It Is National Emergency Day!

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:43 am

on to Florida to play some golf!

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Ann Coulter trash talking Trump is like cancer insulting the plague.

1. ‘IT’S OVER’40 MINUTES AGO
Ann Coulter: National Emergency Designed ‘for Trump to Scam the Stupidest People in His Base’

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter fired shots at Trump on Friday for saying he’ll sign a bill that would avert another government shutdown and instead declaring a national emergency to build his Mexico border wall. Replying to a tweet that claimed “the goal of a national emergency is to end illegal immigration and cartel smuggling,” Coulter wrote that “no, the goal of a national emergency is for Trump to scam the stupidest people in his base for 2 more years.” In a subsequent tweet, she added that “The goal is to get Trump’s stupidest voters to say ‘HE’S FIGHTING!’ No he’s not. If he signs this bill, it’s over.” A former Trump ally, Coulter has soured on the president in recent months in the midst of the shutdown debates, claiming to The Daily Caller that the president will “have no legacy whatsoever” without a border wall.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ann-coult ... n-his-base




Brian Klaas

Trump continues behaving like a Despot's Apprentice—praising dictators & despots while mimicking their authoritarian tactics. The crucial divide in US politics is now between those who defend democratic institutions & those who cheer as Trump attacks



I wonder what his speaking ability would be like if he hadn’t developed such a high tolerance for Adderall?


Americans in 30 localities in Puerto Rico are ordered to ration water TODAY, 15 months after a hurricane decimated their island, because the damn dam was not repaired


What the President Could Do If He Declares a State of Emergency

From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.

Elizabeth Goitein

The Voorhes
In the weeks leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, President Donald Trump reached deep into his arsenal to try to deliver votes to Republicans.

Most of his weapons were rhetorical, featuring a mix of lies and false inducements—claims that every congressional Democrat had signed on to an “open borders” bill (none had), that liberals were fomenting violent “mobs” (they weren’t), that a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class would somehow pass while Congress was out of session (it didn’t). But a few involved the aggressive use—and threatened misuse—of presidential authority: He sent thousands of active-duty soldiers to the southern border to terrorize a distant caravan of desperate Central American migrants, announced plans to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive order, and tweeted that law enforcement had been “strongly notified” to be on the lookout for “ILLEGAL VOTING.”

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These measures failed to carry the day, and Trump will likely conclude that they were too timid. How much further might he go in 2020, when his own name is on the ballot—or sooner than that, if he’s facing impeachment by a House under Democratic control?

More is at stake here than the outcome of one or even two elections. Trump has long signaled his disdain for the concepts of limited presidential power and democratic rule. During his 2016 campaign, he praised murderous dictators. He declared that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, would be in jail if he were president, goading crowds into frenzied chants of “Lock her up.” He hinted that he might not accept an electoral loss. As democracies around the world slide into autocracy, and nationalism and antidemocratic sentiment are on vivid display among segments of the American populace, Trump’s evident hostility to key elements of liberal democracy cannot be dismissed as mere bluster.

It would be nice to think that America is protected from the worst excesses of Trump’s impulses by its democratic laws and institutions. After all, Trump can do only so much without bumping up against the limits set by the Constitution and Congress and enforced by the courts. Those who see Trump as a threat to democracy comfort themselves with the belief that these limits will hold him in check.

But will they? Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest.

This edifice of extraordinary powers has historically rested on the assumption that the president will act in the country’s best interest when using them. With a handful of noteworthy exceptions, this assumption has held up. But what if a president, backed into a corner and facing electoral defeat or impeachment, were to declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power? In that scenario, our laws and institutions might not save us from a presidential power grab. They might be what takes us down.

1. “A LOADED WEAPON”

The premise underlying emergency powers is simple: The government’s ordinary powers might be insufficient in a crisis, and amending the law to provide greater ones might be too slow and cumbersome. Emergency powers are meant to give the government a temporary boost until the emergency passes or there is time to change the law through normal legislative processes.

Unlike the modern constitutions of many other countries, which specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, the U.S. Constitution itself includes no comprehensive separate regime for emergencies. Those few powers it does contain for dealing with certain urgent threats, it assigns to Congress, not the president. For instance, it lets Congress suspend the writ of habeas corpus—that is, allow government officials to imprison people without judicial review—“when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” and “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Nonetheless, some legal scholars believe that the Constitution gives the president inherent emergency powers by making him commander in chief of the armed forces, or by vesting in him a broad, undefined “executive Power.” At key points in American history, presidents have cited inherent constitutional powers when taking drastic actions that were not authorized—or, in some cases, were explicitly prohibited—by Congress. Notorious examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent during World War II and George W. Bush’s programs of warrantless wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Abraham Lincoln conceded that his unilateral suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War was constitutionally questionable, but defended it as necessary to preserve the Union.

The Supreme Court has often upheld such actions or found ways to avoid reviewing them, at least while the crisis was in progress. Rulings such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, in which the Court invalidated President Harry Truman’s bid to take over steel mills during the Korean War, have been the exception. And while those exceptions have outlined important limiting principles, the outer boundary of the president’s constitutional authority during emergencies remains poorly defined.

