How tyrants deal with opposition

For context, a reference point

“You’re up there, you’ve got half the room going totally crazy — wild, they loved everything, they want to do something great for our country. And you have the other side — even on positive news, really positive news like that — they were like death. And un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not! I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.” -- Our scumbag Republican ex-president calling Democrats treasonous and un-American because they did not applaud when he said things they did not like or agree with, including his lies, in his misstatement of the union address to congress. Also note the blatant logic flaw that Republican propaganda uses to further divide society: → If you don't applaud to the scumbag's lies and sleaze, you don't love your country.

“And I know a lot of people were very disappointed, but they knew the real answer. You know, when the Democrats go behind the scenes and they go into a room backstage and they sit and they talk, they laugh because they know it's all a big scam, a big hoax [referring to Russian interference in the 2016 election]. And it's called politics, but this is dirty politics and this is actually treason." "And I know a lot of people were very disappointed, but they knew the real answer. You know, when the Democrats go behind the scenes and they go into a room backstage and they sit and they talk, they laugh because they know it's all a big scam, a big hoax. And it's called politics, but this is dirty politics and this is actually treason.” -- Our scumbag Republican ex-president calling Democrats traitors for playing dirty politics, which is standard Republican politician practice, without one shred of evidence of actual treason.  

“The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!” -- Our scumbag Republican ex-president calling some Republicans in congress human scum because they allegedly opposed him.

What the tyrant Putin is doing

The New York Times writes: 

President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday referred to pro-Western Russians as “scum and traitors” who needed to be removed from society, describing the war in Ukraine as part of an existential clash with the United States and setting the stage for an ever fiercer crackdown at home and even more aggression abroad.

Comparing the West to Nazi Germany, the Russian leader laced his speech with derision for the “political beau monde” in Europe and the United States, and for the “slave-like” Russians who supported it. It was a far more hard-line message than one delivered earlier in the day by Mr. Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who said that Russia saw “a certain hope that a compromise can be reached” with Ukraine to end the war.

“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Mr. Putin said. “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges.”

The beginnings of a new crackdown quickly emerged.

Self-purification of society as executed by Putin and his thugs. That is creepy. Scary for the people to be purified, presumably by force.

But come to think of it, that is sort of what American Christian nationalists want to do to American society by force of law. And, a form of self-purification (ideological cleansing) is what the Republican Party has already done to itself via years of RINO hunts, leading to inbred social mental defects.[1] And, that is also what major online pro-Republican politics sites have done in the form of blocking inconvenient facts and dissenting opinions and arguments.

Question: Notice any similarity between Putin and the ex-president and the Republican Party? 

Footnote: 

1. For example:

See, the famous scientist Walker points out that since the apes 

are still here, evolution is a Democratic Party hoax 

😵‍💫

Venue shopping in federal court lawsuits

Republican (Trump) Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk: 

Being transgendered is a delusion, 'yall!

Christian nationalist response: A Major Win For Religious Freedom: 

Matthew Kacsmaryk Confirmed As U.S. District Judge in Texas

The New Republic writes about the well-known practice of venue or judge shopping for filing federal lawsuits. The practice is bipartisan, but the article focuses on the federal judicial district the Republicans favor to block what Democrats try to do. This is more evidence that claim the rule of law is blind is a myth. Some of the examples the article describe are clear reflections of fundamentalist Christian nationalism dogma influencing secular law. 

The law isn't always blind. It can be clearly political and religious partisan. TNR writes:

There are 94 federal judicial districts in America, but one has become the primary venue of choice for Republicans looking to challenge President Biden’s every move: the Northern District of Texas.

It’s no secret why the party turns to this particular district in search of a favorable ruling. All but two of its 18 judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and a Democratic president hasn’t appointed one in the district since 1999. Almost every major Biden administration initiative runs a similar gauntlet: A coalition of Republican state attorneys general files a legal challenge in the Northern District, a Republican-appointed judge grants a preliminary injunction blocking the policy from going into effect, the majority-Republican-appointed Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the order, and the majority-Republican-appointed Supreme Court usually declines to intervene.

This practice is known as judge-shopping, and two Northern District judges in particular sit atop Republicans’ wish list: Judge Reed O’Connor, the George W. Bush appointee who gutted the Indian Child Welfare Act and tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to end the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program for asylum applicants on the Southern border.

