Someone named Dewey took exception to my article about a prison being reopened, and quickly fired off a “rebuttal”.
Aw, cry more. Criminals belong in prisons. People who illegally enter homes belong in prison. People who illegally enter businesses belong in prison. People who illegally enter the country belong in prison.
Sure, criminals belong in prison. Listing crimes that get people arrested doesn’t impress me. By the way, he forgot “People who riot and commit violence against the police and vandalize the US Capitol belong in prison.” Or “People who rape women and sexually harass young women belong in prison.” The problem is that these penalties are not justly applied.
Also, people are allowed to enter the country and, for instance, apply for residence or for asylum. Just being in the country doesn’t make a person a criminal.
I’m sure you’d love to completely eliminate the prison system and switch to the honor system, but you’re not in charge, thankfully. Obama was a rockstar who deported over 3 million illegal aliens and did so without the nebulous “due process” you liberals love to whine about.
I’m not lobbying to completely eliminate prisons, but do find it wasteful to reopen prisons that were declared redundant and shuttered over a decade ago. Why reopen a prison unless you’re planning to throw more people into it, in a country with declining levels of crime?
“Due process” is not nebulous. It’s a specific legal process that requires that the state demonstrate criminality and give the accused an opportunity to present their case in court.
Trump probably isn’t competent enough to get even close to that record level of deportations, but any number helps. Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly. You’re going the way of the dinosaurs. It would be best that you accept that fact.
Why should I accept the fact that injustices are being done? I will oppose them to the end.
The requirement for due process is spelled out clearly in the constitution, the supreme law of the land which most office holders have taken an oath to support. If someone is going to run their mouth about law-breaking, they should be aware of what is in the constitution and who is breaking the law by not abiding.
Full Text of the U.S. Constitution
Extra credit point: Note that this applies to all “persons,” not just citizens.
Note again this applies to all persons, not just citizens; and states are prohibited from violating this right just as the federal government is.
Off-topic but I just heard there was a terrible school shooting in your neck if the woods. This country isn’t doing well.
This idiot is lying.
Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly.
Oh really? The people’s minds are changing rapidly but in the opposite way he claims.
The majority of the US population opposes what the current ICE Gestapo is doing.
and
More and more people are supporting some immigration into the USA.
It’s high at 79%.
Troll: “You’re going the way of the dinosaurs.”
Trivial insult. The fact is the troll is an idiot and lying.
Troll: “It would be best that you accept that fact.”
The troll is an idiot and has nothing worthwhile to say.
We don’t know or care whether he understands that fact.
19 children shot, 2 of which are now dead with more probably dying.
In a Minneapolis Catholic church next to a private Catholic school.
Yeah, it is another atrocity.
@ 4
The usual suspects are already claiming the suspect was trans,
Our esteemed host just doesn’t understand.
Big strong macho American men like Dewey are vewwy, vewwy, fwightened.
Nothing else matters but that.
Every one of every group which makes them insecure must be eliminated, by
anyevery means necessary.’Especially those who realize, and say, that their insecurity comes from within…
NO ONE is actually criminal until charged, tried by a jury of their peers and sentenced.
Can’t wait until the current iteration of Gestapo sweeps up the troll.
Try to remember that Jews, LGBTQ, Roma and nonwhites weren’t the only targets. Resident legal aliens (white people from other countries) were also targeted & imprisoned. You could be a blue eyed blond German and if you were a socialist, communist, trade unionist, off to the camps with you.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps
Oh yeah, when the Nazis ran out of conscripted (non Jewish) Poles & Slavs, they conscripted German citzens from the lower socioeconomic strata. Nazi sympathizers who were nonetheless conscripted into work gangs. The idiots wrote letters to Hitler, protesting their full (privileged) German citizenship, which fell on deaf ears. Plenty of them died from exposure and starvation in the work gangs–insufficient clothing, shelter, food.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/nazi-forced-labor-policy-eastern-europe#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20compulsory%20labor,labor%20during%20World%20War%20II.
Fuck off now, stupid troll.
From WashPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/08/27/minneapolis-shooting-annunciation-catholic-school/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert
Right. Thoughts and prayers.
Rational gun control laws? Not so much.
Well, let’s hope none of the injured are having their Medicaid & SNAP benefits cut off by Cheeto Benito, the flag molester.
Part of me kind of wonders if the flags aren’t going to inch their way back up, to be out of reach of the flag fondler.
