As Tom continues
to call attention to the election-year
resumption of federal executions, let me add this to the election-year mix: a friend of mine shared
this WaPo story about federal law enforcement officials who have inserted themselves, apparently uninvited by local authorities, into the nightly protests on-going in Portland, OR.
From Katie Shepherd's story:
When several men in green military fatigues and generic “police” patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan in front of Mark Pettibone in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his first instinct was to run.
He did not know whether the men were police or far-right extremists, who frequently don militarylike outfits and harass left-leaning protesters in Portland, Ore. The 29-year-old resident said he made it about a half-block before he realized there would be no escape. Then, he sank to his knees, hands in the air ...
He was detained and searched. One man asked him if he had any weapons; he did not. They drove him to the federal courthouse and placed him in a holding cell. Two officers eventually returned to read his Miranda rights and ask if he would waive those rights to answer a few questions; he did not. And almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go.
Pettibone said he still does not know who arrested him or whether what happened to him legally qualifies as an arrest. The federal officers who snatched him off the street as he was walking home from a peaceful protest did not tell him why he had been detained or provide him any record of an arrest, he told The Post. As far as he knows, he has not been charged with any crimes.
Clearly, the president believes that positioning himself as a champion of law and order is a winning political strategy. But it seems he has jettisoned law and we must settle for order. His well-documented ignorance of basic Constitutional protections seems not to have been addressed yet.
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ReplyDeleteThey are probably from the Department of Homeland Security -- ICE and Border agents dressed up like soldiers. The Don is not constitutionally allowed to use the military as his consiglieri, and even red state governors object to having their National Guard do his dirty work. So he has created a bunch of people more used to making arrests at plant gates and courthouse lobbies running around looking like Army Rangers and clearing the streets of hobgoblins and other threats to his reelection.
ReplyDeleteYes. It's Trump's street brawlers -- agents from agencies under DHS that Congress funded for other purposes whom the president is using as a backdrop for the tough-on-crime part of his reelection campaign. He said today his brawlers brought Portland under control and will do it again "very easily" if necessary. He said he will reveal more about his street gang next week. People will be shocked. For the usual six hours.
DeleteThere is a photo of the pretend soldier boys, as well as a discussion of whether they are legal (spoiler: Probably yes, although it's arguable) at:
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/politics/federal-agents-portland-arrests.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
I highly recommend the NY Times article Tom has linked to directly above. In fact, I started to compose an update to the post, based on what is reported in that story, but ran out of time on Saturday, and then didn't find any on Sunday. So a few brief thoughts:
Delete* An unmarked vehicle swooping up to the curb and abducting a citizen who literally is just walking down the street - that's right out of the Soviet or Nazi playbook, and was a precursor to some of the worst human rights abuses of the 20th century. To be sure, this protester Pettibone was subsequently released, but to have him kidnapped by government security forces, and then detained, even for just a short time, without any charges or explanation: that's precisely the sort of thing which America saw herself as standing athwart, not that long ago.
* I've never been a fan of the Department of Homeland Security. I thought it was a bad idea, in the wake of 9/11, to aggregate these formerly-disparate security and police forces under a single aegis.
* I've also been concerned for a long time about the breadth of federal law. My basic view is: if the federal government wishes to arrest anyone, or spy on anyone, there is a law on the books, probably many laws, which will permit it.
* In this instance, the justification for the deployment of this joint federal police force in Portland is the attacks on statues and defacing of federal property. While I understand the motives for doing these acts and have a certain amount of sympathy for those who are pulling down statues of Confederacy generals and government officials, there is a right way and wrong way to go about this. The wrong way is to put together a group (a mob) and go out at night to do it directly. The right way is to go through the boring, lengthy and frustrating process of petitioning local government, showing up for hearings, putting pressure on local representatives to vote your way, and so on. In this case, the lawlessness of the iconoclasts is providing the justification for Trump and his agency to deploy these feds. Additional justification is provided when the local police, who should be protecting public property, are told by local elected leaders to stand down, almost certainly for political reasons. Trump's police troops are filling a vacuum left by derelict local officials and police, and are combatting local residents who are looking to take illicit short-cuts around the obligations of citizenship.
