Ocelot II
Ocelot II's JournalWe, as a collection of human beings, are no better than any other collection
of human beings that comprise a country. We are just as capable of cruelty as any other. We've done it before - the taking of land and the genocide of Native people, the abduction and enslavement of African people, Jim Crow laws, all manner of terrible behavior throughout our relatively short history. Our big mistake was gaslighting ourselves into thinking we were above and better than all the other countries who had committed such atrocities. Behold the Manifest Destiny doctrine by which we persuaded ourselves that we had the God-given right to take all that land that belonged to other people and inhabit and develop and farm it and profit from it. During our early years wealth was also derived from the stolen labor of others - not just the wealth of the Southern states, but that of the North, which bought the slave-harvested cotton and turned it into textiles and sold it in Northern cities. Our railroads were built by Asian laborers, not slaves but almost, until we decided we weren't going to allow those people to immigrate any more. We welcomed some immigrants but exploited and discriminated against others. Former slaves were just barely "liberated," but remained oppressed and poor.
All the while, we told ourselves that we were the exceptional country, the good guys, the country that won wars against evil empires. We patted ourselves on the back for defeating the Nazis, but we were so convinced of our superiority and indestructibility that we got sucked into fruitless, pointless, protracted wars in southeast Asia and the Middle East, from which we eventually slunk away while trying to pretend we hadn't been defeated. Have we become a cruel country? Trump made it socially acceptable to be cruel in public, but people will be cruel unless reminded that cruelty is ultimately destructive. Trump just let us take the mask off so we, collectively, could stop pretending to be better than the rest of the world.
With that in mind, those of us who don't think it's cool to be cruel should stop pretending the US was ever all that morally superior in the first place. Our job now is to shove the cruelty back into the closet, and expose the error of people who think being horrible to their fellow citizens and even more horrible to our immigrants will somehow prove the myth of American exceptionalism. We certainly can become better than we are now; Germany recovered from the Nazi regime that caused its near-destruction and became a prosperous democracy. I don't think I'll ever understand what motivates some people to take such pleasure in punching down, but we have to acknowledge the existence of that tendency in others (and maybe sometimes in ourselves) and resist it and keep resisting it. And call out the cruelty, every time.
By definition, the Constitution *can't* be unconstitutional but its provisions are subject to interpretation.
The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment simply says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The Trump's EO purports to add conditions to the birthright citizenship clause by stating two different situations where a person is not a U.S. citizen at birth: When the mother was unlawfully present in the U.S. and the father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident when the person was born; or when the mother was in the U.S. lawfully but on temporary status, such as a student visa, work visa, tourist visa or under the Visa Waiver Program, and the father was neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident when the person was born. These exceptions apply to anyone born after February 20, 2025. Several courts have held the EO to be blatantly unconstitutional and enjoined its application, but SCOTUS said those courts' injunctions don't apply nationwide but only within their jurisdictions, meaning the EO is still blocked in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin - that is, states which have Democratic attorneys general. In the remaining states, Trump's order can go into effect 30 days after Friday's ruling, pending any further legal action. SCOTUS will have to decide the question, and to uphold the EO they will have to interpret the plain language of the 14th Amendment as meaning something other than what its words seem to say. The issue seems to have been pretty well resolved back in 1898 in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, https://perma.cc/C5PG-SQSP where the court held that a person born in the US to Chinese parents was a citizen despite the current law limiting the immigration of Chinese people. The language of that case cites so much history and English common law supporting the doctrine that a person born within the boundaries of a country by operation of law and custom becomes a citizen of that country, that even the troglodytes on the current SCOTUS should be satisfied (but you never know with that bunch).
In the meantime, though, babies born after February 20 are US citizens in half of the states but might not be in the other half, at least pending further proceedings.
