The Gestapo in Denver

Not so secret a police state any longer.

Protesters at the Denver airport over the weekend were told by police that it was illegal to exercise “free speech without a permit.”

Denverite reported that over 200 people gathered at the Denver International Airport on Friday to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. In video posted to YouTube, Police Commander Tony Lopez can be seen advising demonstrators that they are in violation of the law.

“Stop doing anything that could be construed as free speech without a permit” ... Lopez warns in the video, which lacks context, that even carrying a copy of the U.S. Constitution was prohibited in the airport.

“I cannot carry the Constitution without a permit?” one protester asks.

“Correct,” the officer replies.

Protestors are being handed these pieces of paper. Organizers tell crowd to take down signs, and not to sing or police will step in #KDVR pic.twitter.com/5HDM9RpmrV

— Emily Allen FOX31 (@EmilyAReports) January 29, 2017

So we can surmise that the Denver police department was just following the orders of the Denver city council.  Fortunately none of the protestors were arrested.  Yet.

Monday Night Massacre

Rock and roll.

Trump went the full Nixon last night, after acting AG Sally Yates had instructed DOJ employees not to enforce his Muslim ban earlier in the afternoon.  The FNG, also an Obama appointee like Yates, promises to compel the executive order.  And then Trump followed up by replacing the ICE director with an underling without explanation.

This may be a moment of clarity for Senate Democrats, but they are already waffling on whether to support or oppose Trump's to-be-named-later-today SCOTUS pick, now widely rumored as his sister's appeals court bench teammate, Tom Hardiman.

But the real news about the Muslim ban may lie elsewhere.

For all the pyrotechnics at the Justice Department today, this may be the bigger story. There's been confusion over the last three days over whether Republicans on Capitol Hill were briefed, consulted or involved in writing President Trump's now infamous immigration executive order. The White House has said they were. Republicans on the Hill said the first they heard of it was in news reports.

Now we have an explanation.

According to this story in Politico, the White House worked with senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee to draft the order. But those staffers, who work ultimately for Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), didn't tell their bosses. In other words, they secretly collaborated with White House staff without informing the members of Congress they work for. Indeed, the administration went so far as to have them sign non-disclosure agreements swearing them to secrecy!

This is quite simply unheard of.

To be clear, the executive works with Congress all the time to craft legislation. That's the President working with members of Congress, though much of the actual work is delegated to staff. All normal. It's congressional staff working for the executive without telling the members of Congress they work for which is the big deal.

More from Josh Marshall there on What It All Means.  But for sure, this is what shaking up Washington looks like, and House Republicans suddenly need to assess how they are going to react to getting the end-around from President Cheeto Hitler.  I'll bet they won't just lie there and take it the way Democrats do.

If Trump is going to be reined in, it's going to be Team Pachyderm that does the dirty work.  If he keeps piling up constitutional crises this fast ... well, impeachment in six months at least sounds a little more plausible.  And at this pace, who can predict what happens today, tomorrow, the rest of this week, and next?  We're all going to have to do more than pop and eat corn, that much is certain.

Update: Not getting the word about the ban beforehand includes James Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, and GOP Sen. Bob Corker.  (Who knows, one of these men could possibly be a terrorist sympathizer.)

At least three top national security officials — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Rex Tillerson, who is awaiting confirmation to lead the State Department — have told associates they were not aware of details of the directive until around the time Trump signed it. Leading intelligence officials were also left largely in the dark, according to U.S. officials.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said that despite White House assurances that congressional leaders were consulted, he learned about the order in the media.

[...]

Mattis, who stood next to Trump during Friday’s signing ceremony, is said to be particularly incensed. A senior U.S. official said Mattis, along with Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford, was aware of the general concept of Trump’s order but not the details. Tillerson has told the president’s political advisers that he was baffled over not being consulted on the substance of the order.

Hoo boy.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has a lot of blogging to do if it's going to make any Super Bowl parties this weekend.  Here's the roundup of the best of the lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff did an interview with Jessica Shortall of Texas Competes, one of the many groups that is fighting against Dan Patrick's anti-LGBT bathroom bill.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos reports that, true to Trumpian fashion, Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz avoid their constituents, going as far as to eject peaceful visitors from offices, locking them out, and calling the police.

SocraticGadfly takes a look at recent discussion about implicit bias, especially implicit racial bias, and believes it is indeed a valid concept, but at the same time has issues with testing for it.

Frustration at the weakness of Democrats -- in particular, Senate Democrats confirming Trump's cabinet appointees -- is spreading and growing stronger, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value sent a letter to each of his Houston and Harris County elected Democrats -- from the school board on up -- asking them what role they will take in opposing Donald Trump.  Neil will be posting the replies at his blog as they are received. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

After a couple of months off, John Coby at Bay Area Houston gets back in the saddle with a couple of postings, one about the HCDP chair race and one about Trump.

