ICE Goes Looking

For John, BLUF:  Sanctuary Cities are a growing phenomenon across the fruited plain, although mainly on the coasts.  Now the Federal Government is deploying more ICE Agents to metropolitan areas to round up suspected illegal immigrants.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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BOOM:  ICE Throws Down the Gauntlet, Arresting Two Illegal Aliens in a California Courthouse

From PJ Media, by Mr Rick Moran, 20 February 2020.

Here is the lede plus seven:

ICE agents arrested two illegal aliens in a courthouse in Northern California, defying a state law that says they needed a warrant from a judge to do so.

ICE flouted a new state law that requires the warrant before arresting an illegal on courthouse grounds.  After the predictable outcry from courthouse officials and others, ICE calmly gave their rationale.

Los Angeles Times:

ICE said in a statement that California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” David Jennings, ICE’s field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.

In other words, ICE is telling critics to go climb a tree.

ICE's actions follow the deployment of Customs and Border Patrol agents to sanctuary cities and states.  The state government of California bitterly criticized that move, but find themselves unable to do anything to prevent it.  The Department of Homeland Security, the agency under which ICE and CBP operate, can send its personnel anywhere they see fit to send them.

There is a definite tug of war between the Federal Government and some of the States and some of the cities.  It represents the lack of consensus across the country.♠  Per haps the November elections will help to resolve these differences.

To move forward, we are going to have to find a compromise with regard to our immigration policy.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  This raises the issue of providing more Federal political power to the more populous states, perhaps by giving them more US Senators.  This would change the balance of power and would reduce most of the States, as a group, to to a minority position.  Ten States are half the population (167,707,819, out of 331,875,705, per the 2010 Census).  The nation would be run by California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, when they were in agreement.  Picture that on the map.  A change in how we distribute Senators would probably require a new Constitutional Convention, with the danger that many states would drop out at the Convention.  This last Wednesday, The Washington Times had this article:  "Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule".

The Chuck and DiFi Show

For John, BLUF:  This is more historic documentation than current event, but it could be a primar on next year of the Democrats win the Senate.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Little Story About Chuck and Dianne...

From PJ Media, by Commentator Stephen Kruiser, 26 September 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

As a third accuser crawled out from the seedy underbelly of attorney Michael Avenatti to smear Brett Kavanaugh with a story that actually makes her look like a monster, it became very apparent that none of this is going to play out quite like the Democrats want it to.  At least not completely.

It has been obvious since last week that the Democrats and their well-trained advocates in the MSM have been hoping all along that Judge Kavanaugh and the Republicans would just fold under pressure.  As soon as today's fantastical tale hit the news, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately called for Kavanaugh to withdraw.  That's what they've been hoping for all along.

Schumer took his case to Twitter (the MSM never complains when a Democrat lobbies and attacks on social media), proving that he's either too stupid to know what "corroborated" means, or is simply a pathological liar:

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The First Thing That Comes to Mind

For John, BLUF:  Maybe they could subpoena the char woman to ask if anyone left any notes in the room.  The second, I would think.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Democrats Want Trump's Helsinki Translator Hauled In Front Of Congress To Testify

From Zero Hedge, by Mr Tyler Durden, 18 July 2018.

Here is the lede:

At least two Congressional Democrats are calling for Trump's interpreter to testify about the private one-on-one meeting held between the US President and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Have US Representative Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) and US Senator Jeane Shaheen (D-NH) learned nothing from the experience of the Sage of Searchlight, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?  Remember when Majority Leader Reid abolished the filibuster for certain Federal Judge nominations?  How did that work out long term?

Does Representative Kennedy not foresee a time when there would be a Democratic President and a Republican majority in one of the Houses of Congress?

Apparently not.  Lack of long term thinking.

If you want more Trump, this is how you get more Trump.

Regards  —  Cliff

Lois Lerner, Multi-tasking

For John, BLUF:  Remind me, Monday, to ask George about if Ms Lerner should be debarred here in Massachusetts.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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By Reporter Stephen Dinan, of The Washington Times we have this Monday article—"IRS finds yet another Lois Lerner email account".  Another?  Yes, besides the two already found, there is an account for ‘Toby Miles’, linked to government business.

Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.

The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.

IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency.

It is Day 838 of the IRS Scandal.  That is a long time.  The good news is that the Courts in our system of Government are allowing this to go on and not shutting it down, like we were some sort of dictatorship, without the protection of a separation of powers.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Are we going to Abilene?