#5 Akira MacKenzie
it seems to be true that the shooter was a trans individual. I heard it on MPR. plus here is NBC:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minneapolis-catholic-school-shooting-rcna227591
There have been a couple of other shootings here in Minneapolis within a single day, too, though only one mass shooting.
@ 9
Fuck. The fascists are going to eat this up,
Dexter man sentenced to year in prison for making women expose breasts while working as Border Patrol agent
Why is “Dewey” so het up about undocumented immigrants when there are far more serious crimes going on?
New Jersey’s massive American Dream mall sued for selling clothes on a Sunday
Lots of books have been written about the intricacies of due process. It’s why lawyers have to get specialized education. It’s a highly detailed field with a lot of meaningful technicalities. But like most people who complain about “criminals,” they are the actual criminal element, being led around by a convicted felon on Epstein’s list.
As a commissioned officer, I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Having read the whole thing prior to taking that oath for the first time — if you’re actually going to uphold your oath, it really helps to know what you’re upholding — I was aware of the Religious Test Clause, Amendments I, V, XIII, XIV, XV, and XIX, and took that oath with no mental reservations or purpose of evasion. “Dewey”‘s argument as summarized by PZ (presumably edited primarily for length, not for substance; it has the whiff of extended, repetitious ranting) demonstrates that he would have either been ignorant of what he was swearing to support and defend, or have substantial mental reservations/purpose of evasion.
Or both.
@9 Robbo, #8 silvrhalide #11. Akira MacKenzie : Aussie ABC news says it is been de an anti-Catholic hate crime :
&
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-28/shooting-reported-at-annunciation-church-school-in-minneapolis/105705812
Shit, yes, this seems bad in so many ways here. Huge understatement.
If those early reports are true -and even if they aren’t since that’s already beeing reported and you can bet that the reichwing is going to run with it and probly invent more.. I hope it’s not true but not sounding good at all. ( Inadequate descriptiuon but .. no words ..)
On the topic, this Dewey klown sure has a toxic mix of bigoted anti-migrant hate and willful ignornace plus a very poor, weak strawperson imagination of the progressive views he imagines he disagrees with here.
The economic effect of deportations under Obama:
Via NPR. Emphasis mine.
@ StevoR
Hey Stevo, I thought you were a huge fan of extra-judicial execution:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/12/09/ask-before-opening-fire/#comment-2245700
Or are you telling us you’re so stupid you think it’s possible to have a society where murdering random insurance company flunkies is okay, but murdering random Catholic kids is not. As though it’s even conceivable to have a social system with one and not the other.
Silent Bob, you are now confabulating bullshit “gotchas” to put down people you disagree with.
(1) Brian Thompson was hardly a “flunkie.” He was the CEO responsible for decisions that harmed thousands of vulnerable people and did so for his own financial benefit. (2) It is entirely possible to support the killing of a person who has abused power when there is no legal avenue to pursue, and at the same time not supporting the mass murder of children because of a delusional hatred of their school’s religion. Note that I do not agree with Mangione’s actions, but I can see the difference between him and the Annunciation shooter — a difference so obvious that it could only be missed by a moron or a bad-faith agitator.
We should take the example of EU nations when it comes to the US Justice System. It’s shocking how much harsher the penalties are in the States. Something that would get you a few years of prison in Europe, can lead to decades of incarceration in the US. Not to mension prison conditions, the use of prolonged solitary confinement, the lack of any meaningful rehabilitation, etc.
There are literally people on social media asking Americans not to order food deliveries, because it’s too dangerous for the drivers and they might get arrested and deported. That’s the state of affairs.
About people’s minds changing rapidly.
I just learned 12% of Trump voters have abandoned him over the Epstein scandal.
Have a nice day in the midterm election.
We’ve had border controls and immigration enforcement for at least a century.
What is different this time is the brutality and illegality of the current ICE thugs.
They are arresting US citizens, Legal Permanent Residents such as Green Card Holdes, and legal asylum seekers. They are also using racial profiling to randomly stop people, mostly nonwhites.
They are also arresting tourists when they enter the USA for no particular reason and sometimes arresting foreign students here in the USA legally for educations. Up until now, there were 1.1 million foreign students in the USA, an important part of the universities enrollment and a source of American soft power.
They are also emptying out work places to the point where our food system is slowing down.
Normally, in the summer fruit and vegetable prices go down as the harvest starts up. This isn’t happening this summer because there is a shortage of…farm workers.
