Off-Duty Cop Pulls Gun on Man Buying Mentos; Police Union Condemns Fourth Amendment

Two weekend stories from both sides of the country demonstrate the generally screwed-up relationship some members of the law enforcement community have with the citizenry.

First: It’s hard to fathom what was going on in the mind of an off-duty Buena Park, California, cop when he decided to pull out his gun after mistakenly thinking a man was shoplifting a pack of Mentos. The man, Jose Arreola, had paid for them. The officer missed the exchange of money and only saw Arreola grabbing the mints and pocketing them and jumped to the wrong assumption.

The incident happened in March, but apparently is just now being publicized as Arreola retains a lawyer and is demanding compensation. Here’s the video:

Though the police wouldn’t comment on the story, the Buena Park Police Department posted a note from Chief Corey Sianez on Facebook:

The video of the incident clearly shows our officer drawing his gun, but not pointing it, at a subject he allegedly believed was committing a theft inside the mini-mart of a Chevron gas station in Buena Park. We were aware of this incident after it occurred and we immediately began conducting an administrative investigation into the conduct of the officer involved. The complainant also filed a formal complaint against the officer alleging misconduct and also retained an attorney. I want you to know that after I watched the video I found it to be disturbing, as I’m sure it was to you. However, because there is an ongoing personnel investigation and potential litigation pending against the city, I am unable to discuss the details of our investigation. I can definitely assure you that our investigation will be thorough and if the officer is found to be in violation of any policies and procedures, he will be held accountable. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

This response is notable for what it leaves out. Sianez blames his silence on the investigation and “potential litigation.” But even after all this is over, Arreola and the citizens of Buena Park probably won’t get any answers about this still-unidentified cop’s behavior. California state law deliberately conceals information from the public about police misconduct and what discipline officers face. As the law currently stands, we’ll probably never know what the authorities do about a cop who pulls his gun out because he thought he saw somebody steal mints.

There’s a bill in the state Senate in California to make public some investigation and discipline records involving police conduct, but it focuses on cases of actual use of force and gun discharges. So even if that legislation were enacted, Buena Park citizens concerned about this behavior probably wouldn’t get any answers.

Second: In New York City, a police union president’s over-the-top reply to another New York agency is less violent but probably no less disturbing. As an amusing way to connect with annual May the Fourth Star Wars cultural celebration, the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board tweeted this:

Silly, but there was a whole host of tweets Friday trying to tap into the “May the Fourth” cultural moment. It was on point. Less focused was this absurdly furious response by the Twitter account of New York Police Department Sergeant Benevolent Association (SBA) President Ed Mullins:

So apparently just telling people how to file a complaint if they feel as though the police have violated their constitutional rights is too much disrespect for the SBA.

This is far from the first time we’ve seen such a bonkers over-the-top response from SBA. They’re the ones responsible for a video last year that went viral for all the wrong reasons, suggesting that criticism of the police is a form of “blue racism” in a video that misquoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have Dream” speech. I noted back then that they appeared to be objecting to a police sergeant even having to face trial for shooting a mentally ill woman in Bronx. (A jury acquitted the officer in February, and he has returned to work.)

The tone of the tweet here is similar. The SBA seems to object to the very existence of a process to hold officers accountable if they violate a citizen’s constitutional rights.

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Watch Magma From Hawaii’s Kilauea Consume A Car In Upscale Neighborhood

Since erupting last Thursday, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has destroyed at least 30 homes and forced over 1,700 residents to flee as hot magma shoots through nine fissures which have opened up in the ground – spewing molten rock, toxic gas and steam into the air. 

The magma has been making its way through several upscale neighborhoods, including the Leilani Estates near the town of Pahoa on the Big Island, where ongoing eruptions along with several powerful earthquakes have cut off power and water to locals. 

“I have no idea how soon we can get back,” said Todd Corrigan, who left his home in Leilani Estates with his wife Friday as lava burst through the ground three or four blocks from their home. They spent the night on the beach in their car and began looking for a vacation rental.

Hawaii County civil defense officials said two new fissures opened overnight, bringing the total to nine that opened in the neighborhood since Thursday. U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist Wendy Stovall said that with the two new fissures, the total was 10, though one of the new ones had already stopped producing lava. –CBS

Here is a thermal image of the crater:  

Twitter user @bclemms posted a video of magma consuming a car:

Some evacuees were briefly allowed back to their homes to gather medicine, pets and other necessities. Authorities, however have warned residents that no commercial masks sold in stores and available to the general public – including those known as N-95, will protect against sulfur dioxide (SO), and that first responders require special masks and training not available to private citizens.  

