Stone, one of Trump’s previous advisers, was convicted on all counts for lying to Congress during its probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The attorney general’s speech also came on the second day of presidential impeachment hearings examining allegations that Trump attempted to interfere in the 2020 elections by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Barr criticized Democrats for launching a “holy war” and using “any means necessary to gain momentary advantage,” while he said conservatives “tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means.”
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Barr reportedly received a standing ovation, but outside the halls of the Federalist Society, his remarks sparked outrage and intensified calls from the left to impeach not only the president, but the attorney general himself. Others were quick to roast Barr for his statements. “Bill Barr is the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics counsel, tweeted.
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“Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted Saturday morning. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.”
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Read Samantha’s complete article which includes the full the two of a number of tweets at the link.
Hours after a new witness testified in the House’s latest impeachment hearing on Friday, Attorney General William Barr railed against Democrats for declaring a “war of resistance against this administration.”
In a speech before the conservative Federalist Society, Barr rebuked lawmakers for probing President Donald Trump’s potential power abuses, suggesting their efforts are illegitimate.
“The sheer volume of what we see today ― the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas ― is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch, and indeed is touted as such,” Barr said. “The costs of this constant harassment are real.”
Barr’s portrayal of oversight as harassment echoes Trump’s repeated claims that he is the victim of a partisan “witch hunt” rather than the subject of a justified inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, which remain at the heart of Democratic-led impeachment proceedings.
“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr added. “This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have had in contesting the political issues of the day.”
President Trump is convinced he has the “absolute right” to do anything from asking other countries to investigate his political opponents to pardoning himself. But he couldn’t possibly tell you why — aside from his innate conviction that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — you can get away with anything. Enter Attorney General William P. Barr to put a pseudo-intellectual gloss on Trump’s authoritarian instincts. In a Friday night speech to the Federalist Society, Barr gave a chilling defense of virtually unlimited executive authority.
Barr’s wrongheaded assumption was that “over the past several decades, we have seen steady encroachment on presidential authority by the other branches of government.” His view faithfully reflects the conservative consensus of the 1970s when he was a CIA analyst and a law student. Few serious analysts share that view today at a time when the president claims the authority to kill suspected terrorists anywhere in the world without any judicial oversight. In fact, conservatives decried President Barack Obama’s tendency to rule by fiat — for example, in protecting “dreamers” from deportation or reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran that wasn’t submitted for Senate ratification.
Trump has now taken rule-by-executive-order to the next level by declaring a “state of emergency” to spend money on his border wall that Congress refused to appropriate. Trump has also misused his authority in myriad other ways, including obstructing justice (as outlined in a special counsel report that Barr deliberately mischaracterized) and soliciting a bribe from Ukraine to release congressionally appropriated military aid.
Yet, to hear Barr tell it, Trump is somehow denied power by the nefarious “Resistance.” Barr decried Trump critics who do not view “themselves as the ‘loyal opposition,’” but rather “see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.”
Earth to Barr: Trump does not treat his critics as “the loyal opposition.” He calls them “human scum,” “traitors” and “the enemy of the people,” using the language of dictators. And it is Trump and his toadies — not his opponents — who are “willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage.”
Barr went on to blame the “Resistance” for Trump’s failure to get more nominees confirmed. The real problem is Trump’s incompetence and his preference for “acting” appointees to dodge the constitutional requirement to seek the Senate’s “advice and consent.” (Trump has not nominated anyone for nearly 20 percent of the top federal jobs.) If Barr wants to find a real abuse of the confirmation process, he should talk to Merrick Garland.
As devoid of self-awareness as his master, Barr whines about “the pursuit of scores of parallel ‘investigations’ through an avalanche of subpoenas.” He conveniently forgets that Republicans tried to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about sex and spent years probing the Benghazi, Libya, attack in a failed attempt to blame Hillary Clinton. Trump is stonewalling congressional subpoenas at an unprecedented rate, forcing Congress to seek judicial assistance to enforce legitimate requests for documents and witnesses. But Barr denies that the courts have any right to “resolve … disputes” between the executive and legislative branches — effectively allowing the president to act like a king.
The attorney general went on to rail against judicial review of administration actions such as “the travel ban.” This was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court after the administration rewrote the initial versions, which constituted clear discrimination on religious grounds. Yet Barr is still aggrieved that the courts dared “to inquire into the subjective motivation behind governmental action” — i.e., to look at Trump’s own words about banning Muslims rather than accept the administration’s disingenuous explanations.
