Originally published at: DHS Brings PATRIOT Act Tool to Bear in NSPM-7 Investigation - TPM – Talking Points Memo
The Trump administration used a tool created in the early days of the War on Terror to obtain financial information without a search warrant as part of its broad crackdown on opposition groups, new documents show. In newly released emails, agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) used the law, established by the PATRIOT Act, to…
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I guess latitude in statutory interpretation really is a double-edged sword; all it takes is a bit of evil intent and, bam, defense becomes a tryrant’s cutting edge.
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Justin Wolfers writes:
The mechanism runs from a mistaken premise to self-inflicted damage. Trump treated trade as extraction: America gets “ripped off,” so tariffs force better terms. But tariffs triggered retaliation (China to 125%, Canadian boycotts), raised input costs and consumer prices, injected on-again/off-again uncertainty that deterred the factory investment they were meant to spur. Because trade is reciprocal cooperation, throwing sand in the gears cost America customers, suppliers, and trusted partners rather than winning concessions. The “deals” Trump trumpets were, largely, either fictional or already-existing.The goods trade deficit has gotten worse, but i not what we should be looking at anyway. “Reshoring” did not happen as sand in the gears reduced American factory employment. And Trump has advertised a great many supply-chain vulnerabilities that people now have no reason not to exploit.
The impending damage from Trump tariffs were covered intensely at first, but somehow the media slacked off as they became an on-again-off-again routine depending on the week or day of the week. Only now is the larger damage emerging. Americans must appreciate the damage done, they can’t be that ignorant or stupid.
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Ah, this will get the nation’s militias to comment!
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The Trump administration used a tool created in the early days of the War on Terror to obtain financial information without a search warrant as part of its broad crackdown on opposition groups, new documents show.
Please. Persecution, not “crackdown” as if this was law enforcement.
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Yet another problem of separating the parliamentary function of writing legislation from the executive function of interpreting and enforcing legislation. It’s almost like there is a reason the majority of democracies don’t use a presidential system like ours.
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In newly released emails, agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) used the law, established by the PATRIOT Act, to canvas financial institutions across the country for an investigation.
This is exactly what rights groups were afraid of when the PATRIOT A ct was passed.
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They are for “freedom” in the abstract, but they haven’t met a concrete “freedom” outside of the Second Amendment that they will attach any value to.
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Not quite. They want the personal freedom to trample your rights. Logic be damned.
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Some day, we will have an executive branch which faithfully executes the laws. In the meantime, we have to put up with this crap.
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This administration would say that they are. The court largely agrees. That’s the problem.
Government can’t just be faith based. It needs accountability. Our system laughably assumes that the accountability is a presidential election every 4 years and 67 Senators.
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We really ought to be using more straightforward language for things like this, especially on a platform like TPM that is not trying to pander to the nutters.
“DHS Bring PATRIOT Act Tool to Bear” is objective sounding I guess.
But this is like a 5-alarm fire. What would we call this exact same persecution of political enemies taking place under a dictatorship or despotic regime? Because this is the same thing.
“Unconstitutional”, “political persecution”, “state terror”, and “purge” are a few relevant terms that come to mind.
Even those do not really seem strong enough.
They are basically twisting the law to silence and imprison critics and opposition groups, in contravention of the Constitution and every Constitutional right and democratic norm ever upheld in our republic.
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And the verb employed here would be spelled “canvass.” You’re welcome.
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“Freedom” in the hands of this right-wing regime means freedom to do what is necessary to consolidate power, regardless of the law or the Constitution.
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In terms of accountability, the Trump regime has taken pains to fire the people–the inspectors general–put into place to assure that government agencies are doing their job and not working against the law. Accountability is detrimental to dictatorship.
It seems to me unlikely that DHS would not know when they were targeting a union leader such as David Huerta. Unions in general are anathema to the right-wing regime, since workers are supposed to surrender their rights in return for having gainful employment.
The inspector generals were never put in place to check the President. They have always been executive branch employees. Youre just used to Presidents who weren’t authoritarians and so was the Congress that that failed to make them part of a legislative agency.
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That misspelled word is in a quote. Should I have put an “sic” after the spelling? Anyway who named you editor?