5 hours ago, M2 said:

At this point, Tulsi was a better pick. Isn't there an absolute boot licker out there that also been an exec at one of the many intel orgs out there? None?

If you have any political ambitions whatsoever, I think the smart move would be to bide your time and stay as far away from this self immolating administration as you can. If you thought Kamala trying to distance herself from Biden was rough just wait till you see how much JD and Rubio are going to have to answer for on a national debate stage if either of them ever run for president.

That’s probably why there aren’t many people stepping up to take these roles other than the absolute most devoted Trump cucks. You’d have to be politically retarded or the most devout loyalist ever to think hitching your career to this wagon at this point would be a good move

On 6/11/2026 at 3:21 PM, StoleIt said:

Didn't everyone think Tulsi was a Russian agent or something? What ever happened to that narrative?

I thought she is still a Dem and had little background in intel. That's my narrative. Check my work.

8 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:

I thought she is still a Dem and had little background in intel. That's my narrative. Check my work.

From wikipedia here's her relevant Committee assignments as Congresswoman: Armed Services Committee for 8 years with 2 of those on the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations; Foreign Affairs for 6 years, & Homeland Security for 2 years. Her military career was as a medic, MP and Civil Affairs officer. Score that how you want, but there's at least some experience. She left the Democrats to be an independent in 2022 then joined the Republican Party in 2024.

Wild read. Miller is a fucking ghoul independent of this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html?

Edited Tuesday at 08:00 PM2 days by 17D_guy

Yes, we get it. You’re a progressive who doesn’t like Trump or people who support Trump.

7 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

Wild read. Miller is a fucking ghoul independent of this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html?

I will never understand the argument that people in a country illegally should have a months- or years-long right to protest their removal.

Are you here legally? If no, then you are deported. Deportation is not imprisonment or punishment, it is merely the cessation of violation.

Where's the logical end to this nonsense? Should visa applicants in Zimbabwe have a right to "due process" if they are denied a green card? If not, why is it any different for the Zimbabwean who snuck in?

If we are trying to give them prison sentences, then yeah, due process includes the right to a fair trial. But if we're just returning intruders to their rightful place, due process should include only food and water for the journey home.

8 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

I will never understand the argument that people in a country illegally should have a months- or years-long right to protest their removal.

Are you here legally? If no, then you are deported. Deportation is not imprisonment or punishment, it is merely the cessation of violation.

Where's the logical end to this nonsense? Should visa applicants in Zimbabwe have a right to "due process" if they are denied a green card? If not, why is it any different for the Zimbabwean who snuck in?

If we are trying to give them prison sentences, then yeah, due process includes the right to a fair trial. But if we're just returning intruders to their rightful place, due process should include only food and water for the journey home.

Having spent a little time along the Texas border with Mexico in an official capacity, and having seen the onslaught of illegal immigrants wading across the Rio Grande, I am not without sympathy for their plight but I also clearly realize that the government's main priority must to be protect its citizens above all else. This issue has been politicized far more than it needs to be, it's a sovereignty issue and nothing else.  No modern country allows completely unrestricted entry and settlement by anyone.  Even places often cited as “open” still have rules, they require identification, limit how long you can stay, and/or enforce conditions like employment or housing.  The “sovereign right to control borders” is a core principle of international law and statehood, meaning every country has the legal authority to decide who can enter, stay in and leave its territory.  It’s codified across several core international legal sources.

This is a great example I found years ago…

Imagine a crowded town built inside sturdy walls.

Inside the walls, there are laws, courts, schools, roads, and a shared agreement about how life works. People rely on these structures—they trust that disputes will be settled, that services will function, that rights will be protected. These things don’t exist by accident; they are maintained by the authority of the town itself—its ability to define who belongs inside, how resources are shared, and how order is kept.

Now imagine a group of townspeople who begin to argue that the gates should be opened—wide. They believe movement should be freer, that people outside should not be held back by lines on a map. They point out, correctly, that on a human level, the walls can feel arbitrary. Why should where you’re born determine where you may live? Why should opportunity stop at a border?

Their argument is rooted in a sense of fairness, even moral clarity: people should be able to move, to seek better lives, to not be constrained by geography.

But across the square, others see a tension taking shape.

They look at the same walls—not as arbitrary barriers, but as the very structures that make the town possible. The walls define the system that allows the laws to work, the taxes to be collected, the services to be delivered. Without some control over who comes and goes, they worry the town could lose its ability to function as it does now.

And so, to them, an irony appears.

