Does this make us safer?

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

“Homeland Security investigators were diverted from cases involving child exploitation, drug trafficking, human trafficking and money laundering to investigate suspected noncitizen voting as the Trump administration intensified efforts to find evidence of election fraud, according to a sprawling ProPublica investigation.”

Homeland Security Agents Were Pulled From Major Criminal Investigations to Hunt for Noncitizen Voters: Report
Homeland Security Agents Were Pulled From Major Criminal Investigations to Hunt for Noncitizen Voters: Report
The study by ProPublica found that, starting in early 2025, Homeland Security Investigations reassigned more than 6,000 agents to immigration enforcement
www.latintimes.com

Views: 2

Will we be able to recover both the money and our democratic institutions?

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

“The Trump presidency has often looked more like a post-Soviet or postcolonial regime than like a first-world democracy. The Trump post-presidency may look the same. Trump has abused his office to enrich himself and his family in ways that are completely unprecedented—not only in the United States but also in the history of almost any peer democracy. Only Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s notoriously lawless former prime minister, was in any way comparable, and Berlusconi was sentenced to prison.”

What Might Happen to Trump?s Ill-Gotten Gains
What Might Happen to Trump?s Ill-Gotten Gains
Lessons from fallen autocrats
www.theatlantic.com

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A feature (not a bug) of our deportation system

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

Some people apparently think that the US government has an obligation to keep these people alive while it detains them.

Listen to 911 Calls From Inside an Immigration Detention Center: ?We Just Need to Take Him to the Hospital?
Listen to 911 Calls From Inside an Immigration Detention Center: ?We Just Need to Take Him to the Hospital?
Reporters don?t have access to Camp East Montana, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country. Emergency calls from the Texas facility offer a glimpse of unfolding crises faced by those locked inside, with few ways to get help.
www.propublica.org

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Poem of the day

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

Encore un livre
by Jules Laforgue (1860-1887)

Encore un livre; ô nostalgies
Loin de ces très goujates gens,
Loin des saluts et des argents,
Loin de nos phraséologies!

Encore un de mes pierrots mort;
Mort d’un chronique orphelinisme;
C’était un cœur plein de dandysme
Lunaire, en un drôle de corps.

Les dieux s’en vont; plus que des hures;
Ah! ça devient tous les jours pis;
J’ai fait mon temps, je déguerpis
Vers l’Inclusive Sinécure!

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The value of “victory” keeps going down while the price keeps going up

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

According to the WSJ: “For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

“But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.

“This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed.”

Views: 4

Game of the week

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

Views: 3