Hey,

The Air Force has experience with balloons now.

Update: It now seems possible that the “cartel drones” may have actually been party balloons.

Rumor I heard is that the military is planning to start testing some counter drone system, and in discussions with FAA, they couldn’t promise that civilian flights would be safe, so FAA pulled out the big gun.

It sounds like this counter drone system would only be for use on drones that cross the river into us airspace, but I’m not sure of that.

For reference, the US has operated an Air Defense Identification Zone for a long time, that covers Mexican airspace near the border. The air force tries to identify, track, and sometimes intercept all air traffic in the ADIZ. Civilian air traffic is supposed to be on a filed flight plan, in communication with ATC, and have an assigned four digit transponder code. Failure to do so may result in interception by scrambled aircraft.

I would imagine that “cartel drones” in or around Juarez would not be doing the above. But there may also be too many of them to economically intercept with F15s.

Update: the government fired the attorney the next day, so she can at least get some sleep.

(The judge declined to grant her request for contempt.)

She could say what exactly the feds are doing wrong, for example, with federal officers’ names and dates and details. Create the record.

My guess is that the ICE and DHS people who are breaking the law have figured out not to tell the attorneys this stuff, for precisely this reason. The attorneys have a duty of candor to the court, but ICE does not.

She could refuse to file motions supporting the feds.

She may already be doing this, at least with respect to 100% dilatory motions. I haven’t kept up with her case work.

Then the people would win those uncontested cases.

In this case, and in many others like it in MN, the petitioners already won their case. They’ve been ordered to be released, but they aren’t getting released in a timely manner.

When a judge issues a release order, it is the responsibility of the federal attorney to communicate the contents of that order into the federal bureaucracy, to ensure it is carried out. That process has turned into an all-consuming job, because that’s how ICE wants it.

I agree in general, though, that the only ethical or moral move here is to resign.

Boasberg’s allegedly inappropriate remarks were delivered in a private breakfast with other judges prior to judicial conference. The point is that it was the kind of judicial conference that’s supposed to remain private. So much so, that the DOJ refused to provide the court with their copy of Boasberg’s actual words, because then they would have to explain how they got hold of them (probably illegally).

So that gave the court an easy reason to dismiss the complaint.

They did some wildly unprecedented legal maneuvers to try to get these warrants.

1. Went to magistrate duty judge, who approved 3/8 warrants.
2. Went to that judge’s manager, Chief Judge Schlitz. He didn’t outright deny the warrants, he just wanted to take a few days to think about it.
3. That wasn’t good enough. They went to the judge-manager’s manager, the 8th circuit court of appeals. In a sealed emergency petition for writ of mandamus.
4. Judge Schlitz was required to defend himself in this mandamus action with two hours of notice and he wasn’t even allowed to read the papers.

Since the mandamus action failed, it seems likely that the government has gotten a grand jury indictment. Which process bypasses judges nearly entirely.

Note that it’s pretty normal to get indictments first in the federal courts (before the current times), because if the feds arrest someone on a complaint, they have a 30 day deadline to get that indictment. If they don’t arrest first, there’s no deadline and they can retry as many times as they want.

So normally the feds only use complaints when they need to get someone off the street urgently. These feds use complaints because they only care about splashing the perp walk on social media. They don’t care what happens to the case after that.

The planes are adaptable, multirole fighters that can, in fact, fly in all sorts of conditions. The problem is the ratio of maintenance hours to flight hours is really high. I was once quoted that it was an amortized $12k just to turn it on bring the engine to idle, and turn it off again.

Given that reality, in peace time, many operators will pick and choose when and where they fly. In wartime, of course, the way economy will either expand to handle the maintenance, or (more likely, imo) designs will pivot to something more manufacturable and maintainable.

Isn’t that similar to the shit that got Turkey kicked out of the F35 program?

I think what he’s saying is, even if they do access it, they can’t ever bring any of that info into a court anywhere without admitting they accessed it.

They can only use information they obtain illegally from this data that has some kind of parallel construction from another source.

Here’s some explanation of the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine.

New York State is a sovereign state that derives original sovereign power from the citizens of New York. Meanwhile, the United States is also an original sovereign power that derives its power from the entire people of the United States. (Remember, the Constitution is established by “we, the People”. The U.S. is not just an agreement between individual states). Both governments have original power over the geographic territory of New York. The regular powers of government are split between the two according to the terms of the Constitution.

Thus, New York State can exercise its General Police Power to prosecute Mr. Mangione for murder. This power is not granted by the Constitution, but it is recognized by the Constitution. The United States government can simultaneously exercise its power to Regulate Interstate Commerce, by prosecuting Mr. Mangione for the crime of “interstate stalking that caused the death of a person.”

State / federal dual sovereignty is a very infamous loophole to double jeopardy.

A death penalty charge was laughed out of state court. This article is about federal court. Luigi is facing trial simultaneously at both levels.

The previous hearing on the evidence suppression for 4th and 5th amendment violations was completed in state court. Mangione has to reargue all of those issues again in federal court. And the two court systems could come to different conclusions.

Plus there are a couple of extra items that are federal only, that the article mentions.

flood the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest refineries with Venezuelan heavy crude.

It is so important to understand the difference in grades of crude oil.

The US’s refining capacity is currently oriented around lighter and sweeter crudes. They can’t just handle a big glut of Venezuelan oil today. They would need retooling and and reconfiguration. And Venezuela needs a bunch of new and reinvested infrastructure if it wants to ramp up its production.

All of that is a large, large amount of capital expenditure, and the people who can put that money down will want solid assurances that the Venezuela arrangement will continue for years and decades.

And Trump is certainly not giving them “long term thinking” vibes right now.

He has a drug conviction from way back that he was not exonerated of, unlike the murder. The drug charge by itself is a legal ground for deportation.