They see people standing inside a functioning system—protected by it, benefitting from it—while calling for a loosening of the very boundaries that make that system coherent. It feels, to the critics, like wanting both the shelter of the house and the removal of its walls at the same time.

Meanwhile, the reformers don’t see irony at all.

In their eyes, the critics are too rigid—too tied to a model that treats borders as permanent and necessary in their current form. They point out that the town has already changed over time: gates have opened before, alliances have formed between neighboring towns, and entire regions have created shared spaces where movement is freer without chaos ensuing. To them, the walls are not sacred—they are adjustable.

They would say: we’re not asking to destroy the town; we’re asking to rethink how its boundaries work.

So the “irony” lives mostly in the space between these viewpoints.

To one side, it is a contradiction: a desire for the benefits of a bounded system while arguing to weaken the boundaries.

To the other, it is not a contradiction at all, but an evolution: a belief that systems can adapt, and that human mobility and social order do not have to be in conflict.

And the town square conversation continues—
not really about walls, or gates, or even borders,
but about how much structure a society needs,
and how much freedom it can sustain at the same time.

8 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

I will never understand the argument that people in a country illegally should have a months- or years-long right to protest their removal.

You're making a strawman argument and you know it. Bad Ratner.

Prove this person is an illegal alien, before imprisoning them and deporting them. Cause the government never makes mistakes, this should be easy.

33 minutes ago, busdriver said:

You're making a strawman argument and you know it. Bad Ratner.

Prove this person is an illegal alien, before imprisoning them and deporting them. Cause the government never makes mistakes, this should be easy.

The left doesn’t want to deport people who have been determined to be here illegally, so let’s not pretend this is a legitimate debate going on today.

33 minutes ago, busdriver said:

You're making a strawman argument and you know it. Bad Ratner.

Prove this person is an illegal alien, before imprisoning them and deporting them. Cause the government never makes mistakes, this should be easy.

Do you really think that this is just about figuring out whether or not the people are illegals or not? You think that's what the deportation judges are doing, looking for clues to figure out if they accidentally scooped up a citizen? Come on, you can't really think that, right?

You think that in 2026, with the most unfathomably complex surveillance tools ever imagined by man, the real problem we are having is figuring out who is a citizen and who isn't?

Exactly how many citizens are being accidentally deported?

You ever met someone who had a hard time proving that they were a citizen? Lol, talk about bad faith.

Edited Wednesday at 01:23 PM2 days by Lord Ratner

15 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Exactly how many citizens are being accidentally deported?

A 4 second Google search produces multiple claims of detained/deported citizens and legal immigrants. Some of this is obviously dubious, but due process is how that is sorted out. Trusting "the most unfathomably complex surveillance tools ever imagined by man" without any oversight is an insane violation of basic civil liberties.

2 hours ago, busdriver said:

A 4 second Google search produces multiple claims of detained/deported citizens and legal immigrants. Some of this is obviously dubious, but due process is how that is sorted out. Trusting "the most unfathomably complex surveillance tools ever imagined by man" without any oversight is an insane violation of basic civil liberties.

If you have found any, I would love to see a verified claim that a citizen was deported accidentally. I have seen not one single instance, but even if there was one instance, that would not be relevant. If we had maybe 10 instances or 100 instances, that would start to matter. We're talking about tens of millions of people, and accident rate of 0 is not logical in any context, especially this context.

Again, we are not talking about imprisonment, execution, asset seizure, or any other punitive government actions. Those absolutely demand due process. Being deported is simply fixing the glitch.

This is one of those issues that doesn't require much research, because you know factually that if there were verified cases of law-abiding citizens being shipped off to El Salvador, you would never hear the end of it from one side of the political spectrum, just like when an immigrant murders and innocent woman on the subway, you never hear the end of it from the other side.

So far the left has a bit of a problem producing any evidence of the threats they seem so adamant to defend us against.

11 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

If you have found any, I would love to see a verified claim that a citizen was deported accidentally. I have seen not one single instance, but even if there was one instance, that would not be relevant. If we had maybe 10 instances or 100 instances, that would start to matter. We're talking about tens of millions of people, and accident rate of 0 is not logical in any context, especially this context.

Again, we are not talking about imprisonment, execution, asset seizure, or any other punitive government actions. Those absolutely demand due process. Being deported is simply fixing the glitch.

This is one of those issues that doesn't require much research, because you know factually that if there were verified cases of law-abiding citizens being shipped off to El Salvador, you would never hear the end of it from one side of the political spectrum, just like when an immigrant murders and innocent woman on the subway, you never hear the end of it from the other side.

