Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: The Despot’s Bag of Tricks

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Military, Terrorism, The State

In apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.

Via the Tenth Amendment Center:

Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …

The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.

* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.

* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.

SECTION 1021

Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”

One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.

These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.

Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.

UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.

UPDATED: Just Like Hitler (Not)

Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Law, States' Rights

11 Replies

The outrage of it! Imagine giving local police the “authority to check the immigration status for individuals during traffic stops and other minor violations.” Can there be anything more heinous than the “police checking the immigration status of persons who are lawfully stopped or taken into custody”! What next? Take them off the streets if they’ve committed a crime? The mind boggles.

Lawmakers in Arizona, Mississippi, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina and Alabama have successfully passed strong enforcement legislation against illegal immigration … The U.S Department of Justice has moved forward with lawsuits against four of those states, and Arizona’s well-known bill, S.B. 1070, will be reviewed by the United States Supreme Court some time next spring. … The main focus of the DOJ lawsuits are laws that give local police authority to check the immigration status for individuals during traffic stops and other minor violations.

(NumbersUSA)

According to the Los Angeles Times, federal judges have responded by blocking these “strict new immigration laws adopted by conservative legislatures in half a dozen states …” However, “legal experts believe the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will take a sharply different approach.”

The high court said it would hear the Arizona immigration case in April, and Eastman said he expected the justices to divide along the same lines as in the May ruling upholding Arizona’s sanctions on employers who hire illegal workers. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined with Roberts in that case.

(LA Times)

As a legal immigrant, I went through an ordeal to get into the US. About me, Uncle Sam knows, for instance, that I do not carry any dread diseases. (I suspect some of you are relieved to know that the new immigrants at your kid’s school are TB free, right? Oh, they’re illegal?) Would I mind if a cop asked me for my ID, if he had reason to suspect I was up to no good? Why would I? The last time a cop asked me for an ID was when I applied for a license to carry concealed. That seemed eminently reasonable.

UPDATE (Dec. 30): Myron, unchecked crime is no answer. What a terrible position a liberal American is in: He much admit that as an upstanding citizen who obeys the law, he should be left unmolested by those who’ve sworn to protect him, whereas those who are not in this category should be sent packing. The upshot of this hue and cry over checking the immigration status of individuals who’ve broke the law will be that the poor natives will continue to be molested by the homegrown terrorists of the TSA, whereby your average illegal drunk driver, a lethal weapon, will leave the scene of an accident having obtained all the protections the ACLU can agitate for.

UPDATED: Salt of the Earth Forsaken on the U.S.-Mexican Border

Constitution, Crime, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

A rancher speaks out anon about the reality of life in the rural areas on the U.S.-Mexican border. And MSNBC, going against type, reports it. Is America’s news cartel beginning to sympathize with law-abiding American citizens under siege on the U.S.-Mexican border? MSNBC tells the story of “a South Texas farmer” who lives “in fear of Mexican traffickers smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across his land”:

“I’m a citizen of the United States. This is supposedly sovereign soil, but right now it’s anybody’s who happens to be crossing here,” he said. “I’m a little nervous being here right now. Definitely don’t come down here after dark.”
The farmer said a federal law enforcement agent told him to buy a bulletproof vest to use while working in his fields. Whenever he goes out to survey his agricultural operations, he always tells his office where he is headed, and he has purchased a high-powered rifle.
“One of the basic points of the federal government is to protect the people of this nation to secure the border, and they’re not doing that,” he complained.

Like Bush before him, Obama “and many local officials have said the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever and that reports of violence on the American side are wildly exaggerated. But the farmer scoffed at that argument. ‘I walk this soil every day and have since I was old enough to come out on my own,’ he said. ‘In this part of Texas, it is worse than it’s ever been.'”

Remember Rancher Robert Krentz and his faithful companion, both killed by a marauder who beat a retreat to Mexico.

UPDATE (Nov. 27): Many more, mostly unmentioned, Mexicans than Americans have been gunned down as a consequence of “Operation Fast and Furious,” “in which a gang going by the acronym ATF—the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—sold assault rifles to Mexican gangsters and their local gun-runners, who later used their taxpayer-funded ammunition and immunity to gun down” these innocents.

The gang leader is Attorney General Eric Holder.

UPDATED: Football Scene Obscene (Getting Stranger)

Celebrity, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Sex, Sport, The Zeitgeist

How did the noun “coach” ever come to be paired with the adjective “legendary”? To an outsider, the American football scene is obscene, starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down.

The problem with this freak show is that the participants have become pathologically invested in it.

Meanwhile, from NBC News’ vault comes this creepy footage of alleged pederast Jerry Sandusky:

“I must be a frustrated playground director. … I enjoy being around children. I enjoy their enthusiasm I just have a good time with them. Everybody needs people to care for them. Sometimes they don’t want it. Sometimes they don’t understand what you’re trying to do, but they want to be disciplined. Kids are growing up awfully fast today.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE (Nov. 15): As I said in an earlier post, I abhor the media-encouraged hysteria and hype over the Pen-State affair. “Let the man have his day in a court of law,” and all that stuff. But is this man helping his legal case?

In an “interview with Bob Costas, broadcast Wednesday night on NBC’s Rock Center,” the accused Jerry Sandusky manages to incriminate himself. I understand that Sandusky is here trying his best not to lie. Instead, he unintentionally injects a great deal of sensuality into talking about boys and what they mean to him.

MORE.