“Some district courts have carefully divided their caseloads to avoid the possibility of judge-shopping—ensuring that no judge hears more than 10–15 percent of the cases filed in any specific division,” Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, wrote in January. “But others haven’t. Of the seven divisions in the Western District of Texas, four have exactly one judge hearing every single case. And five of the seven divisions in the Northern District of Texas have one judge hearing all or most cases—including the Wichita Falls division, where O’Connor hears more than 85 percent of civil cases.”

Of the 20 lawsuits filed against the Biden administration by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 13 were filed in district court divisions with only a single judge, all of whom were Trump appointees. Last September, for instance, Paxton filed a legal challenge to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidance for gender identity and workplace discrimination in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District. By filing there, he effectively ensured that it would be heard by Kacsmaryk, who staunchly opposed anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender Americans in his pre-judicial career. Kacsmaryk came under intense criticism during his confirmation process for previously describing homosexuality as “disordered” and signed a letter in 2016 that described being transgender as “a delusion.” (emphasis added)

Simple procedural changes would effectively address the venue shopping problem. Federal court rules could require that each case have no more than a 50 percent chance of being assigned to a specific judge. Congress could pass a law to require that patent law cases, which are heavily venue shopped to one judge in Texas who publicly advertised himself as friendly to patent trolls[1], should only be filed where the parties have substantial local connections. The fixes are easy but they probably won't happen any time soon. That is because (i) the law is too often aware and partisan, not neutral and blind, and (ii) American law and government are broken and cannot competently function any longer.

Two points are worth remembering:

• The law is not always blind --- sometimes it is blatantly political and partisan
• Fundamentalist Christian nationalist dogma is hell-bent on de-secularizing American law, government and society and forcing aggressive, vengeful Christian Sharia law on all Americans and institutions, i.e., Christian nationalism is not warm and fuzzy, it is enraged and itchin' to fix what God says is busted with sinful America and sinful Americans 

Footnote: 

1. A patent troll is a patent owner who makes money by suing people who infringe on his patents, not by making, using or selling what the patent claims. This practice has been criticized as abuse of the patent system, which is intended to protect commercial uses for claimed subject matter. In essence, patent trolls have commercialized the practice of suing people to make money, instead of using the patent to protect the commercial activity it claims. Obviously, if a federal judge advertises themself as friendly to patent trolls, that is the judge the trolls want to file their lawsuit with. 

For context, all patent lawsuits must be filed in federal courts. Patent law is a matter of federal law and states do not play a significant role. 

Zelensky's speech to Congress

At ~20:22 to 22:42 of this 26:39 video, Ukrainian president Zelensky showed a video of Putin's attacks on Ukraine. The images are heart wrenching.

Watching it is quite upsetting. Zelensky desperately pleaded for desperately needed help. After Zelensky's speech, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) responded with emotion in a 1:24 video that C-Span broadcast this morning. 

Sasse's reaction is mostly raw emotion and barely controlled commentary from a sitting US Senator. This is the kind of natural human response that can lead to an intended or accidental nuclear exchange and destruction of civilization. Billions of people would die.

Given all the misery, pain, heartbreak and blood that got humans paid to get to this point, blowing it all to smithereens would be a shame. Who wants mankind to go back to some kind of Mad Max post-apocalyptic hell on Earth? Self-annihilation would be disrespectful of the human struggle for civilization, to say the least.

A thought about Russian opposition in Russia: Try to support them

This one is from the One Cannot Afford to Ignore Allies files. A commenter here, Doug1943, posted this yesterday:

What would be desirable is if we could prevent the entire Russian people being driven into a nationalist, hail-our-glorious Leader frenzy. There are brave Russians who are trying to prevent this. (I lived there for a few months in 1985, returned several times after that, both before and after the fall of Communism, and made several Russian friends. Every single one of them loathes Putin. But right now, the mood is running against them.)

How can we help Russians now? The worst possible thing is for Russia to be intellectually isolated, for them to feel everyone despises them. Already we're hearing crap like "Russians are natural robots, don't you know where the word 'Slav' comes from?" etc.

