Although Trump and Bondi hope that “Operation Epic Fury” will fade their faults and overshadow all the domestic unrest, the fact still remains that two peaceful protesters were killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. A disabled woman was dragged from her car even though she wasn’t part of the protests and was on her way to a medical appointment. She is a U.S. citizen, but she was removed so violently that her shoulders were injured, possibly permanently. None of the ICE agents have been investigated, let alone charged in any of these incidents.

As a follow-up, the disabled woman attended the most recent State of the Union Address as a guest of her Congresswoman and was arrested for disturbance even though she said nothing and bore no signs and did nothing to create a disturbance.

Yet Attorney General Pam Bondi has charged thirty-nine protesters for disrupting a service in Minneapolis at a church where one of the pastors was an ICE official, even though no one was injured or hurt. Bondi claimed that the protesters “attacked” a house of worship and stated that if any such protests occurred again, “we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you.”

Contrast the reaction to a peaceful protest against a pastor who is an ICE official with the lack of Department of Justice response to the killings and violence perpetrated in Minneapolis by ICE agents.

Disturbing a church service merits charges against 36 protesters and three media types who were trying to report on the protests, but ICE killings and violence against peaceful protesters doesn’t merit investigation and charges?

What does that tell you not only about ICE, but also about the power of the religious right in the United States?

Another stunning Department of Homeland Security revelation surfaced this week. Last year, Corey Lewandowski, one of DHS Secretary Noem’s top aides, entered the cockpit of a government jet uninvited during the post-take-off period, when entry to the cockpit is legally restricted, complaining because Secretary Noem’s blanket had been left behind when the crew and passengers, including Secretary Noem, had to switch aircraft for mechanical reasons.

The crew notified Lewandowski that he could not remain in the cockpit during climb-out, and Lewandowski left. Later in the flight, Lewandowski asked who should be fired because Noem’s blanket had been left behind, and the pilot in command took the responsibility. Lewandoski fired him, but the agency had to reinstate the pilot because, at Noem’s destination, there was no one qualified to fly the aircraft back to Washington, D.C.

So, not only did Noem’s people try to fire a pilot for leaving a blanket behind, but no one apparently considered the ramifications.

Apparently, Kristi Noem can’t even hang on to her own blanket and then had an aide break federal aviation rules to complain before going on to fire someone else for either her forgetfulness or that of her staff.

Over a blanket, yet?

And this is the woman in charge of the Department of Homeland Security?

I come from an older and more formal background, as if my readers and friends largely don’t know that already.

In my collegiate first year English class, when we were reading/studying The Great Gatsby, Professor Mansfield looked me and said, “You’re quietly formal, like Nick Caraway,” or words generally to that effect. When I worked in Washington, D.C., I was perfectly comfortable in a tie, collared shirt, and a three-piece suit (if with polished boots), and I haven’t owned or worn a pair of jeans in more than forty years. If I’m doing grubby work, it’s in sweatpants and work boots.

That conservatism extends largely to my writing, except for a few years when I experimented with onomatopoeia in my first fantasy novels (which, as many readers know, was not received as well as it might have been). “All right” will always be two words for me, because I shudder and wince when I see “alright” in print. I also like the pluperfect, which my editor does not.

To me, a collared long-sleeved shirt was just a shirt, but for several years now, and possibly longer (since I don’t keep track of changes in fashion terminology), those plain shirts that went with suits are now what the menswear companies term “formal” or “dress shirts.” I always thought formal or dress shirts were the pleated white shirts that went with tails and tuxedos.

Since I work from the office in my house these days, I no longer wear suits to work, but my normal attire consists of slacks, collared shirt, and vest, and, of course, polished cowboy boots, certainly nothing I’d consider especially dressy. I may add a sports coat if I go out on a chilly day. But when my wife the professor and I go out to eat in our usual work clothes, more than half the time, someone wants to know why we’re all dressed up. Usually, I suspect, it’s more on account of what she’s wearing.

