onfocus

Now, as then, when a direct path to justice is blocked, states need to find a work-around. The federal prosecution of the Minneapolis officers responsible for George Floyd’s death offers a model.

Some legal methods that might be available to states for justice when the federal government is willfully breaking the law.

If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. ...That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

Absolute heroes. This impulse for helping neighbors is saving lives. I also think this article demonstrates that having an entire party that believes its own most extreme propaganda via Fox News is a disadvantage when interacting with the real world.

After the past three weeks of brutality in Minneapolis, it should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.

We have to reject this way of life every way we can.

I am using the term “third-country removals” instead of “third-country deportations,” because the latter is a legal process in which a migrant is resettled in a safe third country. What is actually happening, in nearly all cases, more closely resembles chain refoulement, rendition, or kidnapping – and often violate domestic and international law.

The scale of human suffering inflicted by Republicans is difficult to grasp.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan said in his ruling that the agents violated Garrison Gibson’s Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

This is not a law enforcement mission, it is a violent harassment mission.

See Also: NYT: Couple Says ICE Agents Gassed Them as They Drove With 6 Children

This weekend, I watched January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang agitate crowds of anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis and I realized how strange it was that he wasn’t just, you know, officially part of ICE.

Garbage Day went to Minneapolis. I think it’s important to see what’s happening there. It’s much more like an invasion from an occupying force than previous protest movements. Also interesting to hear how that invasion is working hand in hand with right wing media.

See Also: Star Tribune Live Reporting

See Also: TPM: What the ‘Federal Invasion’ of Minneapolis Looks Like on the Ground: Photos

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Good to see people with ethics leaving rather than enable their lying.

The Boomers are leaving on a very bad note -- but they are leaving. They're leaving emptiness and wreckage as they head for the graveyards, but this is the second quarter of the 21st Century. It's not an era of Baby Boom Population Bomb. It's an era of radically shrinking populations and disturbed landscapes.

Bruce Sterling here in posts 117-121 on the complete destruction of the Republican party. [via Cory Doctorow, where it’s easier to read]