Politics of Hate category archive

At Above the Law, Jonathan Wolf reports that :ICE “kidnapped” some of the staff of his favorite burrito shop. Later on in the article, he explains his use fo that term (emphasis added):

I say “kidnapped” because this most definitely was not an “arrest” and there is no better word for what actually took place. When a police officer takes another person into custody, he or she is acting under the color of legal authority. This police officer must respect the constitutional rights of the accused, and must have probable cause indicating that the person being arrested has committed a crime. When police officers make arrests, their badges and the badge numbers on them are visible, their last names are stitched into their uniforms, and their faces are uncovered, so that if your rights are indeed violated while you are in custody, you know who to complain about later on. When a police officer goes beyond the legal authority with which he or she is entrusted, that police officer is subject to disciplinary action, civil liability, or even criminal prosecution.

The color of someone’s skin or the fact that they speak English with an accent does not amount to probable cause.

Thom has seen this before. A snippet:

Every modern society that normalizes hunts of the poor, the dark-skinned, the undocumented, or the politically inconvenient eventually discovers that the culturally acceptable definition of undesirable keeps expanding.

At Above the Law, in the midst of a longer story about efforts by lawyers and law students to pressure (the Republican-controlled) Congress to require the Trump maladministration’s ICE to obey the law, lies this little fact:

Minnesota is presently a constitutional law dumpster fire. The Constitutional Accountability Center identifies at least five constitutional amendments that the Trump administration is repeatedly violating on the ground.

Farron comments on the Trump maladministration’s project to build concentration camps and the implications thereof.

Thom says they should be called what they are: not “detention centers,” but “concentration camps.”

UGa history professor Stephen Mihm hears the Trump maladministration’s ICE shaking down brown people and hears a rhyme. Here’s a bit:

This is yet another moment when a little history might have helped Donald Trump. The president is apparently blissfully unaware that many attempts to deploy the federal government to impose unpopular policies on an unwilling populace don’t just fail – they end up destroying those foolish enough to wield that power in the first place.

Case in point: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a deeply unpopular law that effectively radicalized large swaths of the American electorate. It led to widespread civil disobedience, the destruction of a major political party and, thankfully, accelerated the end of slavery itself. Its lessons are ones Republicans should ponder – and fast.

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*Mark Twain.

Home invasions. It’s an American Stasi thing.

And, in more news of the American Stasi. . . .

Another woman’s story.