This, and all else associated with the hateful actions of this administration, is a heinous travesty of justice and morally indefensible. It is incredibly disheartening to see Melrosians feeling empowered now to join the hatred now unleashed all over the country. If there is any doubt whatsoever about what happened in Weimar Germany, one only needs to read this message board to see the parallels in what was supposedly our welcoming and caring community. The fascist garbage being posted is so disturbing.
But so is the reality of what our local government has become, mostly "Dems," now nothing more than a pathetic rubber-stamp for a small-town despot who conveniently violates basic principles that founded this once-noble country. Notably we haven't heard any brave words stemming from our local moral midget, whereas Mayors Walsh and Curtatone and many others across the country have become eloquent and powerful leaders in support of the best American values.
That being said, it is heartening to know there are indeed some locals who have rolled up their sleeves and are working hard to confront the bigotry, misogyny, and outright stupidity of this hateful regime.
"“For the president of the United States to suggest that we don’t know who’s coming in, is either profoundly stupid, or cruel, because there are thousands of people who are running for their lives because they served alongside our troops during the war on terror.”"
“Needless to say, this is an appalling and shameful day in our history...”
An Iraqi Who Helped The US Military Was Among The First To Be Detained Under Trump’s Ban
The man has since been released from custody, but at least 11 other immigrants and refugees remain detained at JFK.
Hameed Khalid Darweesh after his release on Saturday. Twitter: @NydiaVelazquez
An Iraqi man who risked his life working for US forces was among the first refugees and immigrants blocked at American airports on Friday night, as President Donald Trump’s order halting arrivals from several Muslim nations came into effect.
The executive ordered signed earlier on Friday temporarily halted the US refugee program for 120 days; indefinitely suspended the intake of refugees from Syria; and blocked all people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days.
The first legal challenge to Trump’s action was filed on Saturday by the Iraqi man, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, and another compatriot, both of who had US visas and were in the air when the president signed the executive order and were then detained upon arrival. The news of the lawsuit was first reported by the New York Times.
Darweesh was released from custody Saturday afternoon after being held for about 17 hours. He was flanked by Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Nydia Velazquez, both of New York, and his lawyer, International Refugee Assistance Project attorney Mark Doss.
Pleased to announce w/@NydiaVelazquez the release of Hameed Jhalid Darweesh from detention at JFK.
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler)
Darweesh told reporters that despite his ordeal, he was happy to be in America, which he called the “land of freedom.” He thanked those who had supported him, including those who had gathered to protest his detention at JFK.
“This is the soul of America,” he said, speaking of his supporters. “This is what pushed me to leave my country and come here.”
Darweesh, a husband and father of three, worked as an interpreter for US forces in Iraq for a decade, and his life was targeted twice for doing so. He was granted a special immigrant visa for his work with the government on Jan. 20, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Darweesh, his wife, and his children had been traveling together and are planning to go to Charlotte, North Carolina, to start their new lives in America. However, when Darweesh exited the plane at JFK he was detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents. His family was eventually able to leave the airport.
When lawyers for the two men arrived to the airport, they were unable to speak with their clients, the lawsuit stated.
“When the attorneys asked ‘Who is the person to talk to?’ the CBP agents responded, ‘Mr. President. Call Mr. Trump,’” the lawsuit said.
The other man named in the lawsuit, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the US to join his child and wife, who are legal permanent residents living in Houston. He had been granted a visa to join them on Jan. 11.
Alshawi’s wife had worked for a US security contractor as an accountant for about a year, the lawsuit states, along with her brother.
In 2010, Iraqi insurgents tried to kidnap Alshawi’s brother-in-law and also targeted other family members. The family feared for their lives and applied for refugee benefits, which were granted to Alshawi’s wife and their son in 2014. Alshawi has been waiting to join them ever since. He had not been released as of Saturday afternoon.
