There Are Illegalities and Illegalities

The recent attacks on Iran raise multiple concerns: strategic, political, and legal.  Curmie thinks the raids were stupid and sincerely hopes they’ll prove as disastrous for the Trump regime as they already have for the nation’s standing as a promoter of peace.  But what he really wants to talk about is that last item: were they legal?

There are two independent facets to that question.  The first is the one that’s been noised about by a good share of the left-leaning press: that Trump lacked Congressional approval and that the assault was therefore illegal.  Curmie thinks so, but there’s a little wiggle room.  It all boils down to what the War Powers Act actually was intended to do… and to what it says, which may be different things.  Neither Congress nor SCOTUS has seen fit to clarify the terms.

The obvious intent was to allow the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to respond to exigencies: imminent threats, that sort of thing.  The Trump administration can’t seem to get its story straight about what prompted this particular action, which is why Curmie is more than a little suspicious that these shenanigans aren’t entirely on the up-and-up.  Did we go along with this because Israel was going to do it, anyway, as Marco Rubio first argued?  Or was it something else, since he subsequently denied saying what he’s on tape saying?  Was it to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the one that was supposedly “obliterated” last year?  Or to respond to an Iranian threat that’s presumably been imminent for <checks notes> 47 years?  Curmie raises a skeptical eyebrow.

Whatever squishiness there might be in the wording of the War Powers Act, Curmie is pretty much convinced that yes, this was illegal.  The response from Trumpian apologists has been to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy because they were perfectly willing to allow President Obama to bomb Libya back in 2011, casually omitting the fact the two incidents are pretty much parallel: a POTUS of one party uses what may or may not be legitimate authority to execute a military mission, and the other party starts screaming about illegality, even unconstitutionality.  Are the Democrats being two-faced?  Of course they are!  Are the Republicans just as bad?  Yep.

But Curmie hears the GOP sycophants wondering “where was all this liberal concern for restricting the power of the presidency in such cases when Obama was in office?”  Right here, is where.  Here’s the central paragraph of what Curmie wrote 15 years ago:

The administration’s case, one which ignored the objections of Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and of Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, is founded on three independent premises, none of which stand up to much scrutiny. The first is that an offensive mission involving drone attacks, sustained bombing, and occasional casualties doesn’t really constitute “hostilities.” The second is that, despite the fact that participation in a NATO-run, UN-sanctioned, mission to protect civilians has morphed into an aggressive attack on Colonel Qaddafi’s compound, the military and geo-political missions have not merged. The third is the apparent assertion that since the mission has taken longer than expected (and that’s never happened before, right?), we should really only be looking at how long the campaign was supposed to last. Add to that the extreme rarity of any White House over-riding the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel, and the Obama administration has a mess on its hands… or perhaps on its shoes, because they’ve really stepped in something.

Moving on to the second part of the critique of present-day hostilities.  Let’s talk about bombing that elementary school in Minab, killing scores of little girls aged 7-12, which according to the best information we have, was perpetrated by American forces.  This is about as clear a violation of international law, not to mention common decency, as it’s possible to imagine.  It is unmistakably a war crime.  Yes, Gentle Reader, mistakes happen: “fog of war” and all that.  Bullshit.  At best, this was a manifestation of breathtaking recklessness and incompetence.  At worst, it was such an intentional infliction of pain and suffering on young girls that you’d think it was ordered by one of those pervs whose name keeps appearing in the Epstein files.  Oh… wait…

What’s the excuse?  Why aren’t the so-called journalists asking how such an atrocity can happen?  Were we just lobbing bombs into populated areas with no regard for what or who might be on the receiving end?  Was the reported death of Ayatollah Khameini therefore just blind luck?  After all, if you can target a particular area to attack, you can similarly identify a different area not to attack.  Or did some idiot like Pete Hegseth decide to demonstrate his manliness by asserting his absolute authority over a bunch of elementary schoolers.  They might have been in math class, learning about Arabic numerals, after all.  Another explanation is that this was a “precise targeting”: the school building used to be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base, you see.  Ya might wanna check that shit out next time...

When the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by American forces in 1999, President Clinton apologized to the Chinese President Jiang Zemin promptly and profusely, claiming that the incident was accidental.  Given that there was no rational reason to attack the embassy, Clinton was probably telling the truth, even if the Chinese tried to spin the story to their geopolitical advantage.  There’s no reason to bomb an elementary school in Iran in 2026, either.  The difference between the events is two-fold.  First, Clinton, unlike Trump, was willing to admit to a mistake, and even to take responsibility for something that is extremely unlikely to have been under his direct control.  Secondly, whereas Bill Clinton is hardly an exemplar of truth-telling, his sanity has never been in question.