Ted at jobsanger takes note of Trump's approval rating having gone underwater already.

The Lewisville Texan Journal would like to point out that a woman's place is in the House and the Senate.

Dos Centavos was at the rally asking Houston officials to overturn the 287(g) immigration policy. 

And Texas Leftist celebrates the return of a Houston radio station dedicated to classical music.

===========================

More news from across Texas!

Texas Monthly's Daily Post visits the two busiest airports in the state to look at how the immigration ban is going.

Additional 'peaceful protectors' are requested at tomorrow's Muslim Lobby Day at the Capitol, posts the Rag Blog.

UT and NFL football star Ricky Williams was harassed by police in Tyler, and the mayor there responded by offering his guest room the next time Williams visits, though Grits for Breakfast figures that offer would not be extended to other racially profiled black men.

Somervell County Salon begins her most recent Ruminations of the Easily Amused by noting US Judge Sam Sparks striking down the fetal burial law.

The Midland Reporter-Telegram had the story about the mosque in Victoria, a previous target of hate crimes, which burned to the ground over the weekend.

The Texas Observer covered two protests, one in south Austin at the Texas Parks and Wildlife headquarters, against commission member Kelcy Warren (the owner of Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline company) and in San Marcos, where students of Texas State have been repeatedly intimidated by the long history of racial prejudice in that town.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, former state representative Kent Grusendorf has moved on from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Austin's most influential conservative thinktank.

The Texas Tribune covered the DNC chair candidates' appearance at the Future Forum, held at Texas Southern University on Saturday.

DBC Green Blog went to hear Code Pink activists Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin as they swung through Texas.

Rice University's Urban Edge blog has the story on the Texas Historical Commission's designation of the Astrodome as a state landmark, providing the defense against those who would rather tear it down than preserve it.

And CultureMap Houston collected some of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations from this past weekend.

In the aftermath of Trump's Muslim ban

Kevin Drum has missed more often than he's made over the past year or so, but he strikes this one dead solid perfect.  Opening with an excerpt:

Harold Pollack on President Trump's immigration fiasco:

The President’s team had months to prepare this signature immigration initiative. And they produced...an amateurish, politically self-immolating effort that humiliated the country, provoked international retaliation, and failed to withstand the obvious federal court challenge on its very first day.

Given the despicable nature of this effort, I’m happy it has become a political fiasco. It also makes me wonder how the Trump administration will execute the basic functions of government. This astonishing failure reflects our new President’s contempt for the basic craft of government.

This sure seems to be the case. For the barely believable story of just how incompetent the whole exercise was, check out this CNN story. It will leave your jaw on the floor. And yet, there's also one tidbit that makes me wonder if the chaos attending the rollout was quite as unintended as we think:

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President's inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.

The decision to apply the executive order to green card holders, including those in transit, is almost insane. Whatever else he is, Steve Bannon is a smart guy, and he had to know that this would produce turmoil at airports around the country and widespread condemnation from the press.

Why would he do this?

I'll answer that (first, with respect to Trump): In addition to being a racist, a misogynist, and a sexual fetishist, our new president has now revealed himself to be a sadist.  Update: This is not hyperbole, not exaggeration.  Sadist.

"It’s working out very nicely,” (Trump) said on Saturday afternoon as he signed his latest batch of executive actions. “You see it in the airports.”

Bannon, for his part, is both Neo-Nazi and nihilist.

Not today. #JFKTerminal4 #NoBanNoWall pic.twitter.com/uON20Jod3V

— NYCLU (@NYCLU) January 28, 2017

In cases like this, the smart money is usually on incompetence, not malice. But this looks more like deliberate malice to me. Bannon wanted turmoil and condemnation. He wanted this executive order to get as much publicity as possible. He wanted the ACLU involved. He thinks this will be a PR win.

Liberals think the same thing. All the protests, the court judgments, the press coverage: this is something that will make middle America understand just what Trump is really all about. And once they figure it out, they'll turn on him.

In other words, both sides think that maximum exposure is good for them. Liberals think middle America will be appalled at Trump's callousness. Bannon thinks middle America will be appalled that lefties and the elite media are taking the side of terrorists. After a week of skirmishes, this is finally a hill that both sides are willing to die for. Who's going to win?

This is indeed chaos theory as applied to governance.  While the media's attention was focused on the protests, Bannon was appointed to the National Security Council (along with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief of staff Reince Priebus), replacing the Director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That is some kind of hubris.  I'd say we're now headed pell-mell toward both a civil war and a nuclear war -- remember, the North Koreans have been bragging about their new missile and restarting their reactor -- and the reaction from the Chinese seems to be "let's get it started".

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!  There may not be many more in our future!