Deportation – Politics Plus

Open Thread January 8 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 082026

Yesterday, as I am pretty sure everyone knows, an ICE agent shot a woman in the back of the head three times while she was in her car, attempting to get away/out of the way. She died instantly. The car continued to move (Malcolm Nance described this as “Dead Woman Driving”) and crashed into some other vehicles. The air bag inflated and was covered with blood. I can now confirm she was a US citizen. The Root shared her name and a link to a very moving obituary, as well as a slow-motion video with labels of what happened when. Nameless saw this before I did, and posted a comment with three NSFW headlines quoting the mayor of Minneapolis on yesterday’s OT to which I responded with everything I knew at the time. Tim Walz has now given a statement on public safety, together with the Director of Public Safety and the Colonel of the Minnesota National Guard.

This from The 19th reminded me that fairly recently I saw that someone (I assume a male MAGA) was complaining that anyone who says “toxic masculinity” is really saying that all masculinity is toxic. I thought “Yeah, right – just like saying “counterfeit money” is saying that all money is counterfeit.” I suppose that not even all male ICE agents enjoy toxic masculinity, but there surely seem to be a lot of them.

From Common Dreams. The nerve of Stephen Miller saying that we have to act like thugs in order to support “the free world.” The U.S. can’t support the free world in any way when we aren’t even a part of it any more.

Open Thread December 4 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 042025

Yesterday, Andy Borowitz headlined his Substack “Trump Boasts That International Criminal Court in The Hague Has Invited Him to Receive Award.” Considering what that would actually imply, would that it were true. Oh, well, I can dream. Also, yestersay was World Coati Day. Coatis, (or coatimundi, which was the name I learned as a kid, but I guess ispretty well limited to Brazil these days) are members of the raccoon family. They are somewhat rare jn the US, being limited to the Southwest, but more common in Central and South America, including Mexico. Oh, and also, it snowed – dirst of the season, about 3 inches and still on the ground at sunset. Unsurprisingly, it was cold.

This from The Independent was referred by Daily Dose of Democracy. I suppose it makes sense in a really, really warped kind of way. And we already knew that this regime is really, really warped. But good grief, what next?

Robert Reich tells us nothing here that we aren’t (probably) already aware of. But he does it so well – and offers possible solutions. Not easy solutions – I don’t think there are any of those – but possible. And he’s more than willing to hear about others from any reader who has any suggestions.

Harry Litman is not a veteran, but he knows a thing or two about military law, and First Amendment history, anyway. This is the second of a two-part analysis of the reaction to the veterans’ video regarding illegal orders. “I was just following orders” has not been a valid legal defense since the Nuremberg trials – almost my entire lifetime.

Open Thread May 2 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 022025

Yesterday, I got the first email I’ve ever received from a political action committee called The Six PAC. It was formed in 2019 in California to support six progressive Democrats running there for the House. Now it feels the need to put effort into supporting birthright citizenship. I think just its name deserves recognition. Also yesterday, a federal judge in Texas – who was appointed by Trump** – issued an opinion that using the Alien Enemies Act as the basis for deportations is illegal. I’m sure you caught that -it was all over the place.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch does a deep dive into the implications of The Mango Menace’s interview with Terry Moran of ABC. He’s not the only one looking at it – it is so revealing that it’s getting a lot of attention. It would be great if it would wake some people up.

POGO analyzes the relationship between surveillance and deportation. I mentioned Palantir a couple of days ago – this is a sort of a follow-up on that.

Heather Cox Richardson compares the first 100 days of FDR with the same time period of the current regime. Who loses bigly? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count.

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.