Presidents can also rely on a cornucopia of powers provided by Congress, which has historically been the principal source of emergency authority for the executive branch. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, Congress passed laws to give the president additional leeway during military, economic, and labor crises. A more formalized approach evolved in the early 20th century, when Congress legislated powers that would lie dormant until the president activated them by declaring a national emergency. These statutory authorities began to pile up—and because presidents had little incentive to terminate states of emergency once declared, these piled up too. By the 1970s, hundreds of statutory emergency powers, and four clearly obsolete states of emergency, were in effect. For instance, the national emergency that Truman declared in 1950, during the Korean War, remained in place and was being used to help prosecute the war in Vietnam.

Aiming to rein in this proliferation, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976. Under this law, the president still has complete discretion to issue an emergency declaration—but he must specify in the declaration which powers he intends to use, issue public updates if he decides to invoke additional powers, and report to Congress on the government’s emergency-related expenditures every six months. The state of emergency expires after a year unless the president renews it, and the Senate and the House must meet every six months while the emergency is in effect “to consider a vote” on termination.

By any objective measure, the law has failed. Thirty states of emergency are in effect today—several times more than when the act was passed. Most have been renewed for years on end. And during the 40 years the law has been in place, Congress has not met even once, let alone every six months, to vote on whether to end them.

As a result, the president has access to emergency powers contained in 123 statutory provisions, as recently calculated by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where I work. These laws address a broad range of matters, from military composition to agricultural exports to public contracts. For the most part, the president is free to use any of them; the National Emergencies Act doesn’t require that the powers invoked relate to the nature of the emergency. Even if the crisis at hand is, say, a nationwide crop blight, the president may activate the law that allows the secretary of transportation to requisition any privately owned vessel at sea. Many other laws permit the executive branch to take extraordinary action under specified conditions, such as war and domestic upheaval, regardless of whether a national emergency has been declared.


Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
This legal regime for emergencies—ambiguous constitutional limits combined with a rich well of statutory emergency powers—would seem to provide the ingredients for a dangerous encroachment on American civil liberties. Yet so far, even though presidents have often advanced dubious claims of constitutional authority, egregious abuses on the scale of the Japanese American internment or the post-9/11 torture program have been rare, and most of the statutory powers available during a national emergency have never been used.

But what’s to guarantee that this president, or a future one, will show the reticence of his predecessors? To borrow from Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent in Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans, each emergency power “lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.”

2. AN INTERNET KILL SWITCH?

Like all emergency powers, the laws governing the conduct of war allow the president to engage in conduct that would be illegal during ordinary times. This conduct includes familiar incidents of war, such as the killing or indefinite detention of enemy soldiers. But the president can also take a host of other actions, both abroad and inside the United States.

These laws vary dramatically in content and scope. Several of them authorize the president to make decisions about the size and composition of the armed forces that are usually left to Congress. Although such measures can offer needed flexibility at crucial moments, they are subject to misuse. For instance, George W. Bush leveraged the state of emergency after 9/11 to call hundreds of thousands of reservists and members of the National Guard into active duty in Iraq, for a war that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Other powers are chilling under any circumstances: Take a moment to consider that during a declared war or national emergency, the president can unilaterally suspend the law that bars government testing of biological and chemical agents on unwitting human subjects.

One power poses a singular threat to democracy in the digital era. In 1942, Congress amended Section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934 to allow the president to shut down or take control of “any facility or station for wire communication” upon his proclamation “that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States,” resurrecting a similar power Congress had briefly provided Woodrow Wilson during World War I. At the time, “wire communication” meant telephone calls or telegrams. Given the relatively modest role that electronic communications played in most Americans’ lives, the government’s assertion of this power during World War II (no president has used it since) likely created inconvenience but not havoc.

We live in a different universe today. Although interpreting a 1942 law to cover the internet might seem far-fetched, some government officials recently endorsed this reading during debates about cybersecurity legislation. Under this interpretation, Section 706 could effectively function as a “kill switch” in the U.S.—one that would be available to the president the moment he proclaimed a mere threat of war. It could also give the president power to assume control over U.S. internet traffic.

The potential impact of such a move can hardly be overstated. In August, in an early-morning tweet, Trump lamented that search engines were “RIGGED” to serve up negative articles about him. Later that day the administration said it was looking into regulating the big internet companies. “I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful,” Trump warned. If the government were to take control of U.S. internet infrastructure, Trump could accomplish directly what he threatened to do by regulation: ensure that internet searches always return pro-Trump content as the top results. The government also would have the ability to impede domestic access to particular websites, including social-media platforms. It could monitor emails or prevent them from reaching their destination. It could exert control over computer systems (such as states’ voter databases) and physical devices (such as Amazon’s Echo speakers) that are connected to the internet.