So we need to make links. Not to scold them, not to urge them to go to prison by demonstrating -- that's their choice, not ours -- but to say, "We want you to be part of the democratic civilized world." And, ideally, according to me, to acknowledge that NATO expansion -- which we promised Mr Gorbachev would not happen -- has played a role in this horrible affair.

I have some ideas for making this happen. It involves some minimal searching, then cutting and pasting, ending up with a harvest of Russian email addresses. (When I last checked with a friend in Moscow, email was still working.)

Anyone interested in working with me on this should let me know.

Also: At a minimum, if you use the Chrome or Firefox browsers, get the 'Snowflake' (sic) add-on. It turns your computer into a relay point that allows Russian users of the TOR browser to evade censorship. It takes about two minutes to do, is free, and puts no load on your own computer.

The Tor browser is used by some people to evade government surveillance. The Chinese government has banned it. The Tor browser isolates each website you visit so third-party trackers and ads can't follow you. Any cookies automatically clear when you're done browsing. So will your browsing history. It prevents someone watching your connection from knowing what websites you visit. All anyone monitoring your browsing habits can see is that you're using Tor. It tries make all users look the same, making it difficult for you to be fingerprinted based on your browser and device information. Your traffic is relayed and encrypted three times as it passes over the Tor network. The network is comprised of thousands of volunteer-run servers known as Tor relays.

The Tor Project, a 501(c)(3) US nonprofit. Its goal is to advance human rights and defend privacy online through free software and open networks.

A screen shot of the add-on Snowflake for Firefox:

Snowflake is a WebRTC pluggable transport for Tor. Enabling this extension 

turns your browser into a proxy that connects 

Tor users in censored regions to the Tor network.

Fighting the global war for information and truth on the internet --

the Tor Snowflake system

ZDNet wrote this about Snowflake for Firefox and Chrome in 2019:

Tor Snowflake turns your browser into a proxy for users in censored countries

The extensions are not meant to be installed by users living in oppressive countries that block access to the Tor network. They're meant for those living in free countries, where governments don't block Tor access.

Users who want to help those living under oppressive regimes can install the Tor Snowflake extensions -- for Chrome or Firefox.

The two extensions effectively transform a user's browser into a proxy, allowing users in oppressive countries to connect through the extension (and the user's computer) to the Tor network.

We would be the Snowflake proxies resisting 

demagogues and tyrants

The Tor network is a collection of servers that encrypt and bounce traffic between each other, to anonymize a user's real location.

This network has multiple types of servers. There are Tor "guard" servers that serve as entry points to the Tor network. There are Tor "relays" that bounce the traffic inside the network and help anonymize the user's location. And then there are Tor "exit" servers, through which Tor traffic reconnects to the regular internet.

Due to their nature, the IP addresses of Tor guard servers are public, listed on the Tor website, so Tor clients (usually the Tor Browser) can read the list and connect to the Tor network through a safe server.

Over the years, countries have realized that they can block access to these servers, and effectively block a user from accessing Tor.

The Tor Project fought back by developing another type of Tor server, called a Tor bridge. These are Tor guard servers that don't have their IP addresses listed publicly.  

However, Tor bridges aren't a foolproof solution. Oppressive regimes have realized they can also request access to Tor bridges as well, and compile a list of IP addresses to block alongside the regular Tor guards.

Tor Snowflake is the Tor Project's reaction to governments that have managed to block Tor bridges.

Tor Snowflake helps the Tor Project create a constantly moving mesh of proxies that no government could ever block.  

The only downside to Tor Snowflake is the fact that another user's traffic now flows through your browser, taking up your bandwidth. Users on metered connections are advised against activating Snowflake, as this will incur additional costs.

Doug makes an important point by arguing that we should not blindly attack the Russian people. That can turn potential allies and neutrals into enemies. 

There is another point important lurking in the room. America and liberal democracies and civil liberties the world over are in a fight to the death with demagogic tyranny and anti-democratic radicalism. Democracy and freedom are under deadly attacks both from within the US (the Republican Party, Christian nationalism, laissez-faire capitalism) and from the outside (China, Russia, etc.). Allies everywhere are precious and need to be supported when possible.

IMHO, it is time to pick a side and fight for it as best one can.

Question for Doug: Would you please elaborate some on your ideas to help Russian allies trapped in Russia?