Barr blamed the courts and the president’s critics for the fact that so many administration actions have been challenged in court. The truth is Trump has nobody but himself to blame. Many of the lawsuits accuse the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which the executive branch can comply with simply by showing that its actions are not “arbitrary and capricious.” This is an incredibly low standard, which is why the normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, the Trump administration’s win rate is less than 7 percent.
Trump likes to blame such setbacks on “Obama judges,” but many of the judges ruling against him are Republican appointees. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for example, wrote the 5-to-4 decision in June in which the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
“In this partisan age,” Barr sanctimoniously concluded, “we should take special care not to allow the passions of the moment to cause us to permanently disfigure the genius of our Constitutional structure.” He is right, but not in the way he intended. The real threat to “our Constitutional structure” emanates not from administration critics who struggle to uphold the rule of law but from a lawless president who is aided and abetted in his reckless actions by unscrupulous and unprincipled partisans — including the attorney general of the United States.
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Mary Papenfuss Contributor HuffPost
Finally, let’s hear from Mary Papenfuss, also at HuffPost:
Attorney General William Barr’s latest extreme defense of Donald Trump has triggered a wave of calls for his impeachment — and disbarment.
Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, tweeted that Barr’s remarks Friday before the conservative Federalist Society were “another lunatic authoritarian speech” amid an impeachment investigation into the president. He claimed that Barr — a member of the conservative Catholic society Opus Dei — is “the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases.”
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Read the rest of Mary’s article at the link.
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Somewhat “below the radar screen:” Barr’s repetition of Session’s blatantly unethical performance by acting as a “quasi-judicial decision maker” in Immigration Court cases where he clearly has both an actual and apparent bias in favor of a party, the DHS, and against another party, the individual migrant, particularly any asylum seeker.
Obviously, viewed through Barr’s perverted historical lens, we’ve made some seriously wrong moves.According to Barr’s interpretation, we should have allied ourselves with Hitler during World War II. Now, there’s a guy who understood the concept of the “Unitary Executive.” And, he sure knew how to deal with opposing legislators, “the resistance,” and others who were “enemies of the state” or of “inferior stock.” Why on earth would we have aligned ourselves with, and helped rebuild, the noxious parliamentary democracies of the West?
One of our allies, Stalin, did actually demonstrate the wonderful power of the “Unitary Executive” — talk about a guy who WAS the State and annihilated all opposition, real and imagined! He certainly would have known what to do with subversives who preached “impeachment” under the Constitution!
But, concededly, Stalin’s godless communism doesn’t fit in well with Barr’s Catholic Christian theocracy (minus, of course, the social justice teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church). Hitler’s pure Aryian Christian superiority was a much better fit with Barr’s historical outlook.
Of course, according to the Barr view, the seminal figure in Republicanism, Abe Lincoln, erred by not aligning himself with Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. Davis certainly knew how to operate without much legislative accountability. And the founders of the Confederacy also possessed Barr’s superior understanding of the relationship between the State and the Divine: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.”
Sure, easy to believe that God was always a big fan of enslavement, rape, brutality, white privilege, and theft of services from enslaved African Americans, who also happened to be believers in God. Fits right in with Barr’s dehumanization of Hispanic workers, trashing of LGBTQ Americans, denial of rights to asylum seekers, threats to political opponents, and war on Hispanic Americans who have the audacity of wanting to vote and live peacefully in their communities without being terrorized by DHS enforcement.
George Washington, who wrongly refused to install himself as either King or “President for Life” was, according to Barr’s historical perspective, a dangerous wimp who diminished the potential powers of the “Unitary Executive.”
Undoubtedly, our Founders had their flaws. After all, the Constitution not only enshrined the dehumanization of African Americans, who had actually made the success and prosperity of the American Republic possible, but also excluded the majority of inhabitants from political participation.
But, unlike Barr and his fellow “originalists,” our Founders were largely persons of vision and good will who had enough self awareness and humility to see a better and more dynamic future. They would certainly be shocked and dismayed to find out that rather than viewing our Constitution rationally, as a blueprint to be built upon for a better, more inclusive, more tolerant future, two plus centuries later, individuals like Barr holding supposedly responsible positions under our Republic, would be mindlessly and immorally urging us never to escape the limitations and mistakes of our distant past.