Video: Trump’s Emergency Powers Are “Ripe for Abuse”

To be sure, the fact that the internet in the United States is highly decentralized—a function of a relatively open market for communications devices and services—would offer some protection. Achieving the level of government control over internet content that exists in places such as China, Russia, and Iran would likely be impossible in the U.S. Moreover, if Trump were to attempt any degree of internet takeover, an explosion of lawsuits would follow. Based on its First Amendment rulings in recent decades, the Supreme Court seems unlikely to permit heavy-handed government control over internet communication.

But complacency would be a mistake. Complete control of internet content would not be necessary for Trump’s purposes; even with less comprehensive interventions, he could do a great deal to disrupt political discourse and hinder effective, organized political opposition. And the Supreme Court’s view of the First Amendment is not immutable. For much of the country’s history, the Court was willing to tolerate significant encroachments on free speech during wartime. “The progress we have made is fragile,” Geoffrey R. Stone, a constitutional-law scholar at the University of Chicago, has written. “It would not take much to upset the current understanding of the First Amendment.” Indeed, all it would take is five Supreme Court justices whose commitment to presidential power exceeds their commitment to individual liberties.

3. SANCTIONING AMERICANS

Next to war powers, economic powers might sound benign, but they are among the president’s most potent legal weapons. All but two of the emergency declarations in effect today were issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or ieepa. Passed in 1977, the law allows the president to declare a national emergency “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat”—to national security, foreign policy, or the economy—that “has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” The president can then order a range of economic actions to address the threat, including freezing assets and blocking financial transactions in which any foreign nation or foreign national has an interest.

In the late 1970s and ’80s, presidents used the law primarily to impose sanctions against other nations, including Iran, Nicaragua, South Africa, Libya, and Panama. Then, in 1983, when Congress failed to renew a law authorizing the Commerce Department to control certain exports, President Ronald Reagan declared a national emergency in order to assume that control under ieepa. Subsequent presidents followed his example, transferring export control from Congress to the White House. President Bill Clinton expanded ieepa’s usage by targeting not just foreign governments but foreign political parties, terrorist organizations, and suspected narcotics traffickers.

President George W. Bush took matters a giant step further after 9/11. His Executive Order 13224 prohibited transactions not just with any suspected foreign terrorists, but with any foreigner or any U.S. citizen suspected of providing them with support. Once a person is “designated” under the order, no American can legally give him a job, rent him an apartment, provide him with medical services, or even sell him a loaf of bread unless the government grants a license to allow the transaction. The patriot Act gave the order more muscle, allowing the government to trigger these consequences merely by opening an investigation into whether a person or group should be designated.

Designations under Executive Order 13224 are opaque and extremely difficult to challenge. The government needs only a “reasonable basis” for believing that someone is involved with or supports terrorism in order to designate him. The target is generally given no advance notice and no hearing. He may request reconsideration and submit evidence on his behalf, but the government faces no deadline to respond. Moreover, the evidence against the target is typically classified, which means he is not allowed to see it. He can try to challenge the action in court, but his chances of success are minimal, as most judges defer to the government’s assessment of its own evidence.

Americans have occasionally been caught up in this Kafkaesque system. Several Muslim charities in the U.S. were designated or investigated based on the suspicion that their charitable contributions overseas benefited terrorists. Of course if the government can show, through judicial proceedings that observe due process and other constitutional rights, that an American group or person is funding terrorist activity, it should be able to cut off those funds. But the government shut these charities down by freezing their assets without ever having to prove its charges in court.

In other cases, Americans were significantly harmed by designations that later proved to be mistakes. For instance, two months after 9/11, the Treasury Department designated Garad Jama, a Somalian-born American, based on an erroneous determination that his money-wiring business was part of a terror-financing network. Jama’s office was shut down and his bank account frozen. News outlets described him as a suspected terrorist. For months, Jama tried to gain a hearing with the government to establish his innocence and, in the meantime, obtain the government’s permission to get a job and pay his lawyer. Only after he filed a lawsuit did the government allow him to work as a grocery-store cashier and pay his living expenses. It was several more months before the government reversed his designation and unfroze his assets. By then he had lost his business, and the stigma of having been publicly labeled a terrorist supporter continued to follow him and his family.

Despite these dramatic examples, ieepa’s limits have yet to be fully tested. After two courts ruled that the government’s actions against American charities were unconstitutional, Barack Obama’s administration chose not to appeal the decisions and largely refrained from further controversial designations of American organizations and citizens. Thus far, President Trump has followed the same approach.

That could change. In October, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, Trump characterized the caravan of Central American migrants headed toward the U.S. border to seek asylum as a “National Emergency.” Although he did not issue an emergency proclamation, he could do so under ieepa. He could determine that any American inside the U.S. who offers material support to the asylum seekers—or, for that matter, to undocumented immigrants inside the United States—poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, and authorize the Treasury Department to take action against them.

