Sen. “Moscow Mitch” McConnell – Page 2

DARA LIND @ PRO PUBLICA: Trump & His White Nationalists Always Hated Asylum Laws — Now With CBP’s Help, They Have Simply Decided To Repeal Them By Memo — No Real Pushback From Broken Legal System & Feckless Congress!

https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-border-patrol-memo-tells-agents-to-send-migrants-back-immediately-ignoring-asylum-law

Dara writes in Pro Publica:

Citing little-known power given to the CDC to ban entry of people who might spread disease and ignoring the Refugee Act of 1980, an internal memo has ordered Border Patrol agents to push the overwhelming majority of migrants back into Mexico.

For the first time since the enactment of the Refugee Act in 1980, people who come to the U.S. saying they fear persecution in their home countries are being turned away by Border Patrol agents with no chance to make a legal case for asylum.

The shift, confirmed in internal Border Patrol guidance obtained by ProPublica, is the upshot of the Trump administration’s hasty emergency action to largely shut down the U.S.-Mexico border over coronavirus fears. It’s the biggest step the administration has taken to limit humanitarian protection for people entering the U.S. without papers.

The Trump administration has created numerous obstacles over recent years for migrants to claim asylum and stay in the United States. But it had not — until now — allowed Border Patrol agents to simply expel migrants with no process whatsoever for hearing their claims.

The administration gave the Border Patrol unchallengeable authority over migrants seeking asylum by invoking a little-known power given to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. public health agency, to ban the entry of people or things that might spread “infectious disease” in the U.S. The CDC on March 20 barred entry of people without proper documentation, on the logic that they could be unexamined carriers of the disease and out of concern about the effects if the novel coronavirus swept through Customs and Border Protection holding facilities.

U.S. immigration law requires the government to allow people expressing a “well-founded” fear of persecution or torture to be allowed to pursue legal status in the United States. The law also requires the government to grant status to anyone who shows they likely face persecution if returned to their homeland.

“The Trump administration’s new rule and CDC order do not trump U.S. laws passed by Congress and U.S. legal obligations under refugee and human rights treaties,” Eleanor Acer, of the legal advocacy group Human Rights First, told ProPublica. “But the Trump administration is wielding them as the ultimate tool to shut the border to people seeking refuge.”

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration hastily put in place a policy, which the internal guidance calls Operation Capio, to push the overwhelming majority of unauthorized migrants into Mexico within hours of their apprehension in the U.S.

The Trump administration has been publicly vague on what happens under the new policy to migrants expressing a fear of persecution or torture, the grounds for asylum. But the guidance provided to Border Patrol agents makes clear that asylum-seekers are being turned away unless they can persuade both a Border Patrol agent — as well as a higher-ranking Border Patrol official — that they will be tortured if sent home. There is no exception for those who seek protection on the basis of their identities, such as race or religion.

Over 7,000 people have been expelled to Mexico under the order, according to sources briefed by Customs and Border Protection officials.

The guidance, shared with ProPublica by a source within the Border Patrol, instructs agents that any migrant caught entering without documentation must be processed for “expulsion,” citing the CDC order. When possible, migrants are to be driven to the nearest official border crossing and “expelled” into Mexico or Canada. (The Mexican government has agreed to allow the U.S. to push back not only Mexican migrants, but also those from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; the four countries account for about 85% of all unauthorized border crossings.)

Under the Refugee Convention, which the U.S. signed onto in 1968, countries are barred from sending someone back to a country in which they could be persecuted based on their identity (specifically, their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group”).

The Trump administration has taken several steps to restrict the ability of migrants to seek asylum, a form of legal status that allows someone to eventually become a permanent U.S. resident. Until now, however, it has acknowledged that U.S. and international law prevents the U.S. from sending people back to a place where they will be harmed. And it has still allowed people who claim a fear of persecution to seek a less permanent form of legal status in the U.S. (In the last two weeks of February, 2,915 people were screened for humanitarian protection, according to the most recent statistics provided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.)

The Border Patrol guidance provided to ProPublica shows that the U.S. is acting as if that obligation no longer applies.