Thank you. I generally try to keep the fire from other people's hair
from setting mine alight, so before I get too close to the flames I'll read the actual opinion as objectively as I can. News reports, and especially headlines, often get things wrong, sort of like preliminary bomb damage assessments - and then the inaccurate/oversimplified headlines set those coiffures ablaze. I think an important point is that there won't be the wholesale deportation of everyone born in the US to an undocumented immigrant. Even by the terms of Trump's clearly unconstitutional EO, that won't happen because it refers to only two situations: " (1) when [a] person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when [a] person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth." It also provides for a 30-day ramp up; since the EO was dated January 20, 2025 (he could hardly wait!), so it didn't go into effect until February 20. In other words, the only people it purports to deny citizenship to are those born after February 20 to certain (not all) non-citizen parents. So there's one hair-conflagration that can be put out. The obvious problem with the case is that it requires potential plaintiffs to sue individually, although as of today there seems to be a class action in the works, which might solve that dilemma.
What I consider to be the case's weakness isn't that the court found nationwide injunctions to be historically unfounded; it's the rigid originalism that didn't allow it to find an exception for a situation Congress could not have anticipated when enacting the Judiciary Act 200+ years ago - which is the modern use of broad executive orders, and in this case to circumvent the Constitution. In fact, executive orders weren't even a thing in those days (the Emancipation Proclamation was an EO of a sort, but they were otherwise almost unheard-of until the 20th century). Barrett also interpreted the equitable principle relating to the inadequacy of a remedy at law, which is needed for injunctive relief, narrowly, apparently concluding that the availability of litigation in other courts would provide that remedy, where as a practical matter requiring separate litigation in each case where constitutional rights are at stake is a pretty flimsy remedy. She did toss the bone of a class action, though, and we'll see where that goes. And as I said before, the positive result of this case is the effective sidelining of that asshole in Texas.
This is worth reading - a sensible perspective.
No paywall link: https://archive.is/kbIhX
When I was in law school some 40 years ago, I took a course in federal civil procedure (we called the class "Mystery Courts" because the rules and jurisdiction issues can be pretty arcane). At the time I had no idea there could be any such thing as a nationwide injunction; the issue was never discussed at all, and I just understood that a court's decision was limited to the parties to the case. But I've been out of the law business for awhile, so when a few years ago that crackpot Kacsmaryk in Texas tried to outlaw mifepristone for abortions on a nationwide basis I wondered, Can he even do that? I'd assumed that his power was limited to the parties to the case and was surprised to learn otherwise. I just read Barrett's decision, and I can't say that it's wrong, at least historically. This was a typically originalist decision. The modern problem, though, is that nationwide injunctions seem to be the only immediate remedy against nationwide executive orders that are arguably unconstitutional and that previous presidents weren't doing. While the decision is solid as a matter of precedent, it leaves plaintiffs in the position of having to challenge Trump's shitty EOs in multiple courts, with the possibility of inconsistent decisions to be sorted only at some later date, or file class actions, which are cumbersome. On the other hand, Kacsmaryk and similar judicial troglodytes are also sidelined, which is definitely a good thing.
Beat me to it - I just finished reading the opinion, and although it's a problem
for the issue at hand (although it does not address birthright citizenship itself, and there's nothing in the decision suggesting SCOTUS would try to limit or abolish it on the merits), it also refers to forum-shopping. Anti-abortion groups in particular have filed their cases in the district court in Amarillo, Texas, to be sure their cases would be heard by right-winger Kacsmaryk. Among other things, he's issued an injunction allowing several states to petition the FDA to prohibit Mifepristone, saying said they shouldn’t be automatically discounted from suing in Texas just because they’re outside the state. So, I'd say sidelining Kacsmaryk and other judicial wackos is a positive development.
I think clever lawyers can figure out a way around the national injunction prohibition in some cases through the use of class actions.
The difference, though, was that we were attacked first. Granted, it wasn't by Iraq.