Doss told CNN both of the men named in the lawsuit have been specifically targeted in their home country because of their affiliation with the US, and would be in “serious danger” if they were sent back.
“They’re being persecuted,” he said. “They’re coming to the United States with a valid status. These are individuals who are supposed to be in the United States to be protected because they were persecuted and now they’re being detained unlawfully.”
The attorneys filed writs of habeas corpus in New York on Saturday morning seeking to get the men released. The lawyers also filed a motion for class certification that, if granted, would represent all refugees and immigrants being detained or turned away under the new order.
The lawsuit states that the detention of the men solely based on the executive order violates their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
“President Trump’s war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll,” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “This ban cannot be allowed to continue.”
Nadler told reporters he knows of at least 11 other people who have been detained at JFK over their immigration status since the order was issued. He tweeted he and Velazquez are working together to help the others get released.
With - now released - Iraqi Refugee blocked by Trump’s order at JFK. Working w/@NydiaVelazquez to help 11 more ref… https://t.co/Anqodse4I8
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler)
News of the men’s detention horrified Kirk W. Johnson, a former USAID worker in Iraq who founded The List Project, a non-profit which helps Iraqis get refugee status in the US because their lives are threatened in their home country for assisting American forces.
Johnson told BuzzFeed News via email that his staff has been up all night trying to figure out what will happen to Iraqi refugees either in route to the US or scheduled to be resettled imminently.
“Needless to say, this is an appalling and shameful day in our history,” he said.
He said he knows of one Iraqi woman who has waited for two years and gone through countless interviews to get her visa, which was just issued last week. She was denied entry into the US, he said.
“These human beings were vetted, exhaustively, before they were granted valid visas which are now being shredded with the stroke of the president’s pen,” he said.
Johnson said it is hard for an average American to understand just how complex the vetting process is, even for Iraqis who have helped the US government for years and know American military members intimately.
He said he thinks these Iraqis are “arguably the most documented refugees on the face of the planet.”
“[They have] Marines and diplomats and aid workers vouching for them,” he said. “For the president of the United States to suggest that we don’t know who’s coming in, is either profoundly stupid, or cruel, because there are thousands of people who are running for their lives because they served alongside our troops during the war on terror.”
Instead of hate we want peace so all the sad people please walk for peace it is more effective.
It sounds like things worked out exactly the way they should. I want incontrovertible evidence that people have been vetted. Once we have checked, double-checked, and triple-checked, they can come in. Sounds like we made sure on this one. Glad to see people having to work for it.
Thanks God we have a President that puts our protection ahead of anyone else! Haven't we learned anything from the Merkel and the Germans? They allowed anyone including so called refugees and what they got was violence, rape, murder, and a diminishing of life! Implement extreme vetting - that's why we voted for Trump! Protect us!
You liberals should have learned your lessons from Europe but you are all too stupid to comprehend the true reality of what is going on in the world.
This so-called thorough vetting is being done mainly by the UN - you know - a compilation of countries who despise America - even the Obama administration TSA group said that the Syrian and other countries with high levels of terrorists - could not be properly vetted - and yet you fools are against improved vetting procedures!
You all STILL have not gotten over the election and are determined to object to common sense protections - you all should be ashamed if yourselves! No one has the RIGHT to come to America - especially in a world where real evil exists and where people want to do us harm.
You hate rules. It is that simple. This needs to be done, because we cannot continue along the way we have been going. It is not safe or feasible. Some protester on the news said that Trump "should have given them some notice that this would have happened." He did. His election was the notice. It wouldn't matter how he did this thing that needed to be done. You would still complain, because you hate rules. These people complain about the wait. let me ask you, does anyone know what the average wait at Ellis Island was?
Perfect....I Agree.Very Well Said.But The Moonbats Just Won't Get It.
It,'s my bat and my ball, if I don't bat first no one can play!!!
