Today's Civics Lesson

Ali Velshi

Democracy is labor.

DEMOCRACY ISN'T SOMETHING WE HAVE

UNLESS IT'S SOMETHING WE DO

Vic Meyers Resists

Government vs Government

Ain't it funny how all that "states' rights" noise seems to have evaporated.

First they came for the immigrants.

Then they came for Judge Dugan.

Then they came for almost the entire government structure of a whole state.

I haven't been - and I hope to hell I will never be - quiet about it any of this.

Trump’s DOJ sues to block Colorado and Denver’s ‘sanctuary laws’

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Friday against Denver and Colorado officials, alleging in federal court that they had passed “sanctuary laws” that violate the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court in Colorado to declare that several city and state policies are invalid, blocking the city and state from enforcing them. The laws and policies in question generally restrict the ability of state and local government employees to help with immigration enforcement.

“The Supremacy Clause prohibits Colorado and its officials from obstructing the Federal Government’s ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution,” the lawsuit argues. “The Supremacy Clause also prohibits Colorado from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment — as the challenged laws do — thereby discriminating against the Federal Government. The Sanctuary Laws are themselves unlawful and cannot stand.”

Mayor Mike Johnston’s office responded soon after the suit was filed.

“Denver will not be bullied or blackmailed, least of all by an administration that has little regard for the law and even less for the truth. We follow all laws local, state, and federal and stand ready to defend our values,” wrote Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for Johnston, who was named a defendant in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also names Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, the state legislature, the city and county of Denver and Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins.

“Colorado is not a sanctuary state,” responded Eric Maruyama, a spokesperson for Polis, in a written statement.

“The State of Colorado works with local, state and federal law enforcement regularly and we value our partnerships with local, county and federal law enforcement agencies to make Colorado safer. If the courts say that any Colorado law is not valid, then we will follow the ruling. We are not going to comment on the merits of the lawsuit,” Maruyama continued.

The DOJ argued that because of a state law, it can no longer enter into agreements with local governments to detain immigrants in county jails, forcing it to transfer all its detainees to a facility in Aurora. The lawsuit claims that the state’s policies force it to release individuals into the public because it can’t afford to bring them to Aurora.

Immigrant advocates have argued that local governments should not — and don’t have to — work closely with immigration enforcement. They argue that when police partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigrants are afraid to report crimes and communities are less safe.

The federal lawsuit also argues that state and local laws make it harder for immigration agents to detain people who are set to be released from local jails. But city officials have pushed back on those claims, noting in one recent case that agents were notified more than an hour before a wanted person was released.

The lawsuit targets several state laws:

• HB19-1124: This law is one of those most often cited by Republicans unhappy with Colorado’s immigration policies. Nicknamed the Protecting Colorado Residents From Federal Government Overreach act, it prevents law enforcement officers from arresting or detaining an individual on the basis of their immigration status, or holding someone in jail past their release time just so immigration officials can come pick them up. It also prevents authorities from providing information about an individual’s immigration status to federal officials. Officers can continue to assist federal immigration enforcement officials with executing warrants issued by federal judges, and they can transfer people from jail or prison into the custody of immigration officers, if they have a court order.
• SB21-131: This law aims to further restrict cooperation between state employees and federal immigration agents by preventing the state from looking into people’s immigration status or disclosing anyone’s personal identifying information to ICE, except as required by law or courts.
• HB23-1100: This law prohibits the state and local governments from contracting with private companies to operate immigration detention facilities.

