Category Archives: The Resistance

What the Hell???

I really hope this turns out to be false:

Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets

But I can’t say I’m optimistic.

Posted in Law: Criminal Law, Question Authority, The Resistance | 3 Comments

Sing It

What does it mean when you have lost not only Taylor Swift but also Barbra Streisand:

One thing it means is a spike in voter registration.

(Not that I ever ever imagined I’d link to a Barbra Streisand video…)

Posted in 2018 Election, Kultcha, The Resistance | Comments Off on Sing It

The Op-Ed

Everyone is talking about the NYT op-ed by the Trump appointee who sees him/herself as protecting the US from a clear and all-too-present danger in the Oval Office. I’m on the road, so I’m late to the party, but here in very summary form is my two cents, taking the op-ed as true for sake of discussion.

  1. Underminig the boss is often a moral problem, but it is only a constitional problem if you do it wrong. Manipulating the boss is different from just ignoring the boss. Playing bureaucratic games to get your way is probably a Washington passtime than is older than the White House. Flat out ignoring the boss’s orders is subversive of the constitutional order, a violation of a duty of loyalty to the boss, and arguably a violation of every appointee’s oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the USA– a document that for better or much worse has made Trump the President in law as well as in name.
  2. What if the boss is morraly terrible? Ignoring the boss could be a very hard moral issue in extreeme cases. Some ends do justify some means. If the issue were the preservation of the Republic, or preservation of many lives, I think our author would have moral (but not legal) justification for the behavior. If the issues are, as we get the sense they are, ‘mere’ policy – stopping Trump doing things that are very very stupid but not existential dangers – then the moral justification for the illegality and personal disloyalty is much weaker. Quitting and saying why might be a better course.
  3. I am reminded of Daniel Drezner’s piece on whether you should work for Trump, and especially Elliot Cohen’s “I told conservatives to work for Trump. One talk with his team changed my mind”. The warning signs were there from the first.
  4. It’s hard to read the oped without speculating unkindly about the author’s motives. If your goal really were to subvert from within in the interst of the survival of the Republic, why would you advertise that until after the fact? That op-ed is not going to make the job easier. It might be justified if the goal were to bring down this President (and bring in Mike Pence – an improvement how exactly?), but there’s nothing in the four corners of the oped to support that view. Rather, it seems to me like an exercise in ass-covering, a marker that some weasel put down for the future so that after the whole con collapses he/she can disclaim the taint that–if there is any karma or justice–will follow everyone who was part of Operation FUBAR for the rest of their natural life and beyond.
  5. I’m also reminded of what the late great Charles L. Black, Jr. said about how he thought a government official should deal with the hypothetical ‘terroris with an A-bomb’ scenario. The scenario was and is deployed to test intuitions about whether torture could ever be justified–what people who say torture is never justified would do if they believed the terrorists’ claim to have put the ticking time bomb in a big city. Read the fuller account, but the takeaway is that if you decide conscience requires an illegal act, you have a moral duty to turn yourself in right afterwards and face the music, whether it’s prosccution or pardons and a medal.Our op-ed writer is not following that model.
  6. And finally,
Posted in Law: Constitutional Law, Law: Ethics, The Resistance | 3 Comments

Saturday March on Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children

There will be a march on the so-called Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children this Saturday afternoon. Here are the details I received in an email from a local organizing group:

When: Saturday June 23 Time: 4pm

Where: CORNER OF 288th Street and 137th Ave Homestead Florida 33030

Bring: Sunscreen, water, comfortable walking shoes

The Trump administration has reopened a 1,000-bed Homestead facility that once housed minors who entered the country illegally and alone, reviving a compound at a time when the White House is under fire for a new policy that separates children from parents detained by immigration authorities.

Today community leaders and elected representatives were turned away for what was a planned tour of the facility.

Join our coalition of community organizers( ACLU, AFSC, FOMDD, United We Dream, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, We Count!, Miami DSA, Women’s March Florida,MUJER, Temple Beth Am, Florida Immigration Coalition, NCJW Miami, Rise Up Florida, Instituto Jesuita Perdo Arrupe) to STOP THE DETENTION CAMPS and KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER.

Posted in Miami, The Resistance | 10 Comments

Powerful

I don’t watch TV news, so I only saw this ad when Digby blogged it.

Powerful stuff. Here’s Wikipedia’s article on Tom Steyer if you want to know more about him.

Posted in The Resistance, The Scandals | Comments Off on Powerful

Contingency Plans

Is this over-the-top? Paranoid? Sadly, no.

Pix from Digby’s blog which also points me to Host a Mueller Firing Rapid Response Event. Myself I have to think the odds are that Trump is not so crazed as to try to fire Mueller, but what’s the confidence interval for that prediciton? Not high enough, that’s for sure.

Posted in The Resistance, The Scandals | 2 Comments