The Census Question goes back to Court (UPDATED)
[Headline from DRJ]
Reuters — White House faces court deadline to reveal U.S. census citizenship plan:
The White House faces a Friday afternoon court deadline to reveal whether it intends to follow through on U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to press ahead with his fight to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Maryland-based U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel wants the administration to state its intentions by 2 p.m.
A White House spokesman said on Thursday that officials are examining “every option” available to add the query to the decennial population survey.
Donald Trump has made some lawyers’ jobs easier this week. Unfortunately, it is the lawyers who oppose the Administration.
UPDATE on the hearing before Judge Hazel 7/5/2019 at Law & Crime. IMO the DOJ attorneys are in a nightmare scenario and they can’t escape because they can’t fire their client.
— DRJ
If you’re a lawyer for the DoJ, you have a single client — the United States. When the person at the helm is crazy — won’t listen to advice, won’t follow advice, won’t even warn his lawyers when he’s about to publicly commit to something absolutely inconsistent with what you’ve been instructed to say on behalf of that client by the minions of the person at the helm — the only way you can “fire your client” is to quit your job.
Trump is always, ever, his own worst and most effective enemy. In addition to this one, there are hundreds of other examples, going back to the 1980s at least (“Hey, gang, let’s move the USFL to play in the fall, even though our original business plan recognized we can’t possibly compete with the NFL and only ever had a reason to exist when we were playing spring football!”). His cult members are thoroughly cocooned from any such evidence, however, and respond to it with brilliant bon mots like “So you must support Hillary” or “All you have is ‘Orange Man Bad'” or — my recent favorite, from Munroe — he doesn’t lie any more than any other politician. (I still laugh loudly every time I ponder that assertion; it’s by far the most preposterous thing I’ve ever read in the comments on this blog.)
Beldar (fa637a) — 7/5/2019 @ 10:41 amjosh gardner, is most known for trying to extricate aig from hank Greenberg, and defending don’t ask don’t tell, no particular expertise in voting issues,
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 11:08 amhttps://www.newser.com/story/277412/trump-floats-new-idea-on-census-question.html
Just like I said.
Of course it might get a lower response rate,
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 7/5/2019 @ 11:23 amSomewhere nobody clued in Donald Trump as to what DOJ lawyers were about to say.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 7/5/2019 @ 11:25 amThere are other problems with the Census, according to a New York Times article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/us/2020-census-digital.html
Their plan to use cloud technology provided by Amazon Web Services to store the answers got off to rocky start. There was an account with virtually unlimited privileges but access credentials had been lost, so they couldn’t get it, but maybe soembody else could! They couldn’t change the password. That’s been fixed. They only had information from recent field tests, and nothing seems to have been compromised (the door wasn’t used)
I will be possible, but not required, to answer the questionaire online, and field workers going door to door will be equipped with smartphones to log the information they collect.
But in a test: “Some workers had trouble finding an internet connection to transmit the information they had collected. Others had trouble recording people’s responses in an application on their smartphones.”
And they also worry about people trying to distrupt their operations by provocateurs, and the possibility of malware being installed somwwhere.
“In 2016, a cyberattack forced a temporary shutdown of the Australian census’s online response site, prompting the social media hashtag #CensusFail.”
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 7/5/2019 @ 11:26 amBeldar (fa637a) — 7/5/2019 @ 10:41 am
Let me just float this to see how it sounds: “Trump lies more than your typical politician.”
No, sorry, this sounds so incredibly deceptive and untruthful and out of sorts with real world politics. It’s in a league with other assertions confidently floated, of impeccable provenance, that sound similarly off kilter when repeated back. Statements like “Read my lips: no new taxes” and “We found the weapons of mass destruction”, for example.
Munroe (54af9a) — 7/5/2019 @ 1:09 pmIt’s wrong to say that trump lies because it implies he cares enough about the factual accuracy of his statement to decide weather to be honest or not.
I’m increasingly convinced that his decision criteria are focused around the likely response in his target audience. If he thinks it will help him with his base, he says it. Accurate/false isn’t at all part of the decision criteria except so far as it is likely to impact the response in his target audience. (Thank you Sammy for helping me realize this point)
As many commentators on here that love him have shown his accuracy isn’t important to them.
Some have gone so far as to reject the very idea that principles such as honesty are important. Others change the subject or try to make it a relative comparison, as if the point we not “did he lie” but “are his lies worse than someone else’s”.
I can’t recall a single example where someone said they were a strong Trump supporter and that what he said was false, or that he shouldn’t have said something. Maybe I’ve missed it, but I’m concluding that it just doesn’t matter to them.
Time123 (a61b29) — 7/5/2019 @ 1:49 pmI updated the post with a link to a blog post about today’s filings and Order.
