What is the thinking of people like Massachusetts state rep Michelle DuBois, who authored the above Facebook post? Do they think? Can they think? Aiding an illegal immigrant in evading authorities is obstruction of justice. Do the Duboises of the world really and truly regard facilitating illegal immigration as the equivalent of participating in the Underground Railroad? How did they reach such a fdoolish, counter-factual and warped opinion? Yes, the ACLU comes very close to crossing the line with its published advice to illegals, but it doesn’t actively try to foil legal government action. Even sanctuary cities that pledge not to cooperate with ICE are not actively interfering with the agency, or so they can argue with varying persuasiveness. Not DuBois, though. As a an elected legislator, she can pass laws, but she can’t declare those she doesn’t like null and void, and defy the rule of law in so doing.
This is obstructing justice. DuBois’s argument to the contrary was beyond disingenuous:
“Passing information along that is already all over the community not only lets the people I represent know what is happening. It lets ICE know that everyone in Brockton is aware of their intended raid if there was one.”
Oh, I see. She made everyone in Brockton aware of the ICE raid so ICE would know that all of Brockton was aware of it!
Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson referred to DuBois while testifying before lawmakers on Capitol Hill, saying, “This is the most outrageous, outrageous example of what’s going on across the United States that’s undermining my job and every other law enforcement officer in the United States.”
Dubois belongs right along side Oregon judge Monica Herranz, who allegedly allowed an illegal immigrant to slip out a back door to avoid ICE officials waiting for him, in a jail, awaiting trial.
Arrest her. Prosecute her. If she’s keen on being a martyr for open borders, let her try it. Let her make a real argument why the United States shouldn’t enforce its immigration laws. Let’s hear a logical, unemotional, unsentimental, explanation why public figures should be allowed to facilitate law-breaking. Both concepts are indefensible.
I also want her to explain why she thinks a state rep advocating and engaging in active interference with a law won’t send the message to the youth in her district that it’s acceptable to thwart all law enforcement, as long as you don’t like the law involved, or do like like the law-breakers at risk of arrest. I can’t wait to hear that one.
Really: how did she get this way? How did so many Democrats get this way?
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Pointer: Fred
Ethics Alarms 
“Yes, the ACLU comes very close to crossing the line with its published advice to illegals, but it doesn’t actively try to foil legal government action.”
I do not like the term ‘legal government action.’ No, I do not. Why? Cause it’s a very slippery slope.
Government action that is authorized by the law. No?
Who makes the laws? Is there a moral responsibility to obey the laws? (I’m thinking of current events in Russia. Protestors are breaking Russian laws.)
Yes. There is a moral and ethical responsibility to obey laws unless they are objectively a violation of human rights and established principles of justice, in which case one has a moral obligation to defy and destroy those laws—if one hasthe guts. Hence “Judgment at Nuremberg.” The whole play is about that exact topic.
Jack, are you aware of the rampant corruption in Russia? Are you aware that Putin is involved up to his elbows? Ok, down to the wires now… are you in support of the demonstrations in Russia? http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/03/russia-protest-generation-170329113346416.html
Please, don’t knock the news source. I have many others.
Of course I am. But Russia is a fake republic, and an actual dictatorship. How is Russia relevant? There is no participatory law-making in Russia. It’s a corrupt, corrupted culture an society that has been so long without democracy—forever—that the people don’t want it when it is within its grasp. A Bizarro World. Note that I don’t write about Russian ethics, because its an oxymoron.
All they are doing is setting the stage for the massive resistance to a gun confiscation law when they are in power…
They forget their history as to just how dangerous that will be.
You could say an effort to enforce gun confiscation sparked regime change in the United States after six and half years of bloody strife (April 1775 to October 1781).
“All they are doing is setting the stage for the massive resistance to a gun confiscation law when they are in power…”
So, pretty much win-win then?
The hack is from Brockton. Hodgson is a long standing gas bag.
However, his quote is 100% correct.
I’m just pickie, Jack, by having it D-Plymouth instead of D-Brockton. DuBois is Plymouth 10th since it is Plymouth county. Plymouth (town) actually has a few Republicans in the General Court and the Sheriff and DA for the county.
Maybe Plymouth County DA Cruz can step up regarding this hack? Then again he will be classified as a racist, sexist, zenophobic…..
50,000 americans are dying per year from 300% surge of heroin be carried through the borders via illegal immigrants from afghanistan and mexico. Protecting our borders is protecting our family, this is not a social/ race issue this is a life & death issue. People are dying, your friends and family are suffering and dying. Open your eyes. Theres no other issue on the face of this planet that is killing people any faster than this. Yet this issue is unspoken and border control is chalked up as racism?