But after a few months W and his minions were effectively able to tie 9/11 to Iraq and get people to believe - at least for awhile - that somehow Saddam Hussein was behind the attack or supported it. Saddam really was a pretty terrible character, along with his two terrible sons Don Jr. and Eric (oh, wait, were those their names? I forget), an easy guy to hate and a convenient enemy. Throw in some sketchy claims that he had weapons of mass destruction (I recall a lot of frantic insistence that he was building an atomic bomb; remember the yellowcake hoax?), et voilà! All the justification Cheney and Rumsfeld needed for a big fat helping of Shock-N-Awe™! And it wasn't until American soldiers started coming home in body bags that our lazy, gullible, cheerleading media (and especially fuck you, Judith Miller and NYT) started to wonder WTF was really going on over there.
I think participating in Bibi's war of choice will be a tougher sell. W was popular right after 9/11, as the leader of a country whose innocent civilians were attacked, which made it much easier for him to convince people that going to war with Iraq was necessary. But trump's ratings are under water, and we are still stuck with his tariffs and ICE raids and other destructive fuckery. We still have people in the media like Van Jones (and forget about Fox) who are as happy to fellate him as Tweety ever was, but all that other shit won't go away and is likely to get worse. Expect gas prices to go up, for starters. People notice that sort of thing, and might object to pay more for gas just to make Bibi happy and Trump hard.
It seems like everything has been coarsened.
For starters there's a lot of profanity in TV shows and movies that didn't used to be there, in particular lots of F-bombs. I suppose the intent is to reflect the way people really speak, but do they? I often write fuck here on DU, my "safe" space, but I seldom say it, maybe because I'm old and I never heard that word at home (I'd have ended up with a mouthful of soap...), and it still makes me cringe a bit when I hear it spoken. On the other hand, its forbidden quality is why we once used it to express intense feeling, but overusing it has weakened it. I want a replacement for fuck, which no longer does the job because everybody says it all the time.
Is there a slippery slope leading from coarse language to coarse behavior? I don't know, but it seems like people in general have turned into rude slobs who cuss like longshoremen, call each other names, and wear cutoffs and flip-flops to funerals. I sure sound like an old fogey when I write this but it seems like nobody respects anything or anybody, treating other people like bothersome obstacles and the world like their garbage dump. When nothing is respected it's too easy to move to the next step and start destroying just because you feel like it and you don't care. I guess that's nihilism.
Maybe I'll take my grumpy old self off to the woods while there still is a woods.
Ironically, all this is a bit like what started the Civil War in 1861.
The Southern states took umbrage at what they perceived as a tyrannical federal government overstepping its power to control states' internal affairs - in that case, the odious practice of forced labor of enslaved people in their agricultural operations. Here, it's "states' rights" all over again (specifically California, with more likely to follow), but here a state is objecting to the federal government's heavy-handed intervention in its refusal to abuse minority immigrant people. There won't be the same kind of civil war involving actual secession, but we'll be seeing a big fat states' rights argument all over again. And my money is on the next Dem nominee being a governor.
Nailed it. Enough people looked at a despicable convicted felon/fraudster/sex pest/
all-around shitty excuse for a human being and decided, "He's my guy!" and enough other people just said "Meh" and didn't vote at all, to get his fat ugly orange ass installed in the Oval Office -twice. In other words, we live in a country in which slightly more than half of the population are some combination of dumb, mean, ignorant, and/or apathetic. The mean, dumb ones are hopeless and Democrats don't seem to have been able to light fires under the butts of the apathetic ones. Maybe it's because too many Democrats have been sitting around with their dicks in their hands wondering why they can't get the mean, dumb ones to vote for them.
"You can't be my friend any more!" Trump shouted, and threw his phone at the wall.
It briefly stuck to a smear of ketchup and slid to the floor, its screen cracked. "Why is he doing this to me? We were friends!" he wailed. Aides rolled their eyes but knew better than to comment. A woman appeared with a sponge and a pail and began to clean the wall. Trump sobbed quietly while stuffing French fries into his mouth. His tears cleared white channels on his coarse orange cheeks. "His face looks like an old man's ball sack," the cleaning woman muttered to herself. "Can I get you some ice cream, sir?" someone asked, stifling a chuckle. "Three scoops," Trump said with a sniffle. "Then you can all leave. I want to be alone."
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