I agree that the refugee crisis is a true humanitarian crisis and I oppose a ban. BUT where the hell were the libs when Assad "crossed the red line and used chemical weapons." Where were they when the military was begging Obama to not pull out of Iraq. Where were they when the refugee exit was in full swing. The past president sent wrong messages, delayed action and actually encouraged terror with his lack of decisive action. Over 500,000 dead and 6 million displaced.
And to see Schumer weeping at his press conference makes my sick! This guy has been a hack all his life - where were his tears during the Arab spring, the butchering of women and children as well as Americans when ISIS invaded Iraq - under his Democrat President?
His tears are only shed for political reasons like his fellow Democrats! For 8 years they didn't care about the safety of Americans while leaving open our southern borders, encouraging illegal immigration and even helping illegals enter the country, and then encouraging sanctuary cities where both criminal illegals and illegals are protected by left wing moonbats so that criminal carnage will continue in our cities where innocent American citizens have been murdered and assaulted - no more! We now have a President who will care more for the American citizen than for those who wish to do us harm or who violate our laws! Good for him - and good for Americans!
Shut up
Watch This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wxMTh_UzHM
Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!
Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.
Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.
They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.
It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.
One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.
Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.
Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.
The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s *****?
In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.
They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:
“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)
“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”
Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.
Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.
All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.
Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.
In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.
The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.
There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.
Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.
Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.
In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.
It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.
Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.
You moonbats are getting dumb and stupid - didn't school education ever teach you anything about the Constitution? Guess you missed those classes while leanring to picket and riot!
The President and Vice President are exempt from conflict of interests - but you won't know this watching MSNBC, CNN< NBC, CBS, and ABC and PBS!
Also since the Republicans control the House where impeachment originates and the Senate convicts makes any such attempt useless! But I realize you moonbats will never get over the election results - Trump won 33 out of 50 states (not 57 states as our brilliant last President thought).
Now you all need to go back to your caves and get some rest!
"I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat." Will Rodgers
Oh look, another little brat cuts and pastes another BS story from another whiny libclown in HuffPo' and tries to post it as their own material.
Do they teach about plagiarism in your boohoo college Inevitable Impeachment?
Do you even know what impeachment means?
Strange - but I don't remember Chuck Schumer crying for those who lost their loved ones at San Bernadino or Orlando but he cries because a few travelers where inconvenienced for hours coming to America. What a pathetic hack!
These same Democrats just complained about the President's Holocaust statement saying he didn't mention Jews - that he may not be acknowledging the true happening of the event. You can't make this stuff up - the Democrats are off the rails using irrational reasoning just to criticized the President!
Reuters:
US military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.
As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced Al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger-than-expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.
Sad: [:-|]
President Donald Trump reshuffles US National Security Council (NSC), downgrades experts in field, the military chiefs of staff and gives a regular seat to former head of the populist right-wing, Breitbart News website now, Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon. Are you scared yet?
Very sad [:-|]
Not True..This Post Is A Lie Plain And Simple.Just A Liberal Stoking The Fire.Obama Put This Plan Together 6 Months Ago.Since The Shedevil Lost The Election Obama had To Pass This On To President Trump's Team. No Matter Who Was President This Was Going Down.We Lost One Of Americas Heroes In This Raid And 3 Are Reported Injured.Please Pray for His Family And All Our Heroes. My Son Who Is A Marine And Fighting For Our Great Country Contacted Our family Today And Talked About This Raid With Us As He Is In A Area That Supports The Seal Teams. This was Planned Long Ago.So Please Don't listen To These Moonbats Who Write this Crap....God Bless America And Our President..
MrBreitbart is obviously ignoring the fact that even Dick Cheney thinks this bunch is making grave mistakes that violate everything the US is supposed to stand for. So sure, go ahead and sig heil this bunch of incompetent arrogant deeply insecure men who are frantic about their parts being too small. When even Darth Cheney is coming out swinging about this bunch of neonazi fools, when thousands of career foreign service expose their deep concerns in a consent memo, when 5 intelligence departments express their concern and outrage, when nearly every foreign leader--except Putee, of course--has expressed outrage about the chaos and hate-mongering, sure you just go ahead and continue your pathetic rants. Making the Kremlin Great!