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 1:58 pmCouldn’t they just decide not to say anything to the court till they know what;s going on (in part by cross-examining their bosses.)
Let the responsible people appear in court.
Meanwhile, there’s an Op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal by claiming Trump can authorize it as an effort to enforce the 14th amendment.
It says states lose represenation based on the fracton of citizens disenfranchised. Since some states do not allow some people to vote, they would need to know the number of citizens in such state to carry out Section 2 of the 14th amendment.
The only probem is: Where would this apply? Felons can be disenfranchised.
He’d have to rely on Democratic statements about voter ID preventing people from voting.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 7/5/2019 @ 2:37 pmA question asking how many people live here illegally, is illegal because its in part intended to diminish the influence of people who live here illegally.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (6b1442) — 7/5/2019 @ 2:59 pmThis is one of those situations that McGahn alluded to in his testimony to Mueller… in that, sometimes Trumps “says some things” and something the folks around him ignores him.
I think this is one of those scenario and Trump has had enough of it and sticking to his guns to have the DoJ “figure out a way forward”. Hence the fallout…
whembly (4605df) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:17 pmThe more people who live here illegally, the weaker is the case against them. They’re not harming the economy.
Sammy Finkelman (845007) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:33 pmThis is what happens when DOJ lawyers do not have
nk (dbc370) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:35 pm1. A friendly judge;
2. A defendant
a. whom they cannot bankrupt;
b. whose family they cannot threaten;
c. whom they cannot lock up pending trial to demoralize him into pleading guilty;
3. A co-conspirator with whom they made a deal to turn government witness.
They live on a diet of low-hanging fruit and their basic incompetence shows in any roughly even contest.
that wasn’t even the question, it’s a matter of who is a citizen, which impinges on who qualifies for the franchise, but since fair vs. kleznick, (1979), plyer vs. doe (1982) and most recently evenwell (2016) they have stripped that discretion away, it really comes down to money, the more persons, the more money, a locality receives, that’s what was at the heart of the sampling exercise, and the moving of the census from treasury over to the White House,
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:37 pmDo people in jail or prison, on parole, probation, supervision, or court-ordered criminal diversion, or under a restraining order or domestic violence order of protection, count as “free persons”?
nk (dbc370) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:44 pmthat’s an intriguing question, there’s probably a brennan center briefing paper on that,
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:50 pmapparently it only counts where they are incarcerated:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2020-census-prison-population_n_5a7cb966e4b044b3821b0507
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 3:54 pmIt’s worse than that.
They repeat and embellish his lies, because it makes them feel closer to their false god.
Dave (55e817) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:00 pmultimately this is what it’s really about,
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/05/conservatives-immigration-issues/
tom perez, was the atty general of Maryland for a time,
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:08 pmPaywall, narciso.
Kishnevi (e6517f) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:38 pmillegal are the key to their permanent majority status, in summary, we can see it in California among other places, so felons count toward the populations of said districts,
narciso (d1f714) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:48 pmJVW, if you could please try to unblock my original IP address, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Icy (b08aaf) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:51 pmhttps://patterico.com/2019/05/17/new-headlines-from-drj/
That’s ok. Trump doesn’t keep his promises either, I have been told.
FTR, I enjoy the headlines even with the commentary.
BuDuh (d989c6) — 7/5/2019 @ 4:58 pmHi Buduh! I did not come back to post my opinions but I do have some. However, there was no agreement or rule that I couldn’t, although clearly you read it that way.
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:06 pm“She has agreed to post headlines without commentary” doesn’t mean “she has agreed to post headlines without commentary?”
Sounds Trumpian.
I will head back to random intermittent lurking.
BuDuh (d989c6) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:11 pmDRJ, I think almost everyone here who isn’t Christoph with a VPN loves your posts.
Lufkin PD did a good job with their post about this. Just the basic info we need to understand what is going on. Sounds like a kid who did something stupid, which definitely mitigates my opinion of what the penalty should be. Hopefully the adult boyfriend has a nervous moment in front a judge. And big-picture, people understand now that this kind of behavior will inspire consequences.
Dustin (6d7686) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:15 pmAhh. I see the misunderstanding. You don’t recognize your commentary within the headline post as commentary and you think I am erroneously applying your agreement to comments you may make in the comment section.
No. That isn’t how I understood your agreement. Comments in the comment section were never mentioned. Just commentary in the original post.
Take care. Hope you had a wonderful Fourth.
BuDuh (d989c6) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:18 pmThanks, D.
Buduh doesn’t care for me but Christoph actually likes me, so they aren’t the same. I completely agree with you about consequences. This was a teaching moment for young Texans. I hope they get it.
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:25 pmNo, Buduh. You don’t understand. Have a good day.
