At present, we have three dachshunds. I’ve almost always had dogs, initially largish dogs, including a Siberian Husky, a vain and near-brainless Samoyed, several other canines of mixed parentage, and then Toffee, aka Toffee Royale, a pure-bred female chocolate Labrador retriever, who weighed almost eighty pounds without an ounce of fat on her and who could and would retrieve tennis balls longer than any of my teenaged offspring could throw them (and all of them were athletes). Toffee even broke up a local softball game in New Hampshire by “retrieving” the softball and refusing to surrender it.

But until I met and married my wife the professor and opera singer, I’d never made the acquaintance of any dachshund – except in passing. I just thought they were short-legged, often obnoxious, bark-boxes. After Toffee’s passing (at seventeen, no less), my wife longed for another dachshund, because her last dachshund had died before we met. We found a rescue long-haired red dachshund puppy we immediately named Siegfried. He was cute, playful, affectionate – and an escape artist. To this day, I often could never discover how he got out on more than a few occasions.

One of us would have to go out and call him… and then, suddenly, he was right beside whoever took on recovery duty with this expression that proclaimed, “What’s the fuss? I’ve been here all along.”

Because dogs really do better with other dogs, especially according to my wife (and I will not- quite-grudgingly admit that they are pack animals), we soon added a black and tan smooth-coat miniature dachshund named Hildegarde, who was incredibly sweet to people, and a ferocious defender of her territory, all ten pounds of her. She and Siegfried chased off German shepherds and all manner of intruders -– although they never actually bit any person or dog. (And yes, it’s that Hildegard I inserted into The One-Eyed Man.) Hildegard was, however, a bit of a “breedist,” that is, she would only be social with other dachshunds. Other breeds were to be distained.

Our next dachshund was, and is, Buddy Mozart, who was supposed to be an English cream, but turned out to be a wheaten short-coat dachshund (i.e., half wirehair dachshund and half longhair dachshund). He was the inspiration for Rudy, the protagonist of “The Unexpected Dachshund.” He arrived at our house shortly after Dolly, another rescue from a puppy mill. Dolly is incredibly sweet and gentle, and when Buddy Mozart was a puppy, she never barked. So, his requests to us, to this day, are whines, as opposed to barks (which is also crucial to the story).

The latest addition to the dachshund pack is Wolfgang, now only ten months old, affectionate, and an incredibly beautiful English Cream longhair, with razor sharp teeth designed to “de-squeak” any squeaking dog toy known to man or woman, which leaves Buddy Mozart often forlorn because he likes to play with the squeaking dog toys (especially miniature rubber pigs), rather than destroying them, while Wolfgang’s sole mission in his young life seems to be to de-squeak Buddy Mozart’s pig toys. While I try to put the pigs out of reach when Buddy Mozart is finished, I often fail, especially when I’m writing, and that’s I why order the pig toys in large quantities.

NOTE: This post is for a faithful reader who requested anything, even about dachshunds, that didn’t deal with horrible occurrences in the U.S. political arena.

I seem to be missing something. As I write this, TSA employees are unpaid, and consequently many TSA agents can’t pay their bills and are quitting or calling in sick/unavailable. The administration’s latest proposal appears to be sending ICE agents to airports, as if ICE presence could do anything other than make the situation worse.

The Democrats refuse to allow consideration of TSA and other DHS funding until the funding legislation contains legal requirements for ICE agents to wear name badges, carry body cameras, NOT wear masks, and have legal judicial warrants to break into houses and buildings. In other words, to operate under the same legal requirements as all other U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Yet the Republicans and the President find these modest requirements so repugnant that they’re willing to paralyze scores of major airports rather than agree.

In short, the Republicans and the President are demanding funding for a federal law enforcement agency that is exempt from the protections embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, effectively supporting an agency that provides the President with the powers of an authoritarian dictator.

What I fail to understand is why all the law-and-order Republicans are supporting something that is essentially unlawful.

Oh, yes… I suppose it’s no different than ignoring that the President remains a convicted felon and that the man who ran on not getting us into foreign wars has gotten us into Gaza, Venezuela, and Iran, as well as attempting to annex Greenland, Canada, and now Cuba. Did I mention spending a billion dollars a day bombing and otherwise assaulting Iran and its proxies, without even going to Congress in advance? And with no real plans for actually stopping Iranian terrorism or for ensuring we’re not in another long-running war?

But… according to the Republican Congressional leadership and the President, the Democrats are the unreasonable ones for insisting ICE adhere to the Constitution.

