America's Situational Attorney General

El Tiempo Cantina faced social media backlash after
posting a photo of Jeff Sessions' visit last Friday

With the appointment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017, Americans have witnessed the nation's top law enforcement official using his office as a platform to enforce principles that reflect a combination of his own brand of religious fundamentalism, and the rigid, right-wing "Fox News" ideology that has come to define the Republican Party.

His media footprint hasn't exactly been a positive one, either for himself, the Department of Justice, or the Trump administration.

This past weekend Sessions made headlines after a massive social media backlash forced El Tiempo Cantina, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston, Texas that he visited last Friday, to shut down their social media accounts because of a flood of criticism after someone posted a photo of the smiling AG standing next to what appears to be a chef (pictured above).

Now if Sessions was under the impression that visiting a Tex-Mex restaurant and taking a selfie with one of the guys who cooked his ethnic food would distract from the fact that he's now widely vilified for championing locking up non-white asylum seekers, banning Muslims from entering the country and separating the innocent children of undocumented immigrants from their parents, he was sadly mistaken.

Sessions was in Houston reportedly meeting with local law enforcement officials to discuss the enforcement of the Trump administration's controversial immigration policies.

Likely on that agenda are the approximately 360 children of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants who are still locked away in facilities around the U.S. - innocent kids stuck in incarcerated limbo who've yet to be reunited with their parents as ordered by a federal judge weeks ago.

Despite the Tex-Mex restaurant flap, and Houston's notorious jungle-like humidity in August,
Sessions was probably relieved to be as far away from Washington, D.C. as possible.

Hillary-bashing Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy questions
FBI Agent Peter Strzok during July 12th hearings

Especially after the whiny tweet sent out on Saturday by a raving Donald Trump, who was holed up over the weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club - fuming in the midst of one of his frequent tantrums about the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

The unhinged POTUS used his social media account to accuse Sessions of being "scared stiff" and "Missing in Action".


Now 45 tweeted that nonsensical, juvenile claptrap to his followers despite the fact that longtime senior FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok was recently fired by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich as a result of a lengthy internal investigation conducted by Inspector General Michael Horowitz that revealed a number of private text messages that the married Strzok sent to his then-girlfriend (former FBI attorney Lisa Page) that were highly critical of Trump.

Even though Strzok insisted under oath during a contentious Congressional hearing back in July that his personal opinion of Trump did not interfere with his ability to conduct counterintelligence investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, some Republicans seized on the text messages as proof of the concocted "Deep State" conspiracy that alleges an internal government "plot" to topple the floundering Trump presidency.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, Strzok's attorney Aitan Goelman told reporters:

"The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical bureau practice, but also contradicts FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony to Congress and his assurances that the FBI intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters."

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich

As the Times reported, while the IG report was critical of Strzok's personal text messages given his senior role in both the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server as well as the investigation into Russian interference, the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended a 60-day suspension.

But Bowdich, the bureau's deputy director, dismissed the OPR recommendation and fired Strzok, a 20-year veteran of the FBI considered one of the most senior counterintelligence agents in the bureau.

Strzok's firing effectively nullified his ability to collect his government pension and health benefits, so the dismissal was clearly intended to please Trump's childish need for petty vindictiveness against anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes his policies or decisions.

Now I'm not an "FBI insider" or anything, but I don't think Strzok's firing was Bowdich's call; the high-profile firing of a respected career-FBI Special Agent, is not something that's going to be left up to a deputy director.

Especially a dismissal with clear political implications just three months before a mid-term election.

Bowdich was the man tapped to replace former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was famously fired by Jeff Sessions back on March 16th just 26 hours before he was scheduled to retire in a highly-politicized firing that denied McCabe (a 22-year veteran of the FBI) his pension and benefits.

But if you take a quick look at Bowdich's resume, the former Albuquerque Police Officer distinguished himself as an exceptional FBI agent (like McCabe he previously served on the FBI's SWAT team), it doesn't seem like he's one for the kind of partisan back-stabbing that Trump delights in using to try and protect himself from the Mueller investigation.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe 

There's little question that Jeff Sessions was behind the blatantly-politicized, vindictive pettiness that was behind Strzok's firing - but he ordered Bowdich to do it to avoid the kind of criticism and charges of cronyism he received after firing McCabe back in March.

So two different widely-respected and accomplished FBI senior officials, each with more than 20 years of service, fired based on trumped-up charges in order to appease Trump.

Yet Trump STILL took to Twitter to suggest Sessions was "scared stiff" and "Missing in Action"?

Why would Trump publicly make such unsubstantiated and inflammatory accusations about his own attorney general?

Apparently because Sessions hasn't publicly defended Trump's own rampant incompetence, myriad ethical lapses, lengthy trail of documented lies and lack of morality more vigorously.

Remarkably, Trump's criticism of Sessions (a man he appointed) seems to suggest that he's still laboring under the misconception that the attorney general of the United States, and head of the Justice Department, is supposed to also function as the president's personal defense lawyer.

Given the job that conservative wack-job Rudy Giuliani seems to be doing, one couldn't blame Trump for pining for capable counsel, but that's not the AG's job - and Sessions brought his own baggage to this meandering clown car of a presidency.

"Linda" the Jenkinson's Aquarium gift shop clerk
refused to serve 7 black girls in Point Pleasant, NJ

What's unfortunate is that we're temporarily stuck with an attorney general who's more loyal to his own extremist ideology and xenophobic beliefs than he is to enforcing the laws that protect all Americans.

He's been all but silent on the sharp rise in incidents of overt racism and bigotry that have made headlines across the country since Trump's inauguration in 2017.

Store clerks and restaurant managers refusing to serve or kicking out people of color, property managers preventing African-American residents from using pool facilities - crazy shit is happening.

You heard nothing from Sessions about the group of 7 young African-American girls from Camden, New Jersey's Princess to Queenz summer mentoring program who were refused service in the Jenkinson's Aquarium gift shop on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant, NJ last Friday by a woman only identified as "Linda" (pictured above) - whose comments caught on video went viral.

According to an NJ.com article posted Tuesday evening, the still-unnamed woman has been fired from her job and Jenkinson's media relations director issued an apology.

As New Jersey Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly told reporters, "these types of displays of racism are occurring entirely too frequently in our country."

