Habeas Corpus

 No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseised [deprived] of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we [the king] go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny of delay right or justice.¹

The right to due process, ensuring that accused individuals are granted the rights due to them under a system of law, dates in western Europe from at least 1215, when King John of England signed the Magna Carta.

The Magna Carta is a list of rights ranging from matters touching on property and inheritance to criminal law granted by the king to noble classes and landed gentry. The first paragraph above, ensuring that individuals accused of a crime would not be punished without a trial, is what we would call a due process clause. (The explanatory material in brackets is ours.)

While it is not expressly stated, the text implies that even the king is subject to the laws set out in the charter. This would have been remarkable at any point in history, but for it to appear when the doctrine of the divine right of kings, in which John believed, was widely accepted makes it even more so. 

The Magna Carta underwent many changes over centuries, and at times was held in abeyance, but it eventually became the basis of English common law. From there it jumped the Atlantic and became part of our Constitution.

Of everything in the Constitution adopted from English law, the greatest and most important is the concept of due process. Its legal name is Habeas Corpus, and it is the part of our laws that protects all of us from illegal imprisonment, deportation, or punishment. A complete definition is below, at note ².

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."  (The Constitution, Article 1, Section 9.)

The right to due process is the only specific right to be mentioned in two places in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified and written into the Constitution in 1868, reinforced Article 1: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

 The Trump White House is making noises about suspending Habeas Corpus. This has happened only 4 times since 1789, all but once during a war. The exception was during reconstruction when parts of North Carolina were overrun by the KKK. Suspension affecting the entire country has been applied only once, during the Civil War.

Habeas Corpus may be suspended only in times of invasion or war. Trump has tried in the past to make the case that we are invaded by an "army" of foreign terrorists. It's a feeble argument at best. Right now the only place suffering an invasion of terrorists is D.C. and the terrorists are those running the zoo Trump calls a government.

But I digress.

Now that Habeas Corpus is a target, it becomes clear why DonJohnny also wanted to get rid of the first part of the same amendment, the so-called "birthright" clause: to make it easier to deport anyone, citizen or not, arbitrarily, unilaterally, and without judicial interference.

Any change in any amendment must be made by another amendment, which has to go through the ratification process. The Supreme Court hasn't the power to repeal anything in the Constitution. Their job is to consider legislation in the light of the Constitution and decide if that legislation conforms. Period.

Habeas Corpus in some ways is the Constitution in miniature. Take away the protections it offers and the rest of the Constitution is little more than a manual on how to run government.

--- Diogenes, 13 May 2025

¹ Translation of 1297 Magna Carta by Nicholas Vincent, © Sotheby's, 2007. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/magna-carta/translation.html.  Accessed 12 May 2025

² Latin for "you have the body," it is a writ (court order) which directs the law enforcement officials (prison administrators, police or sheriff) who have custody of a prisoner to appear in court with the prisoner to help the judge determine whether the prisoner is lawfully in prison or jail. The writ is obtained by petition to a judge in the county or district where the prisoner is incarcerated, and the judge sets a hearing on whether there is a legal basis for holding the prisoner. Habeas corpus is a protection against illegal confinement, such as holding a person without charges, when due process obviously has been denied, bail is excessive, parole has been granted, an accused has been improperly surrendered by the bail bondsman or probation has been summarily terminated without cause. Historically called "the great writ," the renowned scholar of the Common Law, William Blackstone, called it the "most celebrated writ in English law." It may also be used as a means to contest child custody and deportation proceedings in court. The writ of habeas corpus can be employed procedurally in federal district courts to challenge the constitutionality of a state court conviction.  Law.com: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=848   Accessed 13 May 2025

The Bullies Of Trump 1: Tom Homan

Whether or not we have been victimized, I expect that all of us have run into a bully at some time in our lives.

Bullies and terrorists have a lot in common. The primary purpose of both is to instill a sense of fear into their victims, to keep them off balance and make them so paranoid they feel the need to keep looking over their shoulder.

Of course there is a difference in scale. Bullies ply their trade on playgrounds, in offices and online. Terrorists work on the world stage. Bullies typically target individuals. Terrorists aim at groups. Bullies enjoy inflicting psychological pain. Terrorists get satisfaction from destroying things and killing people.

DonJohnny is himself a bully, and has selected many of his lackeys for their ability to do his bidding and to emulate him. This open ended series will look at the bullies under Trump's command as they come to our attention.

We begin with Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar."

Homan's official title is "White House executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations." "Removal operations" means deportation. The use of that term dehumanizes Homan's victims, reducing them to the status of objects.

Homan is a career ICE officer who entered government service as a border patrol agent in 1984. He was appointed to a position with a title similar to his present one by President Obama and became ICE director in the first Trump administration.

In "The Secret History Of The U.S. Government’s Family-separation Policy," a Pulitzer prize-winning article published Aug. 7, 2022 in The Atlantic, Caitlin Dickerson describes Homan as an early and strident proponent of family separation as a deterrent to immigration, and "The intellectual 'father' of the idea to separate migrant families as a deterrent,"¹ which he first promulgated in 2014 but which was not implemented until Trump became president.

Homan has claimed that the policy is meant "to help families, not hurt them,"² which sounds very much like the Vietnam-era anonymous quote, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."³

But I digress. 

