In January, I wrote about Democrats in the United States Senate proposing a group of changes in US immigration enforcement. Listing some of the suggested changes, I summed them up as largely the adopting of restraints at the US government level “that have generally helped ensure at the state and local level that police violate people’s rights less frequently and can be more likely held to account in instances when they do.”
Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York City mayoral election in November, provided some advice in a video monologue this week regarding interacting with agents of the United States government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In the minute and a half video titled “Know Your Rights When Dealing With ICE” at Mamdani’s YouTube page, Mamdani, who will become mayor on January 1, provided several pieces of advice that, if employed, may protect people from abuse and harm at the hands of government agents.
Cops enforce laws. On first impression that may seem a good thing as one considers long in place laws, such as against assault, murder, and theft, that can help protect individuals’ ability to live in peace. But, laws have proliferated over time in America so that cops are spending a significant portion of their effort enforcing laws against things like drugs and even speech — acting to restrain instead of protect the exercise of individual rights.
Public backlash can lead government to reverse power overreaches, and to do so quickly.
It has become common practice for United States military members to use drones to kill people abroad via remote control. On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to OK cops doing the same in the California city.
United States Vice President Kamala Harris gave a whopper of a speech on Thursday morning at the US Capitol concerning the one-year anniversary of January 6, 2020 protests and scuffles at the building. It was hyperbolic absurdity from the beginning of Harris’s speech when she grouped the date January 6, 2020 with December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and September 11, 2001.
This has been a terrible school year for many students at college campuses across America due to draconian restrictions imposed in the name of countering coronavirus that poses very little risk of major sickness or death for young adults. At the University of California, Berkeley, restrictions imposed on students at dormitories have become so severe that dorm life seems very much like prison life.
People in New York City have been subjected to one of the most repressive coronavirus crackdowns in America. Included have been months-long forced closure of many businesses and extreme limitations placed on businesses that have been allowed to resume some operations during incremental scaling back of closure orders. Such government actions have decimated businesses in the city. A Sunday report by Lauren Thomas at CNBC illustrates the continuing economic destruction by describing vacancies and bankruptcies, along with a large drop in rents sought, in 16 major retail corridors of the Manhattan borough of the city.
The plummeting economy has come hand-in-hand with plummeting respect for liberty, with people in New York City having been prohibited from doing many of the things, in addition to operating or working at businesses, that people have long considered basic to living — doing daily activities outside home without wearing a mask, attending religious services, meeting friends at a bar for a beer, and taking children to a playground, for example.
Across America over the last week large groups of people have been protesting. Many people have also crowded together rioting and looting, often with no police taking any action to stop the out-in-the-open assaults and theft. Meanwhile, in many of the same cities and towns across America businesses remain totally shut down or are legally allowed to operate only under new restrictions that make profitable functioning difficult to impossible, all in the name of countering coronavirus.
“Once police stop you, a ticket is the least of your worries,” writes Jacob Sullum early on in his new Reason article “10 Ways a Roadside Police Stop Can Go Wrong.”
After starting off with a short examination of the discretion police have to pull over vehicles on the road for a plethora of reasons, Sullum addresses, in turn, ten of the ways beyond a ticket that a traffic stop can be harmful. He starts with number one, having one’s driver license taken away, and proceeds on to number ten, being killed.