White Supremacist James Fields and the car he used
to kill Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, VA in 2017

In my view, Americans being denied service in restaurants, stores, public parks or recreational facilities they have a right to use based on their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nationality is a serious issue that warrants at least some degree of leadership or direction from the person who's supposed to be the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Sessions' silence on these kinds of incidents is troubling, but hardly surprising.

Dogged by criticism of his own racial bigotry and xenophobia since he served as a federal prosecutor in Alabama in the 1980's, Sessions was predictably silent about the white supremacists who staged what turned out to be underwhelming public rallies in Charlottesville and in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. across the street from the White House last weekend on the anniversary of the violent Unite the Right protests in Virginia last year.

(Remember, he was in Houston meeting with local law enforcement and eating Tex-Mex food.)

Back in June, Sessions did release a fairly tepid public statement when federal hate crime charges were filed against James Fields, Jr., (pictured above) the-then 21-year-old man who intentionally plowed his car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist march in Charlottesville - killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than 12 others.

But those federal charges came months after the state of Virginia indicted Fields on charges of first-degree murder and nine other felony counts back in December, 2017.

Jeff Sessions: attorney general for some but not all?

Sessions' unwillingness to enforce the laws of the United States to protect all citizens is indirectly putting people's lives at risk - literally.

As Rob Arthur reported for Vice News back in February, an analysis of records from the Department of Justice reveals that "Total activity in the agency's civil rights division is at a 17-year low, falling well below levels seen in the last two [presidential] administrations. One DOJ section charged with enforcing laws on police misconduct has been completely inactive."

When it comes to mounting ICE raids on places of work to arrest undocumented immigrants trying to earn an honest living, arresting asylum seekers at the U.S. border, or separating children as young as three-years old from their parents, Jeff Sessions is the high-profile attorney general.

When Trump wants respected career FBI senior officials fired because they don't like him, or because they believe the Mueller investigation on Russian interference into the 2016 elections is legitimate and should be allowed to complete it's work without being undermined by partisan political meddling, Sessions is the guy.

Loyal and subservient to an erratic president who both reviles and repeatedly humiliates him.

Since his appointment in 2017, Mr. Law and Order's idea of law enforcement is situational at best - and that situation seems to depend on whether or not it conflicts with his own divisive ideology.

When it comes to enforcing those laws that protect innocent Americans from prejudice, bigotry and hatred based on race, ethnicity or nationality, Sessions is invisible, unseen and absent.

He is America's Situational Attorney General.

Antwan Rose, Diante Yarber & Jeff Sessions' Blind Eye

Michael Rosfeld (left) charged after killing unarmed
teenager Antwan Rose by shooting him in the back

Last Wednesday, 30-year-old East Pittsburgh PD officer Michael Rosfeld turned himself in to be arrested and arraigned on one count of criminal homicide in the death of 17-year-old Antwan Rose back on June 19th.

And so begins the slow wait for justice and accountability that has become all too familiar for those American families who've lost sons, daughters, sisters and fathers to unjustified killings by overzealous members of law enforcement.

The circumstances surrounding this latest unarmed American teenager's death are at once familiar, murky and unsettling on many levels.

As journalist Tom Cleary reported in an article for Heavy.com, Antwan Rose was a passenger inside an unlicensed "jitney" cab that was pulled over by East Pittsburgh PD officers because it supposedly fit the description of a vehicle that had been involved in a drive-by shooting in the nearby area of Braddock, PA just a few minutes earlier.

When officers removed the cab driver from the vehicle and handcuffed him to question him, Rose and another passenger opened the passenger side doors and tried to flee the scene.

Almost immediately, Officer Rosfeld pointed his handgun and fired three shots, striking both passengers - take a look at the cell phone video captured by a witness posted on Youtube and watch how quickly Rosfeld starts shooting.

The video is only a few seconds long, and it's not bloody or anything, watch it a couple times - it's pretty clear that the two are running away, not towards the officer, they weren't threatening his life.

Rose was hit in the back and died at the hospital later that evening. The driver of the cab was later released after being questioned - his vehicle had not been involved any kind of shooting as officers suspected before pulling him over in the residential neighborhood where the shooting took place.

Hundreds protest Antwan Rose's shooting in front
of the Allegheny County courthouse on June 22nd

During a press conference held the day after the shooting, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala said of Rosfeld's decision to fire his gun:

"it's an intentional act and there's no justification for it. You do not shoot somebody in the back if they are not a threat to you."

The shooting sparked outrage, and protests and acts of civil disobedience have been taking place since the shooting took place eleven days ago.

While Rosfeld's attorneys are certain to try and use the defense that the officer "felt threatened" by two young men running away from him, the officer's competence has to come into question as he had literally just been sworn in as a part-time East Pittsburgh PD officer an hour and forty minutes before he shot an unarmed teenager running away from him.

He'd also been fired by the University of Pittsburgh campus police for undisclosed reasons prior to being hired by East Pittsburgh PD.

Antwan Rose wasn't some thuggish, violence-prone juvenile delinquent as some American police departments try to retroactively portray young men that are shot on sight because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity in order to try and justify an unjustified shooting.

From the numerous accounts of those in the East Pittsburgh community who knew him have noted publicly in the wake of the shooting, this was a good kid from a good family who was well respected.

He took Advanced Placement (AP) classes and was headed into his senior year with a strong academic record.

Antwan Rose (center) in an undated prom photo

According to the Woodland Hills School District Superintendent Al Johnson, Rose "was an excellent student." 

He also had lasting impact on his local community outside of school as well.

After the shooting Gisele Fetterman, the wife of Braddock, PA Mayor John Fetterman wrote on her Facebook page that Rose had volunteered for a local non-profit charity called Freestore 15104 that she runs when he was just fourteen-years-old.

During his summer vacation no less.

As Fetterman observed, "His life was just starting, he was part of a wonderful family and he was SO LOVED by so many and he didn't deserve this."

This was a motivated kid whose self-discipline is reflected not only in his academic record and volunteer work but also in the fact that he also held down jobs to make extra money from the time that he was at least fourteen-years-old.

Pittsburgh Gymnastics Club owner Kim Ransom told the New York Times that she remembered Rose coming in for an interview on a hot summer day back in 2015 when he fourteen:

"He brought his type-up resume and he was wearing a full three-piece suit with his shiny shoes and he was sweating profusely."

How does a well-liked high school kid like that from a good family end up getting shot in the back?