Homan displays behaviors found in both bullies and terrorists. To the groups of people rounded up en masse, forced to frog march in front of the public and the press, then shipped off to a brutal prison in a foreign country with no due process, he most certainly is acting like a terrorist.

One could argue that Homan is more successful as a terrorist than he is as a bully.

The act that got him first in line for this series was his continuing attempts to intimidate Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The spat between the two is hardly new, but Homan won't give up. He has, in so many words, begged the Department of Justice to find any excuse to charge her with something--anything. Sounds a whole lot like Trump begging Brad Raffensperger to find votes, doesn't it?

Like all bullies, Homan uses vague threats and innuendo meant to intimidate his victims. His comment, "Maybe AOC is going to be in trouble now,"⁴ is a classic bullying tactic. Bullies use oblique, vague threats of unspecified danger to keep their victims off balance. In the final analysis, Homan is a coward, as are all bullies. He hides behind threats and bluster, frequently threatening some kind of legal action against his victims.

The "crime" Homan is claiming AOC is guilty of? Informing immigrants of their Constitutional rights--an act undertaken daily by USCIS, a sister agency of Homan's own ICE. Is he going to shut them down? Better not ask.

Homan calls AOC's work "impeding" the business of mass deportation. We call it what it is: exercising and protecting the Constitutional rights of vulnerable American residents.

--- Diogenes, 11 May 2025   

¹ Dickerson, Caitlin, "The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy," The Atlantic, Aug. 7, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/ accessed 7 May 2025.

² Ibid.

³ Arnett, Peter, "It Became Necessary To Destroy The Town To Save It," Associated Press, Feb. 8, 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre, accessed 9 May 2025 

⁴ Rahman, Billal, "Ocasio-Cortez's War of Words With Tom Homan Heats Up," Newsweek.com, 18 Feb. 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tom-homan-immigration-2032712, accessed 11 May 2025.

 

 

 As a youth my favorite hobby was building model airplanes. At that time in my life I was very jealous of my possessions. Once when a visiting relative, with my mother's permission, completed a few steps on a P-51 Mustang I had left unfinished on my work table, I saw red, ripped the offending parts off, then proceeded to reassemble the plane--my plane. It was petty and childish behavior, which I grew out of.

DonJohnny has the same problem in a big way, and even after nearly eight decades of life he has not grown out of it.

Just as he cannot stand the notion of someone having something that he does not or can not have, he hates knowing that others have done something that he has not. 

Remember the bizarre McDonald's publicity stunt during the campaign? The parasite who has never worked a day in his life tossing french fries in a carefully staged setting with vetted "extras?" That was done only because Kamala Harris had, in her college days, actually worked at a McDonald's. Yes, he really is that childish and petty.

Now he is doing his best to erase American history because he never had a hand in making it. Is that narcissistic enough for you? It reminds me of the destruction of antiquities undertaken by ISIS some years ago: 

Revered historic buildings and monuments that point to the glories of past civilisations are an ideological threat to the caliphate that ISIS believes surpasses them all. In ISIS' view there should be nothing that can challenge its legitimacy, whether Christian, Shia, Sufi or anything else. With a clean slate, ISIS seeks to present to future generations a new version of history, in which its binary narrative of ISIS heroes fighting evil will be able to flourish. Obliterating historic sites is an attempt to create a blank canvas for ISIS to build on: a new beginning.¹

 On April 30 Huffpost ran an insightful and troubling piece titled "Trump's First 100 Days: Destroying America Was The Plan All Along," by Paul Blumenthal.

In a disturbing anti-parallel to ISIS' blank slate mentioned above, Blumenthal writes that "Trump wants to be the anti-FDR," tearing down all the great accomplishments Americans achieved during the second half of the 20th century. One would expect it to follow that Trump would rebuild the country in his own image, but Blumenthal suggests he would more likely leave it in ruins:

  … the ordinary rules of democracy and the rule of law must be swept aside in order to turn back the clock to before the New Deal set America on its path of greater equality.

This is what Trump’s second term represents. His goal is to smash the country built during the 20th century and replace it with a country that is insular, less equal, less wealthy, less educated and anti-democratic. His supporters are quite explicit about this.²

Trump has taken to saying he is creating an American golden age. Perhaps; but his followers will soon discover it's all fool's gold.

During Trump's first term his miscellaneous psychoses were analyzed, debated and dissected ad nauseam. If Blumenthal is right, Trump's mental illness has ratcheted up into nihilistic territory, making it more likely that his administration will dissolve into chaos rather than engage in any rebuilding. I am hardly the first person to suggest this. Search on any combination of Trump and nihilism and prepare to be amazed.

It has become a serious question whether American democracy can survive a second ride on the Trump Coaster. Blumenthal concludes his article on a hopeful note, suggesting that "If there is any solace in Trump’s 100 days of destruction, it is that he has destroyed himself in the process." We can hope. As Hamlet says, "'tis a consummation/Devoutly to be wish'd."

But we must do more than hope and wish. We must act.

--- Diogenes, 2 May 2025

  ¹ Mubaraz Ahmed, "Why Does ISIS Destroy Historic Sites?" Tony Blair Institute For Global Change Newslatter, 1 Sept. 2015: https://institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/why-does-isis-destroy-historic-sites. Accessed 2 May 2025.

² Blumenthal, Paul, "Trump's First 100 Days." HuffPost, 30 April 2025: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-100-days-destroy-america_n_68113057e4b0d4c3d8e32149/amp. Accessed 1 May 2025.