Disturbingly unqualified as he is to serve as our Attorney General, Barr does illustrate the moral and legal bankruptcy of the “fake doctrine” of “originalism.” It’s actually an intellectually indefensible excuse for an empowered, largely White, predominantly male, minority to exclude the majority of America’s inhabitants and their hopes and dreams from full participation in our democracy. It’s as ugly and dishonest as Barr’s own tenure as Attorney General.
Justice Department Argues Against Providing Soap, Toothbrushes, Beds To Detained Kids
“I find it inconceivable that the government would say” current conditions are “safe and sanitary,” as required, said a stunned Judge William Fletcher.
A Justice Department attorney this week argued in court that the federal government should not be required to provide soap, toothbrushes or even beds to detained children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Attorneys for the detained children are arguing that the government is not following the requirements of a 1997 settlement agreement in the case of Jenny Flores that established a framework for the humane treatment and release of detained migrant minors. Children must be housed in “safe and sanitary conditions” under the settlement. A district judge added the specific requirements that children be provided with soap and toothbrushes.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do something other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” asked Judge William Fletcher. “I find it inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
Judge Marsha Berzon asked Fabian: “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of ‘safe and sanitary’ conditions?… You can’t be sanitary or safe as a human being if you can’t sleep.” (See the video below at 24:30.)
Fabian was challenging an order by U.S. District Judge Gee in Los Angeles, who appointed an independent monitor to ensure that the federal government complies with the Flores settlement and specifically required such items as soap and toothbrushes. Fabian argued that such requirements are not detailed in the original settlement. (In the video at 26:40.)
“One has to assume … parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian argued.
Fletcher responded: “Or it was relatively obvious — at least obvious enough so that if you’re putting people into a crowded room to sleep on a concrete floor with an aluminum foil blanket on top of them, that doesn’t comply with the agreement.”
He added: “It may be they don’t get super-thread-count Egyptian linen, I get that. … I understand at some outer boundary, there may be some definitional difficulty. But no one would argue that this [current situation] is safe and sanitary.”
As for soap, it “wasn’t perfumed soap, it was soap. That sounds like it’s part of ‘safe and sanitary,’” he added. “Are you disagreeing with that?”
Judge A. Wallace Tashima said that such items are “within everybody’s common understanding that if you don’t have a toothbrush, if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not safe and sanitary. Wouldn’t everybody agree to that?” he asked. “Do you agree to that?”
Fabian, who appeared to stumble throughout much of her presentation, responded: “Well … maybe.”
The attorney for the children argued that, although soap and toothbrushes weren’t specifically mentioned in the 1997 settlement, they must be provided because they would be “reasonably interpreted” as part of the agreement under contract law.
The “first thing you do is honor the plain meaning” of words like “safe and sanitary,” said Peter Schey. “Today we have a situation where once a month a child is dying in custody. Certainly the Border Patrol facilities are secure, but they’re not safe and they’re not sanitary.”
It’s not clear when the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, will issue a decision in the case.
Honestly, how does Sarah Fabian sleep at night? If she has kids, what does she tell them about what she does to other people’s kids for a living?
And, what can you say about 9th Circuit judges who accept frivolous, totally disingenuous arguments from Government counsel. A private attorney who wasted the court’s time and disrespected its integrity and functions in this matter would almost certainly be disciplined or disbarred in short order.
At one time, DOJ attorneys were expected to adhere to higher standards of ethics because of their role in protecting the public interest and aiding the courts in pursuit of justice. Why in the age of Trump, Sessions, Barr, and Solicitor General Noel Francisco are ethical standards no longer enforced against DOJ Attorneys? And that goes right up to the top, as both Barr and Sessions have clearly interfered with and participated in quasi-judicial immigration decisions after showing clear bias against migrants and in favor of DHS Enforcement, in violation of ethical standards.
Folks like Trump and his cronies always depend on complicit subordinates, as well as complicit courts, to carry out their vile and illegal programs.
Asked about Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency on the southern border so that he can order his wall built without congressional approval, Lessig told MSNBC: “The man is using words that have no connection to reality.”
“He says we have a national crisis … a national emergency. I agree we have a national emergency, but the emergency is this president,” Lessig added. “The emergency is the fact we don’t have an executive who’s exercising his power in a responsible way.”
Lessig said the president can’t build his wall without the backing of Congress.