26-year-old Diante Yarber and a young protester

In my view it demonstrates the massive disconnect between reality and the perception of some police officers in this country - a perception so warped by racial by bias that some cops instinctively react with deadly force in situations where their lives are not actually threatened.

In Barstow, California back on April 5th, a 26-year-old father of three named Diante Yarber was fatally shot ten times at point blank range by four Barstow Police Department officers.

He was killed in the parking lot of a Walmart during broad daylight.

Yarber (pictured above) was wanted on suspicion of car theft when BPD officers spotted his Ford Mustang, recognized him as a suspect, stopped the vehicle and approached the driver's side door.

Yarber allegedly attempted to flee the scene with his brother, cousin and girlfriend inside the car.

Police claim the shooting was prompted when the Ford Mustang he was driving hit one of the police cruisers as he attempted to back up and drive off.

Even though Yarber was unarmed, according to a statement by Barstow Police Department Chief Albert Ramirez, Jr.,  four BPD officers at the scene pulled out their weapons and unloaded about 30 shots into the car because they "feared for their safety and the safety of others".

Ten of those shots struck Yarber in the chest, back and arms, and his girlfriend, who was sitting in the backseat, was hit in the abdomen and leg, while his brother and cousin escaped injury.

Defense attorney S. Lee Merritt described the gunshots that struck Yarber as being "consistent with defensive wounds...as he was shielding himself and trying to escape the onslaught of bullets" according to the findings of an independent medical examiner hired by Yarber's family. 

Jeff Sessions during Senate confirmation hearings
for Attorney General back in January of 2017 

So he was a suspect in a car theft, was not armed, and had three other people inside his vehicle when four BPD officers opened fire at the car which was in a Walmart parking lot in the middle of the day.

Is that smart, effective policing or hair-trigger overreaction based on skin color?

Now after thinking about these two cases, my initial thoughts were actually about Attorney General Jeff Sessions - the nation's top law enforcement authority.

Given that he defended himself against multiple charges of racism that were leveled against him during his tenure as a federal prosecutor in Alabama during contentious Senate hearings for his failed nomination to the federal bench back in 1986, one might think one of Session's first major public announcements as Trump's AG might be something conciliatory.

Something to demonstrate that he's not the bigot his own words and actions showed him to be.

But no, once he managed to squeak through the hearings process and was sworn in as AG, one of his first major initiatives was to announce that the Department of Justice was "reviewing" the various consent decrees that President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder signed with various police departments around the country.

While many around the country saw those consent decrees as a reasonable step to address the rampant, unchecked abuse of police power used overwhelmingly against people of color, Sessions and Trump viewed the decrees exclusively through the narrow lens of the right-wing ideology that drove Trump's presidential campaign.

And of course Trump's bizarre obsession with trying to undue as many of President Obama's executive and legislative achievements as humanly possible; even when they're in the interests of the vast majority of the American people or the environment.

Baltimore City Council members proposing legislation
that would give them oversight over Baltimore PD

Despite the fact that the consent decrees were put into place by former Attorney General Eric Holder (only after exhaustive research conducted by by the DOJ itself) that proved the existence of of racially-biased police practices on the local level, during his Senate confirmation hearings Sessions said the consent decrees:

"undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing [it's] work." 

Even as Sessions moved to delay and roll back the decrees in the spring and summer of 2017, some police officials and city leaders, as in Baltimore, voiced support for remaining committed to the decrees signed with DOJ.

Remember, Freddie Gray was arrested for having what Baltimore PD claimed was "an illegal knife" and he ended up dying of a broken neck while in the custody of BPD officers.

Not one of the six officers charged with his death were held accountable for Gray's death in a police van. Not one.

And Jeff Sessions claims consent decrees that would establish reasonable federal oversight of the BPD would "undermine the respect for police officers"? Really?

Those consent decrees, voluntary agreements signed between local police forces with proven patterns of entrenched, racially-biased policing practices and the Department of Justice, were intended (in part) as a remedy to bring a measure of federal oversight to try and address the wave of instances of excessive use of physical and deadly force against people of color.

And address rampant police misconduct in those departments where it's shown to be systematic.

Not 1 of the 6 Baltimore cops responsible for
Freddie Gray's 2015 death were found guilty   

Under the Obama administration, the DOJ signed consent decrees with at least 12 different metropolitan police forces with troubled histories of racially-biased policing - including Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans and of course, Ferguson, Missouri.

Sessions and the Trump administration tried to frame the decrees in the all-too-familiar conservative light of "federal overreach".

But as a June 12, 2017 Op-Ed in The Baltimore Sun noted, the consent decrees were not forced upon local police forces, rather they were intended as:

"legal agreements between themselves and the DOJ to implement specified reforms. The agreements are the penultimate step, short of a protracted trial, that police departments can take to correct problems such as rampant racial discrimination, stop-and-frisk abuses, and inadequate accountability mechanisms."   

As I've often said, I'm no expert on policing, but it seems to me that unjustified shooting deaths of both Antwan Rose and Diante Yarber would at least indicate that there is still a clear need for at least some kind of pathway or room for reasonable federal oversight of police departments when it's warranted.

Sessions' decisions to revoke those consent decrees between local police departments and the Department of Justice are questionable at best - and at worst, indicative of the deep-seated racial bias that he's been accused of for years.

There's no certainty that any of the officers who took the lives of Antwan Rose and Diante Yarber will ever be held accountable for their deaths - the only thing that's certain is that they're both now members of The Counted.

And while the attorney general turns a blind eye to the reality of biased policing in America, the slow wait for justice and accountability continues.

Marco Munoz & Republican's Ignoble Cause

39-YO Honduran father Marco Antonio
Munoz committed suicide on May 12th 

For many Americans, it's been jaw-dropping to listen to Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions try and use border security to justify the Trump administration's heartless decision to order U.S. Border Patrol agents to separate children from their parents when undocumented families cross into the United States.

Few cases illustrate the intentional cruelty of that policy more than Marco Antonio Munoz, whose death in a Texas jail cell has sparked outrage.

As initially reported by the Washington Post, after Munoz crossed into the U.S. with his wife and three-year-old son at the border in Granejo, Texas on May 12th, he turned himself into Border Patrol agents and requested asylum for his family.

After the three family members were taken into custody and brought to a processing center in McAllen, TX, about nine miles away, Border Patrol agents informed them that they would be separated, and Munoz, understandably upset and likely exhausted after traveling hundreds of miles north from Honduras, became enraged.