Edit: I can’t speak for Patterico but I think Patterico was explaining why my posts will look different when I post (because there would not be commentary as there is with other posters). Buduh read that as a restriction that I know does not exist.
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:26 pmHe understands. He’s just being a podex.
nk (dbc370) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:32 pmThis reminds me of when I was seventeen and received a draft registration notice in the mail. I thought it was so stupid. If the government knows enough about me, who I am, where I live, why send a draft registration and not a draft notice? I returned it and wrote, “registered under protest.”
My birth certificate is on file. My driver’s license is on file. My fingerprints are on file. My high school records, college transcripts, teaching certificate, and realtor’s license are all on file. How does the government not know I am a natural born citizen? It’s ridiculous.
Oh, and there’s an FBI file on me as well. Yeah, back in the eighties when I was at UT, this friend of mine, a complete computer geek, wrote some sort of freaky code and stole $18,000 from the bank he was working at–50 cents off of every service charge transferred to his account. I didn’t know about it, didn’t have anything to do with it, but because the amount was over $10,000, the FBI got involved. I was under surveillance for three months, because he stopped by my apartment almost every day after work.
Yeah, it took them that long to arrest him, because there was no paper trail. Then one day he just disappeared. I told another friend, “I haven’t seen Joey in a while.” He said, “Joey got busted.” I was like, “For what, weed?” He said, “Bank fraud.”
When I did see Joey again, about a month after he was arrested, talk about a time for a back hand slap to the face. You had me under surveillance? Me? I got the FBI following me around, for crying out loud. They have a file on me, and I haven’t done anything. What a sick situation that was.
He ended up serving probation with a fine for restitution. But there is an FBI file on me, and I had absolutely nothing to do with the crime.
Again, at what point does the government have to ask me about my citizenship? Everything is on file.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:50 pm“Sounds like a kid who did something stupid, which definitely mitigates my opinion of what the penalty should be.”
Dustin (6d7686) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:15 pm
We certainly wouldn’t want a public doxxing, as with the Covington kids.
Munroe (1c1251) — 7/5/2019 @ 6:54 pmYou mean those racist punks?
Dustin (6d7686) — 7/5/2019 @ 7:09 pm🙂
Dustin (6d7686) — 7/5/2019 @ 7:09 pmGawain’s Ghost (b25cd1) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:50 pm
Why didn’t they just send you a draft notice, you ask? Two words; plausible deniability.
Y’see, if they went around displaying what they know, then the citizenry would also know that the gub’mint knew all along who the illegals were.
felipe (023cc9) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:13 pmDustin (6d7686) — 7/5/2019 @ 7:09 pm
felipe (023cc9) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:15 pmLOL.
Just felt an earthquake here in the northern San Joaquin Valley of Nor Cal, had to be bad somewhere
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:24 pmStill going… the swimming pool has waves… steady now for 2 minutes
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:25 pm7.1 in Ridgecrest… near the other one. We’re 200 or so miles SE from it, have an old retired work buddy who lives there… hoping he is on vacation elsewhere.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:38 pmWay off… 347 miles SE of us. Has to be some damage there.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:44 pmOh, no. I hope not but it sounds bad.
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 8:58 pmCentered near the 395 highway, main connector between SoCal and the Sierra Nevada.
In perspective, nothing like the damage so may folks have had to deal with around the country the last several years with tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and floods. It’s a weird feeling being seated, starting to feel queasy, finally noticing the chandelier swinging back and forth and water in the pool sloshing back and forth.
One thing for certain… if this quake was in a populated area we’d have a whole different song being sung by the news right now.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 9:05 pmHaiku, your comments are helpful. Could you move/continue to the Earthquake post?
DRJ (15874d) — 7/5/2019 @ 9:13 pmSure…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 7/5/2019 @ 9:32 pmhttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/resolved-we-people-demand-citizenship-question-be-required-within-2020-census
Narciso (fddec8) — 7/6/2019 @ 6:12 amGawain’s Ghost (b25cd1) — 7/5/2019 @ 5:50 pm
Well, of course the draft registration comes before the draft notice,
They used not to have all this information and they needed the registration, and in fact maybe to get all eligible men they still would need people to register. But this was all stupid and symbolic.
In the pre 1969 draft the draft boards would actually select people, this was replaced by a lottery and later the draft was abolished. Jimmy Carter brought back draft registration as a symbolic way of standing up to the soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan (which was not actually the first Soviet intervention in Afghanistan but the toppling of Hafizullah Amin was caught by spy satellites because of the hostages taken by Iran) and no politician has has the guts to abolish it.
There’s no need for any draft registration. In the unlikely event there was a sudden large increase in the number of men needed you would get an increase in volunteers especially if it was asked for,
There’s not one huge database with all that stuff together.
Sammy Finkelman (83cfe1) — 7/9/2019 @ 12:00 pm