klu9

joined 6 days ago
 

The only laws the Trump Administration respects are the laws it gets to inflict on others. The rule of law, however, doesn’t mean the laws don’t apply to those who make the rules. And yet, here we are, seeing another flagrant refusal to comply with oversight laws just because the DHS and ICE feel they can keep getting away with this.

Last month, ICE’s refusal to allow congressional reps to engage in an unannounced inspection of a New Jersey detention facility resulted in the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka — something that occurred even though Baraka followed ICE officers’ orders and returned to the public sidewalk outside of the facility’s gates. That then led to federal prosecutors receiving a tongue-lashing from a federal judge for the arrest and refusal to dismiss the obviously bogus charges the feds used to justify their retaliatory arrest of the mayor.

It’s happening again, albeit without the arrests. But it’s still just as unlawful. Congressional reps on both coasts were denied access to ICE detention facilities — something ICE cannot legally do.

Three Democratic members of Congress from California and two from New York said over the weekend that they were barred from entering federal detention centers in their respective states to check on people who were detained in immigration raids or in protests against the raids.

All five members — Representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez and Norma Torres of California and Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez of New York — said that they should have been allowed to enter the buildings as members of Congress.

The congressional reps are entirely in the right, even if DHS head Kristi Noem and professional liar/DHS PR rep Tricia McLaughlin say otherwise. Inconveniently for both Noem and McLaughlin, ICE’s current acting direction, Todd Lyons, has publicly confirmed congressional members have the right to engage in unannounced inspections of federal facilities.

“We do acknowledge that any member of Congress has the right to show up for an inspection at one of our facilities in their oversight capability,” Lyons said. He also said that while those visits are “unannounced,” members need to show identification and go through screening and can’t bring contraband.

By law, members of Congress are allowed to visit ICE facilities and don’t have to give any notice, although congressional staff members need to give 24 hours’ notice.

That’s what’s being said by ICE, but that’s definitely not how ICE is actually doing things. And ICE’s parent agency, the DHS, is only too happy to oblige ICE’s incorrect claims and unlawful actions by adding more bullshit of its own.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said that the lawmakers had shown up unannounced. ICE officials had told them, she said, that they “would be happy to give them a tour with a little more notice, when it would not disrupt ongoing law enforcement activities and sensitive law enforcement items could be put away.”

Wrong answer, Trish. The law says congressional reps can enter at any time without any prior notice. There’s no provision in the oversight law that gives federal agencies a bit of extra time to tidy up the place and hide anything incriminating. Oversight isn’t really oversight if those being inspected are given advance notice and enough time to sweep stuff under the rugs.

But ICE continues to pretend otherwise and Tricia McLaughlin is always on hand to misrepresent the law and/or claim these completely legal impromptu inspections are nothing more than political stunts. Even if they are “political stunts” (and they are, to a certain extent), the law doesn’t say federal agencies can bar Congress members from entry just because they might they have problems with any perceived motive.

The law is law, but somehow that just never seems to be the case when it comes to this administration. Trump and his cabinet are still picking and choosing which laws they’ll follow and relying on the resulting deluge of lawsuits to continue violating laws while overworked courts try (often in vain) to rein in this administration. Hopefully the tide will turn in the near future, and the system of checks and balances will slowly begin to drain the swamp Trump has created.


From Techdirt via this RSS feed

 

The only laws the Trump Administration respects are the laws it gets to inflict on others. The rule of law, however, doesn’t mean the laws don’t apply to those who make the rules. And yet, here we are, seeing another flagrant refusal to comply with oversight laws just because the DHS and ICE feel they can keep getting away with this.

Last month, ICE’s refusal to allow congressional reps to engage in an unannounced inspection of a New Jersey detention facility resulted in the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka — something that occurred even though Baraka followed ICE officers’ orders and returned to the public sidewalk outside of the facility’s gates. That then led to federal prosecutors receiving a tongue-lashing from a federal judge for the arrest and refusal to dismiss the obviously bogus charges the feds used to justify their retaliatory arrest of the mayor.