The lawsuit also targets policies in Denver:

• City Ordinance No. 94-17: This law was adopted in 2017 under Mayor Michael Hancock. It bars city employees from using “any city funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration laws,” the lawsuit states. That includes helping with investigations, detention or arrest procedures, as well as requesting information about a person’s immigration status in most cases. It also bars federal immigration agents from “secure areas of any city or county jail or other city-owned law enforcement facility for the purpose of conducting investigative interviews or any other purpose related to the enforcement of federal immigration” unless they have a warrant from a federal judge or magistrate. And it says that officers will not detain people solely on the basis of administrative warrants from immigration agents.
• Executive Order No. 142: This order issued by Hancock declared Denver a "safe and welcoming city for all” and touched on numerous subjects. It called for city employees to be trained on “the limitations around collecting and sharing national origin, immigration and citizenship data, including sharing information pertaining to appointment times, dates or whereabouts of clients … with federal immigration enforcement officials.” It also called on city leaders to report on “any efforts” they were aware of by immigration agents to get city help enforcing immigration laws.

Civics

Call your congress critter

202-224-2131

Civics

Jaimie Raskin is the bomb.

Today's Civics Project

You see this posted on social media:

Step 1:

Ask the pastor if

- as an officer of the church -

he endorses Mr Trump

If yes, then

Step 2:

Today's Beau

And the first thing these Republican clowns did was to pass The Tax Cheats Protection Act.

But it's not going anywhere, it'll never become law, and none of that matters.

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

Explaining why "conservatives" love the under-educated.

The Short List

Dear GOP -

• Jesus wasn't white
• Trump isn't Christian
• Trickle Down is bullshit
• Border walls are stoopid
• Water is wet
• Aid to Latin America is good for border security
• Climate Change is a real threat
• Anti-Vaxxers are dead wrong
• Healthcare is a right
• Gun violence has something to do with guns
• We don't need more nukes
• Legal abortion saves lives...and money
• Obama was born in Hawaii
• We have a right to air, water and soil that haven't been poisoned.
• The UN is important
• ...so is NATO...and the EU
• Public funding for schools, including the arts and extracurriculars, is a great investment
• Up is not down
• ...and vice versa
• High marginal tax rates keep us strong and free

There's more, but we'll go with that for now.

Today's Thread

Claire Willett, via Twitter:

In sitting with my feelings about the Mueller report (or more accurately the Barr report) and vividly reliving my feelings on Election Day 2016, it makes me think that one facet of my own privilege I still need to work on is this abiding belief in the myth of Grown-Ups.

A grown-up is not an adult. Adults are real and it's just an age classification. A grown-up is the person who takes care of things and fixes things and protects you from the scary dangers of the world and is always wise and just and brave and right.

They only exist in the minds of kids, and then you get older and you're like "shit my babysitter was SEVENTEEN!!! My parents were in their TWENTIES!!! No one knew ANYTHING! They were ALL just making it up as they went along!!!" and the myth more or less gets replaced by reality.

The belief in Magical Grown-Ups is a side effect of privilege. It's feeling safer when there are cops nearby, or expecting doctors to fix everything. It's when a kid needs help and your first instinct is to call their parents. In any crisis, somewhere a Grow-Up is in charge.

It was my deep and abiding faith that Grown-Ups would save us that left me stunned speechless by the 2016 election, when many people - who had either shed that myth long before, or didn't grow up with it at all - were able to see the crash coming from miles and miles away.

The same part of my Primal Child Brain which secretly believed that somehow a doctor would magically fix my dying mother also, on some level, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believes that a Grown-Up is coming to save us from *gestures vaguely at everything*

Hillary Clinton is a grown-up and Robert Mueller is a grown-up and the Constitution was written by grown-ups and surely somewhere along the line, someone is going to come rescue us from the Titanic before it sinks. The painful reality, of course, is that I am 37. I AM A GROWN-UP

And I wonder if maybe that's one of the unspoken ties that bind those of us from privilege who keep getting taken by surprise when the system fails us - because we were raised to believe the systems all worked, since we were the people they were designed and created to work for.

It makes sense, on some level, when you're a kid. You get sick, and your mom and the doctor take care of you. But the danger in retaining it as an adult is that on some level it's really just buck-passing. "Someone else will take care of this - so I don't have to do it myself."