There are reports that Iran was negotiating with the US when the attacks occurred.  Perhaps that’s true; perhaps it’s leftie spin (or worse).  But there is no question that the logistics of the mission, from choosing targets to strategies for removing Americans from sites likely to be struck by the inevitable retaliation (“get on a commercial plane at your own expense at an airport that’s closed” isn’t terribly helpful advice), were an absolute disaster.  That’s what happens when you choose cabinet members based on sycophancy rather than relevant experience, intelligence, or… you know… competence.

We can hope that the Iranian people will soon be better off, that the military exercise will achieve its purported goal.  It’s not likely, given the history of other attempts at regime change, but it’s not impossible.  It is also possible that new evidence will emerge that will exonerate the US military, but there is something of the boy who cried “wolf” at play here.  What reasonably intelligent person would believe anything this administration says after its serial prevarications about ICE operations?  

Indeed, the two things that will linger in Curmie’s mind for a very long time indeed are the loss of any remaining remnant of American honor or integrity in international relations… and the nagging feeling that de facto Commander-in-Chief of the US military is Bibi Netanyahu.

“First, They Came for…”

Two facts about Curmie:

1. He lived in Kansas for seven years, working on his doctorate and staying on for another year when a full-time teaching gig didn’t materialize.  At the time, the state legislature was more conservative than Curmie would have preferred, but it wasn’t controlled by wackadoodles. 

2. He’s friends with (at least) six trans people, one of whom is also his nephew.  None of them, thankfully, live in Kansas.

Yes, it’s true that the lead story of the past few days is yet another reckless act by the Sociopath-in-Chief.  Were Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that killing little girls is a rather bizarre (and ineffective) means of trying to divert attention away from credible evidence that one has raped little girls.  But that was an act of desperation perpetrated by a single person (well, and his sycophantic minions) and whose victims committed the grievous ethical failing of being born in a different country.  What happened this week in Kansas was, in its own way, even worse.

No, there won’t be any Kansans buried under the rubble of their elementary school, but the level of bigotry disguised as piety and of quite intentional cruelty perpetrated for its own sake by the Kansas legislature is startling, even when compared to other examples of GOP malevolence towards their own constituents.  If you haven’t been following the story, Gentle Reader, Kansas Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto and essentially disenfranchised trans voters, while causing the maximum amount of disruption in their lives in other ways, as well.  This was made easier for the bigots by circumventing the standard opportunity for the public to weigh in on an issue: a tactic called “gut and go,” by which the contents of a bill are “replaced” by, well, whatever the hell some jackass wants, thereby bypassing the public.  It’s now the “House Substitute for Senate Bill 244.”

A letter dated February 23 informed trans people that as of February 26, their state-issued driver’s licenses would no longer be valid because such identification, according to K.S.A. 77-207, must show the sex of the individual at birth.  Moreover, “the Legislature did not provide a grace period for updating credentials.  This means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credential will be invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential.”  Oh, bloody hell.

But wait!  That’s not all!  Recipients of that letter are “directed to surrender [their] current credential to the Kansas Division of Vehicles.”  A “new credential reflecting the gender identification consistent with statutory requirements” would then be issued.  OK, all this is annoying enough simply at face value.  But the real devil, and here Curmie really does mean the physical manifestation of evil, is in the details.

Where to begin?  First off, who cares whether that one letter on a license is an M or an F, since both are acceptable?  The best argument is that it helps identify the driver.  More than a photo does?  Anyway, the more important thing is that things change over time.  Curmie used to have a Kansas driver’s license.  It listed his hair color as brown and his weight at 155 pounds.  Both of those descriptions were accurate 30-something years ago when Curmie moved to Kansas.  Today, however, while there are still a few brown strands in there, the hair is grey (well, maybe “silver” if someone wanted to get on my good side) and the weight was about three inches of waist size ago.  More to the point, those things can change over just the duration of the license.  Other folks change their names: they get married or divorced, for example.  The world changes, except in what passes for a brain in a Republican pol, and we ought to try to keep up as best we can.

There are some areas in which reasonable people can disagree.  There are legitimate fairness arguments that trans women ought not to be playing women’s sports, for example.  Perhaps, although Curmie knows of not a single case in which a trans woman, or even someone pretending to be a trans woman, harassed cis women in a rest room, there’s a scintilla of honest, paranoia-free, argumentation in favor of bathroom bills.  (Needless to say, Curmie disagrees with that perspective, but at least there’s the potential for a rationale.)