None of this is necessary.
It is simply terrorism, cruelty theater.
It is also becoming more and more unpopular.
And, it is harming the USA itself in many ways.
@21 chrislawson
It’s not even hard to simultaneously think Brian Thompsons murder being morally good while thinking his murderer should be incarcerated.
As far as some people are concerned, esp. the bosses at ICE, being hispanic or Middle-Eastern is already a crime.
As is expressing disagreement with the policies of the Trump administration.
I’d be all for prisons if we locked up the truly guilty. Like the illegal union busters and those committing wage theft: https://www.workingnowandthen.com/blog/wage-theft-the-50-billion-crime-against-workers/
If Obama had arrested at least a few of the banking crooks in 2008 – as did Iceland – we might not have gotten Trump. Also, liberal saint Kamala Harris, during her time as AG, arrested thousands of low-level drug dealers (mainly POC) based on fraudulent crime lab data but somehow missed Steve Mnuchin, who illegally foreclosed on tens of thousands of homes (again mostly POC).
So many of our problems date back to when evil 19th century businessmen hijacked the 14th amendment, designed to grant personhood to formerly enslaved people, to designate corporations “persons.” We should end that, and hold execs accountable. Until that happens, even throwing just a few in jail (as Iceland did) would help enormously.
@20. Silentbob :
@ StevoR
Hey Stevo, I thought you were a huge fan of extra-judicial execution: (link snipped)
Then you thought wrong yet again.
As #21 chrislawson has pointed out the CEO Brian Thompson was no mere “flunky” and obviously killing kids is always wrong. Huge difference and obvious strawan on your part.
Wait wut? What do you mean? It’s not only possible to have social systems with neither Health Insurance CEOs or companies at all and without Catholicism but most societies and nations throughout history have lacked both. Societies that have health insurance -& esp the USA model of greedy, sociopathic Insurance companies and societies that are Catholic are a minority of societies or social systems.
Oh and since you are bringing up things from the past here how about answering my questions for you asked long ago and never answered here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/05/16/mokele-mbembe/#comment-2265477
Sigh, could swear I did have blockquotes there where I guess you can all tell where.
FWIW & for clarity; I am conflicted on assassinating the unaccountable, sociopathic rich but as a last resort when all else fails and justice just isn’t delivered..yes, its acceptable.
It is certainly a very different to mass shooting innocent people who do not deserve any punishment let alone death.
It would be preferable to hold such CEOs legally accountable and jail them but sometimes when that isn’t going to happen, well, what then? Let them do ever more harm indefinitely into the future? Harms that include killing and causing immense, incalculable harm to others and the world we all share? Vigilante action including taking out the worst scum alive is not something I’m a fan of – huge or otherwise – but there are contexts and circumstances where it may be considered the last resort least bad alternative in my view.
Do you think this is wrong and if so why?
If there is a person who is above the law, utterly evil and getting away with continually committing evil and causing incalculable harm incl death to others & there’s no way to legally remove them to stop them doing so what would you advise? What do you think is the most ethical action?
Stevo, this is and always been, the rationale of fascists. It’s straight out of Mein Kampf.
@ StevoR
Society has addressed this. We have judges, juries, a right to trial We have a declaration of inviolable human rights.
All these things came about as solutions to the problem you identify. They are not perfect. Nothing ever will be. They’re the best we’ve got.
@ ^ Silentbob : Excepot society hasn’t adressed that since Luigi Mangione had to do that when it came to getting rid of one evil CEO -and yeah, there’s still a huge iussue with UnitedHealthcare and other such predatory, sociopathic, evil companies and what they do to ordinary Americans.
Not perfect is an understatement here and if tif the legal system allows Hetlath Insurance companies to be so evil, who and what will stop them?.
@ 32. Silentbob :“Stevo, this is and always been, the rationale of fascists. It’s straight out of Mein Kampf.”
Nonsense. Fascists are authoritarians and put their idea of law and order above individual choice and ethical action esp when those individual ethical actions breaks their unjust laws. Notably the people hiding Anne Frank broke the law, the people turning her in followed it so.. yeah. Nah.
@35 StevoR
I think the comparison is fair, considering you said back in January that you want a military coup to depose Trump, followed by a ‘ hard reboot of [our] “Democracy” ‘. You aren’t interested in democratic means to an end, you just want the biggest bullies on the playground to force your desired outcome (apparently a military dictatorship) on everyone else.