Scientists expect more lava to find its way through additional vents near the Leilani Estates, but are unable to predict with certainty.

Kilauea has been continuously erupting since 1983 and is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. In 2014, lava burned a house and smothered a cemetery as it approached Pahoa, the town closest to Leilani Estates. But this flow stalled just before it reached Pahoa’s main road.

Nearly 30 years ago, lava slowly covered an entire town, Kalapana, over the period of about a year. –CBS

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Don’t Blame Self-Driving Cars for Accidents Caused by Humans

A car accident in the Phoenix suburbs that wouldn’t otherwise have even made the local news reports has become a national story because of the involvement of an autonomous, or self-drving, car.

Involvement is the key word, because the self-driving car was an innocent bystander in a crash that was entirely the fault of two human-operated cars. But you wouldn’t know that from some of the headlines spattered across social media over the weekend, often accompanied by pictures of the dented Chrysler Pacifica sporting the blue-and-green Waymo logo.

As for what actually happened, here’s how the Chandler police described the Friday afternoon accident in their official report:

This afternoon around noon a vehicle (Honda sedan) traveling eastbound on Chandler Blvd. had to swerve to avoid striking a vehicle traveling northbound on Los Feliz Dr. As the Honda swerved, the vehicle continued eastbound into the westbound lanes of Chandler Blvd. & struck the Waymo vehicle, which was traveling at a slow speed and in autonomous mode.

And if you’re skeptical of police officers’ ability to tell the honest truth, dashcam video from the minivan confirms their account.

As both the police report and the dashcam video show, the accident was caused by the darker car attempting to enter Chandler Blvd., and causing the lighter colored car to swerve out of the way at the last second. It’s not clear from the video which vehicle had the green light.

One thing that is clear about this is that the self-driving car simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the Waymo minivan had been parked on the side of the road when the crash occurred, it would have played the exact same role in what happened.

Local news playing a car accident for clicks and “likes” is to be expected, I suppose, but that sort of coverage has real consequences. First, there is the strong implication—if not an explicit message—that these self-driving cars are some sort of danger to public safety. Readers are quick to draw that conclusion, at least based on the responses to tweets like the ones above.

Second, that fear metastasizes into policy. As two writers at Wired put it, Friday’s crash is “threatening to resurrect tough questions about the safety of autonomous technology and rip the barely-crusted scab off the technology’s reputation.”

That would be like blaming someone sitting in your back seat for an accident that happens three cars in front of you. No reasonable person can look at Friday’s crash and conclude that it should raise any questions—tough or otherwise—about the self-driving minivan. What was the Waymo car supposed to do? Apparate to avoid the oncoming, swerving, human-operated car?

What this minor accident in Arizona really shows is that human beings are pretty shitty drivers. We make mistakes like pulling into oncoming traffic. Around 100 people lose their lives every day in car crashes in America, and about 90 percent of all car accidents (including the one in Chandler) are the result of human error. Americans spend $230 billion annually to cover the costs of accidents, accounting for approximately 2 to 3 percent of the country’s GDP.

Autonomous cars won’t be perfect, and they should face criticism when it’s appropriate, but there is a humongous margin for self-driving vehicles to be imperfect but still better than human drivers. Within that margin, cars like the ones Waymo is currently testing will literally save lives.

Even when they are at fault for accidents—and sometimes they will be—we should keep testing self-driving cars. That is the only way to find out if they can indeed be safer than human-driven cars, and it is the only way the technology will improve.

Unless politicians get in the way, that is. And nothing makes politicians more likely to overreact to a perceived threat than a bunch of garbage journalism that inflates a potential threat—see: terrorism, human trafficking, letting your child play outside—like the coverage of Friday’s accident.

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Is The Supply Of Gold Depleting?

Authored by Lawrence Thomas via GoldTelegraph.com,

The demand for gold is increasing, yet new discoveries of the precious metal have not kept pace with the demand. Funds for exploration are historically high, $54.3 billion, up 60 percent over the past 18 years.

The increased spending, however, has not produced the equivalent in new gold discoveries. During the past decade, 41 discoveries have resulted in a mere 215.5 million ounces of the precious metal. Even counting recently discovered but unexplored mines, which may hold as-yet major discoveries, the total available amount of gold in these discoveries are not expected to surpass 363 million ounces over the next ten years.