But what the hell has “sex at birth” to do with ability to operate a car?  Men can drive; women can drive.  So can murderers, rapists, thieves… even (gasp!) “illegal aliens,” all legally.  Oh, and pedophiles, too; mustn’t forget them.  So even if being trans were to be regarded as unlawful (alas, there have been attempts, including in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas, to make it so), that shouldn’t prevent someone from having a driver’s license.  And there’s certainly nothing about being trans that translates (Curmie apologizes; he couldn’t resist) into being a danger on the road.  People who are, like those with multiple DUI convictions, can still have a driver’s license.  But trans folks who legally had their “M” changed to an “F” or vice versa: nope.

Oh, and if you’re trans, you need a new ID, even if your old one does show your sex at birth.  Andrea Ellis legally changed her name in December, then updated her driver’s license in January.  But, she “saw the writing on the wall after listening to [Attorney General] Kobach’s testimony for H.B. 2426” (the bill that would eventually morph into SB 244 and its demon spawn).  She therefore didn’t change the gender marker on her license, but got the same letter as other transgendered folks.  Yes, she had to change out her old license for one that was literally identical.  She’s trans, after all.

Then we add on the timing.  Apparently these letters were sent by mail no sooner than a Monday, and recipients had only until Wednesday to follow the dictates, as the law would go into effect on Thursday.  Of course, the morons on SCOTUS have decided that it’s OK for the postal service to intentionally not deliver mail, so that potentially complicates things even more.  Chances are very good that some people didn’t even know about what they were required to do until it was literally too late.  What if they were on vacation, for example?  

And then they were expected to turn in their old “credential.”  In person, of course, and you know damned well there will be no extended hours.  So that means taking time off work on short notice, finding a way to the office because you aren’t allowed to drive there, waiting in line, paying $46 (according to one source) for a new ID (poll tax, anyone?), and apparently waiting up to 45 days for a new license (N.B., Curmie isn’t completely convinced about the legitimacy of this claim), without which you’re not allowed to drive: not to work, not to the grocery store, not to visit a friend or relative in the hospital (or hospice), nowhere.

It is, of course, self-evident that new licenses could be created with considerably more alacrity than that—the technology exists to do so in no more than a few minutes—but the powers-that-be will slow-walk the process as much as they can, for no other reason than that, for them, cruelty is fun.  There is no rationality for this law, just bigotry and hatred.  Oh, and they’re handing out $1000 bounties for today’s variation on narcs, i.e., those who report folks they decide are peeing in the wrong restroom.  For a group that thinks “communists” (anyone to the left of Jesse Helms, in other words) are worse than, say, pedophiles, these asswipes sure do like to emulate the Stasi.

Well, actually, the disenfranchisement might be the rationale, as it obviously is for the SAVE Act: identify a group likely to oppose the Reich-wing zealots, and make it harder for them to vote.  That’s the argument raised by real-life Friend of Curmie Will Averill, in a Substack post that also suggests that GOP pols are particularly interested in “Bein’ Hicks and Checkin’ Dicks.”  Will doesn’t say this outright, but Curmie will: this obsession with examining specific body parts is perilously close to the prurient if not the perverse.  But that’s OK, you see, because they’re “protecting our women and children.”  <Sigh.>

There is no lack of posturing on this issue.  Lyft, for example hastened to the rescue, promising half-price rides… which are limited to $10 and expire early next week, long before there’s any reasonable solution.  That’s not help; that’s a scammy marketing campaign. 

The ACLU is filing suit on behalf of two transgendered Kansans, and it appears that there might be some other litigants, as well.  That’s a start, but the suit names only folks like the state Attorney General and Director of Vehicles, not the legislators who are directly responsible for this travesty.  Curmie’s no lawyer, so maybe that’s the appropriate tack, but it still seems insufficient.

Curmie is not, as a rule, given to “thin edge of the wedge” arguments, but with various federal agencies not merely admitting, but bragging about, compiling files on, say, people photographing ICE abuses with the goal of labeling such folks as domestic terrorists, the thought that one violation of Constitutional rights might lead to another becomes foregrounded.  And that famous passage by Martin Niemöller referenced in the title of this piece floats to the surface.

One thing is clear.  Even if we were to buy the spurious argument that trans women in particular are just pretending to be something they’re not, such a subterfuge would pale in qualitative significance in comparison to these… erm… individuals of Oedipal predilections masquerading as Christians.  Curmie has pondered whether every single pol who voted for this heinous bill should, in a just universe, be horse-whipped or sent to the stocks for a week to be pelted with rotten vegetables. 

¿Por Qué No Los Dos?