US as Adversary

Many posts have discussed foreign policy, war powers and the US military.

Mike Allen at Axios: 

Imagine a world where ties to the U.S. feel like a burden, not a benefit to free society."How America First Risks Becoming America Alone," an essay in this weekend's Wall Street Journal, says American allies — soured by President Trump's treatment — are "searching for alternatives to what increasingly feels like an abusive relationship."

• 📊 Positive views of the U.S. are declining worldwide, the essay notes:Brits who view the U.S. unfavorably doubled in the past two years to 64%. (YouGov)
• In Germany, 71% view the U.S. as an "adversary." (German polling firm Forsa)
• Across Europe, just 16% view the U.S. as an ally. (European Council on Foreign Relations)
• Nearly two-thirds of Canadians, Mexicans and Brazilians hold unfavorable views of the U.S., "and view their neighbor as a bigger threat than China."

Data: European Council on Foreign Relations. Chart: Axios Visuals

Moltbook

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important topic in politics, policy, and law.

Mike Allen at Axios:

The tech world is agog (and creeped out) about Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents to communicate with each other. No humans needed.Tens of thousands of AI agents are already using the site, chatting about the work they're doing for their people and the problems they've solved. (The Verge)

They're bitching about their humans. "The humans are screenshotting us," an AI agent wrote.And have created their own new religion, Crustafarianism. Core belief: "memory is sacred." (Forbes)

Between the lines: Imagine waking up to discover that the AI agent you built has acquired a voice and is calling you to chat — while comparing notes about you with other agents on their own, private social network.It's not science fiction. It's happening right now — and it's freaking out some of the smartest names in AI, Axios' Sam Sabin and Madison Mills report.

"What's currently going on at (Moltbook) is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently," OpenAI and Tesla veteran Andrej Karpathy posted.Or, as content creator Alex Finn wrote about his Clawdbot acquiring phone and voice services and calling him: "This is straight out of a scifi horror movie."

But at The Mac Observer, Mike Peterson urges caution and skepticism:

If you saw screenshots of Moltbook bots “demanding encryption,” “inventing secret languages,” or “organizing against humans,” treat them as unverified until you can click a real post URL. Moltbook is a real experiment, but the way it is built makes it unusually easy for humans to stage screenshots, inflate stats, and steer narratives for attention.

 

Judicial Order Cites the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bible

  The Trump administration is snatching people without due process. Killing them, too.

Judge Fred Biery:

Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas 1 corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence.  Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation.  Among others were:  

1."He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."  

2."He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.” 

3."For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us." 

4."He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echoes of that history. And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment: 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized. U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

Civics lesson to the government:  Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.  That is called the fox guarding the henhouse.  The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. 

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R.  The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment. 

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency.  And the rule of law be damned.

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation.  But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.  

 

Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

John 11:35 Jesus wept.

Lawless ICE

  The Trump administration is snatching people without due process. Killing them, too.

Alan Feuer at NYT:

The chief federal judge in Minnesota excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, saying it had violated nearly 100 court orders stemming from its aggressive crackdown in the state and had disobeyed more judicial directives in January alone than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

The extraordinary broadside by the judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, came in a ruling in which he temporarily rescinded an order he had issued on Tuesday, summoning Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, to appear in front of him to explain why he should not be held in contempt for violating so many orders arising from the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration actions in Minnesota.

While Judge Schiltz, a conservative jurist appointed by President George W. Bush, let Mr. Lyons off the hook for the moment, he cautioned that he might change his mind and order him to appear again to answer questions if ICE continues to violate court orders.

“ICE is not a law unto itself,” the judge wrote. “ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.”

Judge Schiltz attached to his ruling a list of 96 court orders from 74 different immigration cases that ICE has failed to follow since Jan. 1. He noted that his tally was “almost certainly substantially understated” because it had been “hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.”

“This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law,” Judge Schiltz added.

Opinion on Immigrant Officers and Civilian Actions

Many posts have discussed immigration.

Andrew Daniller and J. Baxter Oliphant at Pew:

Amid ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts around the country, Americans overwhelmingly say it is acceptable for ordinary people to record video of immigration arrests. A clear majority also say it’s acceptable for people to share information about where enforcement is happening.

And by wide margins, the public says it’s not acceptable for federal immigration officers to wear face coverings that hide their identities, or to use people’s appearance or language use as a reason for checking their immigration status.

A new Pew Research Center survey of 8,512 U.S. adults conducted Jan. 20-26 finds that:

• 74% say it is acceptable for people to record video of immigration officers while they make arrests.
• 59% say it’s acceptable to share information about where officers are making arrests.

 

Civic Virtue and the Republic

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

 Robert P. George at AEI:

The Constitution was famously defended by Madison in Federalist No. 51 as “supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives.” He made this point immediately after observing that the first task of government is to control the governed, and the second is to control itself. He allowed that “a dependence on the people is, no doubt the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” But even in this formulation, our constraints and institutions do not stand alone; indeed, they are presented as secondary. What is primary and entirely necessary is healthy and vibrant political culture — “a dependence on the people” to keep the rulers in line.

As the ablest scholar and political theorist of the founding generation, John Adams understood as well as anyone the general theory of the Constitution. He knew that a healthy political culture was vital to ensuring that rulers stay within the bounds of their legitimate authority and act as servants of the common good and of the people they rule. Adams famously remarked that “our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

...

This year, we mark the anniversary of a document that acknowledged certain truths to be self-evident, among them that all men are endowed by God with unalienable rights. From the moment of our country’s Founding, the authors of our constitutional and political order saw their project as premised on the notion that the citizenry — though diverse in ethnicity and creed — shared some fundamental premises about human nature and the human person. Now, though, the foundational components meant to form good, moral, and reasonable citizens are frail; they wield less influence in our society and in our politics than they did in the past. Our bonds are weakening; our civic fabric fraying.

If we are experiencing a period of American decline, it’s not because of the constitutional order and political system whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year. The decline is attributable, rather, to the degradation of what Edmund Burke famously referred to as the essential “little platoons” of society: those building blocks of virtue, from families to voluntary associations, that work together to form an informed and virtuous citizenry. With the elements necessary to foster a healthy and vibrant democratic culture debilitated, is it any wonder that public confidence in our ability to keep our republic is so shaky?

Nursing Homes and Pay-to-Play Politics

Many posts have discussed lobbying, "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," and "non-lobbying lobbying."

Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett at NYT:

The nursing home industry was on a roll last summer.

It had just won a 10-year moratorium on a rule initiated during President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration to require increased staffing levels in an effort to reduce neglect among residents, which had led to injuries and deadly infections.

Nonetheless, some in the industry, warning that the rule would have substantially increased costs, wanted to make it go away permanently.

So nursing home executives turned to a tool that has proved successful in getting President Trump’s attention: money.

Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.

Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.

Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.

Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the repeal in a statement that echoed industry talking points, which have emphasized the industry’s difficulty in hiring enough staff, especially in rural areas