For John, BLUF:  Congress needs to start doing its job again and stop passing rules for execution, as opposed to actual execution, to the bureaucrats of the Administration.  They are becoming almost a Fifth Estate.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This starts at a Federal Courthouse in DC, where the DC Circuit ruled that Federal Subsidies for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are illegal.♠♥

Then we move to The Instapundit,

TYLER COWEN:  The Real Import Of The Gruber Fracas.  I like this from the comments:  “All I can say is, if you’re going to pass a law with zero bipartisan support, you should be very careful in the drafting, since they aren’t likely to help you out if you muck it up.  In this case, haste and arrogance is biting them in the ass.”

(A little crass, but true.)

But them this moves to the blog Marginal Revolution, where Mr Tyler Cowen talks to "The real import of the Jon Gruber fracas".  Ah, Professor Jonathan Gruber of MIT and his quotes about Federal vs State Healthcare Exchanges.  From the Marginal Revolution blog post:

It would be much easier if (some) people would simply say “Of course this normally should be kicked back into the legislature for clarification.  But I don’t want to do that because I don’t regard Republican control of the House, and how that control is used, as a legitimate form of rule.”  One may agree, or not, but the nature of the case is pretty clear.

Instead we read irrelevant blog posts and tweets about how the experts meant to have subsidies at all levels all along.  Of course they did.  But did Congress know what it was doing in a detailed sense, one way or another?  Hard to say, personally I doubt it, and Alex says no.  The basic starter hypothesis here is that many of them knew this was a health care bill, it would extend coverage, it had a mandate, it had some subsidies, it had a Medicaid expansion, it had some complicated cost control, it was approved by leading Democratic Party experts, it met some CBO standards, and beyond that — if you pull out those who were confused on the details of the exchanges and the subsidies do you still have majority support?  I doubt it.  Most absurd of all are the tweets asking the critics to show Congress intended no federal-level subsidies.

Regarding the line "But did Congress know what it was doing in a detailed sense…", this is a key issue.  Are we going to have rule by representative government or by bureaucratic experts?  This leads to Arrows Theorem.

An easier explanation can be found here, where Wikipedia explains how the family ended up on the road to Abilene, when no one really wanted to go there.  Here is a video explaining the theory.

I am not saying Congress was on the road to Abilene with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but with regard to details they were.  They didn't have the time to argue through a lot of the details.  Frankly, it was all Scott Brown's fault.♦

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  The Fourth Circuit went the other way, as noted in the article, so a battle is teed up for the US Supreme Court.
♥  City Life host George Anthes prefers ObamaCare.  I would go with Reid/Pelosi Care.
♦  Well, if you are a Registered Democrat, or a fellow traveler, you should blame Attorney Martha Coakley.

Welcome Home, Sergeant Berghahl

For John, BLUF:  Leave no one behind.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.♠

The tradition in the US military is that we leave no one behind.  We have done some pretty hairy things in pursuit of that goal.  There is glory to spare.  For example, on 2 June 1972, General John Vogt, Commander of Seventh Air Force, in Saigon, shut down the air war over North Viet-nam to rescue Captain Roger Locker, who had been on the ground, near Hanoi, for 23 days before he was plucked to safety.

So, the President agreeing to swap five Taliban from Guantanamo Bay for one US Army soldier, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, makes sense to me.  Sure, Sergeant Bergdahl wasn't captured in battle, but probably when he wander off into a place he shouldn't have been.  But, he is one of ours.  He was lost and now he is returned to us.

Yes, we paid a high price.  Someone I know provided the following information:

The brain trust of the Taliban was significantly increased by this release.

Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhawa -- former interior minister and help to create the Taliban
Mullah Mohammad Fazl -- chief of staff of the Taliban Army
Mullah Norullah Noori -- member of the prison riot that killed CIA officer Spann
Abdul Haq Wasiq -- deputy chief of Intelligence
Mohammadd Nabi Omari -- member of a joint al-Qaeda-Taliban cell in Khowst province, strong ties to Haqqani

He then notes that those who will pay the price for this swap will be the Afghani Government and especially its military and police.

I'm all for not leaving someone behind but this is a significant price to pay for that.  The end of the Afghanistan war will only be in our eyes.  These people will wait out their year in Qatar and then be right back at it.

The one area where there is a problem, in my mind, is the legislation requiring Congress be notified 30 days prior to any release from Guantanamo of prisoners there.♥  That did not happen in this case.  There was no notice to anyone on Capitol Hill until after the release of Sergeant Bergdahl.  Some may point out that the President issued a signing statement when he signed that particular piece of legislation, but signing statements were suspect when President Bush did them, so they are certainly still suspect.