Tell me how that’s unreasonable.

In my experience, a great number of Americans tend to think of economists as either ivory tower pedagogues or unrealistic ideologues, while classifying business executives as practical and down-to-earth. Both government and business have number-crunchers, but government numbers’ types are usually economists while business prefers accountants. One reason for this is likely because public policy economics and business economics differ in their basic structures and aims.

In business, an individual or a business provides a good or service to another individual or organization for a defined price. If the revenues from those prices do not cover the operating costs of the business, sooner or later the business must cut costs, raise prices, go bankrupt, or be bought by another business.

In government, a department, agency, or commission provides a service for the public, for which the Treasury provides reimbursement from funds appropriated by Congress to provide that service. While government may buy goods, those goods are bought for use in providing a service. At least, they’re supposed to be, although one might question whether multi-million-dollar DHS productions of Kristi Noem on a horse constitute a public service, even if it turned out that she was riding into the sunset.

In business, the goal is to make a profit, hopefully by providing a solid product or useful service, but in practice any cost-cutting that’s not illegal is allowable, particularly where it comes to wages, and it’s left to the consumers to determine whether they want to pay for the product. Of course, from the beginning of human history, businesses have attempted to corner their market so that the only choice buyers have is to pay an exorbitant price or do without. This was and is known as “free market economics.”

Not surprisingly, that hasn’t changed, which is why the U.S. government ended up regulating business, and why businesses complain about excess government regulation and continue to push for government to be run like a business.

So when politicians talk about running government like a business, voters should be wary. For example, Trump sold himself as a practical businessman. In his case, practicality has primarily translated into amassing funds by shifting costs onto others, failing to fully pay subcontractors, and using his office to enhance family-related businesses on an unprecedented scale. That doesn’t even include trying to gut social programs to finance a war that he promised he wouldn’t ever get us into.

His rhetoric and that of others tend to ignore the fact that failure of government to rein in business excesses in seeking to maximize profits results in more people who need to rely on government income and medical support because they can’t make a living wage on what businesses are paying.

And,so far, I’ve seldom ever heard an accountant consider such economic considerations, and any economist who points them out is considered unrealistic and anti-commerce by those who think government should be run like a business.

The good news (of sorts) is that I once again successfully managed to get our federal and state tax forms completed and filed, albeit with the assistance of tax software.

The bad news is that certain aspects of it took a lot longer because of the trend toward going “paperless.” As a writer I have a lot of varied small expenses, and a great many of them I pay by check, the remainder by credit card. My bank used to send me monthly copies of my checks. I sorted out the ones for business and filed them. Except my bank went paperless and no longer provides copies – which means I have to sort through bank statements and print out copies, except that some businesses convert the checks electronically, so that there’s no real way to get a copy of those checks. Another bank now charges $3 a month to provide a monthly paper statement for a non-interest-bearing checking account.

Add to that that because we no longer have a Staples—or any other office supply business – within 60 miles, I have to order office supplies online, and that also means that I have to print out the receipts myself.

The outfit that maintains the website bills electronically, and that means I have to print out those bills as well… and so it goes. Everywhere I look, there’s pressure to “go paperless,” which may be fine for the companies involved, but it shifts the printing costs and time to me, and I don’t see any corresponding reduction in the prices charged by the companies going paperless. I do notice, in general, that their profits are increasing.

All of this is an acceleration of a trend that likely started more than sixty years ago when gasoline “service stations” (which then used to pump the gas, clean the windows, and check the oil) transitioned to self-service stations.

More and more grocery outlets are offering self-checkout options, as is Home Depot, which are really a choice between standing in line or doing the work of a checker yourself. Some fast-food restaurants now “offer” electronic ordering or ordering through an “app.”

While companies and providers all tout the convenience and cost savings of going “paperless,” and checking yourself out, it seems to me that they’re the ones getting the majority of benefits, while the rest of us do more and more of what they used to do and pay higher prices to boot.

In practical terms, Iran is a theocratic equivalent of the Third Reich, except it has far greater internal control than Hitler and his minions could ever have dreamed of. Iran is governed by an absolute autocrat, whose rule is enforced strictly and often violently by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Over more than 40 years, the IRCG has established itself as not only an armed social control force, but also as an independent military/paramilitary force of more than 90,000 men with its own independent ground, naval, and air units, as well as the elite Quds Force, which is responsible for “extraterritorial operations,” essentially organizing and supporting all the Iranian guerilla proxy groups across the Middle East. The IRGC also has the ability to call up another 500,000 men. At present, the IRGC Navy is now Iran’s primary force exercising operational control over the Persian Gulf, serving as a de facto coast guard, which suggests that the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to be opened to oil tankers any time soon.