“Ultimately he has no constitutional authority to exercise the power to build this wall without Congress’ approval,” Lessig said. “These statutes were certainly not written with the intent to give a man like Donald Trump the power that he’s now claiming.”
In an opinion piece Lessig published in The Guardian on Friday, he said the Constitution would not uphold the actions of a president who shut down the government to insist on a program that was not supported by the public. Lessing referred to the situation as a “veto-ocracy,” ruled by “petulance” rather than “principle.”
If the Republicans support Trump in this, they are saying that any president can “support whatever policy he likes,” including, say, to nationalize health insurance.
“The fools are they who enable this constitutional immorality,” Lessig wrote. “Those fools are the Senate Republicans, who have placed party over country, and President Trump over the Republican Party.”
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Part of the blame for this unprecedented national disaster belongs to the Supremes’ majority for their shockingly spineless performance in the “Travel Ban Case.” By failing to stand up for the Constitution in the face of Trump’s clear record of religious and racial bias and the rest of his White Nationalist hokum, their message was clear.
Whenever Trump doesn’t want to follow the law or is thwarted by Constitutional separation of powers, all he needs to do is declare another totally bogus “national emergency.” Will the GOP appointees keep looking away while the Constitution and our republic crumble before this unscrupulous madman? Or, will Chief Justice Roberts and some of the “Gang of Five” make good on Roberts’s recent claim that “there are no GOP or Democratic Federal Judges?”
Last time it was Muslims and refugees; this time, it’s asylum seekers, kids, and families in Trump’s crosshairs; next time, maybe he’ll come for the Supremes themselves. If so, they shouldn’t look to the immoral and cowardly GOP Senate for any help!
The attorney general charged that the freedom to practice religion in America has come “under attack” in the nation’s current “cultural climate.”
A “dangerous movement, undetected by many, but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom …. It must be confronted … and defeated,” he added.
“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We’ve seen United States senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma …. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” Sessions added, referring to the Colorado baker who won a religious liberty challenge to LGBTQ anti-discrimination law in the U.S. Supreme Court after refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Sessions called freedom of religion “indeed our first freedom being the first listed right in the First Amendment” and said that the Trump administration is “actively seeking to accommodate people of faith.”
Sessions touted his department’s prosecution of attacks on religion, among them court actions shielding about 90 plaintiffs from Obama-era requirements that employer health insurance cover contraception, an amicus brief “we were proud to file” on behalf of Phillips, and indictments in an arson attack and threats directed at two mosques.
Twitter exploded, with critics charging that the Religious Liberty Task Force was a front to protect religious zealots attacking LGBTQ rights and an unconstitutional push to marry church and state on the altar of Christianity.
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Read the entire Article, including the “Twitter Storm” at the link. Some pretty funny but “right on” reactions!
Yet another taxpayer-financed scam by our corrupt and bigoted Attorney General. Obviously this is a thinly disguised effort to use Government funding and power to promote and establish far right-wing Christian views and biases.
Don’t expect any help for Muslims targeted for hate crimes, irrationally excluded under the “Travel Ban,” or targeted by anti-Muslim pronouncements of Administration officials and GOP right-wing politicos. Don’t expect any assistance or protection for those religious groups actually engaged in “God’s work on earth” and carrying out Christ’s true humanitarian, forgiving teachings by providing help to migrants and resisting inhumane and illegal Administration policies. Don’t expect any help for Bhuddists, atheists, deists, or any other non-right-wing Christian groups trying to vindicate their First Amendment rights. Don’t expect any help for members of the LGBTQ community whose rights are being trampled upon by so-called Christians who promote intolerance, discrimination, humiliation, de-humanization, and hate in the name of false “religious expression.”
Interestingly, Sessions himself has been charged within the Methodist Church (of which my wife and I are members) with violation of teachings of Christ and the Church’s own rules and values.
He’s a total scofflaw and a fraud, seeking to impose his corrupt, inhumane, intolerant views on the rest of us by abusing his Government position and squandering taxpayer funds on an anti-Constitutional attempt to establish particular “so-called Christian views” as the law of the land.
“Jeff Sessions’s memory works in mysterious ways. He has “no clear recollection” of the March 2016 meeting where George Papadopoulos offered to set up a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin — but the attorney general does remember shooting down the campaign aide’s unseemly suggestion.
Or, so Sessions tells the House Judiciary Committee.