In what I consider an administrative lapse of judgement, the Administration didn't even call up to the leadership of the two hours in the hours before the release, saying "We are about to execute this swap—please keep it under your hat."  This kind of ignoring of the law does not engender confidence in the Administration on the part of the Loyal Opposition.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Luke 15:32.
♥  My understanding is that the 30 days is a shortened period from previous legislation.

Administration in Court Over Execution of Laws

For John, BLUF:  I blame Congress for this revolting development.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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In court today, per The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Government will go to Court over what can and can't be changed in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act♠ by Government Administrative Fiat.

Unlike the challenge to the individual insurance mandate, Halbig v. Sebelius involves no great questions of constitutional interpretation.  The plaintiffs are merely asking the judges to tell the Administration to faithfully execute the plain language of the statute that Congress passed and President Obama signed.

Well, nothing is ever that simple.  But the point is that the law says one thing and the Federal Government is doing another.  Is there any limit to what the Executive Branch can do to modify Federal Laws (passed by Congress) in the process of faithfully executing them?

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi likes Affordable Care Act, but City Life Host George Anthes likes "Obamacare".

RBG For Ever

For John, BLUF:  Too much long term thinking can create bad recommendations.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Law Professor and Blogger Ann Althouse is a little cranky over UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky saying Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "should retire."

Justice Ginsburg is 81.  But, how is her brain?  This just seems to be politics.  Mr Ginsburg should commit suicide to meet the political dreams of Dean Chemerinsky?  Perhaps he should send her a Tantō as a gift.

Separation of powers and all that.  Let Ms Ginsburg be Ms Ginsburg.

Regards  —  Cliff

DiFi vs CIA

For John, BLUF:  This is a strange fight, which suggests something deeper.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The New Yorker weighs in on the imbroglio in DC over the Senate Report on the use of torture during the Bush Administration.

Let us be clear.  The Bush Administration, in the wake of 9/11, authorized torture, which was wrong (1) because it is morally objectionable and (2) it doesn't work.

The Obama Administration ended torture on Day Two.  Now, five years later the Chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the head of the CIA, John O Brennan, seem to be in a fight.  Is this about Mr Brennan justifying his time as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, under President George W Bush?

What is President Obama's dog in this fight?

Regards  —  Cliff

Drones and Leaks

I don't often link to Nation of Change articles, but thought that this link to a blog post (Blogger Tom Engelhardt), containing an OpEd (FSO Peter Van Buren), might help lay the basis for discussion of the nexus of drone attacks and leaks of national security information.  The same questions are being asked in the Wash Post by Lawyer Katrina vanden Heuvel, who writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine.  She dismisses the search for leaks as a smokescreen obscuring the real drama, the President of the United States directly involved in picking targets for drone attacks.  Assassinations in the minds of some, legitimate military operations in the minds of others.  For those of us who are older it brings to mind the vision of LBJ on his hands and knees, picking targets for Operation ROLLING THUNDER during the Viet-nam war.  Whatever happened to plausible deniability?

Let's face it; if this had been Geo "W" Bush, we would have been all over him.

But, this is still an issue to be wrestled to the ground.  First, does the US accept that enemy leadership is a legitimate target?  If it is, do we understand that this creates a certain reciprocity?

Then there is the question of where the "battlefield" ends when fighting al Qaeda?  If Number 2 is in Yemen, is he an acceptable target?  If Number 2 is living in the outskirts of Naples, Italy, is it OK to go after him?  What about Drum Hill, in Chelmsford, MA?  Where is it no longer acceptable to send up a Predator Drone (or send in a covert agent)?

Then there is the question of US Citizenship.  What about legal rights?  Can they be waived by a procedure developed by the Executive Branch?  Does fighting for the "enemy" automatically forfeit US Citizenship?

Finally, if some evil terrorist leader, what about some evil drug lord?  If some evil drug lord, what about some slightly less evil drug kingpin?  Put another way, once on this slippery path, where do we stop?

We need an open debate on these issues.  This is not so much a D vs R issue as one that has come to the fore due to the intersection of technological maturation and geo-political reality.

Regards  —  Cliff

Regulating Space

One of those things out there is a proposal for a Space Code of Conduct.  From The Christian Science Monitor:

There's been some pushing and shoving lately to establish a global "Code of Conduct" for outer space — a protection clause for various international factions keen on preventing nefarious actions by others in the final frontier.

And here is the official position of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from January of this year.

It turns out that Congress, or at least the House of Representatives, is concerned about the Executive Branch negotiating such an agreement but not submitting it to the US Senate for ratification.  However, such an Executive Agreement would allow Cabinet Agencies to issue rules for those US Citizens (and Firms) going into space, based upon the Agreement.

Sometimes it isn't about party, but about separation of powers.

Regards  —  Cliff