Even Trump admitted he gave final approval for the raid; could have sad "No". No surprise that the the far right wingnuts are trying to pin this on Obama who never gave final approval.
Maybe Trump should put the professionals back on the NSC, instead of demoting them. But no, he'd rather have his psycho right wing nationalist wing nuts on NSC instead.
So Sad [:-|]
Too bad when "psycho right wing nationalist wing nuts" are equated with "strength" as is the case with these incredibly insecure wannabe fascists enamored of their testosterone-laced hate-mongering. These puny, poorly educated and morally bankrupt individuals should learn to go punch a real punching bag to vent their lifetime of poor self-esteem instead of unleashing on the vulnerable.
Poor Michael can't understand that he voted for a lunatic for president. The writing is on the wall Michael. He will be out within two years. Even Republicans in the House and Senate hate this guy or are frightened of his unstable behavior. It would be easy to get a simple majority vote for impeachment in the House and 2/3 in the Senate to send this looney to the mental hospital for help. In fact it will probably be the republicans in congress who initiate charges or an inquiry for impeachment. The Democrats are content sitting back watching Trump destroy the Republican party and at the same time igniting the largest grassroots Democratic groundswell of party unity and energy since the Civil Rights era. If Trump's crazy antics continue, The Dems could easily take back the Senate, maybe even the House in 2018 and gain major ground in the states. It's really up to republicans to save themselves and have the balls to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump before it is too late. The Dems are just enjoying the train wreck,the almost daily outrage coming from the oval Office's circus of clowns.
You're correct "Lost", the dems are doubling down on their far left agenda and are going to get buried in 2018. "Poor Milkey" is clueless if he thinks the dems can easily win the senate. Does he realize the Republicans are only defending 8, while the dems are defending 23?
Train Wreck? The Dems Are The Train Wreck And Ready To Crash....WoW
He is actually following through on the promises that made me vote for him. I wake up happy every day knowing he is in charge instead of that other one.
The last three week have been disastrous for Trump, he's got no one of substance who know what he/she is doing. It will only get worse, and has been since January 20th.
keep believing the right-wing fear-mongering hate websites at your own peril
all fake! Sad!
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Hinting darkly that “there’s something going on,” Donald J. Trump complained on Friday that he has been treated “very unfairly” by the people who wrote the United States Constitution.
“If the Constitution prevented me from doing one or two things, I’d chalk that up to bad luck,” he said. “But when literally everything I want to do is magically a violation of the Constitution, that’s very unfair and bad treatment.”
Lashing out at the document’s authors, Trump said that “America is a great country, but we have maybe the worst constitution writers in the world.”
“Russia has much better constitution writers than we do,” he said. “I talked to Putin, and he said their constitution never gives him problems.”
“The situation is very unfair!” he added.
In an ominous warning, Trump said that, as of Friday, he was putting the writers of the U.S. Constitution “on notice.”
“I don’t have their names yet, but that’s something I’m looking into,” he said. “These jokers are not going to get away with this.”
"Resident" is too dumb to know satire when he sees it, so unfortunately typical in this dumb burb.
That was so much better than saying "oops". [:)]
How silly. A satirical piece from the New Yorker is not "fake news," because it was never "news" to begin with. But then anyone who is so limited that they do not comprehend what satire is, let alone have obviously never read anything as well-written as the New Yorker, is not worth the paper they're printed on, as it were. This is sadly the case for far too many of the republicans, especially in Melrose. Even Repugs across the nation are getting the idea about this disgusting and dangerous man they elected, but here in little ol' Miss, they're still too backwards to understand the YUGE mistake they made.
