Looks like Trump & Co. blinked on Friday night after discovering the Supremes were getting involved in their latest Venezuelan deportation operation

 

As legal fight raged, ICE buses filled with Venezuelans heading toward airport turned around, video shows

 

Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. ...

As the motorcade was headed for the airport, a last-minute federal hearing on the matter was taking place in Washington.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening — just hours after a bus rolled up to Bluebonnet.

Shortly before that hearing kicked off, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in.

“We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU arguing on behalf of detainees on the verge of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. ...

 

Rep. Anna Eshoo says Christine Ford doesn't have a political bone in her body, which is utterly ridiculous

Hasn't Ford involved politicians from the very beginning?

Here's Eshoo:

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., met July 20 for roughly 90 minutes with Ford, who lives in her Bay Area district and is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University, after Ford contacted Eshoo's office about Kavanaugh.

"It was more than obvious to me that she bore the scars of what she had been subjected to," Eshoo said in an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday. "She doesn't have a political bone in her body. And she obviously was really terrified about what could become of her and her family." ... 

Eshoo said her actions were dictated by Ford's desire for complete confidentiality about her allegations as she worked through whether and how to bring them to the attention of those vetting Kavanaugh and, potentially, the public. "I think it's difficult for people to understand if you haven't dealt with people that have been subjected to something like this," she said. "They keep it to themselves. They feel guilty. They bury it. They tell themselves to move on. And so there wasn't any kind of political process in her mind whatsoever."

The pair then took it to a higher political level in Senator Feinstein:

Ford's request for discretion was observed to the point, Eshoo said, that in her office only she and one other senior aide were fully aware of Ford's claims. When Eshoo and Ford mutually decided to take the matter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ford's letter laying out her account was hand-delivered to a Feinstein aide in Washington, Eshoo said: "In other words, you don't drop it off at the receptionist's desk."

Ford is hardly otherwise apolitical:

Christine Ford ... signed a letter with other health professionals demanding that President Donald Trump stop his controversial policy on family separations at the border . . . an exhibit in an ACLU lawsuit against the Trump administration. ...

The Washington Post reports that she is a “registered Democrat who has made small contributions to political organizations.” A review of federal campaign finance records shows donations earmarked for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. ...

A 2017 article in the San Jose Mercury News says that Blasey was planning to attend a science march wearing a knitted brain hat that was supposed to resemble the pink p*ssy hats that many have used to protest Donald Trump and advocate for women’s rights. “It’s a science party!” the article quotes “biostatistician Christine Blasey, of Palo Alto” as saying. It says she would “wear an elaborately knitted cap of the human brain — yarn turned into a supersized cerebral cortex — inspired by the ‘pussy hats’ donned during the Women’s Marches.”

Police in Colorado Springs won't investigate ACLUer who called for Trump supporters to be killed, citing freedom of speech

Reported here by CBS Denver:

'The post states, “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before Election Day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force…” ... Wirbel did not respond to a request for comment. He is from Colorado Springs and police there say his post is covered by free speech and they do not intend to investigate.'

Evidently as long as you don't threaten a specific individual it's permitted to advocate killing the followers of Obama, or Clinton or Madonna or the Pope and so on.

Whatever happened to incitement laws? to law and order?

Colorado Springs has bigger problems than Planned Parenthood shootings.

Noted Lefty Calls Obama's Secrecy Orwellian and Tyrannical

Noted lefty Glenn Greenwald for the UK Guardian here calls Obama's secrecy about a CIA program to kill even Americans with drones Orwellian and tyrannical (he's right):

"[W]hat is missing from the debate is the most basic information about what the CIA does and even their claimed legal justification for doing it. The Obama administration still refuses to publicly disclose the OLC memo that purported to authorize it (they agreed two weeks ago to make it available only to certain members of Congress without staff present, thus still maintaining "secret law"). They conceal all of this - and thus prevent basic democratic accountability - based on the indescribably cynical and inane pretense that they cannot even confirm or deny the existence of the CIA program without seriously jeopardizing national security.

"This is a complete perversion of their secrecy powers. Even among the DC cliques that exist to defend US government behavior, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to defend what is being done here. The Obama administration runs around telling journalists how great and precise and devastating the CIA's assassination program is, then tells courts that no disclosure is permissible because they cannot safely confirm in court that the program even exists.

