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Jan's avatar

Two new words/word uses for you today:

1) Grogger - MAGA person who is suddenly realizing what s/he elected and is rejecting the results. They are not quite "woke". They are about halfway there, so they are groggy.

2) Magasplaining - It is derived from the word "mansplaining". It involves the proliferation of fake news and pseudo-facts that are produced by the MAGA community to justify their rhetoric. They never stop to listen to truth or research the real facts about the ideas they are explaining. Since it is gender neutral because both MAGA men and MAGA women do the same thing, it gets the broader moniker of "magasplaining".

Jan's avatar

Today I look at the courts. There is an article in mainstream media titled "Judge orders administration to submit plan for return of migrants deported to El Salvador prison under AEA". I have no argument with the direction this is going. America has a constitutional amendment that prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment". The administration side stepped this amendment by deporting immigrants to places where there is no prohibition against such treatment. Moreover, the destination was not even the country of origin of the immigrants.

My concern is not the court ruling. It is December. The first wave of people to El Salvador was almost 12 months ago. What happened to "speedy trial"? Is this not a matter of life and death? Why are lawyers who sit comfortably in their penthouse suites being given lots of courtesy time to ponder all of the legal possibilities, while the daily lives of the victims are a living hell? Why is this not on a "zero day" track, so that we would have been at this point 12 days after they were deported? Why is no one in the administration being arrested for defying the courts? How are we believing that justice even has a chance to breathe in a country where people can be disappeared, and then the ponderous wheels of the court system begin to turn and consider and think, and debate, and wonder, and reconsider, and avoid, and delay, and ignore, and coerce, and threaten, and review, and .... until all victims are dead, and the final decision requires no real action, but precedent is established as an entry point for the next atrocity that might offend the senses of the public.

A person on trial for murder deserves the ponderous consideration of the courts. A person, or group of people who have been treated extra-judicially, and are suffering deserve unreserved speed from the justice system, including orders to incarcerate obstructing leaders. Anyone who refuses to follow the order of the court should be removed from the position of leadership and the next person in the chain of command should be given a few hours to follow the court's orders. Instead, we see an entire administration say "no", and then we argue about it for months, as if the rights of the perpetrator exceed the rights of the victims. The inversion here is indefensible.

SCOTUS has so weakened the power and credibility of the courts that we now see a flaunting of court authority. It has been almost an entire year. How can we call this justice? It is not even justice for the perpetrators, because it gives them the impression that they are "right" enough, when "cruel and unusual" is prohibited at a foundational level that parallels the much enshrined "right to bear arms". American lawyers and leaders have fought harder for the right to bear arms - inanimate objects - than they have for the lives of humans whom this administration deems "refuse". Read carefully the words etched in stone at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Read carefully the description of those to whom America offers "liberty": "Send these, the wretched refuse of your teaming shores". The declaration of these immigrants as "refuse" by this administration only increases their qualification for our offers of "liberty". Patrick Henry, in his famous speech equated liberty with life. The Declaration of Independence establishes "life" and "liberty" on equal footing. Yet for nearly a year, the "blessings of liberty" have been denied, by undue delay in process, to those immigrants who have been declared to be refuse.

What has happened to America?

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