Immigration Ban Sends Shockwaves Constitutional Crisis

[RocketMan]

Petition
Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.

Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.

Sign this petition


1,001,489 signatures

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928

"because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen."

27th January 2017
BREAKING NEWS: The Queen invites Donald Trump to the UK for a State Visit

Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from Her Majesty The Queen to visit the UK later this year for a State Visit. [...]

Out of the 12 presidents in Her Majesty’s reign, only five were ever invited for a State Visit. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. President Trump will now become number six.

http://royalcentral.co.uk/uk/thequeen/b ... isit-75677

Keep Calm
and
Tug Your
Forelock

#HerMajestyTheResistance

I heartily agree with the facepalm. What is it with the British royal family that makes liberals go all mushy anyway?

This was a good tonic for that:

https://twitter.com/LouHaigh/status/826353513869475840

Louise Haigh MP
‏@LouHaigh
Is embarrassing Queen really primary concern w fawning over a racist misogynist on cusp of destroying the world as we know it? #TrumpProtest

[MacCruiskeen]

RE: This tweet:

Louise Haigh MP
‏@LouHaigh
Is embarrassing Queen really primary concern w fawning over a racist misogynist on cusp of destroying the world as we know it? #TrumpProtest

Well, she's right about that embarrassingly arselicking "embarrassing the Queen" petition; but "the world as we know it" is hardly worthy of preservation in its current form, is it? I mean, the world of The Global War on Terror, the ongoing war that has destroyed the world of millions of Muslims ever since September 2001, and is still destroying it.

O for the good old days of The Global War on Terror as we knew it! Paradise Lost! Come back, Saint Barry! Hillary, save us!

What a spectacle. The Trumpocalypse is an act of system-legitimizing brilliance.



- Some good points about the current hysteria from a couple of posters on a UK discussion board (slightly rewritten & reformatted for clarity):

David M:

What I would like to know is whether the order from the White House REALLY prohibited entry to all the people that the media claims, when the details of it seemed to say that:

1) it shouldn't apply to anyone with a valid visa,

and

2) certainly not to American residents or citizens returning from holiday.

Did all that chaos happen because the staff in airports wouldn't take responsibility for letting anyone in from the countries on the list?

ceemac:

Trump has declared a 90-day travel ban on the citizens of seven Middle East countries: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

The first six have been bombed, ruined, and all but destroyed by the USA and its allies (including the UK). Iran has "merely" been sanctioned, threatened and menaced for years.

None of these cynical and murderous acts of war ever resulted in a petition to stop Bush, Clinton or Obama from entering the country. (Or a fucking constitutional crisis in the USA.)

Apparently creating a failed state, killing a million people, and rendering millions more homeless is less of a stain on your character than issuing a 90-day travel ban.

Yet now, suddenly, everyone's clutching their pearls about the danger to America's reputation, and the possible embarrassment to our dear monarch?

[seemslikeadream]

Petition
Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.

Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.

Sign this petition


1,001,489 signatures

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928

"because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen."

27th January 2017
BREAKING NEWS: The Queen invites Donald Trump to the UK for a State Visit

Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from Her Majesty The Queen to visit the UK later this year for a State Visit. [...]

Out of the 12 presidents in Her Majesty’s reign, only five were ever invited for a State Visit. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. President Trump will now become number six.

http://royalcentral.co.uk/uk/thequeen/b ... isit-75677

Keep Calm
and
Tug Your
Forelock

#HerMajestyTheResistance

Petition
Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.

Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.

Sign this petition
1,652,973 signatures

ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED FIFTY TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THREE PEOPLE HATE trumpty dumbty SO MUCH THAT THEY DO NOT WANT HIM IN THEIR COUNTRY

[seemslikeadream]

For some, Sally Yates' firing resembles Saturday Night Massacre
http://www.usatoday.com/news/

2015 video shows Jeff Sessions asking Sally Yates if she would say no to the president if he asks for something 'unlawful'
http://www.businessinsider.com/sally-ya ... ing-2017-1

Google employees staged a protest over Trump’s immigration ban
Walking off the job in eight offices worldwide

http://www.theverge.com/google/2017/1/3 ... lers-unite

[Searcher08]

Sally Yates action were interesting.
As far from the "Yes, Prime Minister" territory as it is possible to go. She could have put on a beat box worn a pink beany and yelled "Fuck Daw-nuld Trump!!" at the end though.