While the “regular” Iranian armed forces (the Artesh) are theoretically independent, and the Artesh is primarily the force assigned for national defense, the regime has continually embedded ideological and political representatives within the Artesh to ensure loyalty to the Supreme Leader.

In addition, because of various sanctions and embargoes, most of Iran’s military hardware is domestically manufactured, and Iran became an exporter of arms by the 2000s, particularly of missiles and drones, many of which have gone to Russia for use against Ukraine. The Iranian drones are far easier and less expensive to manufacture than the vast majority of weapons being used by U.S. forces against Iran.

The U.S. has so far lost three F-15 fighters (if to Kuwaiti air defenses) at a replacement cost of $90 million per jet. A single Patriot (MIM-104) missile, specifically the advanced PAC-3 MSE variant, costs approximately $4 million to $5 million per interceptor. A newly produced Patriot battery, including radar, control station, and 5–8 launchers, costs over $1 billion. Even “cheaper” U.S. missiles can cost $1-3 million each.

By comparison, Iranian Shahed drones, which are so slow that high tech systems have trouble detecting them, each cost from $20,000 to $50,000 or less. In addition, Russia is now building more sophisticated Shahed drones and has ramped up production enough that it conceivably could export them for Iranian oil.

So… what happens when the U.S. runs through all its expensive and lethal weapons?

A short war? Really?

Although Trump and Bondi hope that “Operation Epic Fury” will fade their faults and overshadow all the domestic unrest, the fact still remains that two peaceful protesters were killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. A disabled woman was dragged from her car even though she wasn’t part of the protests and was on her way to a medical appointment. She is a U.S. citizen, but she was removed so violently that her shoulders were injured, possibly permanently. None of the ICE agents have been investigated, let alone charged in any of these incidents.

As a follow-up, the disabled woman attended the most recent State of the Union Address as a guest of her Congresswoman and was arrested for disturbance even though she said nothing and bore no signs and did nothing to create a disturbance.

Yet Attorney General Pam Bondi has charged thirty-nine protesters for disrupting a service in Minneapolis at a church where one of the pastors was an ICE official, even though no one was injured or hurt. Bondi claimed that the protesters “attacked” a house of worship and stated that if any such protests occurred again, “we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you.”

Contrast the reaction to a peaceful protest against a pastor who is an ICE official with the lack of Department of Justice response to the killings and violence perpetrated in Minneapolis by ICE agents.

Disturbing a church service merits charges against 36 protesters and three media types who were trying to report on the protests, but ICE killings and violence against peaceful protesters doesn’t merit investigation and charges?

What does that tell you not only about ICE, but also about the power of the religious right in the United States?

Another stunning Department of Homeland Security revelation surfaced this week. Last year, Corey Lewandowski, one of DHS Secretary Noem’s top aides, entered the cockpit of a government jet uninvited during the post-take-off period, when entry to the cockpit is legally restricted, complaining because Secretary Noem’s blanket had been left behind when the crew and passengers, including Secretary Noem, had to switch aircraft for mechanical reasons.

The crew notified Lewandowski that he could not remain in the cockpit during climb-out, and Lewandowski left. Later in the flight, Lewandowski asked who should be fired because Noem’s blanket had been left behind, and the pilot in command took the responsibility. Lewandoski fired him, but the agency had to reinstate the pilot because, at Noem’s destination, there was no one qualified to fly the aircraft back to Washington, D.C.

So, not only did Noem’s people try to fire a pilot for leaving a blanket behind, but no one apparently considered the ramifications.

Apparently, Kristi Noem can’t even hang on to her own blanket and then had an aide break federal aviation rules to complain before going on to fire someone else for either her forgetfulness or that of her staff.

Over a blanket, yet?

And this is the woman in charge of the Department of Homeland Security?

I come from an older and more formal background, as if my readers and friends largely don’t know that already.

In my collegiate first year English class, when we were reading/studying The Great Gatsby, Professor Mansfield looked me and said, “You’re quietly formal, like Nick Caraway,” or words generally to that effect. When I worked in Washington, D.C., I was perfectly comfortable in a tie, collared shirt, and a three-piece suit (if with polished boots), and I haven’t owned or worn a pair of jeans in more than forty years. If I’m doing grubby work, it’s in sweatpants and work boots.