Even our so-called mayor was once a Repug but retreaded himself to be a retrofitted Dem (though there's no lipstick that can cover the underlying ignorant and hateful attitudes). That played pretty well with the ignorant types who suck up and follow him, but it's now caught up with enough of the community that he isn't having such a good time getting everyone to buy his boondoggles anymore. He may have shoved through his 26% raise, but that override didn't play so well, and his perpetual and costly building schemes are scorned as they should be. He may have fooled the majority for many years, but his rampant corruption, contemptuous conduct, and patronage schemes aren't fooling most anymore. He and his cabinet of pompous little men with big notions about themselves (PDR, RVC, JC, etc) are a mini version of the unpleasant, incompetent and menacing fools now in the WH. His latest "wall" is this library "renovation" scheme, and he's got his fleet of silly Kelleyannes (Marthas, Denises, etc.) to promote it; fortunately there are plenty of pi$$ed-off taxpayers who aren't buying it. Too bad they didn't rise up against the 6-7 million-dollar modulars (bet you hadn't realized how much the price had gone up!) "wall," another terrible and costly boondoggle, or that "Learning Commons" that is just a shinier version of the empty barn of a "library" that it started out as.
The ignorance and belligerence of the types who continue to rail against true American values is really quite something to behold. Seeing it play out over and over again locally is sad and disgusting. Melrose is supposed to be a community of caring and reasonably educated citizens. Not so much, really, especially looking beyond the "quaint" "nice" real estate portrayals. But the demographic is actually changing, and in this case, that is fortunate. The more actual educated and informed residents move in, the more diluted the influence of the contemptuous and ignorant, hopefully. Too bad it will take a while for these new Melrosians to realize how awful the school system is and that they were sold a bill of goods by the lying real estate agents, but maybe the outrage will be sufficient to tackle the complete overhaul of the school administration, starting with the irredeemable school committee/mayor.
Meanwhile, we need a Melrose version of SNL to cope with the tiresome and obnoxious cast of bad characters on the 2nd floor there.
"Real Facts Redux" is just another who consumes and regurgitates Kellyanne's "Alternate Facts" and is anything but a rational, balanced human who trades in actual facts. He has proven over and over again with his rants that he is another unpatriotic Melrose fascist, a Nazi admirer/wannabe, like so many of the factually unpatriotic Trumpites. Even when this guy ran for alderman, it was clear who he really is, and thankfully, the majority of decent Melrosians recognized this (even if they fail to recognize so much else). Wave your flags and place your hand on your heart, but you are no patriot when you endorse a monster like DT (or his sick, unAmerican agenda) who has already defiled the office of the Presidency, the Constitution of the United States, and brings new shame almost by the hour to our country worldwide.
Oh, for those Trump diehard supporters who imagine themselves American Patriots and still can't seem to understand what and whom they are endorsing, this foolish playacter so-called "President Trump" has actual card-carrying Nazis in his nightmare cabinet cabal, including this gem:
"Controversial Trump counter-terrorism aide Sebastian Gorka is facing fresh scrutiny for his ties to far-right political organizations in Hungary.
Forward.com reports that Hungarian group Vitézi Rend, a far-right organization that the United States State Department claims was “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II, is claiming that Gorka is one of its “sworn members” who took a “life-long oath of loyalty.”
What makes this particularly interesting, notes Forward, is that Gorka’s immigration status in the United States could be jeopardized if he failed to disclose his relationship with the group.
“The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend ‘are presumed to be inadmissible’ to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the website writes.
Gorka’s ties to Vitézi Rend were first revealed earlier this year when a photograph emerged of him wearing one of the group’s medals."
The post above gives you an idea as to the crazy people out there that refuse to accept Trump's victory in November! Give it up people,and understand that we finally have a President who wants to protect us, grow jobs, stick up for America in international trade and diplomacy, who cares about the working middle class and not the elitists in Washington or those on the West & East coasts!