[seemslikeadream]

[MacCruiskeen]

The Shockwave of the Trumpocalypse demands a proportionately serious response: more crap cartoons*, more halfbaked forelock-tugging petitions, more pearl-clutching opinion pieces, and (above all) more smileys. America's reputation is at stake.

*Rowson is so bad. As if Trump would need to waterboard May to gain her agreement. As for Steve Bell, he used to have a brain, a clue, a sense of humour, and the ability to draw cartoons.

[seemslikeadream]

[seemslikeadream]

Letter from 100-Plus National Security Leaders on Refugee Executive Order

January 30, 2017

The Honorable John F. Kelly
Secretary
Department of Homeland Security
3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Honorable Sally Yates
Acting Attorney General
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530

The Honorable Thomas A. Shannon
Acting Secretary
Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Secretary Kelly, Acting Attorney General Yates, Acting Secretary Shannon:

As former cabinet Secretaries, senior government officials, diplomats, military service members and intelligence community professionals who have served in the Bush and Obama administrations, we, the undersigned, have worked for many years to make America strong and our homeland secure. Therefore, we are writing to you to express our deep concern with President Trump’s recent Executive Order directed at the immigration system, refugees and visitors to this country. This Order not only jeopardizes tens of thousands of lives, it has caused a crisis right here in America and will do long-term damage to our national security.

In the middle of the night, just as we were beginning our nation’s commemoration of the Holocaust, dozens of refugees onboard flights to the United States and thousands of visitors were swept up in an Order of unprecedented scope, apparently with little to no oversight or input from national security professionals.

Individuals, who have passed through multiple rounds of robust security vetting, including just before their departure, were detained, some reportedly without access to lawyers, right here in U.S. airports. They include not only women and children whose lives have been upended by actual radical terrorists, but brave individuals who put their own lives on the line and worked side-by-side with our men and women in uniform in Iraq now fighting against ISIL. Now, because of actions taken by this White House, their lives have been disrupted and they may even be in greater danger if they are sent home. Many more thousands going through the process will now be left behind. More broadly, tens of thousands of other travelers, including dual citizens and, at one point, legal U.S. residents face deep uncertainty about whether they may even travel to the United States or risk leaving and being barred reentry.

Many of us have worked for years to keep America safe from terrorists. Many of us were on the job working for our country on 9/11 and need no reminder just how vital it is to destroy terrorist networks and bring partners to our side in that global effort. Simply put, this Order will harm our national security. Partner countries in Europe and the Middle East, on whom we rely for vital counterterrorism cooperation, are already objecting to this action and distancing themselves from the United States, shredding years of effort to bring them closer to us. Moreover, because the Order discriminates against Muslim travelers and immigrants, it has already sent exactly the wrong message to the Muslim community here at home and all over the world: that the U.S. government is at war with them based on their religion. We may even endanger Christian communities, by handing ISIL a recruiting tool and propaganda victory that spreads their horrific message that the United States is engaged in a religious war. We need to take every step we can to counter violent extremism, not to feed into it by fueling ISIL propaganda.

Perhaps the most tragic irony of this episode is that it is unnecessary. We do not need to turn America into a fortress to keep it secure. Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has developed a rigorous system of security vetting, leveraging the full capabilities of the law enforcement and intelligence communities. This vetting is applied to travelers not once, but multiple times. Refugees receive even further scrutiny. In fact, successive administrations have worked to improve this vetting on a near continuous basis, through robust information sharing and data integration to identify potential terrorists. Since 9/11 not a single major terrorist attack has been perpetrated by travelers from the countries named in the Order.

