February 2017 Archives

Yoo is no liberal "snowflake." This is the guy who, when he served in Bush's Justice Department, authored a series of memorandums providing legal arguments that the torture of detainees in the War on Terror was within the law, and not a war crime. According to tapes of a debate found by The Intercept, Yoo even defended the legal right of a president to torture children. As NBC News reported, he's part of the reason that the United States went to war in Afghanistan, and that Bush was able to open the ethically-dubious detention center in Guantanamo Bay. And when it came to President Barack Obama, Yoo supported his problematic use of drone strikes.

This essentially holds that during wartime a president can exercise virtually unlimited authority, which can be checked by Congress only by using the "power of the purse." Since the "war on terror" was a unique construct that could not possibly have a definitive end, that meant the president was to have nearly dictatorial power for the foreseeable future. Among other things, according to Yoo, the president could suspend the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the government to deploy the military for domestic police actions, and the Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures, by holding that they don't apply to domestic military operations undertaken during a "war on terror."

"Among the first agencies reported to face an information lockdown were the departments of Agriculture and the Interior," continues Hiltzik. "Scientists and other staffers at USDA's Agricultural Research Service, its main scientific arm, were told Monday to stop releasing 'any public-facing documents', including 'news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content ... until further notice', according to an internal email published by BuzzFeed. Following a public uproar, the ban was rescinded a day later."

Donald Trump started with climate change denial, and proceeded, rapidly, to fetter directives of the Environmental Protection Agency. "We're living in a new era, where an unverified report about possible, unsubstantiated rumors of alleged, unconfirmed evidence hacked from an undisclosed source competes on an equal footing with real information," notes Dr. Brian Moench, President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Trump's strategy is clearly an attempt to delegitimize any source of information that has the temerity to challenge or tarnish him."

In keeping with its overall fascist direction and agenda, the new regime is attacking the foundation of the public's ability to engage in critical thinking: a scientific, evidence-based approach to reality. 

The Trump regime's actions to shut down communications by dozens of federal agencies has not gone unopposed. A number of so-called rogue twitter accounts have sprung up to communicate information directly to the public. While all of them can't be verified, an interview has been published with the people behind @ActualEPAFacts, who explained why they took this unprecedented, and potentially career-killing, step: 

We all work on climate change research and grant administration. Knowing that our department is not valued by the person who may be leading the agency worries us. Our jobs are at stake. We wanted to be sure that science, real science, continues to have a voice. When the information was deleted from the Badlands NPS site it felt very Orwellian.