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, said it would not comment on the document provided to ProPublica. Asked whether any guidance had been provided regarding people who expressed a fear of persecution of torture, an agency spokesperson said in a statement, “The order does not apply where a CBP officer determines, based on consideration of significant law enforcement, officer and public safety, humanitarian, or public health interests, that the order should not be applied to a particular person.”

That language does not appear in the guidance ProPublica received. Instead, it specifies that any exception must be approved by the chief patrol agent of a given Border Patrol sector. One former senior CBP official, who reviewed the guidance at ProPublica’s request, said that because there are so many levels of hierarchy between a chief patrol agent and a line agent, agents would be unlikely to ask for an exemption to be made.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Shows how fragile our legal system and our democratic institutions are. Contrary to “popular liberal myth” they have not “been holding up well” in the age of Trump. A GOP Senate, of course, deserves much of the blame. But, it’s not like the Democrats have exactly put protecting the rule of law and Constitutional Due Process for the most vulnerable among us at the forefront.

We can also trace the disintegration of the legal system under Trump directly to the the failure of Roberts and the GOP majority on the Supremes to stand up for separation of powers, racial and religious justice, and Executive accountability. By ignoring a very clear record of invidious racial, religious, and political bias behind Trump’s Executive actions, and allowing a transparently contrived “national security” rationale to be used, in the so-called “Travel Ban Case” the Supremes’ majority basically signaled they had no intention of halting a White Nationalist assault on our Constitution and the rights of vulnerable minorities, particularly migrants. In other words, Roberts & Co. said: “It’s OK to ‘Dred Scottify’ away, we’ll never stand in your way.” And, true to their word, the “J.R. Five” have been more than happy to ignore the law and “green light” the White Nationalist nativist immigration agenda.

So, four decades of painstakingly hard cooperative work by “good government” advocates, NGOs, the private sector, and the international community to reach an imperfect, yet basically workable, consensus that saved countless lives and helped fuel our economic success, the Refugee Act of 1980 lies in tatters. Decades of progress destroyed in a little over three years. That’s “institutional failure” on a massive scale!

Don’t look for the Refugee Act or the rule of law to be resurrected any time soon. Under Trump and his would-be authoritarian kakistocracy, the “emergencies,” real and fabricated, will never end until democracy and human decency are dead and buried. And, don’t count on Mitch McConnell or John Roberts to stand in the way.

This is exactly how democracies die. But, we do have the remaining power to remove the kakistocracy at all levels of our government and start rebuilding America. Yes, Roberts and his gang have life tenure. But, with “regime change,” we can start appointing better judges who will aggressively push back against the far-right, anti-democracy judicial agenda! Folks who believe in Due Process, fundamental fairness, the rule of law, racial equality, human decency, and equal justice for all! Vote to save our nation in November!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-20

MONDAY SATIRE: ANDY BOROWITZ ON SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): “PERSON WHO IS ALWAYS TROUBLED OR CONCERNED SHOULD GET DIFFERENT JOB, WORKPLACE EXPERTS SAY”

Andy Borowotz — Andy Borowitz
Political Satirist
The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/person-who-is-always-troubled-or-concerned-should-get-different-job-workplace-experts-say?source=EDT_NYR_EDIT_NEWSLETTER_0_imagenewsletter_Borowitz_ZZ&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Borowitz_021020&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67c363f92a41245df49eb&cndid=48297443&esrc=right_rail_borowitz&mbid=&utm_term=TNY_Borowitz

Person Who Is Always Troubled or Concerned Should Get Different Job, Workplace Experts Say

Andy BorowitzFebruary 10, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report)—An employee who regularly self-identifies as “troubled” or “concerned” would benefit from seeking a different job, leading workplace experts said on Monday.

Professor Davis Logsdon, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Workplace Health Institute, cited the case of a Maine woman who appeared to undergo a traumatic experience every time she was faced with a difficult decision at work.

“According to her own account, each decision followed an excruciating period of existential torment,” Logsdon said. “Any employee who finds decision-making this harrowing should clearly consider working somewhere else.”

Logsdon said that the woman’s frequent episodes of being troubled and/or concerned usually resulted in an unsatisfactory outcome.

“At the end of her nightmarish deliberation process, she lost the capacity for individual judgment,” he said. “She just went along with what everyone else in the office decided to do, regardless of the harm that such a decision might cause.”