That conservatism extends largely to my writing, except for a few years when I experimented with onomatopoeia in my first fantasy novels (which, as many readers know, was not received as well as it might have been). “All right” will always be two words for me, because I shudder and wince when I see “alright” in print. I also like the pluperfect, which my editor does not.

To me, a collared long-sleeved shirt was just a shirt, but for several years now, and possibly longer (since I don’t keep track of changes in fashion terminology), those plain shirts that went with suits are now what the menswear companies term “formal” or “dress shirts.” I always thought formal or dress shirts were the pleated white shirts that went with tails and tuxedos.

Since I work from the office in my house these days, I no longer wear suits to work, but my normal attire consists of slacks, collared shirt, and vest, and, of course, polished cowboy boots, certainly nothing I’d consider especially dressy. I may add a sports coat if I go out on a chilly day. But when my wife the professor and I go out to eat in our usual work clothes, more than half the time, someone wants to know why we’re all dressed up. Usually, I suspect, it’s more on account of what she’s wearing.

This amuses me, because what we wear now would have been considered excessively casual in our twenties and thirties. But then, what most people wear on airplanes today would likely have denied them boarding back then. Denying boarding for totally inappropriate attire still might be a good idea, even if it does come from a fashion dinosaur.

Why do so many Republicans oppose requirements for ICE agents:

To wear body cameras?
To wear name badges?
To obtain a judicial warrant before forcing their way into homes, churches, and other private spaces?
To be prohibited from wearing masks?
To be held to the standards and accountability of other law enforcement agencies for use of force, especially lethal force?

Right now, ICE often operates more like Hitler’s brownshirts than like a legitimate law enforcement body, and yet Republicans oppose any reforms to ICE operating procedures, despite the killings of protesters and the blatant lying about those events.

Could it be that immigration reform is secondary to establishing the practice of punishing citizens for speaking out against heavy-handed government.

ICE isn’t the only area where the current administration is violating the Constitution and established law.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is the foundational, congressionally enacted legal system (10 U.S.C. Chapter 47) regulating the U.S. armed forces, and one of its provisions is that military personnel must not obey unlawful orders. A specific example of an unlawful order is one that suppresses lawful protest against suppression of First Amendment speech. Yet both President Trump and his Secretary of Defense/War have attempted to suppress the free speech of members of Congress, merely for pointing out this provision of the UCMJ. That’s certainly against the Constitution.

In addition, Trump has used the Department of Justice to attack political enemies, attempting to file lawsuits where even grand juries refuse to bring indictments. Federal attorneys (from both political parties) have literally resigned by the score in protest of such tactics, and at least one federal district attorney’s office had no attorney able or qualified to carry out such an indictment.

Trump has also flagrantly ignored the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that bars officials from accepting foreign gifts or profits, although he’s paid lip service to it by funneling such gifts to façade foundations and family members (which at least one other President has done, not that such makes it legal, but never on the scale Trump has done).

So… why do a majority of Republican members of the House and Senate put up with such patent illegalities?

Is it because they believe that if the President (but only a Republican President) declares that something is legal, then it must be? Or are they simply afraid that their own President will attack them? Either way, what does all this say about the Republicans? (Not that the Democrats are exactly paragons of virtue).

Extreme idealism shouldn’t be enshrined in government or law, and certainly not in a democratic government. Ideals are fine for personal guidance. They’re even acceptable as governmental goals, but they become tyranny when turned into unyielding law.

Take abortion. Any policy that forbids abortion is going to kill a certain and not inconsequential number of mothers, as is already happening in Texas, and any policy that allows even restricted abortion to save the life of the mother will kill a certain number of viable fetuses. It also forces doctors to choose between disobeying the law or seeing women die unnecessarily. Why? Because extremist and absolutist laws can’t take into account all the possible health permutations.

Or take immigration. The current ICE policies, combined with the legal fallacy that immigration is a civil offense, effectively make no distinction in terms of guilt between someone trying to escape being killed by a dictator in their former homeland and someone who’s committed multiple crimes. They also punish infants and children who had no choice about where they were born or where they live. But then, why should one expect any more of the descendants of people who wiped out millions of indigenous peoples and enslaved millions of others for hundreds of years, who also just conveniently forgot that they are the descendants, essentially, of illegal immigrants?

And some of those who support ICE actions and policies even profess to believe in a God, whose professed Savior said, “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.” And one of those supporters is even a pastor, whose professed savior didn’t say, “just the children whose preferably white parents were born here.”