It’s happening again, albeit without the arrests. But it’s still just as unlawful. Congressional reps on both coasts were denied access to ICE detention facilities — something ICE cannot legally do.

Three Democratic members of Congress from California and two from New York said over the weekend that they were barred from entering federal detention centers in their respective states to check on people who were detained in immigration raids or in protests against the raids.

All five members — Representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez and Norma Torres of California and Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez of New York — said that they should have been allowed to enter the buildings as members of Congress.

The congressional reps are entirely in the right, even if DHS head Kristi Noem and professional liar/DHS PR rep Tricia McLaughlin say otherwise. Inconveniently for both Noem and McLaughlin, ICE’s current acting direction, Todd Lyons, has publicly confirmed congressional members have the right to engage in unannounced inspections of federal facilities.

“We do acknowledge that any member of Congress has the right to show up for an inspection at one of our facilities in their oversight capability,” Lyons said. He also said that while those visits are “unannounced,” members need to show identification and go through screening and can’t bring contraband.

By law, members of Congress are allowed to visit ICE facilities and don’t have to give any notice, although congressional staff members need to give 24 hours’ notice.

That’s what’s being said by ICE, but that’s definitely not how ICE is actually doing things. And ICE’s parent agency, the DHS, is only too happy to oblige ICE’s incorrect claims and unlawful actions by adding more bullshit of its own.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said that the lawmakers had shown up unannounced. ICE officials had told them, she said, that they “would be happy to give them a tour with a little more notice, when it would not disrupt ongoing law enforcement activities and sensitive law enforcement items could be put away.”

Wrong answer, Trish. The law says congressional reps can enter at any time without any prior notice. There’s no provision in the oversight law that gives federal agencies a bit of extra time to tidy up the place and hide anything incriminating. Oversight isn’t really oversight if those being inspected are given advance notice and enough time to sweep stuff under the rugs.

But ICE continues to pretend otherwise and Tricia McLaughlin is always on hand to misrepresent the law and/or claim these completely legal impromptu inspections are nothing more than political stunts. Even if they are “political stunts” (and they are, to a certain extent), the law doesn’t say federal agencies can bar Congress members from entry just because they might they have problems with any perceived motive.

The law is law, but somehow that just never seems to be the case when it comes to this administration. Trump and his cabinet are still picking and choosing which laws they’ll follow and relying on the resulting deluge of lawsuits to continue violating laws while overworked courts try (often in vain) to rein in this administration. Hopefully the tide will turn in the near future, and the system of checks and balances will slowly begin to drain the swamp Trump has created.


From Techdirt via this RSS feed

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 minutes ago

Awww...

Can I at least use the and tags?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 minutes ago* (last edited 20 minutes ago) (4 children)

Trying it out:

orion

No sound in Piefed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 57 minutes ago

Ahem, I believe it's "jerbs".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

Just line the parade route and turn your backs on him and his brownshirts as they pass by.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

" Lots of planets have a white cismale backlash"?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago

A simpler time... when a fan could post a GIF of Spock shagging a sheep without having to worry about being downvoted. Only about how many people signed their guestbook.

 

TIL about GifCities, the Internet Archive's collection and search engine for GIFs from Geocities, the host of free personal websites from the turn of the century.

Calvin and Hobbes on wagon downhill

A search for "Calvin" finds almost exclusively GIFs of our favourite six-year-old and very few of a 16th century protestant reformer.

Although our Calvin does have a theological opinion.
Calvin religious principles

Original post:
https://piefed.social/post/896235

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

My software chops begin and end with: 10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD" 20 GOTO 10

Good to hear devs are working on it.

 

GIFs!

We are excited to announce a new version of GifCities, Internet Archive’s GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine!

https://gifcities.org/

The new version of GifCities includes a number of new improvements. We are especially excited at the drastic improvement in “GifSearchies” by implementing semantic search for GifCities, instead of the hacky old “file name” text search of the original version.

This news makes me want to dance!

Calvin and Hobbes dancing

Why not post your favourite Geocities GIFs below?

 

GIFs!