DHS was always going to start acting like the Stasi. Intimidating citizens by rounding them up for detention and interrogation without cause because Donald Trump believes they are somehow endangering federal buildings is not the first step toward a police state. It's a sign that the police state has already been launched.
DeleteWhere is congressional leadership in all this?
IMO, all signs of the Confederacy should have been expunged from the public square in 1865. You'd still have people celebrating traitors and defenders of slavery. But they'd have to do it in a secret basement. Like how Bavarians reportedly celebrate Herman Goering's birthday.
I have no problem with pulling down Confederate monuments and desecrating them in the grossest possible way. However, I agree (reluctantly) that it does little to promote the public peace for a small group of protestors to take it upon themselves to make these decisions unilaterally. I think we all ought to be able to enjoy participating in seeing the last of Robert E. Lee and the horse he rode in on.
Re: "where is Congress?" - we're starting to see some reactions now. Both the Oregon Attorney General and the Oregon chapter of the ACLU have sued DHS. And I heard a news item tonight that one of the Oregon House members is preparing legislation, although I'm not holding my breath that the Senate would take it seriously.
Delete"But it seems he has jettisoned law and we must settle for order"
ReplyDeleteAnd it will end up that we have neither law nor order.
I hope there will be lawsuits brought on behalf of the victims of Trump's brownshirts.
PS, I decided to delete my semi tongue-in-cheek comment about tv show plots. I don't wish to make light of this serious matter.
DeleteExactly. This is a move to create disorder and division under the cloak of "law and order." It worked for Nixon, and it may work for Trump.
DeleteKatherine, I actually really liked your tv show plot comment. I think it's okay to have a little fun, especially harmless fun like your comment.
DeleteTrump is so incredibly ham-handed. There was that walk across Lafayette Square, with federal police pounding on protesters and journalists, so the Great Man could have a picture taken of him holding onto a bible like someone who never had grasped a bible in his life.
DeleteThis ill-planned deployment of federal cops is of a piece. As was the so-called "travel ban" which didn't survive a court challenge. It's Amateur Hour in the White House.
It may be Amateur Hour, but it could also be Der Tag. The militarizing the DHS may be more than a coincidence with The Don telling Chris Wallace Sunday that he may not accept the results of the election: "I have to see."
DeleteHe began by cultivating the military. He surrounded himself with generals. He loooooved the military; he looooved the veterans (even though he was ineligible for their organizations). Ignoring the doctrine that politics stops at waters' edge, he visited troops to make partisan attacks on the dangers of "Sleepy Joe." By anybody else,it would be called sucking up. From him, it was just Trump.
But then Gen. Bonespur got mad at Generals Kelly, McMaster and Mattis, pardoned a Navy war criminal and kept getting crosswise with the chain of command. Somewhere in the muddy depths of his ego he may have been counting on his role as commander-in-chief keeping him in office if the voters decided not to. But now that he has cashiered the military, he has to be afraid the military will cashier him. Hence, a parallel military organization. Like the Sturmabteilung (SA).
He could have developed his idea of ignoring elections from his former enemy Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. He sent Mike Pence down there in March of 2019 to take out Maduro, and Pence said "all options" were on the table. But Maduro is still there. The Don could count on the support of his best buddies, Putin, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte. As for Britain, France and Germany, he cashiered them long ago.
All impossible? How possible was The Don's election?
All the more reason why he has to get shellacked beyond all shadow of a doubt in November.
DeleteAnd since a lot of people will be voting by mail (in spite of Trump's efforts to discredit it) the states have to make sure their ducks are in a row with the systems they already have in place. It would be best to require that the ballots be actually received, not just postmarked, by Nov. 3. And if they previously haven't been sending out ballots to all registered voters, now is not the time to start doing it.
And they also have to ensure in-person voting. If they don't have enough poll workers (because a lot of them previously were seniors who are at risk for Covid) they could pull in National Guard to staff the polling stations, if that's a legal option.