Unable to calm him down, agents took him to the Starr County, TX jail where he was eventually found dead in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a padded cell with some cloth wrapped around his neck on the morning of May 13th.

That horrifying scene (Border Patrol agents reportedly had to physically pry Munoz's three-year-old son from his arms) seems totally devoid of compassion, more like a chapter from a dark dystopian sci-fi novel than a snapshot of 21st century America.

Munoz's death is so far removed from the words inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

Even Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked
Jeff Sessions to stop separating migrant families 

Scores of Democratic Senators and members of Congress (including some Republicans) called on the White House to halt the draconian  "zero tolerance" immigration policy announced by Sessions in early May.

In response, Trump had the gall to blame Democrats for a policy that he himself initiated in order to fire up the loyal right-wing base of support that feeds off his xenophobia and bigotry.

But not all conservatives are comfortable seeing children ripped from the arms of parents seeking asylum in the U.S. - or the effect it's having on the image of the Republican Party.

Last week Jeff Sessions sat down for an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Knowing how much damage Trump's policy is doing to undocumented immigrant families as well as the image of the Republican Party just five months before the November midterm elections, Hewitt pleaded with the notoriously anti-immigrant attorney general to at least stop separating children from their families. 

Sessions' response was to self-righteously insist that he's bound by the law - even though there is no existing law mandating that Border Patrol agents separate families who enter the country illegally.

As if separating children from their parents wasn't already making him seem like some kind of soulless monster who crawled out of a primordial ooze, earlier today Sessions insisted that fleeing deadly gang violence or domestic abuse from a spouse or family member in another country is not grounds for an asylum claim in the United States.

DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen & Sen. Kamala Harris

Back on May 15th, the embattled Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen sat before a Senate Committee and got into a heated exchange about the Trump administration's demand that the children of undocumented immigrants be separated from their parents.

As the Denver Post and other news outlets reported, Nielsen got an earful from the no-nonsense California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris.

The former California Attorney General, whose reputation for unrelenting questions and demanding answers in Senate Committee hearings has riled more than one Republican on Capitol Hill, grilled the Trump cabinet member on the reasoning behind ripping parents from their children.

"What we'll be doing is prosecuting parents who've broken the law, just as we do every day in the United States of America." Nielsen insisted.

As if she's proud of that.

As if Border Patrol agents literally pulling Marco Antonio Munoz's terrified three-year-old son from his arms in an immigration processing center in McAllen, Texas is making the country safer.

As if immigration authorities currently housing some 11,500 undocumented immigrant children away from parents who came here to seek asylum is a noble cause that must be defended.

When in fact, she and Sessions (at Trump's behest) are in effect, twisting U.S. immigration policy to churn out death, injury, terror and heartless family separation to justify the xenophobic hysteria of a man who didn't even know the words to God Bless America at a fake "Eagles fans rally" on the White House lawn last week that no actual Eagles fans attended.

That's the guy claiming that ripping children from their parents arms in the name of  border security is a noble cause as he blunders his way through the G-7 summit in Canada by insulting our allies and embarrassing Americans with his ignorance of diplomacy and foreign affairs.

The November midterm elections can't come soon enough, and as Mr. Munoz's death demonstrates, lives are literally at stake.

The Awkward Aroma of Authoritarian Reach

Bad timing? Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert

It's not always easy to discern the specific ways in which the decidedly-authoritarian approach to oversight of local American law enforcement under Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions is impacting the U.S. justice system on the community level.

But there've been some pretty eye-opening examples lately.

For example, a lot of national media attention has been devoted to the questionable fatal shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by two Sacramento police officers back on March 18th.

Far less national media attention has been focused on Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert receiving a $10,000 donation from the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA) for her re-election campaign just two days after Clark was shot eight times in the back while he was in the backyard of his grandmother's home - holding his cell phone.

As the top prosecutor in Sacramento, Schubert's office is responsible for determining if the shooting warrants the filing of criminal charges against the two SPD officers.

And as Darrell Smith reported for the Sacramento Bee on April 6th, she also received another $3,000 donation to her re-election campaign from the Sacramento County Alliance of Law Enforcement on March 23 - less than seven days after Stephon Clark was shot.

That's not to cast suspicion on all 7,000 members of the CSLEA, as their Website clearly shows, their thousands of members are committed to the safety of Californians in a wide variety of ways.

Teri Cox, communications dir. for the
CA Statewide Law Enforcement Assoc.

But writing a $10,000 check for the DA responsible for determining whether a questionable shooting of an unarmed citizen warrants criminal charges, two days after the shooting?

It raises legitimate questions about the ability of local prosecutors to fairly investigate police officers accused of serious misconduct resulting in the death or bodily injury of civilians.

In no way am I suggesting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions directly influenced two Sacramento police unions to make large campaign donations to a DA handing a police brutality case.

But the optics make it look sketchy.

Particularly given the reluctance of local prosecutors to file criminal charges against police officers even in cases of flagrant use of unnecessary deadly force against unarmed people who hadn't actually committed a crime.

Teri Cox, the director of communications and public affairs for the CSLEA tried to explain the timing of the $10,000 campaign donation as mere coincidence. As she told the Sacramento Bee:

"There was no timing involved. We've been for (Schubert) from the very beginning, it's unfortunate that the check had to happen at that time."

And maybe that's true, but it does call into question the objectivity of a DA who could arguably be seen as being in ethical and professional conflict by accepting large campaign donations from two police unions within days of two SPD officers shooting an innocent man in his own backyard.

Is that an example of authoritarianism?

The Oxford dictionary defines authoritarian as: favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority.

The new American authoritarianism?

Not only was the United States founded on the principle of questioning authority, but placing a system of clearly-defined checks and balances on the three major branches of the federal government lies at the very heart of the U.S. Constitution.

By extension, that principle applies to local government in my humble view.

But what happens when you have an attorney general like Jeff Sessions?

A man whose personal cultural and racial bias places him on the fringe of the American mainstream.

Someone who clearly runs the Department of Justice as if the concept of justice is based not on the Constitution, but on an adherence to the narrow, hyper-conservative ideology favored by the erratic POTUS?

What happens when individual representatives of federal law enforcement branches begin to police people based not on criminal acts or violations of laws, but rather on what they think and write?

Like the Department of Homeland Security seeking bids for an outside contractor to compile a massive database of hundreds of thousands of "media influencers" (including journalists and bloggers) so the federal agency can supposedly monitor the content.