Then, of course, there’s the problem of selective enforcement of absolutist laws. We’re seeing ICE agents picking up U.S. citizens because they “look different.” Add to that an administration that changes the law, without the approval of Congress, so that immigrants who were here legally became illegal overnight, and not because of anything they did, while ICE unilaterally decides that agents don’t need judicial warrants to break into homes.

But apparently that legal absolutism being applied to pregnant women and once-legal immigrants doesn’t apply to white male sexual abusers or well-connected drug dealers or white politicians convicted of financial fraud.

Fancy that.

There is a story. It was written in 1973 by Ursula LeGuin, and it’s entitled “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In its essence, the story presents a utopian city whose successes and virtues all rest on the misery of a child confined in a basement room barely larger than a broom closet. The people of Omelas fall into two groups – those who accept the child’s misery as the cost of maintaining all the virtues of the city and those who walk away.

This is obviously an artificial dichotomy, and a fictional device to raise a question, and what that question might be has been the subject of discussions and arguments about the meaning of the story, its moral issues, and various take-offs for more than fifty years. Now, I certainly haven’t read all the philosophizing and stories/novels arising out of that story, but those I have read seem to tiptoe around one other aspect of the story, an aspect particularly pertinent to the present social/culture issues of today.

The United States is facing and not handling particularly well a number of social/political issues, all of which have negative impacts on someone or some group of individuals. No matter how one handles the issues around abortion and maternal health, in a great many instances someone is going to get hurt and die. In the case of gender issues, someone is going to be disadvantaged, hurt, or worse – no matter what law or policy is adopted. The same is true of immigration.

LeGuin’s story unrealistically simplifies the issue – one child versus the greater good of an entire city, and those who cannot accept that price must leave.

More than a half century ago, when I was in college, one of my professors defined the goal of government as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” It’s hard to argue against that generality, but what’s always bothered me about that definition is that it doesn’t address the fundamental and largely untouched of issue of how society should define the “greatest good.”

According to the Constitution, Congress is supposed to define that greater or greatest good through legislation, but right now, we have a President who is redefining the greater good by his standards, and a Congress unable to oppose him because the institution cannot agree on what’s best for the country… and, unhappily, that makes fictional Omelas look better by comparison.

The other day I got to thinking – again – about how family affects children, sometimes long after they’re children.

My father was an attorney, but he’d just passed the bar exam and married my mother in June of 1941. After Pearl Harbor, he applied for a commission in the Navy. He was accepted and spent the next five years as a Navy officer, largely as communications officer on a fast troop transport that saw a great deal of action in the Pacific. After the war, he returned to law but remained in the Naval Reserve until multiple back operations required medical retirement. Although his legal expertise was securities law, he also loved literature and wrote a number of short stories on the side but was unsuccessful in getting any published. He also played the piano and wrote songs, and was offered a job in Hollywood, but chose law school instead. He became quite successful as an attorney and even was a town councilor and mayor protem of a small town outside Denver.

I definitely did not inherit any musical talent, but I was headed for a legal career and was two years into college during the early part of the Vietnam War when the Cuban Missile crisis occurred. I realized that as a healthy and athletic young man I was far too likely to be drafted, and I had no desire to be in the Army. So I joined the Naval Reserve in the ROC program (since abolished) which required regular reserve meetings and OCS training for two summers. I graduated on schedule and was promptly ordered to duty as an ensign assigned to an assault boat unit. I was soon deployed to Vietnam, but not before applying to be a Naval Aviator. I had a short deployment in Vietnam before my orders came through for flight school. Somehow, I survived flight training and four years as a helo driver (both carrier and non-carrier postings in the Pacific), after which I had to decide whether to go career or leave active duty.

Along the way, I realized that while I was a more than competent pilot, I was not a great pilot. So I opted for civilian life and applied to law schools. I was accepted… and came to the conclusion that I really didn’t want to be a lawyer. Instead, I took a job as an industrial economist, which didn’t work out, then failed miserably as a real estate agent, before spending a year writing short stories, and selling far too few to support a family (and four children by then).

I was involved in local politics and that led to a temporary job as a campaign researcher and writer, which turned into a position as a legislative assistant in Washington, D.C., followed by other political positions most often held by lawyers, eighteen years worth. All the time, I was writing and getting published on the side, until I finally left Washington for New Hampshire to become a full-time writer.