Consequently, the researchers at the Workplace Health Institute concluded that any person who approaches his or her job with the levels of self-doubt and anxiety regularly exhibited by the Maine woman should find a new job that requires no decision-making whatsoever.

“In her current position, she is useless,” Logsdon said.

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

All too true! At least most of the other GOP toadies didn’t give it two seconds of thought before enthusiastically and boisterously selling out America. Why “beat around the bush” if you’re in the “Party of Putin” and “Moscow Mitch” has already told you how to vote to avoid a “public flogging?”

PWS

02-10-20

TOM SCOCCA @ SLATE WITH ABOUT ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT “MOSCOW MITCH” & THE GOP’S RIGGED IMPEACHMENT “TRIAL” — “Schiff and the other impeachment managers have all the facts and principles on their side. The president’s defenders had nothing to counter them with but nonsense and lies. Nonsense, lies, and 53 votes.”

https://apple.news/A3t3E97jpSQCSgTT0YG8ZnQ

THE SLATEST

Impeach-O-Meter Goes to the Senate: Schiff Takes His Losses Like a Winner

JANUARY 22 2020 5:25 PM

The re-relaunched Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump will be removed from office by impeachment trial before the end of his first term.

At 1:31 a.m., the tail end of a long Tuesday night in the Senate, Rep. Adam Schiff stepped to the lectern to deliver his final remarks on the Senate Democrats final attempt to amend Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposed rules for the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Schiff, the lead impeachment manager from the House, had been talking off and on for hour upon hour, as legal Twitter marveled at his agility and endurance, the president’s legal team snarled derisively at his arguments, and the rock-solid Republican majority voted again and again to ignore whatever his side was proposing.

This time it was a measure to give Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the trial, the authority to resolve disputes about which witnesses would or wouldn’t be relevant to the case—if McConnell’s rules ever did allow any witnesses to be called. Jay Sekulow, the president’s personal attorney, had mounted the argument against it, making a terse case that continued along the path established by all the previous defense arguments, heading inexorably toward the legal doctrine of Nuh-Uh.

“With no disrespect to the chief justice,” Sekulow said, “this is not an appellate court. This is the United States Senate. There is not an arbitration clause in the United States Constitution. ‘The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.’ We oppose the motion—the amendment.”

Sekulow had been hunched over the podium, visibly annoyed at the length of the proceedings. Roberts, throughout the day, had lost his own famous bloom of boyishness till he looked more and more like his predecessor William Rehnquist. But Schiff smiled a little as he started speaking.

“Well,” he said, “this is a good note to conclude on, because don’t let it be said we haven’t made progress today. The president’s counsel has just acknowledged for the first time that this is not an appellate court. I’m glad we have established that. This is the trial, not the appeal. And the trial ought to have witnesses, and the trial shouldn’t be based on the cold record from the court below, because there is no court below, because, as the counsel has just admitted, you are not the appellate court.”

This was, in a certain sense, a triumph. The premise behind McConnell’s trial rules, worked out in advance with Trump’s defense team, was supposed to be that the House has already given the president’s misdeeds a full airing. The Senate is simply there to review the House’s conclusions, and if the House failed to secure all the witnesses and documents to make the case indisputable—thanks to blanket executive defiance of subpoenas, backed by judicial slow-walking—then the Senate has no constitutional duty to try to learn more.

The premise was absurd, but the president’s defenders had been arguing absurd things all day, when they weren’t arguing false ones. Schiff had patiently, thoroughly countered each argument. And now he had maneuvered Trump’s personal lawyer into making the case against the ostensible core of the defense strategy.

It was elegant and pointless, like seeing a basketball player put on a scoring exhibition in an empty gym after even the janitor has swept up and gone home. The real core of the defense strategy is that Mitch McConnell is going to acquit the president no matter what happens. Trump is obviously guilty of abusing his power to try to force Ukraine to advance his political interests for him; between impeachment and trial, the Government Accountability Office helpfully affirmed that his plain undisputed act of withholding aid funds was illegal all on its own.*

The figurative gutters of Fifth Avenue are awash in blood and spent shell casings. What the Senate cameras recorded was a day-long showdown between reason and brute force. Schiff and the other impeachment managers have all the facts and principles on their side. The president’s defenders had nothing to counter them with but nonsense and lies. Nonsense, lies, and 53 votes.