The suddenness of this Order is also troubling. The fact that individuals cleared for admission were literally in the air as the Order went into effect speaks to the haste with which it was developed and implemented. We are concerned that this Order received little, if any scrutiny by the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security or the Intelligence Community. Now that some of these individuals are here in the United States, and thousands of others are stranded, our government’s response has appeared disorganized and chaotic. As lawyers take steps to protect their clients who have been detained here or stranded at many other airports, the U.S. government will continue to face a flurry of legal challenges, which could have been avoided. Additionally, by banning travel by individuals cooperating against ISIL, we risk placing our military and diplomatic efforts at risk by sending a clear message to those citizens and all Muslims that the United States does not have their backs. Already, the international push-back has been immense, and threatens to jeopardize critical counterterrorism cooperation.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this self-made crisis. We know that your agencies did not create this situation and we particularly respect that many of you are working to mitigate its damage. Effective immediately, you can apply the discretion given to you under the President’s Order to admit into the country the men, women and children who are currently still stranded in airports. The process for doing this is well known to the security professionals within your departments. We urge you to execute it. While it is good to see the withdrawal of the application of the Order to legal permanent residents of the United States, your Departments can immediately work to allow other classes of people into the country, and remove the discriminatory prioritization implicit within the Order. Most critically, we urge you to draw on the insight of the professionals in your departments to recommend that the President revisit and rescind this Order. Blanket bans of certain countries or classes of people is inhumane, unnecessary and counterproductive from a security standpoint, and beneath the dignity of our great nation.

Dr. Madeleine K. Albright
Former Secretary of State

Janet Napolitano
Former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

Susan Rice
Former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States

Dennis Blair
Former Director of National Intelligence
Admiral, USN, Retired

Michael Hayden
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Samantha Power
Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations

Bill Richardson
Former Governor of New Mexico and United States Ambassador to the United Nations

________________________________

John R. Allen
Former Presidential Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL
Former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
General, USMC, Retired

Tony Blinken
Former Deputy Secretary of State

William Burns
Former Deputy Secretary of State

Bruce Andrews
Former Deputy Secretary of Commerce

Richard Clarke
Former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism for the United States

Rudy DeLeon
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense

Heather Higginbottom
Former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources

Thomas Nides
Former Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources

James Steinberg
Former Deputy Secretary of State

James Stavridis
Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe
Admiral, USN, Retired

Michael Morrell
Former Acting Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Matthew Olsen
Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center

Rand Beers
Former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

John B. Bellinger III
Former Legal Advisor to the Department of State

Ambassador (ret.) Nicholas Burns
Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

Eliot Cohen
Former Counselor, Department of State

Michele Flournoy
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Eric Fanning
Former Secretary of the Army

Marcel Lettre
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence

James Miller
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Wendy Sherman
Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

Suzanne Spaulding
Former Undersecretary for National Protection and Programs, Department of Homeland Security

Michael G. Vickers
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence

Tara Sonenshine
Former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

Clara Adams-Ender
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Ricardo Aponte
Brigadier General, USAF, Retired

Juan Ayala
Major General, USMC, Retired

Alyssa Ayres
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia

Donna Barbisch
Major General, USA, Retired

Jamie Barnett
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Jeremy Bash
Former Chief of Staff, Department of Defense

Daniel Benjamin
Former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State

Charles Blanchard
Former General Counsel, United States Air Force

Jarret Blanc
Former Deputy Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan

Barbara Bodine
Former United States Ambassador to Yemen

Richard Boucher
Former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs

David Brahms
Brigadier General, USMC, Retired

Mike Breen
Retired United States Army Officer

John G. Castellaw
Lieutenant General, USMC, Retired

Wendy Chamberlin
Former United States Ambassador to Pakistan

Derek Chollet
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Christopher Cole
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Bathsheba Crocker
Former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs

Jay DeLoach
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Abe Denmark
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia

John Douglass
Brigadier General, USAF, Retired

Paul Eaton
Major General, USA, Retired

Mari K. Eder
Major General, Retired, USA

Dwayne Edwards
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Robert Einhorn
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation

Evelyn Farkas
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia

Gerald M Feierstein
Former United States Ambassador to Yemen

Daniel Feldman
Former Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan

Jose W. Fernandez
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs

Jonathan Finer
Former Director of Policy Planning, Department of State

Robert Glacel
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Philip Gordon
Former Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region

Kevin P. Green
Vice Admiral, USN, Retired

Caitlin Hayden
Former National Security Council Spokesperson

Richard S. Haddad
Major General, USAF, Retired

Gretchen Herbert
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Mark Hertling
Lieutenant General, USA, Retired

Christopher P. Hill
Former United States Ambassador to Iraq

David Irvine
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Arlee D. Jameson
Lieutenant General, USAF, Retired

John Johns
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Deborah Jones
Former United States Ambassador to Libya

