all so-called independent agencies are fully accountable to Congress, the only meaningfully democratic branch of our govt. also the most dysfunctional branch of our govt. but there’s no saving American democracy without curing that dysfunction.
see David Andolfatto https://xcancel.com/dandolfa/status/1912535963294740729
kind of emblematic of what DeSantis and Rufo have done to New College.
Google news headlines: “Former New College marketing director drove naked around Lakewood Ranch” “Former spokesperson for Gov. DeSantis arrested, charged with exposure of sexual organs” “New College of Florida marketing director arrested, fired from job”
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis i'm glad you didn't go in, but i suggest maybe you don't know how it felt to be a Congressperson hated by the crowd in the circumstances that prevailed inside. or Mike Pence for that matter.
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis there are distinctions. but legitimately fearing for ones life is key license to act, even fatally, in self-defense. and there was lots of that fear. we are all fortunate it went down with as little loss of life as it did.
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis i'll do my best not to kill anyone, even if they do sneak into my house. trespass of a country is far less intimate and threatening to life and property than a home. a home invader provokes real safety and self-defense concerns that an undocumented migrant typically does not. 1/
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis why shouldn't the J6-ers, by your reasoning, have been shot for trespassing univited into the People's House? to be clear, i think that would be awful and dumb, and think non-violent mere trespassers among j6-ers ought to have been more leniently treated. but from all accounts, many Congresspeople legit feared for their lives, in the way one might during a home invasion. /fin
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis i mean, just ctrl-f the word "jail". it's nearly all trespassing or trumped up "disorderly conduct". https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm
an occupy protester jailed 90 days on trumped up "assault of a police officer" https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/occupy-wall-street-protester-sentenced-to-90-days-jail-for-assault-idUSBREA4I0K0/
Federalized prosecutions of George Floyd protests. https://m4bl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Struggle-For-Power-The-Ongoing-Persecution-of-Black-Movement-by-the-U.S.-Government.pdf
states like FL criminalize association as "riot" and legalize vehicular homicide. https://slate.com/business/2021/04/drivers-hit-protesters-laws-florida-oklahoma-republicans.html
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis her notification was an abduction.
me, i'm not a fan of executions, under almost any circumstance. certainly not for a two-strikes hit of illegal entry and failing to hold a valid fishing permit.
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis i am disappointed by what you think. i'd like to say i'm shocked, but we've spoken.
what about people like Rümeysa Öztürk, who was in the country legally until, entirely unbeknownst to her, her legal status was revoked because she'd coauthored an op-ed asking Tufts to divest from Israel?
after Rubio signed the revocation, was she subject in your view to immediate execution?
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis "El Salvador's justice minister once said the only way out is in a coffin." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-records-show-about-migrants-sent-to-salvadoran-prison-60-minutes-transcript/
Sure, we don't know they never leave. We do know they have no fixed terms, their stay is indefinite and at the discretion of their jailers. That is a violation of any human's rights. If you're judged to have done something so egregious to merit life withour parole, you know it. Otherwise, you know what you owe. 1/
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis All the J6 people had full due process. That doesn't mean I agree with all the prosecutions and outcomes — had I had the discretion of a prosecutor, I might have been more lenient with low-level nonviolent trespassers. But they got lawyers, trials, rights-of-appeal, etc. They did time because they did the crime, even if you think the circumstances of their crime should have exonerated them. /fin
if the Supreme Court really wanted to encourage compliance by the Trump Administration, it might in a majority opinion include, Clarence-Thomas-style, an off-hand remark about how perhaps the Court's reasoning in Trump v United States bears a second look in light of more recent jurisprudence.
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis Perhaps you can argue not so much process is due for ordinary deportation to a home country in which a person would be a free citizen. I suspect we'd disagree on how much process would be due, but that'd be a less fundamental disagreement. 1/
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis But a whole lot of fucking process is due before "deporting" (really renditioning) someone to a third-country gulag, whose conditions of imprisonment we neither control nor monitor, from which no one is ever released. And a whole lot of process is due prior to deporting a person to a home country after a judicial finding they specifically cannot be deported to that home country on valid legal grounds. /fin
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis Look. This is just pure sloppiness. You have no idea what I think about the grab bag of cases discussed in this piece. I haven't paid attention to most of them. I think that sending anyone on an indefinite term to a third-world prison no one has ever been released from is something the United States shouldn't do, and especially shouldn't do without due process. 1/
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis I have no idea whether Kilmar Abrega Garcia is the saint his, um, wife seems to present him to be, or a vicious gang member and wife beater. Neither do you. Neither does Pam Bondi. If these allegations were prosecuted and, after vigorous defense if he proclaims innocence, he were convicted of crimes, that's be fine. None of us would have taken any notice of the case. 2/
@Phil @jbouie @jeffjarvis But you can't put a person in prison, let alone a prison no one is ever realeased from, without meeting a high burden of proof and severity. Life sentences in CECOT are probably impermissible under the 8th Amendment anyway, but even if it were run like a Norweigian prison, you'd need to prove a crime commensurate with a life sentence. /fin
Text: It would be easy to assign malice to this nonsense, and there is a degree of it. There is also indeed self-interest on behalf of the oligarchs backing Trump, who might still hope they can get their tax cuts while holding onto Trump's populism (though I suspect they realize their losses aren't worth it). However, Trump isn't doing something that every political movement does in one way or another. He's trying to create a narrative and set of common reference points that transform issues associated with complex systems into digestible ones with easy solutions. To give him his credit, that's his greatest talent. The man is a master ideologist in a world where ideologies have fewer stable reference points in "big ideas." However, I suspect that the contradictions and unexpected consequences of trying to take as complex a system as global trade and payment out of homeostasis with blunt tools will create feedback loops that even he can't paper over.
@Phil you live in a bubble of your own construction, and from that vantage instruct us all on the proper application of executive authority, in a democracy no less. but the people you support are actively dismantling democracy, incarcerating innocents and throwing away the key, hinting very strongly that any of us (“homegrowns”) could be next. this is tyranny that has even shed its fig leaves, but you sing songs to yourself and look away. https://www.newsweek.com/merwil-gutierrez-ice-wrong-teen-el-salvador-2059783
@Phil He is sending people into life imprisonment who have done nothing at all to merit that, with no meaningful process. he is a tyrant. his rank evil is leavened only by his idiocy, buffoonery, narcissism. Perhaps he’s incapable of understanding the horrors for which he is responsible. His supporters, however, have no such excuse.
@Phil DOGE is incompetence and corruption incarnate.
@Phil I agree Congress has been dysfunctional the last few decades. But empowering a tyrant is no solution to that. Our system requires an assertive, functional Congress. Electoral reform and institutional changes can deliver that.
@Phil independent agencies are entirely answerable to Congress. the one democratic branch of government.
hawkish fed did nothing to gold though.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org Drehen Sie die Unendlichkeit und sie wird Null.
(blame Google Translate if that makes no sense. or just blame me!)
@Phil are independent courts repugnant to democracy? can the people never choose a decision-making procedures other than the whim of the people as expressed through the whim a quasi elected quasi king?
under our constitution btw the electoral college is not elected. its weird quasi electedness is an ad hoc ex post state level innovation.
under our constitution democratically elected Congress is supreme. and it is, even with respect to independent agencies.