*********

Yup.

Refugees at our border get sent into harm’s way by a scofflaw Trump regime without any Due Process.

But, Trump gets a rigged guaranteed acquittal in a “show trial’ without regard to the evidence, engineered by corrupt GOP “jurors” who pre-pledged to violate their oaths of fairness and impartiality.

Who says American democracy isn’t on the ropes?

PWS

01-23-20

WILLIAM SALETAN @ SLATE: “Trump Is a Remorseless Advocate of Crimes Against Humanity” – “But Trump’s election and his persistent approval from more than 40 percent of Americans are a reminder that nothing in our national character protects us from becoming a rapacious, authoritarian country. What protects us are institutions that stop us from doing our worst.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-remorseless-advocate-crimes-against-humanity.html

Saletan writes:

It’s hard to keep up with President Donald Trump’s scandals. One day he’s covering up taxpayer-funded travel expenses for his family. The next, he’s stealing money for his border wall. The next, he’s being implicated by an accomplice in the extortion of Ukraine. But one horror is right out in the open: Trump is a remorseless advocate of crimes against humanity. His latest threats against Iran, Iraq, and Syria are a reminder that he’s as ruthless as any foreign dictator. He’s just more constrained.

Trump admires tyrants and defends their atrocities. He has excused North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s mass executions (“Yeah, but so have a lot of other people”) and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murders of journalists and dissidents (“At least he’s a leader”). As a presidential candidate, Trump shrugged off the gravity of using chemical weapons. “Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy,” he joked.

At home, Trump has encouraged religious persecution and political violence. He called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States (he later imposed a modified version of the ban) and for collective punishment of Muslims who live here. As a candidate, Trump urged his supporters to “knock the crap out of” protesters. In 2018, at a political rally, he praised a Republican congressman for criminally assaulting a reporter. “Any guy that can do a body slam,” said Trump, “he’s my guy.”

Trump has long advocated war crimes. He has endorsed torture not just for information, but because our enemies “deserve it.” As a candidate, he proposed that for the sake of “retribution,” the United States should “take out” the families of terrorists. Wives and children were legitimate targets, he argued, because by killing them, we could deter terrorists who “care more about their families than they care about themselves.” Two months ago, he intervened in legal and military proceedings to thwart punishment of three American servicemen who had been indicted for or convicted of atrocities. Then he deployed the men in his reelection campaign.

Trump agrees with past presidents that we and our terrorist adversaries have played by “two [different] sets of rules.” But unlike his predecessors, he takes no pride in America’s higher standards. He sees them as a needless impediment, defended by “weak” and “stupid” people. In 2016, Trump complained that ISIS was “cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind.” Torture laws should be relaxed, he argued, “so that we can better compete with a vicious group of animals.” “You have to play the game the way they’re playing the game,” he explained.

Trump takes no pride in America’s higher standards. He sees them as a needless impediment, defended by “weak” and “stupid” people.

Some presidents have caused pain through recklessness or indifference. Trump inflicts pain on purpose. To deter migration from Latin America, his administration separated migrant parents from their children. Trump argued that the separation was a “disincentive.” Too many people, he explained, were “coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.” Later, he used the same sadistic logic to force a migration in Syria. He boasted that by facilitating Turkey’s invasion of that country, he had precipitated the “pain and suffering” necessary to compel Syrian Kurds “to leave.”

In Africa and the Middle East, Trump proudly advocates plunder. In October, he said the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil to make sure we were “paid back” for the costs of our occupation of that country. In Syria, he stationed U.S. forces at oil fields, explaining that he viewed those fields as a revenue stream. (“$45 million a month? Keep the oil.”) He proposed a business arrangement to exploit Syria’s oil: “What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly.” Last Friday, in a Fox News interview, the president repeated that he cared only about the oil. “I left troops to take the oil,” he told Laura Ingraham. “The only troops I have are taking the oil.”