Colin Kahl
Former National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States

Claudia Kennedy
Lieutenant General, USA, Retired

Gil Kerlikowske
Former Commissioner, United States Customs and Border Protection

Charles Kupchan
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Jonathan Lee
Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Department of Homeland Security

Fred Leigh
Major General, USA, Retired

George Little
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs

Deborah Loewer
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Donald E. Loranger Jr.
Major General, USAF, Retired

Kelly Magsamen
Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs

Randy Manner
Major General, USA, Retired

Thomas Malinowski
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Brian McKeon
Former Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Philip McNamara
Former Assistant Secretary for Partnerships and Engagement, Department of Homeland Security

John G. Morgan
Lieutenant General, USA, Retired

Suzanne Nossel
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Affairs

James C. O’Brien
Former Special Envoy for Hostage Recovery

David Oliver
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Eric Olson
Major General, USA, Retired

Rick Olson
Former Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan

Charley Otstott
Lieutenant General, USA, Retired

Robert Pearson
Former United States Ambassador to Turkey

Glenn Phillips
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Gale Pollock
Major General, USA, Retired

Amy Pope
Former Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Steve Pomper
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Michael Posner
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy , Human Rights and Labor

Anne C. Richard
Former Assistant Secretary of State, Population, Refugees & Migration

Leon Rodriguez
Former Director, U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Ronald Rokosz
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Laura Rosenberger
Former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State

Christopher Ross
Former United States Ambassador to Syria

Tommy Ross
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security Cooperation

John M. Schuster
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Eric Schwartz
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration

Stephen A. Seche
Former United States Ambassador to Yemen

Robert Silvers
Former Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy, Department of Homeland Security

Vikram Singh
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia

Elissa Slotkin
Former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Jeffrey Smith
Former General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency

Julianne “Julie” Smith
Former Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States

Michael Smith
Rear Admiral, USN, Retired

Matthew Spence
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy

Andrew W. Steinfeld
Former Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Seth M.M. Stodder
Former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Border, Immigration & Trade Policy

Jake Sullivan
Former National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States

Loree Sutton
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

Antonio Taguba
Major General, USA, Retired

Jim Townsend
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy

David Wade
Former Chief of Staff, Department of State

George H. Walls Jr.
Brigadier General, USMC, Retired

William Wechsler
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counterterrorism and Special Operations

Catherine Wiesner
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration

Willie Williams
Lieutenant General, USMC, Retired

Johnnie E. Wilson
General, USA, Retired

Tamara Cofman Wittes
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Moira Whelan
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs

Jon Brook Wolfsthal
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Lee Wolosky
Former Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure

Tom Wyler
Former Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce and Senior Advisor for International Economics

Stephen N. Xenakis, M.D.
Brigadier General, USA, Retired

CC: Secretary James Mattis, Department of Defense; General Joseph Dunford, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
http://lobelog.com/letter-from-100-plus ... ive-order/

[seemslikeadream]

LONG TIME COMING
Donald Trump’s Refugee Ban Has Attorney General Nominee Jeff Sessions’s Fingerprints All Over It
For years, Sen. Jeff Sessions and his top communications guru have been screaming and hollering about refugees. Looks like their new boss granted their wish.
Betsy Woodruff
BETSY WOODRUFF