Is that for actual "homeland security"?

Or is it simply a means to try and validate Trump's loony paranoia about what he calls "fake news"?

Civil rights activist and journalist Shaun King

Did you read the recent story about how activist and journalist Shaun King and his family were subjected to harassment by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after they landed at JFK airport?

As he wrote on his Twitter feed, ICE agents called him and his family out of line at JFK after they returned from a recent trip to Egypt.

He was questioned about his leadership role with the Black Lives Matter movement and asked about his activities in Egypt.

In recent years King has emerged as a leading voice on unjustified police brutality against people of color and the systematic racial bias of the American justice system.

He's covered everything from stories about racially-biased policing by the NYPD, to Bronx courts railroading young men of color into jails and he's become a leading social media presence advocating for justice and policing reforms.

If you've never read any of his stuff before, check out his recent story back in January in the Intercept about police officers in Cartersville, Georgia arresting 70 people ranging in age from 15 to 31, mostly African-Americans (including veterans, college students, and at least one pregnant woman) because they found less than an ounce of weed at a party.

(And yeah, Georgia cops really arrested 70 people and hauled them all to jail for a bag of weed - click the link above)

He's begun using his influence and reach on social media to encourage broader political activism, becoming a co-founder of a political action committee called Real Justice PAC to bring national attention (and money) to smaller local political races for offices like district attorneys that have massive influence over mass incarceration in an effort to address America's broken justice system.

Shaun King represents one of the emerging grassroots leaders in the fight against the flagrant authoritarianism trumpeted by the current presidential administration.

Small wonder he and his family were stopped in JFK airport and questioned by ICE, even though he's an American fighting for the values enshrined in the Constitution.

It's not always easy to discern the specific ways in which the decidedly-authoritarian approach to oversight of local American law enforcement under Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions is impacting the U.S. justice system on the community level.

But you can certainly smell the aroma these days.

Trump's Friday Night Massacre

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

The current political landscape in America has such a surreal quality these days that the fictional political worlds depicted on TV shows like Netflix's House of Cards and HBO's VEEP look like tamer versions of reality in comparison.

After having a few drinks at my local on Friday night, the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe just 26 hours before the 21-year FBI veteran was set to retire, left me floored.

Now Trump has done so many incredibly stupid things since being inaugurated, that ineptitude has become sort of a default mode for a chaotic White House that revolves around his narcissism, insecurity, ignorance and paranoia.

But his decision to order Sessions to fire McCabe late Friday night ranks as quite possibly one of the most vile, petty and monumentally-stupid actions ever undertaken by a sitting U.S. president.

Trump interfering in a federal agency's firing of a career employee over an internal disciplinary matter undermines the role of the FBI as a law enforcement body independent of partisan politics - though it has unfortunately been used that way in the past.

In a statement justifying McCabe's firing 26 hours before his previously-announced resignation would take effect, sanctimonious AG Jeff Sessions claimed that the FBI's internal disciplinary office and the Justice Department's Inspector General Michael Horowitz (both of whom Sessions oversees...) found "that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor - including under oath - on multiple occasions."

Remember, Sessions perjured himself under oath during Senate hearings by lying about multiple contacts he and other members of the Trump campaign staff had with Russian individuals before the election.

Dept. of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz

So he's got some cojones pointing his finger at anyone because they "lacked candor". 

Especially after firing someone late on a Friday night in a cowardly attempt to minimize the political fallout from a White House action that reeks of authoritarian overreach and vindictive pettiness.

There's something childish and trite about it that's beneath the presidency.

After all McCabe, who served as acting head of the FBI for three months last year after Trump fired James Comey, had already yielded to White House pressure and announced his resignation.

So Trump's action, essentially denying McCabe government pension benefits he earned over the course of a 21-year career at the FBI, comes off as overkill motivated by Trump's own petty personal political vendetta.

And is clearly part of Trump's desire to convince the public that he's the victim of a vast Democratic conspiracy and purge the top ranks of the FBI until he can appoint someone who will fire Robert Mueller to end the special investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

But despite his quasi-delusional perception of the world, Trump's not a king or a CEO.

Not only has McCabe lawyered-up, as ABC News' Mike Levine reported on Saturday afternoon, an unnamed source says that the highly-intelligent former protege of former FBI Director James Comey (like his ex boss) kept detailed written memos of his meetings with Trump.

Memos which were turned over to the special investigation being headed up by Robert Mueller and could be potentially used to corroborate James Comey's testimony about Trump's efforts to obstruct justice by asking Comey to back off an investigation of former General Michael Flynn.

Despite having no idea of what kind of evidence Robert Mueller is sitting on, Trump woke up this morning and began spinning the baseless accusation that McCabe is lying about taking notes during meetings he had with 45 - who, predictably, is now calling them "fake memos".

Par for the course for America's "very stable genius."

The Price of Walking Home: Chris Hickman Charged

Ex-Asheville PD Officer Chris Hickman

The disturbing body cam footage of ex-Asheville PD officer Chris Hickman brutally punching, choking and tasing 33 year-old Johnnie Rush on the night of August 25, 2017 is a sobering reminder of the extent to which internalized racial bias continues to fuel the unnecessary use of excessive physical force by some members of the American law enforcement community.

Hickman's sarcastic and cynical taunting, and his sadistic beating of a citizen is egregious enough - after being choked into unconsciousness, Rush is lucky to be alive.

Small wonder this sickening example of police brutality took almost seven month's to be released.

But what makes this incident even more disturbing is the fact that Rush was simply walking home after a long shift washing dishes at a local Cracker Barrel restaurant.

He wasn't fleeing a bank robbery, running with a loaded gun in his hand, or trying to evade the police - the man was walking home from work.

Municipal ordinances that selectively target "Manner of Walking" have been the subject of this blog on more than one occasion - starting in the wake of the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown by ex-Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson in August, 2014.

An in-depth investigation of the Ferguson Police Department's policing practices by the Department of Justice in 2015 found that a staggering 95% of people stopped by Ferguson PD officers for one of several "Manner of Walking" ordinances were African-American.

To put that statistic into perspective, according to 2010 Census data 67.4% of Ferguson residents were African-American, 29.3% were white.

The practice of some police officers essentially criminalizing individuals for walking down the street, or even allowing officers to randomly decide that the manner in which an individual walks merits suspicion, or justifies a legal excuse to stop and frisk someone, certainly isn't limited to Missouri.

