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Note: Everything in this post is my personal opinion. If you don’t agree, set up your own Substack. Or, leave me a comment.
I had a completely different column in mind for this week, but given recent news I’ll save it for later.
After being yelled at by Stephen Miller to stop worrying about finding undocumented criminals and just start rounding up anyone suspected of being undocumented. He’s reported to have said,”Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?”
Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?
Stephen Miller
A few days later ICE agents, many of them wearing masks and in civilian clothing, raided day laborer meeting sites at Home Depots in largely hispanic communities.
There was also a raid at a clothing manufacturer in downtown LA. Here’s a timeline from ABC News.
From much of the published video it appears that all of LA is under attack by violent protesters. In fact, the vast majority of of protesters were peaceful.
A few of them attacked police, damaged property and set some Waymo self-driving taxis on fire.
Those people should be arrested, charged and tried for their crimes.
In spite of the impression given by news footage, cropped and edited by right-wing “news” organizations to make things look even worse, the protests were scattered, mostly peaceful and relatively small.
The greater LA area is huge.1 The distance from the Santa Monica Pier to Beaumont, CA, at the eastern edge of greater LA, is about the same as the distance from New York City to Philadelphia.
The protests were tiny, no more than a few hundred people at each protest site. There was no need to call up the National Guard and the Marines for protests the LAPD sees as “just another Sunday”.
There was more unrest, property damage and violence in LA after the Dodgers won the World Series last year.
Nobody called out the National Guard for that. We’re now in the ridiculous, if dangerous, situation where the 4, 000 National Guard troops plus the 700 active duty Marines may outnumber the protesters.
It’s hard not to conclude that our Convict in Chief wants to escalate the violence to have an excuse to take even stronger measures.
And then there was this morning. US Senator Alex Padilla happened to have a meeting in the same US Government building where Kristi Noem was holding a press conference just up the hall.
At this point it’s not clear how he gained access to the room where Noem was speaking. It seems unlikely that he just wandered in, someone must have identified him and allowed him through the door.
Noem and her security team have said that he “lunged towards the podium2” and “didn’t identify himself”.
Here’s a video where you can clearly hear him identifying himself.
Note that Noem pauses briefly in her remarks but continues on as if nothing is happening. It certainly doesn’t sound like she fears she’s being attacked.
This all happened in a federal building.
Everyone, including U.S. Senators, goes throgh security screening on the way in.
So Senator Padilla could not have been carrying a weapon.
In the unlikely event that nobody on Noem’s team recognized a sitting U.S. Senator they could have taken him out of the room and questioned him. In my opinion there was no need to escalate matters by taking him to the floor and cuffing him.
Noem and others in the MAGA Administration appear to be determined to push the boundaries of US law and the constitution.
If you don’t like it, do something!
This Saturday, June 14th, there will be a nationwide “No Kings” protest. Sign up. Attend. Bring a friend or two.
It’s time to say Foxtrot Delta Tango.3
Musical Coda:
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Depending on how you measure, the greater Los Angeles area is about 100 miles east-to-west and around 75 miles north-to-south. In general, if you’re out of town and someone asks where you’re from, you just say “LA”. At least I do, and I live about 50 miles away from downtown LA in southern Orange County.
I see no podium in the video, but there is a lectern. I may have to give up on that distinction.
F**k Donald Trump.