This amuses me, because what we wear now would have been considered excessively casual in our twenties and thirties. But then, what most people wear on airplanes today would likely have denied them boarding back then. Denying boarding for totally inappropriate attire still might be a good idea, even if it does come from a fashion dinosaur.

Why do so many Republicans oppose requirements for ICE agents:

To wear body cameras?
To wear name badges?
To obtain a judicial warrant before forcing their way into homes, churches, and other private spaces?
To be prohibited from wearing masks?
To be held to the standards and accountability of other law enforcement agencies for use of force, especially lethal force?

Right now, ICE often operates more like Hitler’s brownshirts than like a legitimate law enforcement body, and yet Republicans oppose any reforms to ICE operating procedures, despite the killings of protesters and the blatant lying about those events.

Could it be that immigration reform is secondary to establishing the practice of punishing citizens for speaking out against heavy-handed government.

ICE isn’t the only area where the current administration is violating the Constitution and established law.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is the foundational, congressionally enacted legal system (10 U.S.C. Chapter 47) regulating the U.S. armed forces, and one of its provisions is that military personnel must not obey unlawful orders. A specific example of an unlawful order is one that suppresses lawful protest against suppression of First Amendment speech. Yet both President Trump and his Secretary of Defense/War have attempted to suppress the free speech of members of Congress, merely for pointing out this provision of the UCMJ. That’s certainly against the Constitution.

In addition, Trump has used the Department of Justice to attack political enemies, attempting to file lawsuits where even grand juries refuse to bring indictments. Federal attorneys (from both political parties) have literally resigned by the score in protest of such tactics, and at least one federal district attorney’s office had no attorney able or qualified to carry out such an indictment.

Trump has also flagrantly ignored the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that bars officials from accepting foreign gifts or profits, although he’s paid lip service to it by funneling such gifts to façade foundations and family members (which at least one other President has done, not that such makes it legal, but never on the scale Trump has done).

So… why do a majority of Republican members of the House and Senate put up with such patent illegalities?

Is it because they believe that if the President (but only a Republican President) declares that something is legal, then it must be? Or are they simply afraid that their own President will attack them? Either way, what does all this say about the Republicans? (Not that the Democrats are exactly paragons of virtue).

Extreme idealism shouldn’t be enshrined in government or law, and certainly not in a democratic government. Ideals are fine for personal guidance. They’re even acceptable as governmental goals, but they become tyranny when turned into unyielding law.

Take abortion. Any policy that forbids abortion is going to kill a certain and not inconsequential number of mothers, as is already happening in Texas, and any policy that allows even restricted abortion to save the life of the mother will kill a certain number of viable fetuses. It also forces doctors to choose between disobeying the law or seeing women die unnecessarily. Why? Because extremist and absolutist laws can’t take into account all the possible health permutations.

Or take immigration. The current ICE policies, combined with the legal fallacy that immigration is a civil offense, effectively make no distinction in terms of guilt between someone trying to escape being killed by a dictator in their former homeland and someone who’s committed multiple crimes. They also punish infants and children who had no choice about where they were born or where they live. But then, why should one expect any more of the descendants of people who wiped out millions of indigenous peoples and enslaved millions of others for hundreds of years, who also just conveniently forgot that they are the descendants, essentially, of illegal immigrants?

And some of those who support ICE actions and policies even profess to believe in a God, whose professed Savior said, “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.” And one of those supporters is even a pastor, whose professed savior didn’t say, “just the children whose preferably white parents were born here.”

Then, of course, there’s the problem of selective enforcement of absolutist laws. We’re seeing ICE agents picking up U.S. citizens because they “look different.” Add to that an administration that changes the law, without the approval of Congress, so that immigrants who were here legally became illegal overnight, and not because of anything they did, while ICE unilaterally decides that agents don’t need judicial warrants to break into homes.

But apparently that legal absolutism being applied to pregnant women and once-legal immigrants doesn’t apply to white male sexual abusers or well-connected drug dealers or white politicians convicted of financial fraud.

Fancy that.