01.28.17 6:15 PM ET
To longtime Jeff Sessions observers, the chaos that unfolded in American airports on Saturday morning wasn’t a surprise. At all.
Rather, the refugee ban was the predictable culmination of years of advocacy from two of President Donald Trump’s most trusted advisors: White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller and attorney general designate Jeff Sessions. For years, Sessions and Miller—who was the Alabama senator’s communications director before leaving to join the Trump campaign—pushed research and talking points designed to make Americans afraid of refugees.
Press releases, email forwards, speeches on the Senate floor—Miller and Sessions used it all to make the case against Obama’s refugee program was a huge terror threat. The executive order Trump signed late in the day on Friday is just the logical conclusion of their work.
I started getting press releases that Miller sent on behalf of Jeff Sessions in March of 2013, shortly after I moved to D.C. to cover Congress. The emails went to my Gmail, and kept coming over the years—hundreds and hundreds of them. By the time he left Sessions’ office to join the Trump campaign, Miller’s press releases were legendary among Hill reporters: There were just so many of them, at all hours of the day, and they never stopped. Some were lengthy diatribes; some were detailed, homemade charts; some were one-liners; one was just a link to Facebook’s stock page on Google Finance with the subject line, “Does this mean Facebook has enough money now to hire Americans?”
“I wanted to put together a little book of the best emails I ever sent,” Miller told Politico last June. “I spent hours and hours of research on those.”
Some of that research had serious methodological problems, according to Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute.
“Miller’s work vastly overstates the threat of foreign terrorists to the homeland,” Nowrasteh said.
He pointed to Miller’s efforts to chronicle cases of refugees implicated in terrorist activity. It’s true that some refugees in the U.S. have been indicted for terrorism-related crimes, Nowrasteh said. But instances of refugees actively planning terror attacks on American soil, he added, were vanishingly rare.
“Almost all the refugees that I was able to specifically identify in his set were trying to support a foreign terrorist organization, mostly Al Shabab in Somalia, by giving them money or something like that,” Nowrasteh said. “I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a big difference between sending a militia in your home country funds and trying to blow up a mall in Cincinnati.”
The collective effect of Miller and Sessions’ messaging was to enthusiastically push a narrative that now dominates the Trump administration: that refugees and other immigrants steal Americans’ jobs, suck up too much welfare money, incubate terrorists in their communities, and, overall, are a big problem.
The conclusion was always the same: The government should let in far fewer refugees, and it should think twice about welcoming Muslims.
And now, that’s exactly what Trump is doing.
For instance, in one “Dear Colleague” letter that Sessions co-authored with conservative Republican Rep. David Brat—a letter Miller blasted out to his press list—the would-be attorney general ripped into the refugee program.
“There can be no higher duty as lawmakers than to keep our constituents and their families safe,” Brat and Sessions wrote. “Yet our reckless refugee programs, lax green card and visa policies, utter failure to enforce rampant visa overstays, along with our wide open southern border, put the U.S. at grave and needless risk.”
“Grave and needless risk”—it’s a view that clearly informs Trump’s decision to temporarily ban refugees.

And a Miller press release blasted out on Nov. 25, 2015, included this ominous title: “U.S. Issued 680,000 Green Cards to Migrants from Muslim Nations Over the Last 5 Years.”
Sessions then forwarded that email to his email list on Jan. 12, 2016, the day of Obama’s final State of the Union address, and added this note: “Some numerical context for any discussions of refugee policy that may arise tonight. As further context, the top-sending country for migrants are Iraq and Pakistan, according to Pew, ‘Nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law.’”
The implication was clear as a bell: Muslim immigrants are flooding into the U.S., and they’re bringing Shariah with them. Someone who agreed with Miller’s assessment would do what Trump just did.
Just about any time a refugee living in the U.S. was charged, implicated, or otherwise connected to terrorism, Miller emailed his list about it.
Another Sessions press release, sent jointly with Sen. Richard Shelby, also included ominous intonations about refugees and Muslims.
“Congress must cancel the President’s blank refugee check and put Congress back in charge of the program,” Sessions and Shelby said. “We cannot allow the President to unilaterally decide how many refugees he wishes to admit, nor continue to force taxpayers to pick up the tab for the tens of billions of unpaid-for welfare and entitlement costs.”
“The omnibus would put the U.S. on a path to approve admission for hundreds of thousands of migrants from a broad range of countries with jihadists movements over the next 12 months, on top of all the other autopilot annual immigration—absent language to reduce the numbers,” the release continued.
That same statement also suggested that refugees were robbing elderly Americans of their benefits.
“Refugees are entitled to access all major welfare programs, and they can also draw benefits directly from the Medicare and Social Security disability and retirement trust funds—taking those funds straight from the pockets of American retirees who paid into these troubled funds all of their lives,” Sessions and Shelby said.
Now that Trump is president, those numbers are getting reduced—and fast.
Another foreboding subject line from Miller showed up in reporters’ inboxes on Nov. 20, 2015: “ICYMI: Each 5 years, U.S issuing more new green cards to migrants from Muslim nations the population of Washington, D.C.”
Sessions also took to the Senate floor to argue that Muslim immigrants are uniquely dangerous. On Nov. 19, 2015, the Alabaman said the following about Muslims:
“It is an unpleasant but unavoidable fact that bringing in a large unassimilated flow of migrants from the Muslim world creates the conditions possible for radicalization and extremism to take hold.”
In the speech, Sessions argued that the U.S. should set up safe zones in Syria where refugees could settle—instead of allowing any of them into the United States. Miller emailed reporters as Sessions spoke to highlight his argument. Now it’s Trump’s position.
At Breitbart, Julia Hahn covered Sessions’ speech in an article headlined “AFGHANISTAN MIGRATION SURGING INTO AMERICA; 99% SUPPORT SHARIA LAW.” News broke earlier this week that Hahn got a job in the White House as an assistant to Trump and senior advisor Stephen Bannon.
And on and on and on, for hundreds of emails, without even a whisper of flip-flopping.
Trump’s crack-down on Muslims and refugees shouldn’t surprise anyone. He’s just taking his advisors’ advice.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... er-it.html