Gold discoveries have followed a predictable pattern. 263 major gold discoveries have been made in the past 28 years, but half of those discoveries happened in the 1990s. This boom lasted until the turn of the century when the rate of discovery began to decline. Only 16 discoveries were reported from 2000 to 2002, which produced 108.3 ounces of gold. That amount was below the average finds of the 1990s. This decline has continued, with both new discoveries and the amount of gold mined decreasing steadily. By 2010, only 18.6 million ounces of gold was discovered, a severe drop from the 61.5 ounces found in 2009.

Old sectors are being depleted, while active exploration for new discoveries has been slow. The amount of available gold has not met expectation and remains far below the 2009 high.

The lack of new discoveries is not the result of funding. $54.3 billion has been allocated to exploration during the past decade. Part of the problem is that the time span between discovery and production is around 20 years. Unless significant new discoveries are made, the amount of available gold could decrease in the near future, raising the demand for the metal even further. Scarcity invariably results in higher prices, and the decline in global gold makes a price increase almost certain.

Continued gold exploration has become critical. In 2018, Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp., one of the world largest gold explorers, has allocated $1.3 billion to expand its current projects, an increase of $300 million from the previous year.

Much of the available gold in Australia’s northern Goldfield has been depleted, and companies are drilling to unprecedented depths of 3 kilometers below the surface hoping for new discoveries as new finds are becoming rarer and more expensive to pursue. 

According to Richard Schodde, managing director of MinEx, Australia gold mining output could decrease by 50 percent over the next eight years, with only four mines remaining open by 2057.

The need to drill deeper will make gold harder to find and more expensive to produce.

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The GOP Needs to Listen to Jordan Peterson: New at Reason

Jordan PetersonIf you have not picked up on the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, then you have missed the news about a huge cultural movement. Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist who has gained a huge following by promoting what might be called the sterner virtues—self-examination, self-discipline, striving, and, well, sucking it up: Quit complaining about your miserable life, he says, and take ownership of it. Don’t point the finger at others: Do what you should be doing to become the best version of yourself you possibly can. And don’t presume to lecture the rest of the world about how it needs to shape up until you have proved you can do something minimally competent—like, say, cleaning your bedroom.

Peterson also has gained fame and notoriety by opposing political correctness. In an era when the press is full of ruminations about “toxic masculinity,” Peterson makes no excuses for virility. He considers being nice a lower-order virtue, if it is a virtue at all, and contends that a weak man is far more dangerous than a strong man.

The question here, though, is why those conservatives who find Peterson’s message to the individual so appealing don’t apply it to their movement as a whole.

Because, let’s face it: The conservative movement needs to straighten up. A. Barton Hinkle explains.

View this article.

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“This Is Terrible For PDVSA”: Conoco Begins Confiscating Venezuela Oil Assets, Infuriating China

While there is an increasingly more overt trade war being waged between China and the US, a more covert and arguably important contest between the two superpowers is being waged for spheres of influence, most notably in Africa – which is now largely a Chinese colony, in Latin America, where increasingly more countries are gravitating toward China and away from the “west”, and more recently, Europe.

Of all such “zones of influence”, the one country where Beijing has arguably invested the most is Venezuela, and for obvious reasons: the country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves has found itself in a spiraling economic crisis in recent years and with the US refusing to step in and provide much needed funding, it allowed both China and Russia to provide the Maduro regime with loans, mostly in the form of vendor financing, as new Chinese and Russians funds were wired in exchange for Venezuela oil delivery contracts, typically struck well below prevailing market prices.

Which is why China is sure to be incensed following the latest indirect attempt by the US to further limit Venezuelan oil output, and impair the production capacity of what has become one of China’s key Latin Americans clients.

Here’s what happened.

On April 25, ConocoPhillips won a ruling that said the US major was entitled to more than $2 billion from Venezuela’s insolvent state oil company, PDVSA, over the country’s expropriation of several oil projects more than a decade ago. The drawn-out international legal struggle began in 2007 when ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil refused to cede control of their major oil production ventures to the Venezuelan government, as demanded by Hugo Chávez, who was president.  The U.S. firm left the country after it could not reach a deal to convert its projects into joint ventures controlled by PDVSA, even as several other oil companies, including Chevron, Repsol of Spain and Total of France, agreed to the demand and accepted partnerships with the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, better known as PDVSA.

The problem, however, now that Conoco has the greenlight to demand billions, is trying to collect on the court ruling: the Venezuelan government has resisted the demands of companies whose assets it has confiscated, and since it is effectively bankrupt, there is little it can be threatened with under conventional contract law.

