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Saturday, July 18, 2020

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she would file a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and Federal Protection Service alleging they have violated the civil rights of Oregonians by detaining them without probable cause. She will also seek a temporary restraining order against them. The ACLU of Oregon said the federal agents appear to be violating people's rights, which "should concern everyone in the United States."

The headline is from AP, carried by Strib, and it is about Trump being yet again a provocateur, needing to be severely criticized, and curbed. November cannot come soon enough.

Note that because the military declined to be Trump's foil, he is deploying other federal employees to do his malign dirty work. Nobody in office in Oregon wants the idiot show on their turf. And they make it clear. With a raging pandemic, this sort of diversionary circus stunt really annoys. This clear uninvited misuse of government power is costly and aimed against citizens. It is Trump in his full nuisance mode.

BOTTOM LINE: Trump has got to go. If it has to be Biden serving the eviction notice instead of a progressive, that's politics. Bad politics, but essential nonetheless.

Bernie serving the eviction notice would have been more fun, but cutthroats waylaid him. Bloomberg and others. There will be a reckoning over that, but it can await the ouster and replacement by Biden, as marginally an incremental a reform as that will be.

___________UPDATE__________
Chemical weapon deployment is reported, and a breach of lawful norms rather than lawful conduct:
Federal agents, some wearing camouflage and some wearing dark Homeland Security uniforms, used tear gas at least twice to break up crowds late Friday night, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been a nightly feature in deeply liberal Portland since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd on May 25. President Donald Trump has decried the disorder and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blasted the protesters as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city, helping make the clashes between police and demonstrators a national focus.

The administration has enlisted federal agents, including the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and an elite U.S. Customs and Border Protection team based on the U.S.-Mexico border, to protect federal property. But Oregon Public Broadcasting reported this week that some agents had been driving around in unmarked vans and snatching protesters from streets not near federal property, without identifying themselves.

Tensions also escalated after an officer with the Marshals Service fired a less-lethal round at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him.
[italics added] If you imagine it's fun and comfort to be hauled into an unmarked van by cammie wearing men without any badging; where it could be Pepe the frog's Boogaloo bois looking to lynch, as much as federal agents, then fun to you is a sick thing.

The House should pass a resolution of condemnation, and request that heads of agencies appear for hearings. If discipline is so lax that unmarked clothing and unmarked vehicles are used to snatch Americans off the street - we have an agency problem that needs sunshine.

Inspector Generals of any involved agencies should be tasked by House leadership to investigate who did what from the agency in Oregon, and then appear to testify.

Agency budgets need review. If there's money for that level of misadventure, then there's too much money for the agency to handle safely.

This is bullshit-trampling on citizens' rights far more than requiring a pandemic related face covering; but that band of assholes deriding a "masking infringement on rights" have fallen silent about governmental snatching people off the street into unmarked vans and with neither a warrant nor jurisdiction to be off federal properties causing civilian havoc. The army told the _________ in chief no, it was against the law for them to conduct war against citizens, so the __________ went and used other more pliant tools of government.

(fill in the blank)