"Such flagrant abuse of secrecy power is at once Orwellian and tyrannical. It has the effect of blocking even the most minimal transparency on the most consequential question: the government's claimed authority to execute anyone it wants without charges, far from a battlefield, in total secrecy. It yet again demonstrates that excessive government secrecy is an infinitely greater threat than unauthorized disclosures. This is why we need radical transparency projects and aggressive whistle-blowers. And it's why nobody should respect the secrecy claims of the Obama administration or believe the assertions they make about national security. What else do they need to do to prove how untrustworthy those claims are?"

Patriot Act Votes Show Rep. Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus is Full of TINOs

Tea-Partyers in Name Only.

Everyone's getting this wrong, from Adam Serwer here at The Washington Post to Rush Limbaugh here, on partisan grounds. The Post wants to paint the Tea Party Caucus as a bunch of hypocrites, and Rush wants people to believe the Tea Party actually supports even the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act.

Rush chalked up the Feb. 8 revolt of 26 Republicans to rookies being poorly advised by the Republican leadership:

Now, the Republicans lost 26 of their own members, adding to the 122 Democrats who voted against it," and some of the Republicans say that they 'felt completely uniformed [sic] by their leadership' on this. Some of the rookies, some of the freshmen say they were not really advised about all this in time -- and the leader of the opposition was Dennis Kucinich.  Now, something tells me here that Republicans do not intend to vote with Dennis Kucinich, 'cause he's aligned with the ACLU opposing extending the whole thing, the whole Patriot Act.  So if Kucinich is for it, "all rational people" ought to be against it.  

The only trouble is, the exact same bunch of Republicans all voted against the controversial provisions again yesterday. They've had six days to get brought up to speed by the leadership, but not a single one has changed his vote. And Rep. Hanna joined them to make it 27 and the third from the membership of the more liberal Republican Main Street Partnership.

I guess Rush must think these 27 Republicans are quite irrational after all, voting with Kucinich and the left. Rush was silent about this today, hoping we've forgotten what he said.

The facts are these. The Tea Party in the US House is much smaller than people think, and it isn't co-terminous with Bachmann's caucus. The latter is a bunch of me-too Republicans who find it expedient to identify with the Tea Party politically, just like Michael Steele did, and even Sarah Palin, who took an eternity to speak out against the bailouts. Just 8 self-identified Tea Party Caucus members voted both times against the controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. And only 7 others who joined them were elected in the Tea Party wave last autumn, but they still do not self-identify that way.

When you consider that the vast majority of the Tea Party Caucus voted to extend the Patriot Act provisions, you can understand why 19 Republicans who voted the other way might have a reason not to associate themselves with such pretenders.

Bachmann's list hasn't been updated since last summer, despite the gargantuan Republican sweep in November. Where is all the new blood, huh?

It's staying away for a reason, if it's really there at all.

Tyrannies Desire to Know Everything You Say and Do: Feds Violate FISA

From The Washington Post:

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of US citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

What the ACLU got was heavily redacted. Read about it here.

Assume no communication whatsoever is exempt from eavesdropping. I know I don't.

So to all my regular readers over at 216.81.81.84 in the Department of Homeland Security in Woodbridge, VA, hello! And a big shout out to you over at Customs and Border Protection at 63.167.255.154! Also to the DHS in Springfield, VA, at 216.81.81.83, greetings! And you over at United States Army Information Systems Command Headquarters at 141.116.212.32 in Alexandria, VA, thanks for visiting!

I would be remiss if I left out the FBI. Hello over there in Clarksburg, WV! Nice of you at the Criminal Justice Information Systems office at 153.31.113.26 to stop by! And also those of you in Bridgeport, WV, at 153.31.113.21. I appreciate your interest, ever so much!

What will you all do, when the power goes out?

Arrogant Flight Attendants Want Special Treatment On Enhanced Pat-Downs

But your choice is to get scanned virtually strip-searched or groped, that's it, against your 4th Amendment rights.

Calling enhanced pat-downs by the TSA "invasive," Deborah Volpe, Vice President of the Association of Flight Attendants Local 66 in Phoenix, says they want a different "crew pass" procedure for flight attendants and pilots, according to a story here from ABC15 in Phoenix:

"We don't want them in uniform going through this enhanced screening where their private areas are being touched in public."

"They actually make contact with the genital area."

"They've already contacted the ACLU."

"We just feel this pat-down is a little much."

If it's a little much for you, isn't it a little much for anyone? What makes union members so special?

Want to crash the TSA? November 24 is National Opt-Out Day. Refuse the scanners. Make them feel you up. And make sure to film it and upload it to YouTube.

Pass the word: optoutday.com.