[MacCruiskeen]

Letter from 100-Plus National Security Leaders on Refugee Executive Order

[...]

... and beneath the dignity of our great nation.

Dr. Madeleine K. Albright
Former Secretary of State

Janet Napolitano
Former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

Susan Rice
Former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States

Dennis Blair
Former Director of National Intelligence
Admiral, USN, Retired

Michael Hayden
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Samantha Power
Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations

Bill Richardson
Former Governor of New Mexico and United States Ambassador to the United Nations

[...]

http://lobelog.com/letter-from-100-plus ... ive-order/

^^Stern guardians of the Homeland's unblemished reputation. Truly, it would bring a tear to a dead man's eye.

It's hard not to feel some sympathy with a man who is opposed so vehemently by so many smugly murderous imperialist bastards.

[seemslikeadream]

Here are the major legal challenges to Trump's immigration ban
Here are the major legal challenges to Trump’s immigration ban
By Tess Owen on Jan 30, 2017
The President’s recent executive order plunged the U.S. immigration system into chaos. The order bans refugees for 120 days — and Syrian refugees indefinitely — as well as suspends travel from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days.

At first triggering protests at airports around the country, the move has now invited an array of federal lawsuits challenging its constitutionality and enforcement. Here’s a round-up of some of the major challenges — so far.

NATIONAL CASES
Council for American Islamic Relations

The organization announced Monday that it had filed a complaint in a federal court in Virginia challenging Trump’s executive order as a violation of the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment and due process as protected by the Fifth Amendment.

“This is not a Muslim ban simply. It is a Muslim exclusion order,” said Lena Masri, an attorney on the case. While the order has been dubbed a “Muslim ban,” the complaint alleges it’s also an “exclusion order” due to its apparent intent of initiating the “mass expulsion of immigrant and nonimmigrant Muslims lawfully residing in the United States by denying them the ability to renew their lawful status or receive immigration benefits afforded to them under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.”

Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist and executive director of the Arab American Association of New York (and organizer of the post-inauguration Women’s March on Washington D.C.) is the lead plaintiff in the suit.

“There’s a broad proclamation that our country has issued an edict that it prefers one religion over another,” said Shereef Akeel, a civil rights lawyer with Council for American Islamic Relations, referring to Trump’s vow that he would prioritize Christian refugees over others. “And that would make our founding fathers roll in their graves.”

The lawsuit names Trump, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security John F. Kelly, the U.S. State Department, and the Director of National Intelligence as defendants in the suit.

Washington State

Washington will become the first state in the country to take legal action against the Trump administration. Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Monday that the state was suing Trump on account of his executive order on immigration. Gov. Jay Inslee joined Ferguson at a news conference when he announced the lawsuit.

“The fact is that its impact, its cruelty, its clear purpose is an unconscionable religious test,” Inslee said at the conference.

“President Trump may have his alternative facts,” Ferguson added, “but alternative facts do not work in a courtroom.”

The case will be filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington on Monday afternoon and seeks that provisions of Trump’s executive order be declared unconstitutional by a federal judge on the grounds that it violates the right to religious freedom and equal protection under the law. The suit is also seeking a temporary restraining order against the implementation of the immigration order, like detentions at the Sea Tac Airport in Washington.

Attorney generals from 16 states — including New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Washington — released a joint statement Sunday condemning the order.“ We are committed to working to ensure that as few people as possible suffer from the chaotic situation that it has created,” the statement read.