And, in a way, I ended up with a life-pattern far more like my father’s than I’d ever anticipated, or realized until recently, although he stayed married and totally in love with his college sweetheart from the time he met her until he died more than 60 years later, and it took me three tries on that front (but my wife the opera singer and college professor and I have been married for 34 years).

Then, as she, and my offspring, well know, I can be totally clueless about some aspects of life.

How many times have you read an article or heard a commercial saying that there’s just one thing that you just HAVE to have? I suppose there are occasions where this might be true, but I suspect that’s largely an overstatement. There are certainly products that can make life easier, but in my experience, the items one has to have fall into three categories: (1) those you must have and already possess; (2) those you must have and cannot afford or cannot obtain; (3) those you need but don’t realize that you need (often until it’s too late to avoid damage, disaster, or mere inconvenience).

But beyond that, the idea that there’s just one product or service that’s vital tends to ignore a basic fact of life. Everything requires something else. Fire requires oxygen, a fuel source, and a means of ignition. For that fire to last requires a benign environment or protection from a hostile environment. Even a simple screwdriver requires the right tip to fit the screw and enough force/torque to screw or unscrew.

As a different facet of this dynamic, when a disaster occurs, too many analysts (and media pundits) immediately start searching for and speculating on what principal factor led to that disaster. Only in very rare cases does a disaster result from a single factor or failure. Often, a disaster is caused by a combination of factors, many of which may be minor in themselves, and all of which were required to cause the disaster.

But multi-factor analysis isn’t usually the strength of the media, besides which, multiple contributing causes don’t grab the headlines or draw the attention to the products of the organizations sponsoring media outlets.

So, the “one thing you have to have” and the one failure that caused the disaster will remain a staple of the news/commercial media for now… and likely for so long as money and human nature dominate news and commerce.

The other day, I got to thinking about why the Department of Homeland Security could unilaterally change immigration laws so that people who were legally in the country one day were classified as illegal immigrants the next. To me that seemed so at odds with the ex post facto clause in the Constitution.

The answer to that question is a bit frightening.

While the Constitution prohibits specifically retroactive laws (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3), this prohibition applies only to criminal cases, not civil matters, and immigration is considered a civil matter, even when the government is using criminal justice mechanisms, such as incarceration facilities and police powers, or carrying out actions like deportation or visa revocation.

Despite the fact that immigration is considered a civil matter, illegal immigration is made a federal crime in the United States, primarily through 8 U.S.C. § 1325 (Improper Entry by Alien) and 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (Reentry of Removed Aliens)

The classification of immigration as a civil matter is not addressed in the Constitution, but was established by in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893). This ruling also determined that deportation is not “punishment” in the legal sense, but rather the government’s refusal to allow someone to remain, and because they are not considered “punishments,” Congress or the Executive Branch can retroactively apply new immigration grounds for exclusion, even if those grounds did not exist when the non-citizen entered the country. In addition, statutes, such as those that make past criminal activity grounds for deportation (e.g., membership in certain organizations or criminal behavior), can be applied to actions taken before the law was passed.

So, if every major law dealing with unauthorized immigration is a criminal statute, how can immigration enforcement be a merely civil matter?

As a side note, while subsequent Supreme Court decisions have maintained the legal fiction established by the Fong Yue Ting precedent, I can’t find any legal reason why Congress couldn’t pass a law declaring that any immigration proceedings should be considered as criminal matters, given that the government is already treating them that way, except without many of the procedural safeguards required Constitutionally in criminal proceedings involving U.S. citizens.

In 1915, Amy Lowell wrote a poem entitled “Patterns,” most likely set in the time of The War of the Spanish Succession, about love constrained and lost by adherence to patterns, particularly social patterns and patterns of expectation.

Patterns are everywhere in nature, simply because patterns are a form of order, and life, and even the universe, requires order. But the closing line of Lowell’s poem asks, “Christ! What are patterns for?” A strong poetic suggestion that patterns in excess are anything but good.

In a very different context, laws attempt to impose patterns. Those patterns are meant to create societal order, but enforcing laws in excess can be tyranny. That’s one reason most societies have legal procedures and courts – to determine how the patterns of law should be imposed, and in what instances that such patterns should not blindly apply.

In dictatorships and authoritarian societies, patterns are imposed absolutely, and too often now, ICE is following that example here in the U.S.

The problem with ICE and its actions lies in the working assumption that anyone not legally in the United States is de facto a criminal and evil, and that they all can be treated in the same way.