Such a move would carry echoes of a law passed recently in Hungary that criminalized the provision of financial or legal services to undocumented migrants; this has been dubbed the “Stop Soros” law, after the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros, who funds migrants’-rights organizations. Although an order issued under ieepa would not land targets in jail, it could be implemented without legislation and without affording targets a trial. In practice, identifying every American who has hired, housed, or provided paid legal representation to an asylum seeker or undocumented immigrant would be impossible—but all Trump would need to do to achieve the desired political effect would be to make high-profile examples of a few. Individuals targeted by the order could lose their jobs, and find their bank accounts frozen and their health insurance canceled. The battle in the courts would then pick up exactly where it left off during the Obama administration—but with a newly reconstituted Supreme Court making the final call.

4. BOOTS ON MAIN STREET

The idea of tanks rolling through the streets of U.S. cities seems fundamentally inconsistent with the country’s notions of democracy and freedom. Americans might be surprised, therefore, to learn just how readily the president can deploy troops inside the country.

The principle that the military should not act as a domestic police force, known as “posse comitatus,” has deep roots in the nation’s history, and it is often mistaken for a constitutional rule. The Constitution, however, does not prohibit military participation in police activity. Nor does the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 outlaw such participation; it merely states that any authority to use the military for law-enforcement purposes must derive from the Constitution or from a statute.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 provides the necessary authority. As amended over the years, it allows the president to deploy troops upon the request of a state’s governor or legislature to help put down an insurrection within that state. It also allows the president to deploy troops unilaterally, either because he determines that rebellious activity has made it “impracticable” to enforce federal law through regular means, or because he deems it necessary to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” (terms not defined in the statute) that hinders the rights of a class of people or “impedes the course of justice.”

Presidents have wielded the Insurrection Act under a range of circumstances. Dwight Eisenhower used it in 1957 when he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce school desegregation. George H. W. Bush employed it in 1992 to help stop the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after the verdict in the Rodney King case. George W. Bush considered invoking it to help restore public order after Hurricane Katrina, but opted against it when the governor of Louisiana resisted federal control over the state’s National Guard. While controversy surrounded all these examples, none suggests obvious overreach.

And yet the potential misuses of the act are legion. When Chicago experienced a spike in homicides in 2017, Trump tweeted that the city must “fix the horrible ‘carnage’ ” or he would “send in the Feds!” To carry out this threat, the president could declare a particular street gang—say, MS‑13—to be an “unlawful combination” and then send troops to the nation’s cities to police the streets. He could characterize sanctuary cities—cities that refuse to provide assistance to immigration-enforcement officials—as “conspiracies” against federal authorities, and order the military to enforce immigration laws in those places. Conjuring the specter of “liberal mobs,” he could send troops to suppress alleged rioting at the fringes of anti-Trump protests.


Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
How far could the president go in using the military within U.S. borders? The Supreme Court has given us no clear answer to this question. Take Ex parte Milligan, a famous ruling from 1866 invalidating the use of a military commission to try a civilian during the Civil War. The case is widely considered a high-water mark for judicial constraint on executive action. Yet even as the Court held that the president could not use war or emergency as a reason to bypass civilian courts, it noted that martial law—the displacement of civilian authority by the military—would be appropriate in some cases. If civilian courts were closed as a result of a foreign invasion or a civil war, for example, martial law could exist “until the laws can have their free course.” The message is decidedly mixed: Claims of emergency or necessity cannot legitimize martial law … until they can.

Presented with this ambiguity, presidents have explored the outer limits of their constitutional emergency authority in a series of directives known as Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or peads. peads, which originated as part of the Eisenhower administration’s plans to ensure continuity of government in the wake of a Soviet nuclear attack, are draft executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared in advance of anticipated emergencies. peads are closely guarded within the government; none has ever been publicly released or leaked. But their contents have occasionally been described in public sources, including FBI memorandums that were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act as well as agency manuals and court records. According to these sources, peads drafted from the 1950s through the 1970s would authorize not only martial law but the suspension of habeas corpus by the executive branch, the revocation of Americans’ passports, and the roundup and detention of “subversives” identified in an FBI “Security Index” that contained more than 10,000 names.

Less is known about the contents of more recent peads and equivalent planning documents. But in 1987, The Miami Herald reported that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North had worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create a secret contingency plan authorizing “suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to fema, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law during a national crisis.” A 2007 Department of Homeland Security report lists “martial law” and “curfew declarations” as “critical tasks” that local, state, and federal government should be able to perform in emergencies. In 2008, government sources told a reporter for Radar magazine that a version of the Security Index still existed under the code name Main Core, allowing for the apprehension and detention of Americans tagged as security threats.

Since 2012, the Department of Justice has been requesting and receiving funds from Congress to update several dozen peads first developed in 1989. The funding requests contain no indication of what these peads encompass, or what standards the department intends to apply in reviewing them. But whatever the Obama administration’s intent, the review has now passed to the Trump administration. It will fall to Jeff Sessions’s successor as attorney general to decide whether to rein in or expand some of the more frightening features of these peads. And, of course, it will be up to President Trump whether to actually use them—something no previous president appears to have done.