So, following the April 25 ruling, in a statement the Houston-based ConocoPhillips said it would “pursue enforcement and seek financial recovery of its award to the full extent of the law.”

Over the weekend it did just that.

As Reuters updates, ConocoPhillips has moved to “take Caribbean assets” – i.e. confiscate – belonging to Venezuela’s state-owned, solvency-challenged PDVSA as part of its unilateral enforcement of the $2 billion arbitration award.

The U.S. firm is said to have targeted PDVSA facilities on the islands of Curacao, Bonaire and St. Eustatius that accounted for about a quarter of Venezuela’s oil exports last year. The three play key roles in processing, storing and blending PDVSA’s oil for export.

The move, incidentally, is entirely legal: Conoco received court attachments freezing assets at least two of the facilities, and could move to sell them, one of the sources said.

What the confiscation of key Venezuela assets means is that the US oil major’s legal maneuvers could further impair PDVSA’s already sharply declining oil revenue and the country’s convulsing economy. Venezuela is almost completely dependent on oil exports, which have fallen by a third since its peak and its refineries ran at just 31 percent of capacity in the first quarter.

Venezuela’s collapsing oil production juxtaposed with the soaring US shale output, is shown in the Reuters chart below:

Making matters worse, this could be just the beginning of Conoco’s aggressive confiscation: the company’s claims against Venezuela and state-run PDVSA in international courts have totaled $33 billion, the largest by any company.

“Any potential impacts on communities are the result of PDVSA’s illegal expropriation of our assets and its decision to ignore the judgment of the ICC tribunal,” Conoco said in an email to Reuters.

Meanwhile, making confiscation a relatively simple venture for Conoco, PDVSA has extensive assets in the Caribbean. Some examples:

  • On Bonaire, it owns the 10-million-barrel BOPEC terminal which handles logistics and fuel shipments to customers, particularly in Asia, i.e. China.
  • In Aruba, PDVSA and its unit Citgo lease a refinery and a storage terminal.
  • On the island of St. Eustatius, it rents storage tanks at the Statia terminal, owned by U.S. NuStar Energy, where over 4 million barrels of Venezuelan crude were retained by court order, according to one of the sources.

Additionally, Reuters reports that Conoco also sought to attach PDVSA inventories on Curacao, “home of the 335,000-barrel-per-day Isla refinery and Bullenbay oil terminal. But the order could not immediately be enforced, according to two of the sources.”

And this is where not only Caracas, but also China is about to get very angry.

While PDVSA’s shipments from Bonaire and St Eustatius terminals accounted for about 10% of Venezuela’s total exports, the more important question is who were the recipients. According to Reuters, the exports were mostly crude and fuel oil for Asian customers including ChinaOil, China’s Zhenhua Oil and India’s Reliance Industries.

Which means China is about to see a significant decline in its Venezuela imports thanks to, you got it, a confiscation green lit by United States, and it will be most displeased.

Some more details on the confiscated assets: “From its largest Caribbean operations in Curacao, PDVSA shipped 14 percent of its exports last year, including products exported by its Isla refinery to Caribbean islands and crude from its Bullenbay terminal to buyers of Venezuelan crude all over the world.”

Meanwhile, making matters worse, operations at the bankrupt state-owned oil company are grinding to a halt: PDVSA on Friday ordered its oil tankers sailing across the Caribbean to return to Venezuelan waters and await further instructions, according to a document viewed by Reuters. In the last year, several cargoes of Venezuelan crude have been retained or seized in recent years over unpaid freight fees and related debts.

“This is terrible (for PDVSA),” said a source familiar with the court order of attachment. The state-run company “cannot comply with all the committed volume for exports” and the Conoco action imperils its ability to ship fuel oil to China or access inventories to be exported from Bonaire.

And now the question is what will China do after a US company has effectively crippled Venezuela’s oil output, forcing Beijing to look for much more expensive oil elsewhere.

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Trump Lashes Out At John Kerry’s “Possibly Illegal Shadow Diplomacy” With Iran

Following reports over the weekend that Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry and a group of his former State Department officials, had been busy being unofficial diplomats in recent weeks, sneaking around the world trying to salvage the Iran nuclear deal he presided over, ahead of its May 12 renewal deadline, it appears President Trump has a few things to say about these actions.

As we previously noted,

John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.

