Day: July 17, 2025

Is This The New National Police?

The outlandish antics of ICE in the past few months has brought up a question….are they now the national police force?

These antics are all too familiar especially to anyone with half a brain and a small amount of knowledge of history….

The agency of mask-wearing officers who aren’t afraid to smash windows, detain lawmakers and pluck nonviolent undocumented immigrants off the street is about to become the best-funded federal police force.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already been acting with impunity during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Video of agents on horseback and in armored personnel vehicles in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is striking both for its demonstration of militarized power and for the total inability of the city’s Mayor Karen Bass to do anything about it.

“They need to leave and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters on the scene Monday.

But Trump administration officials feel no need to listen to local authorities in a city like Los Angeles.

“Better get used to us now, because this going to be normal very soon,” El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News on Monday, responding to Bass.

That new normal may come as a shock to Americans unused to a federal national police force operating inside the country.

The megabill Trump signed last week will elevate ICE in the American consciousness and on American streets.

ICE will have more funding in the coming years than any other federal law enforcement agency, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at pro-immigrant American Immigration Council.

The new law allocates $75 billion for ICE through 2029 to order as many as 10,000 new agents and to build detention facilities for more than 100,000 additional people.

“It makes ICE a higher-funded law enforcement agency than the entire FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons combined,” Reichlin-Melnick explained, after averaging that $75 billion across the next four years, more than doubling ICE’s budget in each of those years.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/ice-cbp-police-los-angeles-immigration

This group gets more funding than all our federal law enforcement agencies….why?

This is getting ridiculous….does the US need yet another ‘police force’ to run rough sod over the public?

This smells a lot like another regime that had to have its own ‘private army’ (for lack of a better description).

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

You Be The ‘Judge’

I have not been a fan of SCOTUS for many years, since about 2000, to me they are nothing more than political hacks that use nothing for their decisions other than political dogma….the interpretation of the Constitution means nothing to them.

These people are longer pretending that they use the Constitution as a guideline and that deserves a closer look….

It is quite the bit, really, to spend decades insisting on your “originalist” and “textualist” bonafides, and then when dealt an essentially unbeatable hand simply decide over and over again that that “original” “text” actually means whatever the hell you want it to mean. Or, perhaps more accurately, that the text you supposedly revere simply does not matter, or simply does not exist. I imagine the six conservative Supreme Court Justices sleep as well as anyone in the country.

On Monday, SCOTUS issued a ruling that blocked a May order from a US District Judge that basically ruled Trump could not dismantle the Department of Education unilaterally. That original ruling was just obviously, on-its-face correct: the Department was created by an act of Congress. The president does not, constitutionally speaking, get to just undo that because he feels like it. And yet.

The new ruling was unsigned, and came with no decision explaining the conservatives’ reasoning, such as it may be. This isn’t necessarily unusual for rulings like this, but it does highlight the ruling party’s increasing disdain for the pretenses that generally have been upheld in centuries of Washington’s procedural wranglings — and one might think that literally undoing the Constitution might require some explanation, if the Justices maintained some tiny modicum of shame. Alas.

https://www.splinter.com/the-supreme-court-isnt-even-pretending-anymore

In recent years I believe these ‘hacks’ need to address the people of this nation and these ‘elitist’ dipsticks need to explain their abandonment of the Constitution….

The Supreme Court is allowing Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education. But it won’t say why.

Yesterday—almost exactly a week after the Court lifted a lower court’s block on Trump’s plans to fire thousands of federal employees—a majority of the justices decided to give the president the go-ahead for a different set of mass layoffs. Last week, the Court provided a handful of sentences that vaguely gestured at why it might have allowed the administration to move forward. This week, it offered nothing at all. There’s something taunting, almost bullying, about this lack of reasoning, as if the conservative supermajority is saying to the country: You don’t even deserve an explanation.

And this is not the only incident of these ‘hacks’ doing the bidding of a political party and it has only gotten worse in the past 20 years or so.