For example back on October 19, 2016, I blogged about a white, plain-clothes Minnesota police officer Tim Olson being videotaped by a passing driver as he accosted and arrested an African-American man named Larnie Thomas who was walking along the side of the road in broad daylight.

Asheville (NC) Police Chief Tammy Hooper 

But the incident with Christopher Hickman is unusual in that it's a police stop based on how and where someone was walking - one that resulted in such a violent beating being caught on police videotape.

Local residents who packed the Asheville Citizens Police Advisory Committee meeting last Wednesday night, were understandably angered, confused and looking for answers about Hickman's conduct.

Like many over the past few days, I've been trying to figure out why Asheville, North Carolina police chief Tammy Hooper took five months to launch a criminal investigation - and given the potential legal liability based on Hickman's behavior, why the Asheville City Council was kept in the dark for months too.

In a thoughtful and detailed op-ed on the incident published in the Asheville Citizen Times last Friday, City Council member Vijay Kapoor noted that Chief Hooper immediately took Hickman's badge and gun after Johnnie Rush filed a use of force complaint the day after the incident and she watched the videotape.

As Kapoor notes, she also placed Hickman on administrative duty - this was all within about 24 hours of the incident taking place.

But if you take some time to read Kapoor's comments, the investigation seems to have morphed into an intentionally slow-footed combination of bureaucratic foot-dragging by the Asheville Police Department, the City Attorney's Office and the City Manager's Office.

If Chief Hooper felt that Hickman's behavior in the videotape was bad enough that it warranted taking his badge and gun and pulling him off the street - why didn't she push harder for an independent investigation?

Johnnie Rush after Hickman's beating 

Or report the incident to the City Council?

The result seems to be sort of a ping-pong match between an APD internal investigation and the District Attorney wavering on whether or not to file charges against Hickman - and nothing happened.

That is until the videotape was finally leaked to the Asheville Citizen Times in February six months after the incident and the story blew up.

With national media attention suddenly focused on Asheville's handling of the incident amid growing outrage over the videotaped beating of Johnnie Rush, charges were filed against Hickman last Thursday - including assault by strangulation and assault inflicting serious injury.

Additionally, as the Charlotte Observer reported on Monday, the Buncombe County DA's office quickly announced it is dropping charges against 17 different people arrested by Hickman.

The FBI is reportedly investigating the incident, but with Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a proven racist who scaled back DOJ investigations of racially-biased police departments) heading up the Department of Justice, it's highly doubtful anything substantive will come of that.

But the important thing is the truth came out, even if it did take six months for the video to finally be seen by the public and the Asheville City Council - and more importantly Christopher Hickman was taken off the street and forced to resign from the APD in January.

Time will tell what becomes of the assault charges filed against him.

Would any of this had happened had the body-cam footage not been leaked to the press?

Probably not.

Johnnie Rush would likely have been charged with trespassing, jaywalking and resisting arrest etc., his complaint likely would have been swept under the rug, and in the end it would have been the word of a black man in North Carolina against two white Asheville PD officers.

And no one would ever know the price he paid for walking home.

Operation Keep Safe - More ICE Theater

Police escort 23-YO Juan Vega to an ICE facility in
Los Angeles during sweeps in January [Photo - Getty]  

As a former resident of Los Angeles, I still keep in touch with local news impacting California by listening to public radio station KCRW online during the week.

On Wednesday morning I heard a KCRW news report that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement once again engaged in targeted sweeps of undocumented immigrants.

This time in parts of Northern California including Oakland, San Francisco and Napa Valley.


Just over a month ago agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 21 immigrants in predawn sweeps targeting 98 different 7-Eleven stores in the LA area in southern California.

In a blog posted back on Friday January 19th, I called those raids "Anti-immigration Theater" - not just because it was more show than actual substantive policy.

But also because of the absurdity of federal agents expending resources and man hours rounding up a handful of the millions of immigrants who are working here in the U.S. as you read these words.

The latests reports I've read online were that approximately 232 people had been arrested and detained between Sunday and Wednesday.

The KCRW radio report on Wednesday said that when some people arrived for work early Tuesday morning, ICE agents were actually inside their place of employment and quickly began asking those they suspected of being undocumented to produce identification papers.

Before, presumably, being hauled off to one of the increasingly-filled detention facilities around the U.S. where undocumented detainees are currently being held before either being deported, or facing a hearing in court to determine their immigration status.

MTC-run Willacy County Correctional Facility in Texas

As Madison Pauly reported in an article for Mother Jones last February, within the first weeks of assuming office in January, 2017, top immigration policy advisers from the Trump administration were already instructing top officials from the Department of Homeland Security to instruct ICE to drastically increase the number of undocumented detainees that it keeps incarcerated on a daily basis to 80,000.


Sadly, some of those detainees were and are being held in privately owned for-profit detention facilities like the Willacy County Correctional Facility outside Raymondville, Texas (pictured above).

Built in 2006 by the troubled Management and Training Corporation, the facility basically consisted of a series of large kevlar tents which housed 200 inmates each - as you can see from the photo above there are no windows to let in natural light.

Inside there are no walls to separate bathroom facilities including showers and toilets, and the lights remained on for 24 hours a day - try and imagine living with 200 people like that for even a week.

According to a 2017 PRI article by Reynaldo Leanos, allegations at Willacy included lack of medical treatment, widespread sexual abuse and unsanitary living conditions including vermin infestation - those are allegations that have been leveled at other facilities run by MTC.

Check out George Lavender's 2014 In These Times article about the East Mississippi Correctional Facility run by MTC - take a look at some of the photos of the conditions inmates were living in.

MTC's Willacy County Correctional Facility was one of the largest immigration detention centers in the U.S. at one point, and not surprisingly a riot broke out in February 2015 after years of complaints about the management of the facility and the conduct of the personnel and their treatment of the detainees scheduled to be deported.

It was closed after a fire set during the riots destroyed most of it, but remarkably officials are trying to reopen it.

Now according to Madison Pauly's Mother Jones article referenced above, in November, 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote but won the presidential election with the aid of a massive Republican voter suppression effort and interference by the Russian government:

A flooded cell in East Mississippi Correctional
Facility run by MTC - described as "barbaric"

"a whopping 65 percent of ICE detainees were held in facilities run by private prison companies, which typically earn a fee per detainee per night and whose business model depends upon minimizing costs to return profits to shareholders. 