He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings. –Boston Globe

Kerry has also met with leaders from Europe, including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, EU official Federica Mogherini and French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, where they discussed sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English. 

This type of “rogue” diplomacy is very rare for a former Secretary of State.

As The Globe notes, the effort to salvage the Iran deal “highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump’s disruptive approach to diplomacy, and who view the Iran nuclear deal as a factor for stability in the Middle East and for global nuclear nonproliferation.”

“It is unusual for a former secretary of state to engage in foreign policy like this, as an actual diplomat and quasi-negotiator,” said foreign policy expert Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

“Of course, former secretaries of state often remain quite engaged with foreign leaders, as they should, but it’s rarely so issue-specific, especially when they have just left office.”

Which leads us to President Trump’s twitter exclamation that

“The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal.”

And Trump explains why – very simply…

“He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”

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Arctic About-Face: Oil-Opposing Alaska Natives Now Lead Charge To ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

Authored by Tim Bradner via Platts’ Oil Barrel blog,

For years indigenous people living in small villages along Alaska’s Arctic coast fiercely fought offshore drilling. Now they want a piece of the action.

When Shell first showed up in 2007 with a fleet of drillships and support vessels, and parked them in the migration path of the bowhead whale in the eastern Alaska Beaufort Sea, the Inupiats went to court. An injunction from the US Ninth Circuit stopped the company and started a chain of problems that would ultimately defeat Shell’s multibillion dollar Arctic initiative.

Fast-forward to 2018. The Inupiats have now taken over Shell’s offshore Beaufort Sea leases, where there were also earlier oil discoveries, and intend to develop them, most likely by partnering with larger firms.

In a decade, indigenous people in northern Alaska have come full circle, from hostility to cautious embrace of offshore drilling.

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, owned by all Inupiats of the North Slope, is playing its cards close on its plans for 20 former Shell OCS leases off Camden Bay, in the Eastern Beaufort.

The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement approved the transfer of Shell’s leases to ASRC April 13.

The area is highly prospective and includes Union Oil’s small “Hammerhead” oil discovery made in 1986 and two Shell prospects, Sivulliq and Torpedo, outlined in 2012. A well was partly drilled by Shell at Sivulliq but not completed.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

It helps to have an economic stake.

Over several years Alaska Native-owned development corporations – ASRC isn’t alone – have gradually become dominant players in industry support and service work on the North Slope.

Doyon, Ltd., owned by Athabascans of Interior Alaska, owns Doyon Drilling, the largest Alaska drilling contractor on the North Slope.

Bristol Bay Native Corp. and Calista Corp., of southwest Alaska have stakes in oil field services and drilling. Even tiny Nuiqsut, an Inupiat village of 300 near the Alpine oil field west of Prudhoe Bay, owns a drilling company.

Nuiqut’s Kuukpik Drilling is working this year for ConocoPhillips and also works in Cook Inlet, in south Alaska.

ASRC began working in oil field construction on the slope and expanded over several years into a variety of technical service fields.

It’s all about owning the resource The big money is in owning the resource, however.

It is here that Arctic Slope has played its cards shrewdly. Alaska’s Native corporations were formed in 1971 when the US Congress resolved long-standing land claims that had become an impediment to securing rights-of-way for construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.

Congress transferred 45 million acres of Alaska to Native ownership and paid a cash settlement of $962 million to twelve regional Native development corporations that were also formed.

It seemed logical for the new Native corporations to invest in businesses and services to the fast-growing Alaska oil industry, and it turned out to be a successful strategy.

The initial moves into catering, facilities management and services in the 1970s evolved into drilling and construction.

ASRC pursued a similar path in oil field services but also had different cards to play.

As a landowner on the North Slope, ASRC held part of the mineral rights in the Alpine field and began splitting royalties with the state of Alaska when that field began production in 2000.

ASRC is now a working interest owner in the small Badami field east of Prudhoe Bay, which is producing, and it has a working interest in Liberty, a small deposit in shallow offshore waters near Prudhoe.

The corporation also acquired its own onshore state leases in lease sales and has done exploration drilling on the acreage.

ANWR OWNERSHIP IS KEY

Its biggest coup, however, was in securing mineral rights in a 92,000-acre inholding in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain, which is prime real estate after Congress approved exploration in ANWR in the 2017 tax act.

ASRC made its move in the 1980s, years before the national spotlight focused on ANWR.

The inholding was held by Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., the Native village corporation for Kaktovik.

ASRC was able to swap land it owned in areas where the US wanted to preserve parkland for mineral rights under some vilage-owned land in ANWR.