Time for these ‘people’ to step up and provide the leadership they are suppose to be….instead of the ones fueling the destruction of the Constitution of our great nation.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Under Pressure

The US for far too long has threatened China over Taiwan…..originally it was over the Chinese doings in the South China Sea but then the focus went to Taiwan (I guess there was more of a case they could make for going to war over the island nation)…..for the past 3 or more years the war drums have been beating and now under Donny the pressure is being put on our Asian allies to get on-board….

The Pentagon is pressing Japan and Australia to make clear what role they would play if the US goes to war with China over Taiwan, the Financial Times reported over the weekend.

The report said that the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, has been pressing the issue in recent meetings with Japanese and Australian officials, an effort that has frustrated officials in Tokyo and Canberra.

Appearing to confirm the report, Colby said in a post on X that the Pentagon is implementing President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy by “urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense” in both Europe and Asia. “Of course, some among our allies might not welcome frank conversations,” he said.

Colby is a China hawk and a major proponent of the US preparing for war over Taiwan despite the risk of nuclear war. The FT report said that his meetings with Australian and Japanese officials were Colby’s latest effort to convince allies in the region to “raise deterrence” and prepare for a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Sources told the paper that the US has been asking allies to raise military spending, but the request for commitments related to a potential war with China was a new demand. The US is for clarity on the issue despite maintaining a policy of strategic ambiguity over the question of whether or not the US would intervene if China attacked Taiwan.

https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/14/us-pressing-japan-and-australia-on-what-they-would-do-if-the-us-goes-to-war-with-china-over-taiwan/

There has been lots of crazed macho chest beating over the situation and massive assets have been moved into the region for the coming conflict and in return China has been beefing up their forces and assets  in response

All the pieces are being put into place and the wait begins.

So is how firm is the commitment to Taiwan?

At first glance, Washington’s informal but very real commitment to defend Taiwan and preserve its de facto independence seems quite secure.  Over the past decade, Taipei’s security relationship with the United States grew steadily closer – with strong bipartisan approval in the United States.  Not only was that development apparent during Donald Trump’s first administration, but also, to the surprise of many experts on East Asian affairs, the trend persisted throughout Joe Biden’s presidency.

The prevailing assumption was that Trump’s return to the White House would be very good news for hardliners in Taiwan who want to push the envelope on independence.  Elbridge Colby, the official whom Trump chose to be undersecretary of defense for policy in his second administration is renowned for being an avid supporter of Taiwan.  Indeed, Colby embraces a hardline approach toward Beijing on a range of issues throughout East Asia.

However, Trump’s early statements indicated that Washington’s support for Taiwan’s security was far from unconditional.  He immediately pressured Taipei to raise its yearly defense spending – reportedly to 5 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  That is the same demand Trump is making to all members of NATO, and it is consistent with the U.S. president’s rhetorical commitment to an “America First” foreign policy overall.  One of his complaints dating from his 2016 presidential election campaign is that too many U.S. allies engage in “free riding” on Washington’s military exertions.  Trump’s insistence on greater “burden sharing” by America’s security clients has been a consistent theme of his tenure in the White House.

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2025/07/14/how-firm-is-washingtons-commitment-to-taiwans-security/

Muscle flexing 101….

Nearly 40,000 troops from 19 nations, including the US, have converged on northern Australia for the largest Talisman Sabre military drills ever, sending a hard-to-miss message about unity in the face of China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region. The live-fire drills held over three weeks involve artillery, rocket launchers, and tanks from the US, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and other allies, the Wall Street Journal reports. “Everyone is seeing the aggressive activities that China is doing,” said Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, who commands the US Army’s I Corps. “That’s why they’re more interested in what they need to do to protect their sovereign interests.”

The scale and diversity of the force, which includes partners from Europe and across Asia, reflect growing concern over Beijing’s actions in the region. China’s military buildup and recent maneuvers—including live-fire naval drills near Australia and increased activity around Taiwan and the South China Sea—have spurred the US and its allies to expand joint exercises. This iteration features new elements: the debut of America’s Typhon missile system west of the International Date Line, drone operations inspired by the Ukraine war, and the first Talisman Sabre activity in Papua New Guinea. A ceremony kicked off the biennial event on Sunday.

Can the US afford another lengthy war?

How will the conflict be met by the American voter?

At what point is enough enough?

Just wondering.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”