ICE murders another citizen

Yesterday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement—who have no jurisdiction over US citizens—murdered another US citizen in what witness videos clearly show as a depraved act involving at least two shooters. Alex Pretti, the murdered ICU nurse who tried to shield other observers from being assaulted with chemical irritants, was unarmed and subdued when ICE agents shot him at least 8 times.

This morning, a Federal judge in Minneapolis ordered ICE not to destroy or alter the evidence they've collected about the murder, because even the dimmest bulb in the ICE marquee knows they had no justification for this.

I'm not going to link to the videos; they're not hard to find. You should watch them, though, from at least two angles. If you don't believe there is probable cause to charge at least two of the ICE agents with at least 2nd-degree murder, please find the nearest inpatient facility and tell them you're a psychopath.

ICE claimed that Pretti had a gun and planned to shoot the agents. The videos clearly show he made no aggressive moves toward the agents and was in fact trying to remove himself and another victim of ICE violence from the scene. And, of course, until recently the same people yelling "he had a gun!" are exactly the same people who pushed so hard for an extremist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that allowed Pretti to carry his pistol completely legally. As much as I think we should not have average citizens carrying pistols in cities like Minneapolis, Pretti didn't deserve to die.

And as much as the "2A" fanatics raved about carrying guns to the grocery store was necessary to prevent the government from trampling our rights, I ask them, what the fuck do you think happened yesterday? It's funny how they seem to have forgotten that squishy little diarrhea blossom Kyle Rittenhouse.

Speaking of the 2nd Amendment, Tim Walz needs to remember why we have that amendment, and use the state's well-regulated militia to protect Minnesotans from further violence.

Josh Marshall warns that OAFPOTUS administration officials want to escalate the violence to dominate the area:

Escalation dominance” is a concept in military theory and strategy. Imagine you have two countries in a tit-for-tat confrontation. The country with escalation dominance has superior capabilities on every rung up the so-called escalation ladder. So at every stage that country has the upper hand. It has more and better guns. So every escalation puts the weaker country in greater danger and with less hope of ever getting the upper hand. The weaker power faces the bad choice of either backing down or incurring ever greater injury and ultimately destruction.

Why would the White House continue to escalate in the face of rising public opposition? One answer is that they’re fanatics and true believers. But a complementary explanation is this belief in escalation dominance. It may not be popular but they believe public resisters will eventually have to knuckle under. So they’re happy to keep escalating. Because they have more and bigger guns and eventually those who oppose them will have to give in. I don’t think that’s the case. But I’m pretty sure they do.

My party's top officials, who haven't yet figured out that the Republican Party left the land of the sane 32 years ago, made the usual noises and press releases. (Senator Schumer, just fucking retire already.)

This has to stop. It will stop. But clearly, the OAFPOTUS and his droogs will continue to escalate, as their unconstitutional and dangerous¹ secret May memo made clear. Like all authoritarians, neither the OAFPOTUS, nor Reichsführer-ICE Stephen Miller, nor CBP chief Greg Bovino² don't care who dies, as long as they "win." But like all authoritarians, their own psychopathy prevents them from understanding a basic truth: empathy makes collective action more effective. And there are way more of us than there are of them.