Tag Archives: due process

Trump betrays the American promise

Protest at the Dulles Airport, VA

Protest at the Dulles Airport, VA

The nation and the world recoils from the Tyrant in the West Wing, Mr. Donald Trump, who issued an illegal and unconstitutional executive order, universally decried at home and abroad as discriminatory, for barring legal immigrants with visas and green cards, without any advice beforehand from the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Customs and Boarder Protection.

This executive fiat targeted predominantly Muslim nations, namely, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, while excluding other Muslim nations including those where Mr. Trump has business interests.

Mr. Trump knew that he was usurping existing immigration law passed by the U.S. Congress, and fundamental constitutional standards of fairness, targeting Muslims he had every reason to believe presented absolutely no threat to this nation because they had already been vetted and found to present no threat to the United States.

Mr. Donald Trump issued his fiat last Friday, in the late afternoon, ironically enough on Holocaust Memorial Day, guaranteeing the inhumane chaos he plainly hoped to create.

From last Friday through the weekend, our nation’s airports were in disarray with government agents offering no resistance to Mr. Trump’s lawless fiat.  Continue reading

Equal Justice? Not Yet!

UVA Student, Martese Johnson, beaten

UVA Student, Martese Johnson, beaten

We beat up a black student in Virginia – an honor student.

We hung a black man in Mississippi – his feet floating 2-3 feet off the ground.

And we’ve got a local Leesburg councilman from Loudoun County who doesn’t see the point of a diversity commission because Jesus freed the slaves and Jesus would have told us to create such a diversity commission if we really needed one.  (Listen to what he said – https://youtu.be/Texh0_bjvLk )

Well we need more than a commission in America – and a lot smarter thinking public officials than our local councilman.

Sure, it rubs some people wrong to say “we” – you and I – beat up or hung someone.  But our society’s sins of omission make us all responsible for these vile acts in Virginia and Mississippi and in Staten Island in New York and elsewhere, symptomatic of this nation’s historically “uneasy” association with slavery and discrimination, re-emerging more visibly and offensively in recent days.

The failure to act makes us all accomplices after the fact.  John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself” because we are “involved in mankind.”  Another way to put it is – a bad man is a good man’s problem – and we have our work cut out for us these days. Continue reading

More marriage news that will upset Bob Marshall

yardsignsUpdate: As expected, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has filed a motion to withdraw the state’s brief in defense of Nevada’s ban on same sex marriage. A statement from Republican Governor Brian Sandoval’s office says “based upon the advice of the Attorney General’s office and their interpretation of relevant case law, it has become clear that this case is no longer defensible in court.” The only remaining party willing to defend the amendment is now the “Coalition for the Protection of Marriage,” the third party intervenor responsible for putting it on the ballot in 2002. Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hollingsworth v. Perry that such an intervenor does not have standing to appeal, it’s likely that a Ninth Circuit ruling in favor of the couples seeking to overturn the ban will be the end of the line for the so-called “Protection of Marriage Initiative.” The plaintiffs are seeking an expedited hearing.

Now, can we finally put to rest the notion that our Attorney General is “out there on a limb by himself,” per Mr. Marshall?

(Originally published January 27, 2014) Over the weekend there were two more developments toward the ultimate demise of anti-marriage state measures like Virginia’s Marshall-Newman Amendment.

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