January 2017 Archives

People are mad as hell, and rightfully so, over the President's outrageous action this weekend, his denial of free passage to Muslim air travelers on suspicion of religious affiliation.

"We have a President who says 'I don't follow the law, I don't care, I'm already sitting in the seat'," argues 'Young Turk' Cenk Uygur. "There really isn't any other legal action to be taken against the President who won't follow the law other than impeachment." Impeachment is a possibility that many find unlikely, but...

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Are we really stuck with President Trump? asks Georgetown University Law Center professor Rosa Brooks.   

"Yes, he is as crazy as everyone feared," she confirms. Pre-inauguration fantasies that Trump would modify his views after taking office have been dispelled during the earliest days of his administration. 

Brooks considers four ways to discharge a president in her commentary to the Washington Post. She missed a fifth, a move exemplified Monday night by acting attorney general Sally Yates: the refusal of millions of people across this country to follow his orders.

Resistance to illegitimate governance blossomed today as retired Colonel Ann Wright interrupted the confirmation hearing of Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. "I say no to Jeff Sessions, no to hatred, no to racism, no to the ban on refugees," shouted the co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience before being roughly yanked out of the room by a guard. Of special note: the former soldier received the State Department's Award for Heroism in 1997, the same year an Alabama judge accused Jeff Sessions' State Attorney General's office of gross prosecutorial misconduct.

We look forward to more disruption to business-as-usual in the coming days.
The Opinion of Deputy Assistant Attorney General (a position previously held by torture advocate John Yoo) Daniel L. Koffsky came in handy to contravene the anti-nepotism statute hindering appointment of the President's son-in-law Jared Kushnerclear as senior White House adviser. But Deporter-in-Chief Donald Trump didn't bother to consult his Office of Legal Counsel for approval to conspire to deny the civil rights of members of the Muslim faith. 

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President Donald Trump has tapped his controversial senior adviser and chief strategist Stephen Bannon for a seat at National Security Council Principals Committee meetings in what some experts are calling an "unprecedented" political appointment to the panel, reports Alexander Mallin at ABC News...

In an executive memorandum signed by Trump on Saturday, the president also downgraded the status of the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the security council's Principals Committee. Both will now only attend meetings "where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."

"We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory," said Bannon. "We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda."

Not if we deny the legitimacy of the whole damn bunch of American fascists!
If we bomb a country or help destabilize its society, we will then ban its citizens from being able to seek refuge in the United States," writes journalist Zaid Jilani at The Intercept.

President Trump is expected to sign an Executive Order today to restrict visits and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Titled "Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals," the draft text reads "In order to protect Americans, we must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward our country and its founding principles." Which is a lot to ask of people being bombed to oblivion. The U.S. Terror program has little to do with humanitarian aid and everything to do with sustaining American hegemony in the Middle East.

"What all seven countries have in common is that the United States government has violently intervened in them," concludes Jilani.
but a "serious legal and moral failure that leaves us all at risk of further human rights violations," says Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "We are extremely concerned that President-elect Trump will make good on his threat to subject more people to indefinite detention without charge or trial."

Donald Trump's revival of John Yoo's torture techniques -- and worse -- would provide a green light to other authoritarian regimes, fear human rights experts. With good reason. United Nations' special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer warns that the consequences around the world "would be catastrophic."

It's up to us to stop that from happening. 

"I would be guided by" American's support for waterboarding and other tactics says the president-in-waiting. NO! We refuse to accept any such collaboration with the crimes of a Trump regime.

Demonstrate your opposition to expansion of U.S. torture practices:
Wednesday January 11, the 15th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay prison camp
Meet-up 1 PM, Homeland Security's 450 Golden Gate Plaza entrance, San Francisco
A letter to Congress, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, urges the Senate to reject nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general reports Washington Post writer Sari Horwitz. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold confirmation hearings for Sessions on January 10-11.

"We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation's laws and promote justice and equality in the United States," states the letter, which refers to the rejection of Sessions' nomination to a federal judgeship in 1986: "Nothing in Senator Sessions' public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge."

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Six NAACP activists, including the organization's president Cornell Wm. Brooks, were arrested Tuesday night after they held a sit-in at the senator's Mobile, Alabama office, calling Donald Trump's nomination of Sessions "despicable and unacceptable." The protesters were charged with criminal trespass in the second-degree. 

A Twitter follower commented, "Resistance to injustice is always beautiful!" in response to posted mugshots of the six.

Law students share that sentiment. Members of the American Constitution Society at Harvard Law School also wrote a letter, in this case to the president-elect, opposing the nomination and soliciting signatures from around the country. The fact that "Sessions stated that he believed the Ku Klux Klan was okay," was part of students' argument for withdrawal of Trump's attorney general choice.

"Jeff Sessions is a strident conservative and consistently opposes progressive policies and nominees," adds a report prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union in preparation for the confirmation hearing. We'll be watching developments closely.

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Important Reading

Physicians for Human Rights
Broken Laws, Broken Lives

NLG White Paper
ON THE LAW OF TORTURE...

The President's Executioner

Detention and torture in Guantanamo



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This page is an archive of entries from January 2017 listed from newest to oldest.

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