What makes this worse, and I’d say evil, is that the Trump Administration, with various strokes of the pen, have turned tens of thousands of people who were here legally one day into illegals the next by revoking various policies of past administrations, ranging from broad cancellations of student visas to revoking work permits for refugees and others, and removing amnesty protections.

ICE agents are also too often applying a specific pattern (skin color) in initially approaching and detaining individuals.

Lowell’s question applies even more today. Exactly what are patterns (or laws) for?

Theodore Roosevelt often referred to the Presidency as a “bully pulpit,” meaning that it was a powerful platform to shape public opinion and advocate for his agenda, but Roosevelt used the word “bully” in its original meaning of “superb” or “wonderful.”

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is just using the Presidency to bully anyone who disagrees or opposes him, and too many federal officials, particularly Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth, are following that example.

The ICE agent who killed Renee Good didn’t shoot her because she attacked him, but because she politely “disrespected” him… and neither ICE nor DOJ will even look into charging that agent for murder. Death for polite disrespect, and not even a hint of interest in justice? Not to mention baldly lying about the actual circumstances of the shooting.

Pete Hegseth is gunning for Senator Mark Kelly for quoting a part of longstanding military doctrine that Hegseth doesn’t like, possibly because Hegseth follows the Nixon doctrine that no command by the President can be illegal. Trump is going after Jerome Powell, whom he originally appointed, because Powell won’t push for lower interest rates the way Trump wants. Trump’s also trying to punish any city or state that voted against him. He even took away aid for a water pipeline in Lauren Boebert’s district (one of his strongest MAGA representatives in Congress) because Colorado hasn’t “fallen in line.”

There are scores of other examples, large and small, and far too many Americans seem indifferent to what’s happening… at least until it affects them.

No one and no country is off-limits. Right now, Denmark and Greenland are targets because they understandably don’t want Greenland purchased or annexed by the U.S. Earlier, Trump targeted Canada because Canadians don’t want to be “the fifty-first state” and because Ottawa put up large posters declaring, “Tariffs Are a Tax on Hard-Working Americans,” reminding Americans that Trump is part of the cause of higher U.S. prices.

If you’re a public figure and you say or write something that Trump and his lackeys don’t like (especially if it’s true), you risk having your life torn apart, if not worse. And heaven forbid you try to point out, even politely, illegalities to ICE.

I much prefer Theodore Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” to Trump’s… and so should thoughtful Americans.

As regular readers of my blog doubtless know, I try hard to look at the facts in a given situation, all of the facts, if possible, rather than just those facts that support my beliefs or values. This can be difficult when you’re evaluating actions by Trump and his followers, because they have a continuing tendency to misrepresent facts, or to ignore those which are inconvenient or which conflict with their objectives.

I won’t use the terms “beliefs” or “values” with regard to Trump and company because either term implies a consistency which appears lacking in Trump and most Trumpists, with the exception that everything that Trump does or supports appears designed to increase his own personal power. Add to that the apparent fact that Trump has no fixed beliefs or values, except narcissistic self-interest, and the fact that a large segment of his followers appear to accept whatever he says as fact, even when hard and/or visual evidence contradicts what Trump has declared to be true.

When federal law enforcement agents, such as those in ICE, ignore due process, Constitutional rights, and shoot individuals who have not threatened them or who have questioned the legality of ICE actions, and Trump supports those actions as legal, it should be clear to all Americans that the basics of law and order are being trampled.

When Trump uses federal investigations as a weapon of intimidation and effectively repudiates the Constitution and the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court finds ways to support Trump or to avoid addressing the underlying issues, it becomes more and more obvious that Trump, his lackeys in government, and his supporters have little interest in either law or morals.

The great danger of this situation is that those opposing Trump may decide that facts and words – and even votes – are insufficient in stopping his erosion of legal process and human rights, and that they will have to resort to force in order to preserve those rights.

Doesn’t anyone recall the results of the past attempts of arrogant white males to impose and maintain power through various forms of dubious legal inequality?

If the news reports are accurate, the United States used more aircraft and ships to “extract” Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela than it did on the mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability.

While the Trump administration insists that removing the head of state from his own country was in pursuit of a criminal, which Maduro doubtless is, attacking and kidnapping a head of state runs perilously close to an act of war, particularly when the removal required such massive forces.

Under federal law, eight bipartisan, senior members of Congress must receive prior notice of sensitive covert actions. In June 2025, the administration told Republicans, but not Democrats, in advance about the forthcoming U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. For the Venezuela operation, it appears no lawmakers were notified in advance.

Trump insists that the need for secrecy overrode existing law.