Since Trump's election, private prison stocks have soared, and two new, for-profit detention centers are opening in Georgia and Texas."  


When you take these ICE raids in California into consideration, along with the aggressive push by the Department of Justice (under the direction of this White House) to drastically ramp up taxpayer funds going to the for-profit prison industry, in my view it is disturbing evidence that Trump and his equally-xenophobic Attorney General Jeff Sessions are determined to turn the home of the Statue of Liberty into some kind of authoritarian landscape.

It's kind of an obscene marriage between the divisive right-wing ideology of the Trump administration, which vilifies and scapegoats non-white people, and the kind of rampant vampire capitalism that the current Republican Party has pimped itself out to - and worships like a deity.

(Case in point: Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's announcement on Tuesday that the Senate will pursue passage of a "banking reform bill" rather than tackling the gun reform legislation that a majority of Americans are now demanding in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.)

The result is that the convergence of rigid ideology and unchecked greed now serves as some kind of ideological club (wielded by ICE) for right-leaning conservatives to attack states like California, which have rejected the Trump agenda in favor of more moderate and inclusive policies.

As Hamed Aleaziz reported in an article for SFGate.com early Wednesday morning, the most recent raids, deemed Operation Keep Safe, have heightened tensions between ICE and local California municipalities like Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles - where local leaders have pledged to protect the status of their communities as "sanctuary cities" so that members of the immigrant community are not afraid to report crimes to the police, or call emergency services.

ICE agents conduct a raid at a home in Georgia

The High-Chair President's response is the targeted deployment of federal agents using Gestapo-like tactics to round people up.

And in effect, place them into camps.

Of course, ICE painting these most recent raids with an intentionally melodramatic description like "Operation Keep Safe", helps to frame these actions in a context aligned with the Trump administration's ceaseless demonizing of undocumented immigrants.

An extension of Trump's attempts to project his own bigotry onto those he deems as some kind of monolithic dark-skinned menace.

It's intended to play to Trump's hyper-conservative base of support, many of whom are easily swayed to project their personal economic insecurities onto "others"

And use anti-immigrant hysteria to voice their frustration with an economic recovery that's further enriched the wealthiest 1%, but left average Americans stifled by stagnant wages on the sidelines watching progress and opportunity pass them by.

As Jenna Lyons and Hamed Aleaziz reported in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle earlier today, one of those people swept up in "Operation Keep Safe" was 55-year-old Jesus Manzo Ceja.

Jesus Manzo Ceja's daughter Brenda and wife 
Guadalupe at their home in Napa Valley, CA  

An undocumented immigrant who came to California 30 years ago with his family, Ceja walked outside of his home early Wednesday morning to move his truck and discovered ICE agents outside lying in wait with a warrant for his arrest.

While ICE agents (supposedly) cannot force their way into someone's home to detain someone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant, nothing prevents them from simply waiting outside of someone's place of work, home or a court house.


According to the Chronicle, Ceja's 27-year-old daughter Brenda (pictured above), a U.S. citizen by birth, told reporters, "When they took my dad, they asked for my mom, but she was too scared to come out of the house."

The man who worked construction jobs to provide for his family and drove his wife and 15-year-old son to their weekly physician's appointments is now in custody in a facility in Stockton, CA awaiting deportation back to Mexico.

Ostensibly, he was arrested for having spent three weeks in jail for a DUI 14 years ago and also having been stopped for driving without a license.

But Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have made it abundantly clear why 232 different people were arrested over a four day period in Northern California between Sunday and Wednesday.

Granted, some were people with criminal records, but many, like Jesus Manzo Ceja were simply people with non-violent administrative offenses on their record - is deporting them really keeping Americans safe?

People caught up in a theater of extremist anti-immigrant ideology - arrested for being who they are in a nation of immigrants.

Playing Politics With American Lives

Ghanian immigrant Emmanuel Mensah died saving
four people from a fire in the Bronx in December

Yesterday 23-year-old Private First Class Emmanuel Mensah, a legal permanent resident from the west African nation of Ghana, was laid to rest after a funeral at Our Lady of Mount Caramel Catholic Church in Belmont, NY.

Mensah was a decorated member of the Army National Guard who died on the night of December 28th after repeatedly going back into a raging fire in a Bronx building to save four people.

Started by a child playing with a gas stove, it was the deadliest New York fire in 25 years, a blaze that eventually killed 13 people.

Mensah, who was visiting relatives on the first floor of the building when the fire broke out, could have easily saved himself.

But he went back into the burning building three separate times to rescue others, and eventually collapsed and died of smoke inhalation on the fourth floor of the building while trying to save a fifth person.

He was posthumously awarded the New York State Medal of Valor and the Soldier's Medal - the U.S. Army's highest honor awarded for bravery in non-combat. 

As Rich Shapiro reported for the NY Daily News on Saturday, during his eulogy Cardinal Timothy Dolan observed: 

"In the selfless valor, the instinctive willingness to sacrifice and give his all, Emmanuel was God with us, reminding us of the most noble calling of the human person, to give ourselves in sacrifice and love to others." 

Mensah's courage stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration's almost ceaseless attempts to vilify immigrants to the United States, legal or undocumented, who happen to be people of color, Hispanic or Muslims.

Young immigrants rallying for DACA

Trump's strange near-obsession with trying to unravel the achievements of the Obama administration, regardless of the impact on the American people, the economy, the environment or the nation's reputation overseas, is well documented.

But his poorly-thought out decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy last fall was a misguided and reactionary move to eliminate a fragile but logical temporary fix to the larger immigration issue - one that wasn't perfect, but it worked.

By taking a wrecking ball to DACA, Trump sought to fire up his primary base of support, working class white people who'd been left dismayed and marginalized by an increasingly globalized economy.

Angry people left on the fringes of a shrinking middle-class devastated by a brutal combination of the Great Recession, the mortgage housing crisis, stagnant wages and a decades-long trend of U.S. corporations shifting manufacturing jobs (and the huge range of jobs and small businesses that supported that manufacturing) to overseas countries to take advantage of cheaper labor, favorable tax loopholes and more lax labor laws.

Think about those large numbers of understandably frustrated working class whites who came out in droves in 2015 and 2016 during the presidential campaign to collectively vent their pent up anger at Trump rallies.

People who spent their hard-earned money on Trump's red "Make America Great Again" hats, and cheered as they bought into Trump's con-game that all their problems could be conveniently laid at the feet of legal and undocumented immigrants.