5. KINDLING AN EMERGENCY

What would the Founders think of these and other emergency powers on the books today, in the hands of a president like Donald Trump? In Youngstown, the case in which the Supreme Court blocked President Truman’s attempt to seize the nation’s steel mills, Justice Jackson observed that broad emergency powers were “something the forefathers omitted” from the Constitution. “They knew what emergencies were, knew the pressures they engender for authoritative action, knew, too, how they afford a ready pretext for usurpation,” he wrote. “We may also suspect that they suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.”

In the past several decades, Congress has provided what the Constitution did not: emergency powers that have the potential for creating emergencies rather than ending them. Presidents have built on these powers with their own secret directives. What has prevented the wholesale abuse of these authorities until now is a baseline commitment to liberal democracy on the part of past presidents. Under a president who doesn’t share that commitment, what might we see?

Imagine that it’s late 2019. Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low. A disgruntled former employee has leaked documents showing that the Trump Organization was involved in illegal business dealings with Russian oligarchs. The trade war with China and other countries has taken a significant toll on the economy. Trump has been caught once again disclosing classified information to Russian officials, and his international gaffes are becoming impossible for lawmakers concerned about national security to ignore. A few of his Republican supporters in Congress begin to distance themselves from his administration. Support for impeachment spreads on Capitol Hill. In straw polls pitting Trump against various potential Democratic presidential candidates, the Democrat consistently wins.

Trump reacts. Unfazed by his own brazen hypocrisy, he tweets that Iran is planning a cyber operation to interfere with the 2020 election. His national-security adviser, John Bolton, claims to have seen ironclad (but highly classified) evidence of this planned assault on U.S. democracy. Trump’s inflammatory tweets provoke predictable saber rattling by Iranian leaders; he responds by threatening preemptive military strikes. Some Defense Department officials have misgivings, but others have been waiting for such an opportunity. As Iran’s statements grow more warlike, “Iranophobia” takes hold among the American public.

Proclaiming a threat of war, Trump invokes Section 706 of the Communications Act to assume government control over internet traffic inside the United States, in order to prevent the spread of Iranian disinformation and propaganda. He also declares a national emergency under ieepa, authorizing the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of any person or organization suspected of supporting Iran’s activities against the United States. Wielding the authority conferred by these laws, the government shuts down several left-leaning websites and domestic civil-society organizations, based on government determinations (classified, of course) that they are subject to Iranian influence. These include websites and organizations that are focused on getting out the vote.


The Voorhes
Lawsuits follow. Several judges issue orders declaring Trump’s actions unconstitutional, but a handful of judges appointed by the president side with the administration. On the eve of the election, the cases reach the Supreme Court. In a 5–4 opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court observes that the president’s powers are at their zenith when he is using authority granted by Congress to protect national security. Setting new precedent, the Court holds that the First Amendment does not protect Iranian propaganda and that the government needs no warrant to freeze Americans’ assets if its goal is to mitigate a foreign threat.

Protests erupt. On Twitter, Trump calls the protesters traitors and suggests (in capital letters) that they could use a good beating. When counterprotesters oblige, Trump blames the original protesters for sparking the violent confrontations and deploys the Insurrection Act to federalize the National Guard in several states. Using the Presidential Alert system first tested in October 2018, the president sends a text message to every American’s cellphone, warning that there is “a risk of violence at polling stations” and that “troops will be deployed as necessary” to keep order. Some members of opposition groups are frightened into staying home on Election Day; other people simply can’t find accurate information online about voting. With turnout at a historical low, a president who was facing impeachment just months earlier handily wins reelection—and marks his victory by renewing the state of emergency.

This scenario might sound extreme. But the misuse of emergency powers is a standard gambit among leaders attempting to consolidate power. Authoritarians Trump has openly claimed to admire—including the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—have gone this route.

Of course, Trump might also choose to act entirely outside the law. Presidents with a far stronger commitment to the rule of law, including Lincoln and Roosevelt, have done exactly that, albeit in response to real emergencies. But there is little that can be done in advance to stop this, other than attempting deterrence through robust oversight. The remedies for such behavior can come only after the fact, via court judgments, political blowback at the voting booth, or impeachment.

By contrast, the dangers posed by emergency powers that are written into statute can be mitigated through the simple expedient of changing the law. Committees in the House could begin this process now by undertaking a thorough review of existing emergency powers and declarations. Based on that review, Congress could repeal the laws that are obsolete or unnecessary. It could revise others to include stronger protections against abuse. It could issue new criteria for emergency declarations, require a connection between the nature of the emergency and the powers invoked, and prohibit indefinite emergencies. It could limit the powers set forth in peads.

Congress, of course, will undertake none of these reforms without extraordinary public pressure—and until now, the public has paid little heed to emergency powers. But we are in uncharted political territory. At a time when other democracies around the world are slipping toward authoritarianism—and when the president seems eager for the United States to follow their example—we would be wise to shore up the guardrails of liberal democracy. Fixing the current system of emergency powers would be a good place to start.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... source=twb




When the next Democratic president grabs ‘emergency’ powers, blame Trump


By going along with his phony emergency declaration, Republicans are giving permission to the next White House occupant — of either party — to do the same.

