Re: Orange Duce
Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:32 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/upsh ... e=Homepage
"This moment is notably different from 1968, when local officials requested federal troops to restore order in Washington, Chicago and Baltimore because they believed they could not do it themselves. It’s different from Oxford, Miss., in 1962, or Little Rock in 1957, when local officials were openly defying federal court orders to desegregate.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere near the same kind of consensus at the federal level that federal authority is actually being subverted” today, said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “What’s new and troubling here is we have a very, very contested factual predicate. And it’s not remotely clear to me what federal laws are going unenforced.”
If the federal presence in Portland were meant to restore order, it would have made more sense to send in National Guard officers, who have served and trained for such a role, not Customs and Border Protection agents, Mr. Vladeck said. Confrontations there have escalated since the arrival of federal forces, with a line of protesting mothers facing tear gas, and then, Wednesday night, Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland experiencing the same.
“This is the very thing that scared the heck out of the framers of the Constitution,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. “There’s been an over-tendency to cry wolf,” he said of the president’s critics over the past four years. “Well, this is wolf. This is it.”
The fact that the Trump campaign has at the same time begun running numerous ads portraying American cities as overrun by violent left-wing mobs suggests that the president is motivated more by the optics of the federal response than its potential effectiveness, Mr. Vladeck said.
Further muddying matters, the president also announced Wednesday plans for a “surge” of law enforcement officers into American cities to work with local police combating violent crime. Attorney General Bill Barr suggested that a rise in violent crime in some cities over the past month had been “a direct result” of calls to defund and weaken local police forces amid Black Lives Matter protests.
He made a point of distinguishing the plans announced Wednesday from the administration’s campaign to counter “riots and mob violence” in places like Portland.
“The operations we’re discussing today are very different — they’re classic crime fighting,” Mr. Barr said.
But that is precisely the problem, say critics like Mr. Vladeck and Mr. Neily: The federal government isn’t responsible for classic crime fighting in local communities. Yet throughout their comments at the White House on Wednesday, President Trump, Mr. Barr and Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, suggested that they believed restoring law and order in local communities was vital to the mission of the federal government.
Mr. Vladeck offered, in response, this quote from Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in a 2000 decision curbing the central federal role in the Violence Against Women Act: “Indeed, we can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the national government and reposed in the states, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims.”
Aside from the debate over federal authority, the fast approach of the election makes it hard to separate politics from the president’s actions. This week, Mr. Trump suggested that New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland may all need federal intervention. That list of cities, all with large Black populations, includes some with no violent unrest right now. Through June, murders in Oakland were actually down relative to the same time last year.
“The through line here is not the protection of federal property,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a historian at U.C.L.A. “It’s the effort to suppress the uprising for Black life. That sounds pretty familiar. That sounds pretty late 19th century.”
"This moment is notably different from 1968, when local officials requested federal troops to restore order in Washington, Chicago and Baltimore because they believed they could not do it themselves. It’s different from Oxford, Miss., in 1962, or Little Rock in 1957, when local officials were openly defying federal court orders to desegregate.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere near the same kind of consensus at the federal level that federal authority is actually being subverted” today, said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “What’s new and troubling here is we have a very, very contested factual predicate. And it’s not remotely clear to me what federal laws are going unenforced.”
If the federal presence in Portland were meant to restore order, it would have made more sense to send in National Guard officers, who have served and trained for such a role, not Customs and Border Protection agents, Mr. Vladeck said. Confrontations there have escalated since the arrival of federal forces, with a line of protesting mothers facing tear gas, and then, Wednesday night, Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland experiencing the same.
“This is the very thing that scared the heck out of the framers of the Constitution,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. “There’s been an over-tendency to cry wolf,” he said of the president’s critics over the past four years. “Well, this is wolf. This is it.”
The fact that the Trump campaign has at the same time begun running numerous ads portraying American cities as overrun by violent left-wing mobs suggests that the president is motivated more by the optics of the federal response than its potential effectiveness, Mr. Vladeck said.
Further muddying matters, the president also announced Wednesday plans for a “surge” of law enforcement officers into American cities to work with local police combating violent crime. Attorney General Bill Barr suggested that a rise in violent crime in some cities over the past month had been “a direct result” of calls to defund and weaken local police forces amid Black Lives Matter protests.
He made a point of distinguishing the plans announced Wednesday from the administration’s campaign to counter “riots and mob violence” in places like Portland.
“The operations we’re discussing today are very different — they’re classic crime fighting,” Mr. Barr said.
But that is precisely the problem, say critics like Mr. Vladeck and Mr. Neily: The federal government isn’t responsible for classic crime fighting in local communities. Yet throughout their comments at the White House on Wednesday, President Trump, Mr. Barr and Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, suggested that they believed restoring law and order in local communities was vital to the mission of the federal government.
Mr. Vladeck offered, in response, this quote from Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in a 2000 decision curbing the central federal role in the Violence Against Women Act: “Indeed, we can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the national government and reposed in the states, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims.”
Aside from the debate over federal authority, the fast approach of the election makes it hard to separate politics from the president’s actions. This week, Mr. Trump suggested that New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland may all need federal intervention. That list of cities, all with large Black populations, includes some with no violent unrest right now. Through June, murders in Oakland were actually down relative to the same time last year.
“The through line here is not the protection of federal property,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a historian at U.C.L.A. “It’s the effort to suppress the uprising for Black life. That sounds pretty familiar. That sounds pretty late 19th century.”
Funny how all the FLP cumquats on this forum become deaf, dumb and blind kids whenever Barry's penchant for launching smart bombs in other countries is even mentioned. Does that surprise me... not in the least. 