Ferguson said Monday that he had been in contact with other attorneys general, but at this point, Washington State was taking its own legal action against the Trump administration.

Darweesh v Trump

This was the case that slammed the breaks on deportations as part of implementing Trump’s executive order. Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New York on behalf of two Iraqi immigrants — one of whom was an interpreter for the U.S. military during the Iraq War — the case alleged that their detainment and threatened deportation violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment

Federal district Judge Anne Donnelly, from Brooklyn, granted a temporary emergency stay Saturday — in place until Feb. 21 — which immediately halted deportations and ordered the release of detainees. The enforcement of that court order has been chaotic with scattered reports of Customs and Border Protection officers choosing to violate the federal order in the interest of upholding Trump’s executive order.The Department of Homeland Security, however, has assured the public that its agents would “comply with judicial orders; faithfully enforce our immigration laws and implement @POTUS Executive Orders.”

The case, which granted temporary relief, faces a more thorough review by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. A federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts signed a similar nationwide order in the suit Tootkaboni v Trump blocking the deportation of two college professors and others “similarly situated.”

INDIVIDUAL CASES
Aziz v Virginia

A nonprofit legal aid group based in Virginia filed an amended complaint on behalf of two Yemeni brothers, charging that Customs and Border Protection officers at Washington Dulles Airport coerced them into relinquishing their legal status.

The brothers, Tareq Aqel Mohammed Aziz and Ammar Aqel Mohammad Aziz, had lawfully obtained immigrant visas by virtue of their father’s status as a U.S. citizen, and were entitled to permanent residency. The lawsuit charges that, upon arrival in the U.S. on Saturday morning, the two brothers were cuffed, detained, and coerced into the I-407 form, which relinquished their status and they couldn’t understand. They were put on a flight back to the Addis Ababa airport in Ethiopia and are now stuck in “limbo,” according to the suit.

The ACLU of California filed three individual lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs at LAX — one resulted in a court order requiring the government to return an Iranian man who was deported to Dubai, despite having a valid visa. An individual suit was also filed in Seattle, Washington by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
https://news.vice.com/story/major-legal ... ration-ban

[seemslikeadream]

Meet the Scientists Hit by Trump’s Immigration Ban
Order barring citizens of seven countries from entering the U.S. has left many confused and afraid
By Lauren Morello, Sara Reardon, Nature magazine on January 30, 2017

Thousands of demonstrators block roads inside Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) during a rally against Donald Trump's muslim immigration ban in Los Angeles, California, on January 29, 2017. Credit: Aydin Palabiyikoglu, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images
Kaveh Daneshvar was thrilled when he was invited to speak at a molecular biology meeting next month in Banff, Canada. Daneshvar, a molecular geneticist, is finishing a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and is preparing to go on the job market. He hoped that the conference talk would give him much-needed exposure to leaders in his field.
But that now seems impossible: if Daneshvar, an Iranian citizen, leaves the country, he may not be able to return. On January 27, US President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order that blocks refugees from entering the United States for 120 days and stops Syrian refugees indefinitely. It also bans citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries “compromised by terrorism”—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—from entering the United States for 90 days. The US government has issued conflicting statements on whether the provisions apply to people such as Daneshvar who hold visas that would otherwise permit them to live, work or study in the United States—including those with the permanent resident visas known as green cards.
Nature spoke to more than 20 researchers affected by the new policy, who described their feelings of fear, shock and determination. Some asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the US government.
“I am really appreciative of what the US has given me and allowed me to achieve here, but at the same time this is really shocking,” says Ali Shourideh, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “I've always been under the assumption this is a free country, that once you immigrated they won't try to kick you out or make life hard for you.”
Shourideh, an Iranian citizen with a green card, has travelled to Iran several times recently to visit his mother, who has cancer. Now, if he leaves the United States, he may not be able to return. “You have to make a choice: do I want to see my mom or do I want to keep my job?” he says. “This is something that for sure will hurt us personally, but also the US, I think, because all these high-skilled-type professionals would not want to be here anymore.”
LEGAL CHALLENGE