By Rick Wilson
February 15, 2019 at 8:36 AM


Several pundits and politicians had strong reactions to the announcement of President Trump’s state of emergency declaration. Congress passed a spending bill Feb. 14 providing $1.375 billion for 55 miles of fencing along the border. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that President Trump will declare a national emergency as a pretext for building The Border Wall™ — Sponsored by Mexico (disclaimer: wall will not be sponsored by Mexico). It’s a broken campaign promise that’s right up there with classics like “Read my lips, no new taxes” and “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.”

It’s Trump’s face-saving condition for signing legislation to keep the government open and, in a way, entirely predictable. It’s the kind of finger-in-your-eye, me-but-also-me petulance that has become routine during his tenure: No matter what the issue is, if Trump doesn’t get to simultaneously declare himself the victor and his opponents the vanquished, he’s distressed. And after he got schooled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during the nation’s longest government shutdown, bursting the self-proclaimed myth of his dealmaking prowess, Trump’s desperation for any kind of win has driven him to this latest Constitution-shredding tantrum. And Republicans look like they’re going right along with him.

It’s bad enough they want to greenlight Trump’s power grab. Now they’re also putting out the welcome mat for the next Democratic president who tries to do the same.

First off, there’s no emergency: As The Washington Post and the New York Times both recently reported, the number of apprehensions at the southern border has decreased in recent years. And the Trump administration’s oft-stated contention that the situation at the border is a national security crisis is, in the words of CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, “a barrel of bunkum and balderdash served with generous helpings of hogwash.” When our nation’s intelligence chiefs recently briefed Congress on the actual threats we face, you know what alarm they didn’t sound? The one about Trump’s imaginary border crisis.


But ever since 2015, when he rode down on that Trump Tower escalator and announced his candidacy by describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” (disclaimer: “and some, I assume, are good people”), he has cranked up the anti-immigration rhetoric to the point where he can’t turn it down, and to the point that the Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys of the world won’t let him turn it down:


Trump knows they can turn the MAGA-hat-wearing crowd — the slice of the electorate that Trump long-term leased from them when he decided to run — against him with one all-caps tweet or one hyperventilating Fox News segment. And they know he knows it, so they keep playing their xenophobic, fear-the-brown-horde tune, and the president dutifully tap dances to it. Trump is running a con, but in Coulter and Hannity’s con of cons, Trump is the mark, and the key to the game is that they can never be satisfied:


Trump allowed himself to get played into a corner, and he will make an announcement Friday morning confirming three things: If you can get him to the conference-room table, he can be rolled; that the shutdown was a disastrous waste of everyone’s time; and that once again in his administration, intelligent governance takes a back seat to D-list showmanship and grade-A fearmongering.

He’s also opening a door that Republicans will regret walking through if and when executive power changes hands: When future President Biden, President Castro, President Harris or President Warren can’t get push their agenda through Congress, they’ll be able to do an end-run on the Constitution, claim emergency powers and cite Trump’s precedent to justify it.

Related: We kissed conservatism goodbye when we let Trump lead the GOP

Climate change threatens life on Earth as we know it? No problem, just executive order a “Green New Deal.” Can’t get 60 votes in the Senate for single-payer health coverage? All good, just declare a national health care emergency. Need to defer law-enforcement action for undocumented immigrant parents of Americans? Just type up an order and . . . oh, wait. President Barack Obama already tried that, courts rejected it, Trump reversed it, and Republicans — rightly — cried foul. Don’t even get me started on a Democrat using emergency powers on gun control.

Until recently, Republicans were skeptical of executive action taken outside the boundaries of the Constitution and the law. But now, hypnotized by the rhythm of Trump’s authoritarian soft-shoe, they’ve forgotten that the whole point of being the conservative party was, or at least used to be, opposition to big government.


Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution is unequivocal: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” But, according to reports, Trump will spend around $8 billion for a barrier at the border, only $1.375 billion of which is in Congress’s new budget deal. That’s something the late, great senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) would never have choked down. McConnell, on the other hand, already said that he is willing to swallow it.

Trump once said: “We are going to need a little eminent domain to get that wall built” on private property, adding: “You have to take certain areas, okay? I hate to tell you.” But that’s like a schoolyard bully telling you he just wants a little of your lunch money, or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin saying he just wants to take a little piece of Crimea. Once the government starts, it’s unlikely to stop. Republicans used to understand that.

Related: If you're still working for Trump, his stink won't ever wash off

In Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump said: “We already have national emergencies out there. You know, President Obama, President Clinton, President Bush — they’ve declared many national — this is not unique. They’ve declared many national emergencies. Many, many. And you have some out there that we can use in addition to one that we can declare if we want to do it.” It’s a reference, apparently, to the seldom-invoked, but still influential come-on-just-try-it-everybody’s-doing-it dictum in the Supreme Court case of What the law is v. What we’ve decided is good for you.

Trump has grafted the ends-justify-the-means approach that he has taken to everything in his life and so-called career onto the GOP and the federal government, and there is no end in sight (disclaimer: it’ll all be over in just two to six more years). The sycophants in the White House won’t stop him. Don’t hold your breath waiting for congressional Republicans to stop him. And, I’ll wager, when there’s a Democrat in the White House, the temptation to see how far he or she can get by applying the Trump doctrine will be too great to pass up.