Was it easier for Trump supporters to vent their
fury against immigrants instead of bankers?

You never saw really saw those red-state Trump supporters coming out in the streets to protest the Wall Street con artists, greedy bankers, insurance giants and corrupt rating agencies that conspired to reap trillions of dollars in profits after systematically slicing people's mortgages up into risky financial products before crashing the economy.

Do you recall seeing crowds of Trump supporters marching in the streets or outside the offices of AIG, Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America or Chase?


In fact, Fox News, the primary news source for those Trump's supporters, like other major media outlets, tended to dismiss and even mock the grassroots Occupy Wall Street protests that broke out in 2011 - and as Brian Stelter observed in a 11/20/11 New York Times article, mainstream media analysis as a whole tended to ignore the deeper substantive issues behind the movement.

But five years later, those same Trump supporters were quick to agree when "Mr. Art of the Deal" insisted that immigrants were to blame for all their woes and that building a big-ass wall along the southern border with Mexico would make everything better.

Fast forward to September, 2017.

With his oft-repeated campaign promise that Mexico would pay for the wall now exposed as one of his many lies, and the Republican-controlled Congress nowhere near green-lighting funding to build it, an increasingly frustrated Trump turned his notoriously short attention span to lower hanging fruit on the political tree.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing that
DACA is being rescinded in September, 2017  

In an example of poorly-thought out political strategy colored by overt ethnic and racial bias, the Trump administration thought that by rescinding DACA, he could take a swipe at Obama and reassure his impatient base that he was taking aim at hard-working immigrants.

And also absolve himself of any responsibility for the gargantuan bureaucratic mess he made by simply shifting the blame for it onto Congress.

Trump had Attorney General Jeff Sessions announce it on 9/5/17.

So think about that, Trump revokes DACA under the justification that Obama creating it was an overreach of executive authority.

Then he "gives" Congress six months to pass legislation to enact a more permanent fix for one of the most pressing immigration problems that Obama created DACA to address - because Congress had refused to do anything about it for years.

As a reminder of just  how absurd that is, remember that back in June of 2012, after more than ten years of Congress bickering over how to pass legislation that would offer undocumented immigrants a legal pathway to citizenship, President Obama took action.

With a Republican-controlled House of Representatives dominated by a right-wing "Freedom Caucus" that had pledged to oppose anything that he proposed, because well, the president was black, Obama issued an executive order creating DACA.

President Obama announcing the creating of DACA
back in June of 2012

DACA was intended for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as young children by their parents.

Only those without felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records would be eligible - and as a condition of the program, every two years they would have to have their DACA status renewed.

The only thing DACA does is defer deportation and grant recipients a work permit so they can show up for work (and contribute taxes to the U.S. economy) without fear of being deported.

Despite Republican hysteria over the program, only about 800,000 immigrants were enrolled in DACA as of 2017 - that's 800,000 people out of an approximate total U.S. population of 326,766,748 people.

That's 0.11% of the U.S. population.

Where DACA is concerned, Trump and some of the Republican politicians who currently control the legislative process want to have their political cake and eat it too.

Trump rescinded DACA, then gave the Republican-controlled Congress six months to pass legislation they've been unable or unwilling to pass for almost two decades.

So either Trump is delusional and has no idea how the legislative process actually functions, or he knows it's unlikely Congress can get it's shit together and send a workable bill to the president's desk to be signed into law. 

Obviously it's called "politics" for a reason, but it's getting pretty tiresome watching the Republican-controlled House and Senate ping-pong back and forth over granting the so-called Dreamers a proper pathway to citizenship.

GOP Senators James Lankford (OK) & Tom Cotton
(AK) discussing an immigration bill last Monday

Last week two different versions of bills that would have granted a pathway to citizenship were both voted down in the Senate by margins well below the 60 votes that would have been needed to pass them.

One of the bills would have granted about 1.8 million Dreamers a 10 to 15-year process for citizenship and a staggering $25 billion for Trump's long-coveted wall.

The bills failed to pass the Senate because the White House has signaled that Trump will veto any bill that doesn't contain money to fund his wall.

And by now it's clear that most Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate think such a wall is a total waste of taxpayer money.

Many experts, including researchers and small business owners who live and work along the border areas where the wall would be constructed agree isn't feasible, appropriate for the environment, or needed for a variety of reasons.

Including the simple fact that undocumented migration from Mexico has been shrinking steadily since 2007 according to data from the Pew Research Center.

Left in the middle of all this are millions of undocumented immigrants, of which the Dreamers in the DACA program make up only a small percentage.

Frankly I'm not sure I really like the term "Dreamer" because it comes from the Dream Act which was originally proposed by Congress 17 years ago back in 2001 - calling people Dreamers associates them with Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration legislation.

To me, slapping a label on thousands of people who were either born in, or brought here to the United States at an early age by parents who came here as undocumented immigrants, tends to have the effect of making it easier to dehumanize them.

Soldiers carry Pfc. Emmanuel Mensah's casket
after his funeral service in the Bronx on Saturday 

Something that Trump seems to relish and obsess over, like when he made headlines back in December by calling African and South American countries "shitholes" during a meeting at the White House.

Crudely parroting his white supremacist senior adviser Stephen Miller by wondering aloud to shocked Congressional attendees why the U.S. should accept immigrants from those countries.

Immigrants like Pfc. Emmanuel Mensah, who gave his life to save his fellow Americans.

Like it or not, by definition these individuals are Americans, people who live and attend school or work here in the United State - some have even served (or are serving) in the U.S. military.

It's not my job to decide these things, but as an average reasonable-minded American, as far as I'm concerned if you sign up to serve in the military, you're automatically a U.S. citizen.

Maybe the term of service would have to be a little longer than two years in the same sense that graduates of the Naval Academy or West Point must serve a minimum of five years after graduating, but serving Uncle Sam makes you an American in my book - period.

Regardless it's past time Congress stepped up to the plate to pass comprehensive legislation, they've been talking about it for more than twenty years.

Maybe, as some members of Congress have suggested, they need to do this in steps and first pass a clean DACA bill as a first step - there's bipartisan support to make that happen.

However they do it, it's not fair for Trump to hold up DACA legislation because he wants money for his ill-advised pet wall project.

Undocumented immigrants have been a part of the fabric of this nation since it was founded, it's about time Congress start dealing with it like informed adults.

And it's past time that Trump stops playing politics with American lives.