People are dying by then tens of thousands
Might want to check your numbers again. Something like 13,000 people per year die from heroin overdoses. Most of the rest of the deaths due to drug overdose are prescription meds like fentanyl and oxycontin.
Also, “Theres no other issue on the face of this planet that is killing people any faster than this.” Not heart disease? Not cancer? Both of those kill about 600,000 Americans every year, twelve times those who die from drug overdoses (and almost fifty times the heroin OD’s). More people die from Alzheimer’s and diabetes than heroin. Heck, more people die from
adverse reactions to properly prescribed and administered prescriptions in hospitals than from overdoses of heroin on the street.
And that’s just America. If you want to talk worldwide, on the “face of the planet”, drug overdose deaths aren’t even a statistical blip. That’s not to say we shouldn’t care about the issue, but trying to frame it as the greatest threat to human life on the planet is way out of proportion.
It’s also a separate issue from illegal immigration. Close off the border and deport all the illegal immigrants, and you won’t see an ounce less of illicit drugs on the streets. There’s enormous demand for such drugs, and that demand will be supplied by criminal gangs, one way or another.
Mr. Marshall, may I respectfully suggest that you need a new category title? “Incompetent elected official of the month” only has a zing to it if there is but one a month. Might I suggest, “incompetent elected official of the day.” However, if finding a new incompetent official every day seems like too much work (though with our current bunch, I doubt it would be too hard, though perhaps time intensive) then maybe “incompetent elected official of the moment,” would be as appropriate. After all, a moment is of undefined length. Otherwise, you may need to hold ethics quizzes (or votes) on which elected official of the last few days is actually the “incompetent elected official of the month.” So far it seems that here are many front-runners for such a title, with the losers being the constituents.
At the prodigious rate our elected officials are showing their incompetence, I calculate that “Incompetent Elected Official Of The Millisecond” to be the approximate frequency needed to highlight them all.
DuBois is in hog heaven thanks to a gerrymandered district. She pulls in all of West Bridgewater and one precinct in East Bridgewater along with her chunk of the East Side of Brockton. So let’s look at the Bridgewater’s. Both went big for Trump, but in the General Court, you think the Dems that control 85% of the legislature want those two burgs to have a Republican? So in goes DuBois who gathered almost 10,000 votes from her Brockton precincts – Brockton that went 73% Clinton and is a Dem stronghold. The Bridgewater’s can’t come close.
Brockton has a significant immigrant population that needs some quality pandering and DuBois is doing just that. An article in today’s Brockton Enterprise shows that the tar, feathers, and pitchforks are out, but that is just the sane people who are not part of her base. I expect her actions to play well, but there is always hope that somehow the Republicans will find a viable candidate to challenge her in 2018.
Now the other looney is Hodgson who recently wished to see prisoners in his county to help construct the wall. That is just one instance and I have many more, but he is not the real issue. Sheriff Joe 2.0. Neither the Sheriff or the rep will be found at any MENSA meeting.
Arrest her. Prosecute her.
Jack, do you really believe that DuBois’s Facebook post constitutes a crime? What law did she violate? How would prosecuting her for this not violate the First Amendment?
How about misconduct while in public office? Abuse of public office? Obstructing justice? Official misconduct? And that’s just without putting on my thinking cap. Seriously, Chris, the First Amendment isn’t absolute. Public officials are not supposed to actively interfere with public policy that’s already in place. Legislative officials are not supposed to interfere with executives, which is exactly what this is. Never mind the fact that Federal law typically supersedes state and local laws, and one level interfering with another was settled in 1865.
Some of these Democratic mayors in GOP held states are flirting with some major problems if they deliberately get in the Feds’ way. They ALL may be flirting with major problems if local officers try to use force against the feds or vice versa. I’ve been involved in cases in which one policing agency has been asked to interfere with another, and it never ends well.