So, years from now, when you’re taking your kid to the National Health Clinic™ for an upset stomach brought on by President Booker’s government-mandated vegan school lunch, and you’re wondering how Democrats raised your top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent without a vote in Congress, don’t blame Vice President Ocasio-Cortez. Blame Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/ ... ssion=true




Cynthia Alksne

Trump’s “Emergency Declaration” will also come to be known as the “Lawyers Full Employment Act.” In the end, it will not pay for the wall - but will pad the savings accounts for thousands of lawyers.





Trump uses racist accent to declare the death penalty for drug dealers makes him ‘excited’

In the middle of a speech declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, a sniffling President Donald Trump segued into the details of trade negotiations with China, and said he was ‘most excited’ about language providing for the death penalty for drug dealers. Trump also made a point of imitating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s accent.

Trump said that before discussing trade with the Chinese president at the summit in Argentina in December, they discussed the problem of drugs.

“I said, ‘listen, we have tremendous amounts of fentanyl coming into our country, kills tens of thousands of people, I think far more than anybody and I’d love you to declare it a lethal drug and put it on your criminal list,'” Trump said, adding that he was surprised when Xi told him China didn’t have the same problems with drugs as the U.S.

“I said ‘you have 1.4 billion people, what do you mean you have no drug problem?'” Trump said. Then, in an accent meant to approximate Xi’s, Trump said the Chinese leader replied, “‘Death penalty. We give death penalty to people that sell drugs, end of problem.'”

Trump said America should adopt the same policy.

“President Xi agreed to put fentanyl on his list of deadly, deadly drugs, and it’s a criminal penalty and the penalty is death,” Trump said. “So that’s frankly one of the things I’m most excited about in our trade deal.”
Watch the video below.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/trump- ... ssion=true
]







Trump IS the (inter)national emergency
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:09 pm

And I bet impeachment stays firmly off the table. Republicans are disgusting and Democrats utterly compromised, corrupted and spineless. Everyone's just neurotically trying to keep the whole damn rickety system from falling apart.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:11 pm

Not all ...sweeping generalities :roll:

Democrats utterly compromised, corrupted and spineless.



who are the "compromised ones" and what is the compromise?

I know trump and his troop are being blackmailed
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:15 pm

Just the ones that matter from Pelosi on down. Why is impeachment consistently off the table? Hell, why is decent baseline public healthcare permanently off the table?

The compromise is over the US plutocratic power structure. Dems are afraid to shake things up too much, the proles might get dangerously subversive ideas and get too riled up. Why, someone might get the idea that the entire SYSTEM should be rejiggered.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:21 pm

impeachment is NOT off the table....but thanks for the interest

House Democrat reintroduces impeachment articles against Trump
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/politics ... index.html


House Judiciary Committee hires lawyers who have written case for Trump impeachment
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/12/politics ... index.html


House Democrats planning expansive Trump probes, even after Mueller report
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house- ... ler-report


House Democrats plan vast Russia probe
https://www.axios.com/house-democrats-d ... bffe9.html


After Trump's National Emergency Declaration, Legal Scholar Says, Initiate Impeachment 'Immediately'
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/ ... mpeachment


Trump impeachment more likely after GOP-led Senate votes for budget he hates — ‘the president was weakened today’: MSNBC panel
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/trump- ... nbc-panel/


House Democrats Are Taking Real Steps Toward Impeaching Donald Trump
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-t ... 2092c2987f


House intelligence chair announces sweeping investigation into Trump's finances and Russia
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/politics ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:37 pm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


Yeahhhh... Waiting for "such a bipartisan crescendo" be like... :tumbleweed:

Also, check out the Bush years. And why are these people still in charge again...?

Image

Trump should have already been impeached the second he declared this ginned-up "state of emergency". You vomiting out your normal copy pasta won't make the sclerotic Democratic party leadership look any more hip.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby PufPuf93 » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:40 pm

Trump and his enablers are the national emergency.

The Democrats do not need the Mueller Report nor a Russia probe to impeach Trump.

They just need to have a House vote and let the Senate do as it will. Rinse and repeat weekly until the enough GOP Senators see the obvious and convict for Trump to be removed from office.

Wasting more time and enduring more damage is insane.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:41 pm

PufPuf93 » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:40 pm wrote:Trump and his enablers are the national emergency.

The Democrats do not need the Mueller Report nor a Russia probe to impeach Trump.

They just need to have a House vote and let the Senate do as it will. Rinse and repeat weekly until the enough GOP Senators see the obvious and convict for Trump to be removed from office.

Wasting more time and enduring more damage is insane.


Yes and yes. :idea:
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:41 pm

JANUARY 6 :roll: ...A LONG LONG TIME AGO :P

THAT VOMIT REMARK IS SO VERY CUTE !!! WOULD NOT EXPECT ANYTHING LESS :yay

SO SWEET OF YOU :uncertain:


RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:37 pm wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/06/pelosi-tamps-down-talk-impeachment/?utm_term=.fa0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


Yeahhhh... Waiting for "such a bipartisan crescendo" be like... :tumbleweed:

Also, check out the Bush years. And why are these people still in charge again...?

