The DOJ Is Suing Boston to Protect It from “Illegal Alien Crime”

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

Looks like we might be next on the hit parade, depending on whether or not the president chickens out on Chicago. From Politico:

President Donald Trump’s administration filed suit Thursday against Boston, arguing its policies that limit police cooperation with civil immigration enforcement violate federal law. The Department of Justice lawsuit follows similar legal actions by the administration against New York, New Jersey, and Los Angeles that seek to overturn what it calls “sanctuary” policies that pose obstacles to Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

This comes after both Governor Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu have made it quite clear that ICE and its auxiliary fat dudes are not welcome here in the Commonwealth (God save it!). We are accused by the Millerites in Washington of making sense.

DOJ’s lawsuit targets Boston’s Trust Act, which was adopted in 2014 and limits the amount of assistance that local law enforcement can provide to federal authorities involving the enforcement of civil immigration or low-level criminal offenses. It doesn’t prohibit Boston police from working with federal authorities on major crimes involving non-citizens. The City Council adopted the measure, which is similar to policies in place elsewhere, so that people in immigrant communities would not be afraid to cooperate with police or be reluctant to report crime.

Wu has been especially vocal and visible in her opposition to the administration's policy of invading cities it finds politically inconvenient. She quickly spoke up about the DOJ's pending lawsuit. From 10Boston:

“This unconstitutional attack on our city is not a surprise. Boston is a thriving community, the economic and cultural hub of New England, and the safest major city in the country — but this administration is intent on attacking our community to advance their own authoritarian agenda.”

Well, sure, but what is the administration feeding the rubes out there in the hinterlands?

“The City of Boston and its Mayor have been among the worst sanctuary offenders in America—they explicitly enforce policies designed to undermine law enforcement and protect illegal aliens from justice,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “If Boston won’t protect its citizens from illegal alien crime, this Department of Justice will.”

An aside: Has there ever been a sillier Cabinet member than Pam Bondi?

As is the case in all these flexes, Boston is being targeted for the politics of its leaders, not for its violent crime, which is at a historic low. My concern is that I live in a town outside Boston with a heavily diverse population—Hispanic, African, Asian—and, thanks to that, there is a thriving restaurant row not far from me. I don't want to see my neighbors rousted from their homes, or dragged off their jobs in various kitchens. I live in a target-rich environment.

Years ago, my son and I went to see The Blair Witch Project at the moving pictures house. We found it so hilarious that we still laugh at it to this day. (How many times do those meatheads cross that creek? Follow it, idiots. It will lead you to a larger body of water and, likely, civilization.) It put me off the "found-footage" genre forever. The political equivalent of a found-footage film is the "undercover" video pioneered by the felonious conservative ratfcker James O'Keefe, who is mysteriously still at large and taping.

“If they’re released in any way, it’s going to be very redacted. They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal Democratic people in those files,” Joseph Schnitt, acting deputy chief of the DOJ’s Office of Enforcement Operations, says in the video. Schnitt apparently thought he was speaking to someone he’d met through a dating app, but he was actually talking to an undercover operative for the right-wing entrepreneur James O’Keefe.

The DOJ already has copped to Schnitt's employment there but claims he's not in a position to know what he says he knows. As far as I'm willing to go is that it certainly wouldn't surprise me if this were the plan. It's just clumsy enough for this administration's crisis management team. But, since I don't trust O'Keefe as far as I can throw the Mount Palomar telescope, that's the limit of my credulity here.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “So Many Roads, So Many Trains” – Otis Rush

Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1923, is a mass baptism in Lake Michigan. I don't know to where they're hustling the baptized off but, having doused myself in Lake Michigan a couple of times for distinctly unsacramental purposes, I only hope there is soup there.

We lost the terrific character actor Graham Greene this week. He was best known for his Oscar-nominated role as Kevin Costner's indigenous mentor in Dances With Wolves, but he also was a gifted deadpan comic as well. He did a great turn in the Mel Gibson Maverick, a piffle, but a good summer diversion, and his relentless trolling of Val Kilmer's half-Native FBI agent in Thunderheart lightened up an otherwise grim murder mystery on the Pine Ridge reservation. Madam Justice tells all of us good children to chill. From Politico:

“I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like,” Barrett, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, added. “I think that our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts. I think a constitutional crisis—we would clearly be in one if the rule of law crumbles. But that is not the place where we are."

The crisis is not that the courts aren't functioning, but that they are, particularly the court on which you sit at the moment. It's functioning as an adjunct to a White House totally opposed to any limits on its power, including those embedded in the rule of law. If your main selling point is that you're oblivious to that fact, you need to rethink your career choice.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found. From Archaeology Today:

The discovery came as a team was excavating a set of Bronze Age tombs at the site of Newe Efraim near Yehud. Among the burial offerings, which also included pottery, jewelry, and metal weapons, were three clay oil lamps that still contained wicks inside. These objects rarely survive, not only because they were made from natural material that decays easily, but because by design they are intended to be lit and burnt, eventually disappearing. “This is a unique discovery that we did not expect could ever be found in the moist Mediterranean climate,” said IAA researchers Naama Sukenik and Yonah Maor. “Although wicks were a common product for lighting in the ancient world, the fact that they are made of organic fibers makes it difficult to discover them in an archaeological dig.”

I love the whole idea of scientists exulting over discovering things like 4,000-year old wicks.

Hey, ABC News: Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

The partial skeleton was found in the Shiwandashan Basin of the Wangmen Formation—a geological rock unit in southern China that contains fossils from the Jurassic period—near the Mingjiang River, the researchers said. The findings contained fossils of vertebrae, ribs, humerus, ulna, fibula and foot bones.

Measurements of the recovered bones indicate that H. qini was likely about 12 meters, or 39 feet long, and walked on four legs, according to the paper. They keep getting bigger and bigger. That's the best way to make us happy now.

I'll be back on Monday to see what fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the victims of the unspeakable violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for everyone touched by the mass shootings in Minneapolis, NYC, and Reno, and everyone recovering from the flooding in Charleston, and in the Roanoke Valley, and in Wisconsin, and in Texas, and in North Carolina, and by earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and in Turkey and Russia, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and Nigeria, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Napa, and in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska, and in Missouri. And the folks caught in “historic floods” in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. And especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve. Thank you for your attention to this matter.