Category: Current Events
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Show Me the Insurrection
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Trump has backed down – for the moment – from invoking the Insurrection Act. But what is it, and how does a mish-mash of laws keep us safe? Do they prevent us from abuses by the President? The Insurrection Act was originally passed in 1807 and was signed into law…
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What is the Nobel Prize?
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The question should rather be: what are the Nobel Prizes? Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) spent his illustrious career as an industrialist (he owned some 100 factories), chemist, engineer and inventor (355 patents, listed at https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/list-of-alfred-nobels-patents/); he was particularly known for his work with the armaments industry in Sweden, Norway, greater Europe,…
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What is the Department of Homeland Security?
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Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. The Department of Homeland Security remains one of the most complex, opaque organizations in the history of the government of the United States. Following the 9/11/2001 attacks, President George W. Bush introduced the idea of an abstruse “war on terror,” emphasizing…
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ICE and the Freedom to Dissent
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I’m continuing our discussion about ICE and their unprecedented reign of terror in our country. This time, however, I am delving into the surveillance state and how this activity translates into ICE “enforcement” actions. ICE is not the only part of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration apparatus, but it…
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What’s the Deal With ICE?
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These days, the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, has become an amorphous behemoth, with certain characteristics that hearken back to its original mandate – but with many more that defy easy categorization. As it was formulated, ICE was a civil…
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We Did Not Assent to This
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I might as well jump right into the mess I’m seeing around us. Murder. Troops in cities. Concentration camps. Invasion of a sovereign nation. Threatened military coups. Gaslighting. We are living in a time I never thought I would experience in our nation’s history, and it can be hard to…