What that means is that Trump believes that he can ignore existing law any time he thinks it’s necessary, and I’m fairly certain that the framers of the Constitution didn’t have that in mind.

In addition, Hegseth is now attempting to reduce Senator Mark Kelly’s retirement pay from his service as Naval officer and to censure Senator Kelly for his statement that military officers have a duty not to obey illegal orders. Although Senator Kelly is a former Navy captain and astronaut, his statement was, first, an opinion in line with what all officers are taught, and, second, made as part of Kelly’s position as a senator.

When the Secretary of Defense attempts to punish a retired officer – and sitting Senator – because the Senator disagrees with the Administration, Hegseth’s actions are against both long-standing precedent and the U.S. Constitution, as well as a sign of the contempt both Trump and Hegseth have for the Constitution and the laws supporting it.

Equally unfortunate is the failure of Republicans in the House and Senate to oppose the continuing disregard for the Constitution and the very laws passed by Congress to rein in Presidential overreach.

What good are laws if those controlling Congress allow the administration to break them at will?

Both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have been playing the “Christian nation” card every chance they get lately, emphasizing the idea that the United Sates was established as a Christian nation.

That contention is inaccurate. In fact, it’s dead wrong. While the majority of the Founding Fathers were “Christian” in background, the vast majority insisted on keeping religion out of government, as demonstrated by their support of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

All of the Founding Fathers had experienced or seen the abuse created by state religions or state-supported religions, and not just in England or elsewhere in Europe, and even in the American colonies. Nine of the thirteen original colonies authorized established churches – the Congregational Church in New England and the Anglican Church in the middle and southern colonies – with the result that personal freedoms were restricted.

In the 1700s in colonial Virginia, government legally and financially supported the Anglican Church and opposed other faiths, including other Christian denominations. Preachers without a license from the Anglican Church faced fines, jail, and physical punishment (whipping). Quakers were forced to move to Maryland. New York excluded Catholics from guarantees of the liberty of conscience. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the Maryland government adopted laws depriving Catholics of their previously held civil rights and ultimately established the Church of England as the only authorized faith. Jews were denied voting rights in most colonies.

Today, even fewer Americans think of themselves as “Christian.” According to Pew Research Center surveys conducted since 2020, the “Christian” share of the adult population has been between 60% and 64%, while the religiously unaffiliated share has ranged from 28% to 31%. Adherents of religions other than Christianity have consistently accounted for 6% or 7% of U.S. adults.

Given the shift in the belief structure of Americans, and the prohibition of religious interference in government enshrined in the Constitution, why are Trump and Vance pushing the idea of a Christian nation?

Might it just be to obtain political support for a religious authoritarian state? The Founding Fathers would have been appalled, as most Americans should be today.

Some time back, I wrote that the Republicans were “the party of no.”

Events have proven that description all too true. While Republicans have been accurate in noting weaknesses or errors in law-making and Presidential decision-making by Democrats, the vast majority of Republican “solutions” have largely failed to improve the problems they addressed, and even when they have partially succeeded, as in reducing the number of aliens attempting to enter the United States, the overall costs in other immigration areas have increased.

From what I can glean from reports, as many as twenty to thirty percent of the people picked up by ICE sweeps are either U.S. citizens or individuals here in the U.S. legally, and very few ICE raids actually result in the capture of habitual thieves or hardened criminals, which was what Trump claimed was the objective.

In a similar fashion, the Trump tariffs have so far had little impact in increasing U.S. manufacturing output, while raising the cost of raw materials for U.S. manufacturers. In addition, foreign reaction to those tariffs has been to create huge losses to U.S. farmers, so much so that Trump is now proposing massive subsidies.

Almost random cutting of federal employees hasn’t measurably reduced federal spending, not with massive increases in defense spending.

Negotiations with Putin have failed to result in peace between Russia and Ukraine, unsurprisingly, given that Putin only respects force, and the only people Trump likes to use force against are immigrants, U.S. citizens, particularly women and Democrats, and purported drug-runners in small boats.

The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have yet to pass any significant legislation offering positive steps in any field, only significant cuts in programs designed to help poor and low-income individuals and families. Almost ten years have passed since Trump promised a better national health plan, and there’s no sign of one yet.

Pretty much the only significant “yes” coming from Trump and the Congress has been a large tax cut for the very wealthiest Americans, but that’s about all Americans should expect from the party of no, because merely finding faults in your opponent’s policies is almost never sufficient to significantly improve anything.