Image

Trump should have already been impeached the second he declared this ginned-up "state of emergency". You vomiting out your normal copy pasta won't make the sclerotic Democratic party leadership look any more hip.
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:43 pm

Yeah it's even longer from Abu Ghraib. Remember that? Pelosi was all over that one, yessir.

I'm sure impeachment is NOW only weeks away... :thumbsup

seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:41 pm wrote:JANUARY 6 :roll: ...A LONG LONG TIME AGO :P

THAT VOMIT REMARK IS SO VERY CUTE !!!


RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:37 pm wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/06/pelosi-tamps-down-talk-impeachment/?utm_term=.fa0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


Yeahhhh... Waiting for "such a bipartisan crescendo" be like... :tumbleweed:

Also, check out the Bush years. And why are these people still in charge again...?

Image

Trump should have already been impeached the second he declared this ginned-up "state of emergency". You vomiting out your normal copy pasta won't make the sclerotic Democratic party leadership look any more hip.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby PufPuf93 » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:46 pm

RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 10:37 am wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/06/pelosi-tamps-down-talk-impeachment/?utm_term=.fa0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


This sounds so similar to "impeachment is off the table" from Pelosi when GWB followed by Cheney should have been impeached over lying the nation into aggressive war against Iraq.

The indictments and plea bargains obtained already by Mueller are weighty. Impeachment and conviction are not dependent on the Mueller investigation which can proceed on its own track.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:50 pm

Yes I know ...



I've got lots of Abu Ghraib stuff I'll get back to you on that ..you do not have to school me on Abu Ghaib!!!!!


LOVE THAT VOMIT REMARK ...I'LL HAVE TO USE IT SOMEDAY


RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:43 pm wrote:Yeah it's even longer from Abu Ghraib. Remember that? Pelosi was all over that one, yessir.

I'm sure impeachment is NOW only weeks away... :thumbsup

seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:41 pm wrote:JANUARY 6 :roll: ...A LONG LONG TIME AGO :P

THAT VOMIT REMARK IS SO VERY CUTE !!!


RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:37 pm wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/06/pelosi-tamps-down-talk-impeachment/?utm_term=.fa0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


Yeahhhh... Waiting for "such a bipartisan crescendo" be like... :tumbleweed:

Also, check out the Bush years. And why are these people still in charge again...?

Image

Trump should have already been impeached the second he declared this ginned-up "state of emergency". You vomiting out your normal copy pasta won't make the sclerotic Democratic party leadership look any more hip.
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:51 pm

Exactly. The formulation is "high crimes and misdemeanors". It's not a criminal justice issue, it is fundamentally a political/legal issue. And a party leadership truly committed to truth and justice would already have impeached Trump. Lord knows he's given enough cause right from the start. It could be argued he's been highly impeachable from day 1 based on the emoluments clause. Saudi envoys etc. staying at Trump properties and so on and so forth.

But nooooooooooooooo, just endless shouting and weirdly tribalistic liturgy about RUSSIAGATE and FOREIGN INFLUENCE and TROLL FARMS. And people getting the vapors about Roger Stone being handcuffed. But far be it from Pelosi, Schumer or the rest of that goddamn rogues' gallery to be criticized. It's just perverse.

PufPuf93 » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:46 pm wrote:
RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 10:37 am wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/06/pelosi-tamps-down-talk-impeachment/?utm_term=.fa0d37f82332

Democrats are unlikely to pursue a path of impeachment without Republican backing, Pelosi hinted. That could hinge significantly on whether Mueller’s probe uncovers concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

“If and when the time comes for impeachment,” she said, “it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”


This sounds so similar to "impeachment is off the table" from Pelosi when GWB followed by Cheney should have been impeached over lying the nation into aggressive war against Iraq.

The indictments and plea bargains obtained already by Mueller are weighty. Impeachment and conviction are not dependent on the Mueller investigation which can proceed on its own track.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:53 pm

I've got lots of Abu Ghraib stuff I'll get back to you on that ..you do not have to school me on Abu Ghaib!!!!!


LOVE THAT VOMIT REMARK ...I'LL HAVE TO USE IT SOMEDAY
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: It Is National Emergency Day!

Postby RocketMan » Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:57 pm

I don't need your Abu Ghraib stuff, the point was that Pelosi thought it prudent to keep impeachment off the table over that one. So I'm not holding my breath this time. State level politicians among others tried to move impeachment forward also back then.

You can use my Vomit Gambit any time you like, calm the fuck down. Your copy pasta is still tiresome and derailing.

seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:53 pm wrote:I've got lots of Abu Ghraib stuff I'll get back to you on that ..you do not have to school me on Abu Ghaib!!!!!


LOVE THAT VOMIT REMARK ...I'LL HAVE TO USE IT SOMEDAY
Last edited by RocketMan on Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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