Two weeks ago, the United States killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike.
To deter retaliation, Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s cultural sites—an explicit war crime. “If Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets,” he tweeted, “we have targeted 52 Iranian sites … some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.” In an exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed legal objections to his threat. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people,” he fumed. “And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

Iraq’s Parliament, furious that Trump had killed Soleimani on its soil and without its consent, voted to expel American troops. But Trump refused to comply unless Iraq paid ransom. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there,” he told reporters. “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.” He threatened to “charge them [the Iraqis] sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” Later, Trump told Ingraham that Iraq would also “have to pay us for embassies.” When she asked him how he planned to extract the payment, Trump replied, “We have $35 billion of their money right now sitting in an account. And I think they’ll agree to pay. … Otherwise, we’ll stay there.”

Trump views the military as a mercenary force he can send around the world for hire. A Very Stable Genius, the new book by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, describes a White House meeting at which Trump said American troop deployments should yield a profit. Trump told Ingraham he’s doing exactly that: “We’re sending more [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia’s paying us for it.” He recounted his business pitch to the Saudis: “You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us.” And he proudly reported that the Saudis had accepted the deal. “They’re paying us,” he told Ingraham. “They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”

Trump’s amorality—his complete indifference to rules against theft, abuse, exploitation, and killing—is a public relations problem for his apologists. They struggle to cover it up. First they softened his Muslim ban to a “travel ban” on certain majority-Muslim countries. Then they concocted non-sadistic rationales for his family-separation policy. Last week, after Trump threatened Iran’s cultural sites, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the public that Trump would obey the law. Pompeo also whitewashed Trump’s threats against Iraq, insisting that American troops were in that country to protect its “sovereignty.” Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, claimed that when Trump spoke of Saudi Arabia paying for U.S. troop deployments, “What the president is referring to is burden sharing.”

But Trump refuses to be silenced. Hours after Pompeo promised that the president wouldn’t target Iran’s cultural sites, Trump repeated that he would. Later, Trump stiff-armed Ingraham’s attempts to clean up his language about stealing Syrian oil. “I left troops to take the oil,” he told her. She tried to correct him: “We’re not taking the oil. They’re protecting the facilities.” Trump shrugged off this reformulation. “Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” he said. “Maybe we should take it. But we have the oil.”

Having an evil president doesn’t make the United States evil. We have a lot to be proud of: a culture of freedom, a strong constitution, vigorous courts, democratic accountability, and laws that protect minorities and human rights. On balance, we’ve been a force for good in the world. But Trump’s election and his persistent approval from more than 40 percent of Americans are a reminder that nothing in our national character protects us from becoming a rapacious, authoritarian country. What protects us are institutions that stop us from doing our worst.

Thanks to Magda Werkmeister and Daijing Xu for research assistance.

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

I’d argue that far from being a strong bulwark against Trump’s authoritarian tyranny, our democratic institutions – Congress, Article III Courts, the bureaucracy, and even much of the media — are in a state of constant meltdown under his regime’s relentless attacks. We can see that graphically played out every day in the GOP’s largely fact free and totally dishonest defense of Trump’s running roughshod over both the Congress and our Constitution.

I can’t detect a sliver of desire on the part of the GOP and its enablers to hold Trump accountable for any misdeed — even soliciting foreign interference in our electoral process and then lying to cover it up. The facts really aren’t in dispute here. Whether the U.S. could survive another four years of Trump and remain a democratic republic is still, unfortunately, an open question.

We can hope for the best. But, without “regime change” in November 2020, the worst might still be ahead.

In the meantime, the Article III Courts should do their constitutional duty and stop “coddling” the regime’s various schemes and gimmicks to commit, encourage, and enable “crimes against humanity.” We certainly aren’t going to get any accountability or restraint on Trump’s misconduct and open contempt for American institutions from a Congress where the Senate is led by “Moscow Mitch” and his enablers.

PWS

01-22-20

KNIGHT INSTITUTE CHALLENGES EOIR’S MUZZLING OF IMMIGRATION JUDGES ON 1ST AMENDMENT GROUNDS – See The Letter Here!