We are excited to announce a new version of GifCities, Internet Archive’s GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine!

https://gifcities.org/

The new version of GifCities includes a number of new improvements. We are especially excited at the drastic improvement in “GifSearchies” by implementing semantic search for GifCities, instead of the hacky old “file name” text search of the original version.

This news makes me want to dance!

Calvin and Hobbes dancing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Thanks for the info.

In the meantime, I opened a new tab, input my instance, waited for the home page to load, searched for 'elena rossini', compared the top two results (her channels?), went with one, looked at its list of videos and saw that it didn't include the video in question, went back, chose the other account and discovered it has zero videos.

???

Saw your reply, tried new search: "Introducing the Fediverse"... 471 results with hers not visible among the top results. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Looked again at your reply, copied that video link that you originally gave and searched... and it works! (Although... how did you get it? I can't see it anywhere else.) Finally I can upvote it. Sheesh!

Also, tried searching for "[email protected]"

  • a search term that I think you can only find if you have already found the video? Catch-22?
  • finds the right channel (which is neither of the ones found in my original search)... but no videos... not even the one it just found when searching for that URL. Same when I'm on the page of the video on my instance ( https://peertube.wtf/w/64VuNCccZNrP4u9MfgbhkN ) and click on its channel name... no videos.

???

So, there's a chance of me being able to eventually interact with the video... if someone else somehow finds an underlying URL and helpfully gives it to me and I then copy and paste it into my instance's search bar.

Meanwhile with content on every non-fediverse social network, it just takes one click to reach and interact with it (comment, upvote etc).

A social network system that breaks the basic building block of the web, the link, seems to be shooting itself in the foot. I hope the fediverse comes up with a much more user-friendly solution soon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (4 children)

I'm still new to the Fediverse; how do I view that link in my home instance of Peertube (peertube.wtf) so that I can save, upvote, comment etc?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

Me neither.

  • Browser: Zen (fork of Firefox)
  • Extension: LibRedirect (pre-installed in Zen IIRC)
  • App: FreeTube

I click on a YouTube link and it opens in FreeTube, no ads.

Every now and then, videos won't play because of some change by Google, usually it's just a day or so until FreeTube releases an update that works again.

32
The weaponization of Waymo (www.bloodinthemachine.com)
 

One thing that I was thinking about as I walked around downtown, the somewhat gloomy summer fog helping to hold the fumes and the apocalyptic mood from last nights’ violence in the air, multiple helicopters and an airborne drone circling, was the way that protestors had turned the self-driving cars against the state they were designed to appease.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I instantly recognized the intro. I've been listening to the Extended Boilerhouse Mix of A Tribe Called Quest's Can I Kick It? for three and half decades and somehow only today connected these two tracks.

https://youtu.be/2EPyPMLOM3w

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

Truly groundbreaking.

Let the songs begin!

SLY & THE FAMILY STONE THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 1973 LIVE -4K- REMASTERED.(STEREO.) (19 minute set) https://youtu.be/UpUCJWlN0sE

 
 

Teaser trailer

Rise of the Deceiver is an action co-op game in which players, imbued with powers bestowed upon them by the legendary members of the Wu-Tang Clan, fight against invaders that wish to corrupt their home. It’s been in development for three years, and started as a companion piece to Angel of Dust, a movie produced by Ghostface Killah and directed by The RZA.

While there have been numerous hip-hop-centric video games over the years, very few of them tackle the artistry, history, and culture of the genre beyond using it as set dressing. “We wanted to create something where it was built from the ground up,” Dabby Smith said. “It was by the culture, for the culture, and actually representing what [Wu-Tang Clan] put out there through the years.”

 

Written by George Takei, Steven Scott, Justin Eisinger
Art by Harmony Becker
Published by IDW Publishing

It Rhymes with Takei fills in the massive blanks George left in his bestselling autobiography of the 1990s by sharing the story of his being a secretly gay man. It’s a book about love, not sex, a book about the pain of hiding one’s true self. It’s a book about fear, about ambition, about shame, about hollow success, and, most of all, it’s a book about growth.

 

Exactly what it says on the tin.

The Voice has some artifacts, but I had to get it out of my head and into yours.
Peter Griffin Backed by the Sky Power Band:

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