On January 28, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a lawsuit against the US government to overturn the order on behalf of two people with valid visas who were detained at US airports. Later that day, the group won a preliminary victory when a federal judge ruled that the government could not deport those detainees. But the ruling does not affect those who were not in transit when the ban took effect.
Scientists have already begun to organize against the immigration policy. More than 12,000 researchers—including 40 Nobel prizewinners and 6 Fields medallists — have signed a petition denouncing Trump’s actions. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of American Universities have put out statements urging the Trump administration to re-evaluate the ban.
And universities have scrambled to understand how the US policy will affect their professors, postdocs, students and other employees from the seven banned countries. Many institutions are advising these people to stay in the United States until the situation becomes clearer.
But that is little comfort to an Iranian engineering student at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The man has just bought a house with his wife, who is expecting their first child—a girl—next week. The couple were expecting their parents to come from Iran to visit the baby, but those plans are on hold. So are the green cards that the pair had expected to receive in April.
Now they are contemplating whether to start anew in Australia, where they hold permanent residency cards that will expire in May. “If you leave, you can get your life back, your parents back, your family back—but you will lose anything you did here,” the engineering student says. “We worked hard for this.”
WAITING GAME

The sudden nature of the ban has thrown many researchers’ professional lives into disarray.
Luca Freschi, an Italian microbial geneticist at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, had planned to move to Harvard Medical School in March. But the US immigration ban has disrupted those plans, because his Iranian wife Maryam will not be able to come with him. She has encouraged Freschi to go without her.
“It’s crazy for us because we got the visa two days before the executive order was signed,” he says.
Another couple, both scientists, are stuck in France while they wait to learn whether the woman, an Iranian, will be able to travel to the United States. They are each set to start jobs at a US university in March.
And the ban is already disrupting some international collaborations. Samira Samimi, an Iranian studying glaciology at the University of Calgary in Canada, was supposed to go to Greenland in April on a NASA-funded expedition to study snow melt. The team will depart from a US Air National Guard base in Schenectady, New York, aboard a LC-130 cargo plane to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
But Samimi won’t be able to cross the border to meet her colleagues in New York. And even if she purchased a commercial ticket to Greenland, she might not be allowed to fly on the cargo plane that will take the US team to its remote field sites. If Samimi can’t get to Greenland to continue the research she started there last year, it could slow her progress towards a PhD. “I thought I would be free in Canada,” she says. “I wouldn’t have to fight for my rights anymore.”
Samimi’s colleagues are exploring all options to get her on the ice. “This really upsets me,” says Mike MacFerrin, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who is helping to organize the expedition. “None of this is right.” He adds: “There is no way this helps us or our science.”
SEEKING FREEDOM

Some of those affected by the immigration shift suffered persecution in their home countries.
Samimi, the glaciologist, was detained by Iranian police for the first time when she was 9, because she wore a T-shirt advertising the US rock band Bon Jovi. Later, she was held and questioned because she dyed her hair unacceptable colours and wore nail polish.
Ubadah Sabbagh, a doctoral student in neuroscience at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, is a Syrian citizen who moved to the United States seven years ago, aged 16, to attend university. Because he ignored an order to serve in the Syrian army, he cannot return home or renew his passport. Now he is worried about conditions in the United States.
“This is not going to be a footnote in American history,” Sabbagh says. “We could slip into a very dark place very quickly if people just decide to be indifferent.”
Then there is Amir Haji-Akbari, a computational statistical physicist from Iran, who won a plum assistant professor job at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2016. The position offered welcome security after his years as a postdoc, and he began planning to apply for citizenship so that he could bring his elderly parents over from Iran. His wife, who is studying quantitative and computational biology at Princeton University in New Jersey, had invited her mother from Iran to watch her PhD defence in April.
Now all of that seems impossible, says Haji-Akbari, who, as an ethnic Azeri and Sunni Muslim, faced discrimination in Iran. “I have always found the tolerance and religious freedom better here,” he says. “Why am I considered a threat? What have I done to you? I have been a second-class citizen in my own country, and now here you are treating me like garbage.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on January 29, 2017.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ation-ban/

[seemslikeadream]

It's hard not to feel some sympathy with a man who is opposed so vehemently by so many smugly murderous imperialist bastards.

of course you would have sympathy for this guy...not only sympathy but maybe some actual Mac

Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

and......gave a nod to Holocaust Deniers on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3yDjylQ5Ps