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/knight-institute-calls-on-dojs-executive-office-for-immigration-review-to-suspend-policy-silencing-immigration-judges

PRESS STATEMENT

Knight Institute Calls on DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review to Suspend Policy Silencing Immigration Judges

In a letter, the Institute argues that the agency’s policy, which it recently obtained through a FOIA request, violates the First Amendment

JANUARY 06, 2020

WASHINGTON — In a letter sent today to the acting director of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University demanded that the agency suspend its policy restricting the ability of EOIR employees to speak at public events. That policy, Institute lawyers argued, violates the First Amendment by unduly abridging the right of immigration judges and other EOIR employees to speak in their personal capacities about matters of significant public interest.

The Knight Institute recently obtained a copy of the EOIR’s policy through a Freedom of Information Act request. That FOIA request was submitted as part of a major investigation the Institute’s writer-in-residence Cristian Farias is leading on free speech restrictions at the U.S. border.

The policy categorically prohibits certain senior EOIR employees from speaking at public events in their personal capacities, and it requires all other EOIR employees to obtain supervisory approval before doing so.

“There is immense public interest in recent changes to immigration policy, and the effects those changes are having on migrant communities,” said Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “EOIR’s policy deprives the public of a crucial voice in that debate, by silencing those charged with operating the nation’s immigration courts.”

The Knight Institute’s constitutional objections to the EOIR policy come in the midst of an ongoing conflict between U.S. immigration judges—who are EOIR employees—and the U.S. government. Some immigration judges have been critical of Trump administration policies that they say interfere with their independence, such as case-completion quotas, and the administration is now attempting to decertify the union that represents the judges. A hearing in that decertification proceeding is scheduled to begin tomorrow.

“Federal employees don’t relinquish their First Amendment rights when they begin working for the government,” said Stephanie Krent, a legal fellow at the Knight Institute. “Limits on federal-employee speech must be tailored to speech that would be genuinely disruptive, but this policy is anything but. It sweepingly suppresses protected speech without any apparent justification.”

Read the Knight Institute’s letter and the EOIR policy here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, Knight First Amendment Institute, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org, (646) 745-8510.

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

Click the above link in the press release to see the letter to EOIR Director McHenry.

Given the absolute Due Process disaster in Immigration Court and the total dysfunctional mess that the “malicious incompetents” at DOJ and EOIR so-called “management” have made out of an already troubled system, it’s perfectly understandable why EOIR doesn’t want any public scrutiny or the truth to come out.

However, given the regime’s complete disregard of the Constitution, the rule of law, and sound public policy in areas from immigration to the environment to voting rights, etc., I wouldn’t hold my breath for EOIR to change their unconstitutional and “just plain dumb” policies. Hopefully, the Knight Institute has the resources to take this to the “real” courts and, perhaps, even to Congress in better times.

But, to date, a divided Congress with “Moscow Mitch” in the driver’s seat and the higher-level Article IIIs have shown little interest in applying the Constitution or insisting on compliance with laws when it’s only the rights and lives of immigrants, particularly brown skinned ones from south of our border, involved. That’s particularly interesting, and not just a little discouraging, because very few members of the Article III Judiciary are Native Americans; almost all descend from immigrants and many of their ancestors would not have been allowed to come here or would not have survived under the types of stereotyping and invidious, unconstitutional discrimination unleashed by Trump and his minions. The ability to see yourself in the situation of other humans should be a requirement for any Article III judge! Obviously, it hasn’t been, or at least not to a sufficient extent, in the past.

So far, the Article IIIs Appellate Courts have bent over backwards to demonstrate just how aggressively out of touch they are with humanity and the everyday individual rights of Americans, whether citizens or non-citizens, entitled to protection under our laws.

Unfortunately, the “failure of courage and dereliction of Constitutional responsibility” among the Article III Appellate Judiciary is a problem that will continue to plague whatever is left of America and our institutions even after Trump and his kakistocracy are gone from the scene.

At some point, maybe legal education in American has to focus on a larger problem: educating a future judiciary with an overriding commitment to ethics, courage to stand up for individual rights, and the integrity to “just say no” to tyranny, inhumanity, wanton cruelty, and constant Executive overreach!

We can’t change what has happened, but we can learn from our failures.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-10-19

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

PRESS STATEMENT

Knight Institute Calls on DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review to Suspend Policy Silencing Immigration Judges

Due Process Forever!

Related posts: