On Second Thought

Colbert to Government Censor: ‘FCC You’

By Michael Woyton

The most inept administration of the most stupid and corrupt president has stepped in it again.

For his first show after a week off, Stephen Colbert had an interview scheduled Monday with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat running in the primary for United States Senate.

Before the interview actually took place, Colbert was contacted by lawyers for the CBS network on which “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” appears, telling him that Talarico could not be on the broadcast, the New York Times reported.

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Not only could the Texas Democrat could not appear on Colbert’s program, Colbert said he was told by the lawyers that the host could not even mention having him on.

“And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this,” Colbert explained on his Monday broadcast, “let’s talk about this.”

Colbert said that the reason behind cutting Talarico from the program was a letter released the day after the president was sworn in for the second time from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr stating that he was thinking about dropping the exception to the “equal time rule” for talk shows.

Carr’s rationale was that some of the talk shows, like Colbert’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s, were, in Carr’s opinion, “motivated by partisan purposes.”

Not only did Colbert ignore the network lawyers’ order to not talk about Talarico on the show, he posted the entire un-broadcast interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s YouTube page.

Watch Colbert’s entire explanation of the brouhaha here as it was broadcast and the entire interview with Talarico here.

Frankly, aside from the reason that the interview had to be streamed separately from Colbert’s regular program, neither Talarico nor Colbert said anything that hadn’t been said elsewhere.

What makes this whole situation unique is the length to which the government led by a 34-time-convicted felon, a consummate liar and an alleged pedophile went to try to prevent any of us from seeing it.

That brings me to the “stupid is as stupid does” part of our program.

Thanks to the head of the FCC desperately wanting to please the grifter-in-chief, there is now a giant telescope on this interview where there would not have been had they not be so stupid and/or petty.

See also Mark Kelly, whose value to the Democratic Party has risen partly because the government tried to accuse him — and five other lawmakers — of treason for stating in a video that military personnel can ignore illegal orders.

Keep in mind that there is no change from the FCC in the equal time rule for talk shows — only that Carr was “thinking” about making a change.

And CBS, with the family of Larry Ellison, a maga billionaire in control, wants to please the felon-in-chief to smooth the regulatory way of a merger between Paramount and Skydance Media.

I’m sure that a big part of it also is, as Talarico said during his interview with Colbert, that “I think Donald Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.”

And, funny enough, thanks to the baby-in-chief and those around him willing to subvert norms more people heard about Talarico and his statement that “[t]here is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism” because it’s “the worship of power in the name of Christ and it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth” than would have if they hadn’t made a stink about it.

Come to think of it, good job, Brendan Carr. Good job, Oval Office toddler.

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On the floor of the Senate the other day, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii had a question for his colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

In light of the failed indictments of Mark Kelly and other lawmakers in which they were threatened with incarceration for exercising their free speech, Schatz wonders if any Republicans have a red line that, once crossed, would turn them against this administration.

Sadly, I think that most if not all GOPers do not have a red line.

Watch Schatz’ impassioned speech.

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Lead art: screen grab from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”/Paramount+

Pres. Felon Has No Morals. Why Should His Administration?

By Michael Woyton

We know that the administration of Pres. Donald J. Felon is the most corrupt, spiteful, revengeful, paranoid and hateful administration in history.

And I remember Nixon.

The totality of the adjudicated rapist’s grip on this country was on full display Wednesday when United States Attorney General Pam Bondi testified in front of Congress.

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Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation and then declined to sue Trump University for fraud, was called before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss among other things the Department of Justice’s handling of the records concerning Jeffrey Epstein, NBC News reported.

“At times, Bondi’s performance at the roughly 4-1/2-hour-long hearing seemed targeted specifically for Trump,” NBC said. “She appeared to be reading off written talking points on occasion and sang Trump’s praises, calling him ‘the greatest president in American history’.”

The hearing was notable for a number of shouting matches “as Democrats peppered Bondi with questions about Epstein and survivors of his abuse, many of whom attended the proceedings.”

While accusing Democrats of “theatrics,” the AG personally attacked the lawmakers, calling Maryland’s Rep. Jamie Raskin a “washed-up lawyer.”

She even called Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has been at the forefront of getting the DOJ to release Epstein’s records, “a failed politician” and someone who has “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Former congressman Adam Kinzinger took note of the way Bondi handled herself at the hearing, saying that she was “clearly hiding something.”

He said on Instagram that he assumed she has a moral compass and is fighting against that compass, “so she gets angry at herself.”

I believe that she doesn’t have a moral compass because she has obviously sold herself to the felon-in-chief and is now worried that her neck is on the line.

Maybe Bondi knows she is on the wrong side but is so deeply entrenched that she can’t find a way out.

Or maybe she just has no soul.

We found out that Bondi and her minions decided it was right and proper to spy on one member of Congress — at least — who was at the Justice Department to look at the unredacted Epstein files.

Thanks to photojournalists, shortly after the hearing photos of a piece of paper titled “Jayapal Pramila Search History” was seen in Bondi’s hands, CBS News reported.

“The document listed out at least eight different files from the Justice Department’s trove of Epstein records, including their file numbers and brief descriptions of their contents, according to images snapped by photojournalists who covered the hearing,” CBS reported.

Jayapal, in a statement to CBS News, said it was “totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files.”

The congresswoman said she intends to pursue this and stop the spying on members of Congress.

Raskin, who is the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said it was an “outrageous abuse of power” and intends to ask the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said he was sure that the spying just “an oversight,” but added that even he didn’t think it “was appropriate for anybody to be tracking that.”

Way to stand up, Mike.

More than likely it was not just a mistake that Bondi ended up spying on members of the government.

Bondi has no moral compass, because Bondi’s boss has no morals.

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Lead art: photo by Kent Nishimura/REUTERS via CBS News.

TFW You Can’t Believe Anything from the Government

By Michael Woyton

Occam’s razor basically means the simpler of two competing theories is the preferred explanation.

An example would be, if you can’t find your keys, they are likely just misplaced, not that someone broke into your house and stole them.

Another example would be, if the airspace around a major American city that just happens to be on the border with Mexico is abruptly shut down to all air traffic for 10 days and then abruptly reopened a few hours later, the cause is likely not thousands of drones trying to bring drugs across the border and spy on United States border patrol agents.

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The probable cause is that our geriatric felonious president who is barely hanging on to sanity either misheard something or dreamed something and ordered the airspace closure, and it took several hours for the FAA and Homeland Security to come up with a “rational” explanation.

If all this sounds like the plot of a D-grade television show or movie, you would be correct.

But that is the country and the world we are living in now, where nothing that the government says can be believed.

Look at what the grifter-in-chief is allowing to happen in Minnesota. The callousness and cruelty is off the charts, with Americans dead at the hands of not just unrestrained immigration agents but an out-of-control, unprofessional Homeland Security director, a corrupt ass-kissing attorney general who will do anything the boss tells her to and an FBI leader whose only experience in law enforcement is, well, zero.

For those voted for the orange-tinted tyrant, who are now saying “this is not what I voted for,” yes, you did.

The administration is as crazy as its leader.

AG Pam Bondi has the chutzpah to get up in front of Congress Wednesday and say, in essence, forget about the Epstein files and all the victims. What’s really important is that the Dow is up and the Nasdaq is breaking records.

“That’s what we should be talking about,” she loudly proclaimed.

Bondi showed how little the sex-trafficked victims of Trump, Epstein, Maxwell, et. al., mean to anyone at the seat of power in the country.

And she brazenly said what she said as 11 of the Epstein victims sat in back of her.

It is so painfully obvious that Bondi is completely out of her depth, and she is totally aware of it. That’s why she acts the way she does in front of Congress repeating the things the old man in the Oval wants to hear on the TV machine.

This is the stupidest administration in history. And its stupidity is taking us down.

The midterms can’t get here soon enough.

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Speaking of stupidity, just how smart was it to try to indict two U.S. senators and four Congress members on charges of seditious conspiracy because the Democrats made a video reminding service members they have the right to refuse to follow illegal orders.

Our addled-brained president accused them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!,”as he posted on social media.

Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona called what the administration did to him and the others “an outrageous abuse of power” all because of “something I said that they didn’t like.”

Image being U.S Attorney Jeanine Pirro — but without the wine headache — and getting to enjoy rejection after rejection by grand juries when she brings up indictments ordered by the mayor of Mar-a-Lago.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who the grand jury also declined to indict, said that a group of anonymous citizens upheld the rule of law.

“But today wasn’t just an embarrassing day for the Administration,” she said. “It was another sad day for our country.”

I sincerely hope Pirro feels embarrassed, but like other members of the regime’s administration, I don’t think she is capable of rational thought. Because Trump.

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Bondi is speaking to an audience of one.

Impeach Bondi and the rest of them.

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Lead art found on the internet.

Is Pres. Felon Setting Stage to Rig Midterms?

By Michael Woyton

The administration of the convicted felon, who still doesn’t admit he lost the 2020 election and who has said the Republicans should take over voting in more than a dozen places, has schedule a call with state election officials to discuss the midterm elections.

The invitation for the meeting was made by an “FBI Election Executive” and will include the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Homeland Security Department, the postal service and the Election Assistance Commission, NBC News reported.

Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive,” signed the invitation, it was reported.

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NBC News said an official who was invited to the meeting and asked not to be identified said no one has heard of Hardiman and “we’re all wondering what an ‘FBI Election Executive’ is.”

This revelation comes on the heels of an FBI raid last week of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, featuring the appearance of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, PBS News reported.

Initially, the government said that Gabbard just happened to be in the area, but she sent a letter to Congress stating that the president personally asked her to be there as the search warrant for voter rolls was executed by federal agents.

White House Press ~~Liar~~ Secretary Karoline Leavitt added, in an effort to explain more about Gabbard’s role, that this was “a coordinated whole-of-government effort to ensure that our elections, again, are fair and transparent moving forward.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, has called on Gabbard to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee about why she was there during the election office raid, CNBC reported.

Warner was especially concerned that Gabbard coordinated a phone call between the president and FBI agents who participated in the raid.

It was inappropriate for the president to involve himself personally in a criminal investigation of an election he lost, Warner told Capitol Hill reporters.

He also sounded alarms about the president suggesting Republicans should nationalize elections.

“That statement alone makes clear that this threat to our election security, the basic premise of our democracy, is forward looking to 2026 into 2028,” Warner was quoted as saying.

The reality is, decentralized voting is a part of the constitution, with individual states setting the rules.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota doesn’t favor federalizing elections, the Wall Street Journal said.

He said it is harder to hack 50 election systems than it would be to hack one.

But that doesn’t mean the felon-in-chief won’t try to muddy the waters as we get closer to the midterms.

Consider the answer Leavitt gave when asked recently whether the president is considering having ICE agents at polling sites, as was suggested by Steve Bannon.

“I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November, and that’s frankly a very silly hypothetical question,” she said. “But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations. It’s a disingenuous question.”

What is a private army for if you can’t use it to intimidate?

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Lead art by Michael Woyton

Red State Grandma Asks Electeds if Her State Will End up Like Minnesota

By Michael Woyton

You would think at some point the grifter-in-chief would take a break from trying to dominate every news second around the clock.

But no.

Where to start, when in the course of a weekend, he threatened to sue Trevor Noah for a joke at the Grammys, suggested going to war with Iran, declared the latest release of the Epstein files absolves him, had journalists arrested and continued badmouthing the VA ICU nurse who federal agents murdered?

Oh, and the man who bankrupted a casino has allowed a showcase for international culture to become an arts desert, and subsequently announced the closure of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for “renovations.”

I’m sure I am leaving something — lots of things — out, but that’s our convicted felon for ya.

There was some good news over the weekend though.

Little Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who, with his father, was detained by our government and held in a Texas ICE facility, was released Saturday per a judge’s order.

Liam is the child photographed wearing a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as he was surrounded by immigration officers and used as bait to lure other people out of his home.

The image of the child spoke volumes about what this administration is really doing and how cruelly they are doing it.

According to the judge who ordered Liam and his father’s release, “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

While scrolling through social media, I ran across an open letter from a South Dakotan to her congressman — there’s only one for the entire state — and her two senators.

Sen. John Thune is the current majority leader for the Senate, so he presumably has some authority. He is joined in Washington, D.C., by Sen. Mike Rounds and Rep. Dustin “Dusty” Johnson. They are all Republicans.

The author of the open letter that appeared on the South Dakota Standard website is Kathy Gustafson, a retired, lifelong South Dakotan who is a mother and grandmother.

In her bio at the end of the letter, she said she was concerned about the “Balkanization” of America and that it “takes a lot for her to speak out, but she has reached that point.”

Gustafson begins the letter by saying, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to comprehend.”

She questions if her state’s elected officials were raised the way she was: by good, hard-working, honest folk, who were taught to treat people as you would want to be treated.

Gustafson reminds the men that they are all descendants of immigrants. Her mother lived through the Nazi regime in Germany, coming to the United States after World War II.

“John and Mike, members of your family fought in that war against the barbaric cruelty of Hitler and the Japanese empire,” she wrote. “How can you think of them, and the millions of people of all nations who fought and died to vanquish autocratic rulers, and blindly acquiesce to imposing the same conditions here in our own country? No, more than acquiesce. You accommodate and enable.”

Then Gustafson cuts to the chase: “I have to question whether you have any morality, or even souls. The question of ‘Have you no decency?’ seems so trite.”

She asks the three politicians how they can watch what has been unfolding in Minneapolis “and not feel the urge to vomit or scream and weep in anguish?”

“How can you make excuses based on [DHS Secretary Kristi] Noem and Trump’s blatant lies?” Gustafson said.

Then she brings it all home: “When does it come to Sioux Falls and Brookings and Rapid City and Pierre? Are South Dakotans safe because we’re a red state? The international students at SDSU certainly don’t feel safe.”

After describing the president, his advisor Stephen Miller and Noem as having shown themselves to be “evil to the core,” Gustafson ends by asking the three elected officials if some shred of their shared upbringing allows them to rebel against what the administration is doing.

“Or are you too far gone?” she said. “Like them.”

Bravo, Kathy Gustafson, keep speaking out.

Here’s hoping others will as well.

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Lead art: Screen grab from KARE 11 via YouTube.

Felon Arrests Journalists for Covering Protest

By Michael Woyton

There’s no time to prosecute the federal agents who gunned down Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

But sure, the United States Department of Justice, owned and operated by a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, has more than enough time to round up and arrest four journalists who did nothing except commit journalism by covering a protest during a church service being led by a member of ICE.

The four journalists are former CNN anchor, now independent journalist Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort and Jamael Lydell Lundy, NBC News reported.

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According to CNN, Abbe Lowell, who is Lemon’s attorney, said Lemon was charged with conspiring to violate someone’s constitutional rights and violating the FACE Act, which prohibits the use of force or threats to interfere with someone’s exercising freedom of religion. Both are federal charges.

However, previously, a federal magistrate judge had rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon, which “enraged” Attorney General Pam Bondi, NBC said.

Lemon and the three others were at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Jan. 18 when a demonstration by protesters took place because the church’s pastor David Easterwood allegedly is the acting director of an ICE field office in the city.

There’s a lot of chatter that these charges will not hold up and the journalists will be able to go back and continue their reporting.

I hope that is true.

But we continue to see an escalation of this administration not giving a damn about what is legal and what is not and what is constitutional and what is not.

Just merely making the accusation against one high profile journalist — even if subsequently a judge dismisses it — is enough send a message that reporters need to be careful what they say or there will be a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

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The grifter-in-chief’s poll numbers don’t seem to be coming out in his favor lately.

Maybe he will sue the Pew Research Center for $10 billion.

Oh sorry, he is already suing the IRS for that amount for failing to prevent the release of his tax records and expects the American public to pay him.

Seems only fair. The New York Times reported that the elderly golfer/Epstein files headliner has used his office to “make at least $1.4 billion,” adding that the number is “an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view.”

But back to his poll numbers, which are way lower than 1.4 billion.

PEW’s survey of U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 20-26, found that a year into his administration “Americans’ view of President Donald Trump — already more negative than positive — have continued to slip.”

His approval rating stands at 37 percent, which is down from 40 percent in the fall.

The number of respondents who believe Trump’s administration’s actions since taking office the second time have been worse than expected is 50 percent, as opposed to 21 percent who said they thought it was “better than” expected and 28 percent who thought it was “about as” expected.

Only a hair above a quarter of Americans — 27 percent — said they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans. That’s down from 35 percent when he came back into office. Pew points out that change “has come entirely among Republicans.”

When asked about a range of qualities and abilities as president, Americans said “nope” on all of them, including having leadership skills and mental and physical fitness, picking good advisers and respecting the country’s democratic values.

While confidence that Trumps acts ethically in office was already low in February — 29 percent — it has dropped 8 percentage points since then.

“And nearly all of that drop has come among Republicans,” Pew said. At the beginning of his second term 55 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they thought Trump acts ethically in office. That share now stands at 42 percent.

There is more not-so-good Pew poll news to dive into through this link.

The American Trends Panel survey from the Pew Research Center surveyed 8,512 U.S. adults. The margin of error is ±1.4 percentage points.

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Lead art: Screen grab from NBC News via YouTube.

Felon’s Own Military Force No Match for Minnesotans

By Michael Woyton

“Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?”

That is what the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist sent out as part of a fundraising email recently.

The email, confirmed by Snopes, goes on to taunt the recipient with doubts about them being a “top MAGA patriot” because they still haven’t responded to his Citizens Only Survey — and sent him some dinero.

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“Don’t tell me, you’re an illegal alien?!?,” the email said.

Any doubts that the Mar-a-Lago makeup man thinks of ICE as his own personal military force? [An aside: Why is ICE going to the Winter Olympics to provide security?]

Just today Greg Bovino’s replacement — border czar Tom Homan — was asked Thursday how many ICE and border patrol agents were in Minnesota.

As part of his answer, Homan said that the agents have “been in theater, some of the people have been in theater for eight months.”

Interesting choice of words for Homan to refer to the agents being “in theater,” which makes it sound as if there is a wartime operation going on in Minnesota.

By the way, I just found out that Homan is only 64 years old. Talk about being ridden hard and put away wet.

Television writer and producer David Simon, likely best known for “The Wire,” reminds us that “in theater” is used in the military to refer “to a wartime theater of operations.”

He goes on to write, “The enemy in this military operation are citizens of Minnesota and the United States.”

The president’s own military force, answerable only to him.

An article in “The Atlantic” by Adam Serwer put the spotlight on the massive amount of pushback against ICE and the border patrol.

Titled “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong,” which can be read free through this link, poses the question of what the federal government expected when it was decided to invade Minnesota.

“Perhaps the Trump-administration officials had hoped that a few rabble-rousers would get violent, justifying the kind of crackdown he seems to fantasize about,” Serwer wrote.

Instead, the feds found “a real resistance, broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent,” numbering tens of thousands of volunteers willing to risk their safety to help defend their neighbors and their freedom.

Serwer points out that the number of Minnesotans who were willing to resist federal occupation “is so large that relatively few could be characterized as career activists.”

Simply, they are ordinary Americans, he observed.

These ordinary Americans seem better equipped to nonviolently “fight back” than the masked and unidentified agents are equipped to do whatever their mission is.

One observer Serwer interviewed said that it was her experience that ICE prefers to make arrests quietly and are unsettled by the whistleblowing and obvious presence by observers.

She said, “when these volunteers draw attention, the agents will ‘leave rather than dig in.’ She added, ‘They are huge pussies, I will be honest.'”

There’s a lot more in this rich story of the people of Minnesota and the times they are experiencing.

The point that Serwer makes is this: “No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors — just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.”

We have a lot to learn from the people of Minnesota. Time will show they are the best of us.

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If you are wondering if there are ways you can help the people of Minnesota, check out Stand with Minnesota through this link.

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Lead art: Screen grab from CNN.

Cartoons Mimicking Life in U.S.

By Michael Woyton

What are the editorial cartoonists saying about current events in the United States?

Here’s a sampling, starting with how America is being viewed from Europe.

Pretty scary, isn’t it?

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From DrMacLeodCartoons:

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From Ward Sutton for the Boston Globe:

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From Bill Bramhall for the New York Daily News:

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And it’s not a cartoon, but an original song written and performed by Bruce Springsteen.

Listen to the song through this link.

It’s important when history is immortalized in song.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” via YouTube.

Hard Times Call for Helping Neighbors

By Michael Woyton

The east coast and much of the rest of the country is cleaning up from a historic winter storm — no, I will not call it by the name created by a private for-profit weather service.

While some wait for the power to back on, the plowing service to show up or even just try to find something for the kids to do since schools are closed, it would be proper and good to give thought to what our fellow citizens in Minnesota are going through.

I got in touch Sunday with a long-time friend who happens to live just a mile from the site of the horrific murder of Alex Pretti Saturday.

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For him and his family it’s been a tough few weeks and, in spite of the massive turnout Friday of thousands of Minnesotans protesting to get ICE out, the stress is mounting.

He said they go to protests, but they are well aware that as of now “If you obey the law, you don’t get shot” is no longer a certainty.

It’s important to remember that what is going on in Minnesota is pretty damn impressive.

People are turning out in massive numbers in subzero temperatures to protest and observe. People are helping other people.

I was watching the amazing news coverage from Minneapolis by KARE-11 Saturday and heard one of their reporters who had a chemical irritant sprayed in her face by an ICE or Border Patrol agent — only because she wasn’t backing up fast enough as they tried to move the press.

She said she was attended to by a couple of other people who flushed her eyes and took her to one of their apartments so she could recover in safety.

Once the reporter was settled in, her good Samaritans said they needed to get back on the street so they could help others in need.

They left the reporter in their apartment to go back into the fray.

Neighbors helping neighbors. That’s Minnesota. That’s what America should be.

I had heard that donations of goods and services were welcome by various organizations, so I asked my friend to recommend one or two.

He said standwithminnesota had a bunch from which to choose.

The site has a directory of places to donate that have been vetted that come from activists on the ground.

The organizations include those providing legal support, food support and rent relief and where to buy or donate materials, to name a few.

For example, the diaper and formula fund provides critical supplies for families who should not have to fear being brutalized or separated from their children for simply trying to access food, formula or diapers for their toddlers.

There is even a way to buy or contribute to buying dashcams for observers’ cars, since video is vital to standing up to this administration.

Take a look at Stand with Minnesota and consider helping in some way.

Minnesota is a model for the rest of us.

Because sooner or later if the felonious president and his sycophants are not stopped, they will come after the rest of us.

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Cartoon by Mike Smith of the Las Vegas Sun.

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Lead art from the internet.

Secret ICE Policy Should ‘Terrify’ Americans: Senator

By Michael Woyton

Congress members who are still on the fence about whether or not they should approve funding for ICE and Homeland Security maybe should pay attention to what is acutally going on in the United States.

There are reports of ICE in Minnesota detaining four children, including a 5-year-old boy who was used as bait to try to gain entry into a home. What was it Ice-Ice Barbie Noem said about her agency only going after violent criminals? A 5-year-old? Really?

An elderly U.S. citizen in St. Paul had his home’s door broken down and was forcibly removed wearing only shorts, crocs and a baby blanket by ICE officers.

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Then there is the jaw-dropping story from The Associated Press about an internal ICE memo it received from whistleblower authorizing ICE officers to forcibly enter people’s homes “without a judge’s warrant.”

According to AP’s reporting, “the memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.”

Contents of the May 12 memo, while not widely shared within the agency, is being used to train new ICE officers “who are being deployed in cities and towns to implement the president’s immigration crackdown.”

The AP said new ICE hires are being told to “follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo.”

The memo was sent to senators by the nonprofit legal organization Whistleblower Aid which requested that Congress investigate its claims, the Washington Post reported.

David Kligerman, Whistleblower Aid’s senior vice president and special counsel, told the Post “the instructions in the memo appeared to violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

He said the framers of the Constitution were “most concerned, of all the rights [in the Bill of Rights], about folks being able to be safe in their homes from arbitrary government invasion.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who was given the memo by two whistleblowers, said Americans should be terrified by this newly revealed ICE policy, according to NBC News.

“It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time,” he said. “In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light.”

This convicted felon of a president does not believe in the rule of law and certainly has no regard for the Constitution.

He has passed his disdain for America down to his secret lawless police force.

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Speaking of the still-unreleased Epstein files:

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Lead art: Screen grab from FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul via YouTube.