The Native corporation went on to do a deal with Chevron and BP to drill an exploration well, KIC No.1. Because no development of the Native-owned land could occur until Congress voted to open the entire coastal plain, the results of that well were held confidential, and have been for decades.

Chevron and BP still hold rights under the deal, but the terms are also confidential.

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Why the Trump Administration Keeps Losing in Court on Sanctuary Cities

In January 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order granting the attorney general of the United States broad discretion “to ensure” that “sanctuary jurisdictions…are not eligible to receive federal grants.” Six months later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wielded that power by declaring the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which provides a wealth of federal dollars to local law enforcement agencies, to be off-limits to any jurisdiction that refuses to “comply with federal law, allow federal immigration access to detention facilities, and provide 48 hours notice before they release an illegal alien wanted by federal authorities.”

It was an aggressive move. Unfortunately for the Trump administration, it also happened to be an unconstitutional one. The executive branch, of which the attorney general is a part, has no lawful authority to unilaterally impose such conditions on federal spending. The federal spending power rests in Article I of the Constitution, which is the section that lays out the enumerated powers of Congress. The enumerated powers of the executive are spelled out separately in Article II. Sessions’ maneuver, in other words, usurped congressional authority and thus violated the separation of powers. Trump can issue all of the executive orders he wants, but he cannot alter this basic fact about the American constitutional system.

In a ruling issued last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit recognized the Trump administration’s malfeasance for what it is. “The Attorney General in this case used the sword of federal funding to conscript state and local authorities to aid in federal civil immigration enforcement,” the 7th Circuit observed in Chicago v. Sessions. “But the power of the purse rests with Congress, which authorized the federal funds at issue and did not impose any immigration enforcement conditions on the receipt of such funds. In fact,” the court pointed out, “Congress repeatedly refused to approve of measures that would tie funding to state and local immigration policies.” To allow the Trump administration to act in this manner, the 7th Circuit concluded, would be to remove a “check against tyranny.”

This was not the first time that the Trump administration’s attack on sanctuary cities has received a well-deserved judicial rebuke. In November 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found Trump’s executive order to be in violation of both the separation of powers (because it sought to expropriate congressional spending authority) and the 10th Amendment (because it tried to force local police into administering a federal regulatory program).

Make no mistake, these cases are about much more than just immigration policy. The Trump administration seeks to impose its will on this issue by aggrandizing the executive, trashing federalism, and subverting the separation of powers. Such unconstitutional tactics should always lose in court.

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Trump Defends Gina Haspel As “Most Qualified Person” To Lead The CIA

President Trump is stepping up to defend Gina Haspel, his nominee to lead the CIA following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s exit, after reports surfaced that she offered to withdraw her nomination during a meeting at the White House over the weekend.

Blaming Democrats for obstructing Haspel’s nomination because she was “too tough on terrorists”, Trump insisted that his pick is the “most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror” before ending his tweet with “Win Gina!”

Questions about Haspel’s suitability for the role have centered around the harsh interrogation techniques, which many have likened to torture, despite their continued defense by neocons like National Security Advisor John Bolton. Haspel – who is widely believed to be the inspiration behind one of the main characters from “Zero Dark Thirty” – ran a black site in Thailand that used waterboarding and other controversial techniques on detainees who’d been captured in the CIA’s rendition program.

Haspel

Gina Haspel, chatting with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner

Haspel is facing a difficult confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Despite her 33 years of service, Democratic lawmakers are expected to zero in on her service during the war on terror, which they say should disqualify her from the top job at the agency. Haspel has said she would oppose reintroducing the techniques used in these programs. Furthermore, Haspel has also been accused of destroying evidence of the near fatal waterboarding of terror suspect and Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah.

The Hill reported last week that the Trump administration had drafted a 27-page memo of “talking points” meant to bolster the standing on Gina Haspel during her nomination hearing.

Supporters of Haspel have been pressed to vouch that “she is an ‘intelligence and national security expert’ who follows the law as written, and has demonstrated strong and clear leadership in very challenging positions.”

In a recent reality check, Truth in Media’s Ben Swann looked at the allegations that are being scrutinized by Democrats, including Haspel’s supervision of “Cat’s Eye,” the CIA black-site program.

Of course, if Haspel does withdraw, it’d be a terrible embarrassment to the Trump administration, which also saw another of its nominees, former White House doctor Ronny Jackson, withdraw his nomination to lead the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

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