What’s really troubling is that, while the White House was in their hands, the Democratic Party was firmly of the belief that Federal authority was supreme, and that anyone on any other level needed to step aside, no local officials refusing to officiate at same-sex marriages, no local sheriffs declining to enforce strict gun regulations, and no local prosecutors dragging their feet if a black man gets killed by a white cop. Except it WAS ok for local AGs to refuse to defend traditional marriage statutes, because the administration was in favor of that. Now that they’ve lost the White House, suddenly it’s all the rage for mayors, governors, and all kinds of state and local officials to defy Federal authority. It’s perfectly ok for a local judge to refuse to honor a federal writ or warrant or find some technicality to declare it deficient. It’s perfectly ok for a local sheriff or police chief to help someone who is here illegally slip out the back door before the ICE agents arrive. It’s apparently heroic for a local mayor to instruct his police force to interfere with Federal agents in the course of their duties, although that hasn’t been put to the test yet. I can only hope it isn’t.
What’s even more troubling is that those supporting this reversal of positions do it without even asking themselves if it makes sense or is consistent. Either one level of authority trumps the rest or it doesn’t. It doesn’t change depending on which party is in the White House. It is the worst case of situational ethics, or protagonist centered ethics, that I have ever seen. I get it, the political left is in favor of open borders. I don’t doubt that some are true believers who really think it is a positive good that anyone be allowed to come to the US and settle here, no questions asked. I also believe that more of the political left are cynical pretenders to ever more secure power, and they see the creation of a huge new population of citizens beholden to them for the privilege and the government largesse that makes it possible for them to get by as the easiest way to get that secure power. So they cloak it in borrowed robes of compassion and charity and try to sell it to the credulous middle, and at the same time they throw the moral tar of racism and xenophobia at those opposed. There is simply neither honesty nor integrity in any of this.
It’s obstruction of justice. I said that. It’s a law enforcement action that a citizen is actively helping law-breakers foil. The First amendment doesn’t protect that—are you kidding? Lies are Constitutionally protected, but if you lie to a police officer to help a criminal escape, that’s obstruction of justice.
I’m not sure it’s settled whether actively foiling an ICE raid would bring a conviction, because illegal immigration is a civil violation. I can’t find a case. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of an official doing this, either.
Jack, sorry, my friend, but you’re starting to worry me.
I can’t imagine why. This is A-B-C. Helping an illegal alien evade the law is a felony under US statutes.
I know that. But… as I stated earlier, “Who makes the laws? Is there a moral responsibility to obey the laws? (I’m thinking of current events in Russia. Protestors are breaking Russian laws.)”
Your response?
(Just so you know, since moving to Garfield, NM, I see these day laborers almost every day outside my my house, in the fields, hoeing the white onions, sometimes with their children. Yep, I have no doubt some are illegal. Still… do you think that I would hesitate one minute if I knew ICE was on its way? OK, so I’m obstructing justice. Can we go back to my original question… “Who makes the laws? Is there a moral responsibility to obey the laws? (I’m thinking of current events in Russia. Protestors are breaking Russian laws.)”
Just saw your response to my original question. Drinking beer. Thinking.
Au contraire, Jack, lying to a Federal investigator IS a crime. That’s partly how Martha Stewart got dinged. Lying to the state or local police is a bad idea, but not a crime. Lying here COULD bring criminal charges in and of itself.
How is that “au contraire” —it’s exactly what I wrote: Lies are Constitutionally protected, but if “you lie to a police officer to help a criminal escape, That’s obstruction of justice.” It may also be accessory after the fact. Stewart lied and thus obstructed the insider trading investigation. It wasn’t the lie, it was the obstruction.
Actually there is a separate charge for making false statements to a federal investigator, which doesn’t exist at the state level, and Martha got dinged for two charges of that. But it’s just splitting legal hairs.
I’m having trouble following your legal thinking about criminal charges. She says ICE will be operating in the area, which is basically reporting on government activity, something journalists do all the time. She also tells them they don’t have to answer the door, which is an accurate statement of their rights under the law, like saying “Don’t answer questions without a lawyer,” That leaves only the part where she says if they’re undocumented they shouldn’t go out. Is that enough to hang charges on?
I agree that it would be clearer if she alerted specific residences of specific raids. Where do we draw the line? What’s essentially blowing the whistle that says “Cheezit! The cops!”
Thinking about it some more, I think my annoyance over a lawmaker acting like this got the better of me. She’s probably short of a prosecutor offense.
You’re right, Mark.
You covered a similar situation that this sort of reminded me of back in Aug 2011 “Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!” You stated that flashing high beams to warn of a speed trap should be illegal but is definitely unethical. Remembered it because I live in Florida where the case took place. Looks like State Rep DuBois is flashing her high beams full strength (no sexual innuendo intended).
Good analogy.
Thanks, Windypundit, and thanks to Jack for being willing to admit error. It’s one of the reasons this is the finest blog I visit.