But there were no grown-ups to magically save us from Trump getting elected and there were no grown-ups to stop his policies from hurting people (no matter how some of his more seasoned advisors may flatter themselves) and there were no grown-ups to prevent Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

There are no grown-ups to stop Mitch McConnell from his rampant abuses of power and there are no grown-ups to make sure every criminal in this government goes to jail and there are no grown-ups locking down security to protect the NEXT election from Russia. There's only us.

The one place of leverage we have is the House of Representatives, and that's because of the hard work of millions of voters and dedicated public servants. We flipped the House because WE were the grown-ups. None of it was magic.

It's uncomfortable and embarrassing to confront your own naivete like this, but I think it's also really important. The one piece of the machinery that's even KIND OF working is the one we fixed ourselves, because we were the only ones who could. No magic. No loophole. Just us.

We may be feeling more than a little lost, but Willett said clearly what we need to remember - grownups wrote our constitution. They gave us a road map so we could lead ourselves outa this shit.

We have to stop being comfortable with Self-Infantalization, and start taking seriously our responsibility to be the grownup in the relationship we have to have with ourselves first.

No gods. No avenging angels. No Daddy State. Just each other. As adults.

Liberty Hill

The women will save us - from ourselves - again.

Karen Collins is a grandmother, and award-winning quilter with deep Texas roots. She never cared much about politics until the 2016 election. Now her retirement has a new sense of purpose.

Liberty Hill from K&A on Vimeo.

David Souter

Appointed by Poppy Bush, and confirmed by a Senate with a Democratic majority.

Today's Facebook Silly

(And a quick reminder that, for way too many of us, we're making our political decisions from deep inside an alarming deficit of knowledge about fairly simple concepts we were supposed to have learned in 9th-grade Civics.)

I see a lot of otherwise smart friends putting up some really dumb posts. I include myself in the first group of course, but there's no way I could ever break into that second group (of course again) because - you know - I'm just that awesome.

Main complaint du jour: Drug Testing people for Welfare-type Bennies.  This one pops up in various iterations; this time appearing on the wall of a high school buddy's sister:

She was a cop (I think).  She studied Law and Enforcement (says that in her bio). Did she just miss the sessions on Probable Cause and The Bill of Rights?  Or is it a little too much to expect law enforcement officers to know something about that silly old document they all swore to uphold?

Congressional Research Service:

Federal or state laws that condition the initial or ongoing receipt of governmental benefits on passing drug tests without regard to individualized suspicion of illicit drug use may be subject to constitutional challenge. To date, two state laws requiring suspicionless drug tests as a condition to receiving governmental benefits have sparked litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court has not rendered an opinion on such a law; however, the Court has issued decisions on drug testing programs in other contexts that have guided the few lower court opinions on the subject.

Constitutional challenges to suspicionless governmental drug testing most often focus on issues of personal privacy and Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches.” For searches to be reasonable, they generally must be based on individualized suspicion unless the government can show a “special need” warranting a deviation from the norm. However, governmental benefit programs like TANF, SNAP, unemployment compensation, and housing assistance do not naturally evoke special needs grounded in public safety or the care of minors in the public school setting that the Supreme Court has recognized in the past. Thus, if lawmakers wish to pursue the objective of reducing the likelihood of taxpayer funds going to individuals who abuse drugs through drug testing, legislation that only requires individuals to submit to a drug test based on an individualized suspicion of drug use is less likely to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, governmental drug testing procedures that restrict the sharing of test results and limit the negative consequences of failed tests to the assistance program in question would be on firmer constitutional ground.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

If you suspect me of doing something illegal, then you gather your evidence, you attach my name (and yours) to it, you present it to the nice judge, and then the judge decides what happens next - not you; not by a show of hands from your little mob of drinking buddies; not some Coin-Operated Politician who needs you to concentrate on some shiny object so you won't notice he and his Sugar Daddies Uber-Patriot Donor Base have their hands in your pants.

It's called Due Process, and it's part of that whole American Exceptionalism thing.

Seriously, kids - we gotta brighten up a little.

Your Civics Homework

We might get around to fixing this one of these days - but I'm not holding my breath.

Smart People

...talking about stuff that matters.

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