The unique stuff of life…

According to newscientist.com:

"Because everyone's DNA is unique – except for identical twins – it can be used to identify people, which is why forensic scientists collect samples of blood, saliva or hair and the like at crime scenes. Aside from encoding your physical features, DNA can also reveal some of your risk for certain medical conditions."

Now, add in a dash of massive worldwide computing power, coupled with continued advancements in DNA mapping, and voila!  You got yourself a practically foolproof way of identifying people.  A person has to go to a LOT of trouble to not sluff off any of their DNA.

Then I Googled “Is DNA registered at birth,” and I got:

"The DNA of virtually every newborn in the United States is collected and tested soon after birth. There are some good reasons for this testing, but it also raises serious privacy concerns that parents should know about. States require hospitals to screen newborns for certain genetic and other disorders."

This, according to the ALCU as well as other sites.  Seems that different states keep the data on file for various lengths of time.

Here are the questions:

-Are you for or against mandatory DNA registration at birth? Or do you see such a thing as intruding on personal freedom?

-Who/What kind of person would be against such a thing?  And why??

-If you are for such registration, how long should the data be kept?

-Who should have access to that data?  E.g., FBI, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, doctors and medical facilities, your neighbors, etc.  Where do you draw the line, if you do?

On vindicating the rule of law

Commitment to the rule of law is one of the core values of a liberal legal system. The adherents of such a system usually regard the concept of a "government of laws and not people" as the chief protector of the citizens' liberty. This Article argues that such is not the case. .... I refer to the myth of the rule of law because, to the extent that this phrase suggests a society in which all are governed by neutral rules that are objectively applied by judges, there is no such thing. As a myth, however, the concept of the rule of law is both powerful and dangerous. -- J. Hasnas, The Myth of the Rule of Law, 1995 Wis. L. Rev. 199 (1995)

Although reference to the judicial ermine [the intellectual purity myth] has fallen from common usage, the assumption it embodies-that when they don their robes, independent judges set aside their passions, prejudices, and interests and follow the law-remains integral to the legal establishment's traditional conception of the role that the judiciary plays in American government. That assumption has come under sustained attack by scholars and policymakers, leading to the question of whether there is enough truth to this "ermine myth" to make it one still worth defending, or whether the time has come to demythologize our understanding of what judges do and to acknowledge that, truth be told, the ermine is just a glorified weasel. Put another way, can the rule of law survive judicial politics? -- CG Geyh, Can the Rule of Law Survive Judicial Politics, Cornell Law Review, 97(2):191-254, 2012

I like weasels. Are judges weasels (ermine)? -- Germaine, 2022

Newsweek writes:

Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner believes that failing to hold former President Donald Trump "accountable for his crimes" will "destroy" the legitimacy of U.S. institutions.

Trump is facing multiple high-profile investigations, and some legal experts have urged the Justice Department to indict the former president or appoint a special counsel to investigate him. Kirschner has previously contended that Trump will face accountability for his actions related to January 6, 2021—when hundreds of his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol.

"DECLINING to hold Trump accountable for his crimes in light [of] the overwhelming evidence would be a political calculation. It would also would make a mockery of honest, law-abiding politicians & destroy the legitimacy of the institutions of American government. This is an easy call," Kirschner, who now works as a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC News, wrote in a Saturday tweet.

The attorney posted the remarks while sharing a tweet from the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The nonpartisan watchdog group wrote: "Frankly, we're getting tired of the whole 'prosecuting Donald Trump for crimes he may have committed is politically motivated' argument some of y'all are making. Holding him accountable isn't political, it's justice."

DECLINING to hold Trump accountable for his crimes in light the overwhelming evidence would be a political calculation. It would also would make a mockery of honest, law-abiding politicians & destroy the legitimacy of the institutions of American government. This is an easy call. https://t.co/UDWNwKx2Ia

— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) March 12, 2022

Mr. Kirschner argues that failing to try to vindicate the rule of law would be a political decision, not a legal one, and that would damage the legitimacy of democratic institutions. 

Question: Is Kirschner's argument and opinion reasonable? 

The stoat or short-tailed weasel (Mustela erminea), also known as the 

Eurasian ermine, Beringian ermine, or simply ermine, is a mustelid 

native to Eurasia and the northern portions of North America