In October, Sessions testified to the Senate that he did not have any “continuing exchange of information” with Russian operatives — and that he wasn’t “aware of anyone else [on the Trump campaign] that did.” Weeks later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed
“Papadopoulos’s confession to the crime of lying to the FBI. In that written statement, the former Trump campaign national security adviser claimed that he had told Sessions about “connections” he had that “could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin” in March of last year. In his testimony before Congress Tuesday, Sessions tried to account for this apparent discrepancy.
“I do now recall the March 2016 meeting at Trump Hotel that Mr. Papadopoulos attended, but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said at that meeting,” Sessions explained. “After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government, for that matter.”
Later, Sessions said more firmly, “At the meeting, I pushed back.”
So, the attorney general has no clear memory of the meeting, but has a vivid recollection of behaving admirably during it.
This isn’t the first time that Sessions’s memories of last year have failed him. In January, the attorney general testified to the Senate that he had not “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day.” Months later, the Washington Post revealed that Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador to the United States multiple times during the 2016 campaign. Sessions responded to these revelations by insisting that he’d met with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his capacity as U.S. senator (not as a Trump surrogate), and that they did not discuss the 2016 election. Sessions later conceded that it was “possible” that Trump’s positions on U.S.-Russia relations came up in his discussions with Kislyak.
Some Democrats have suggested that Sessions’s multiple false statements to Congress this year were conscious lies. The former senator responded to such charges with indignation Tuesday.
“My answers have not changed,” Sessions said. “I have always told the truth, and I have answered every question as I understood them and to the best of my recollection, as I will continue to do today … I will not accept and reject accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie.”
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Meanwhile, speaking to a friendly audience over at the Heritage Foundation, Gonzo treated the Russia investigation as a joke. Mary Papenfuss reports for HuffPost:
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“Attorney General Jeff Sessions had lawyers rolling in the aisles with a surprising string of Russian quips at the start of a speech he gave Friday.
Sessions was the keynote speaker at the National Lawyers Convention at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel hosted by the conservative Federalist Society.
He thanked the applauding crowd for welcoming him. Then, smiling mischievously, he added: “But I just was thinking, you know, I should ― I want to ask you. Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room? Before I get started ― any Russians?” As the laughs grew louder, he continued: “Anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia?” The audience roared.
The jarring jokes came just three days after Sessions was pressed in Congress on apparent discrepancies in his previous testimony about Trump associates’ meetings with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., met with several members of Donald Trump’s campaign during the Republican National Convention, Kislyak and some Trump associates have revealed. Kislyak was widely believed a top spy recruiter.
Kislyak has said he discussed Trump’s policy positions during the campaign with Sessions, an early Trump supporter who was an Alabama senator at the time, The Washington Post reported.
But during his confirmation hearings to become attorney general ― before the Post report ― Sessions said he “never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election.”
Sessions later recused himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election.
Critics were stunned by Sessions’ attitude in the lawyers’ speech.
Sessions “still doesn’t get it” — he’s “in trouble,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) told Wolf Blitzer later on CNN.
“He’s not in trouble where he happened to be in places where there are Russians,” said Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who grilled Sessions this week. “He is in trouble because he had a nearly hour-long meeting with Ambassador Kislyak — also a spy — and then he failed to disclose the existence of that meeting under oath to the U.S. Senate. That’s why Jeff Sessions is in trouble.”
Blitzer noted that Kislyak “now says he spoke with so many Trump officials it would take him more than 20 minutes to name them all.”
To those of us who are familiar with his career, it’s probably no surprise that Jeff “Gonzo Apocalyoto” Sessions would make light of the real threat to our national security — Russia, Vladimir Putin, and his “easy marks” in the Trump Administration including Ol’ Gonzo — while trying to paint “Dreamers,” individuals with TPS status, refugees, asylum applicants, and other hard-working contributing members of the American community as a fake “security threat.”
It’s all part of the White Nationalist agenda to deflect attention from the “clear and present danger” they pose to our Constitution and our national security to a “dummied-up enemy” consisting mostly of persons who are here to help us as a country but, unfortunately for their sakes, aren’t straight, White Christians who vote GOP. In other words, they are outside Gonzo’s “zone of the chosen people” — those whom he considers “real” Americans. And, those whom Gonzo has determined to be “unworthy of protection” include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Democrats, Liberals, Muslims, women who seek abortions, immigration lawyers, those living in so-called “Sanctuary Cities,” and legal immigrants.