So far the left has a bit of a problem producing any evidence of the threats they seem so adamant to defend us against.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025.12.8_ICE-Report-revised-FINAL.pdf

https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-deports-3-u-s-citizen-children-held-incommunicado-prior-to-the-deportation

Groks answer attached.

8 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025.12.8_ICE-Report-revised-FINAL.pdf

https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-deports-3-u-s-citizen-children-held-incommunicado-prior-to-the-deportation

Groks answer attached.

Nice try.

First two links have no deportations. Third link has no names, so the circumstances of the deportation cannot be determined, but every similar named case has been exactly the same. The illegal alien parents of a birthright citizen child(ren) elected to take their citizen children with them back to the country of their deportation. Not the same, and you know it.

In fact there's already federal court precedence that removes qualified immunity from law enforcement officials that do not promptly release someone after proving their citizenship. Morales v. Chadbourne

But it is a very compelling reason to join the rest of the world and the framers of the 14th amendment in abolishing the nonsense of birthright citizenship.

20 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

I have seen not one single instance, but even if there was one instance, that would not be relevant. If we had maybe 10 instances or 100 instances, that would start to matter.

So far the left has a bit of a problem producing any evidence of the threats they seem so adamant to defend us against.

In one sentence you go from shifting the goalpost to rationalizing eliminating all checks and balances on individual rights. You also keep talking about proving your citizenship, while defending eliminating the very forum where you would do that. On a board where there is an entire thread about cops being malicious screwups, in a world where the most technically advanced intelligence apparatus in history bombed a school, and you're ok with no built in check/balance? Bananas

3 hours ago, busdriver said:

In one sentence you go from shifting the goalpost to rationalizing eliminating all checks and balances on individual rights. You also keep talking about proving your citizenship, while defending eliminating the very forum where you would do that. On a board where there is an entire thread about cops being malicious screwups, in a world where the most technically advanced intelligence apparatus in history bombed a school, and you're ok with no built in check/balance? Bananas

Don't conflate me with other people on this forum. I think that cop thread is a bunch of absolute nonsense. A few bad apples in an otherwise incredibly functioning system, but because the algorithm knows what makes you angry, once you go down that rabbit hole all you'll ever see are cops abusing people's rights. It's a waste of time, as are most exercises dystopian fantasy.

I don't care about the school bombing either. Shit happens in war. If A single government official got on the news and high-fived each other and talked about how awesome it was to kill a bunch of little girls (you know, like the Palestinians do), then I'd have a problem. But since I'm a grown-up who served in the military, I know that collateral damage, even mistakenly, sometimes happens. Only children assume that you can build a system free from error or tragedy.

Even more ironically, all this hand ringing over the girls school in a country that would happily slaughter my daughter as a heretic if they had half the chance. Don't forget if any of those girls had grown up to be raped in Iran, she'd have an honor killing to look forward to, if she was able to escape the Iranian justice system with proof that she wasn't a willing participant. Spare me.

And as far as being disingenuous goes, that's pretty rich. Focusing on the negligible number of citizens who have been swept up in a solution (and not deported) that has been a long time coming is just a distraction. Just be honest, you don't want illegal aliens deported. That's fine, you are allowed a political opinion as much as anyone else, but trying to make it a morality play by over hyping the anomalies because you know that the core argument has no foundation in law, history, or morality, is weak tea.

You are rationalizing an outcome you want while ignoring any counter points.

You justify curtailing due process and habeas corpus, hand way away actual examples of government screw ups all around you. Bananas!

3 hours ago, busdriver said:

You are rationalizing an outcome you want while ignoring any counter points.

You justify curtailing due process and habeas corpus, hand way away actual examples of government screw ups all around you. Bananas!

What is confusing? Government screw-ups are not justification for abandoning government action. This used to be a pretty standard policy of the left, considering how many of their programs were grossly mismanaged and abused.

None of our laws were written for the situation we are in now. It was never a consideration that tens of millions of people who have no right to be in this country would nevertheless be here. The protections afforded to American citizens, and others legally present within our borders, cannot be extended to every person on the planet.

It is not hard to prove citizenship. Neither for the government nor the accused party. That there are a few dozen cases out of literally millions is evidence that this is not a real problem, any more than a few aircraft mishaps out of millions of yearly flights are indicative of a widespread aviation safety threat.

The recharacterization of deportation as some sort of punitive action similar to incarceration is the exact trick being used to slow down the process for the ultimate goal of preventing deportation entirely. Same with the refusal of an asylum claim. If you get on a plane to America without a Visa or passport, you are not allowed to leave the airport until you can be seen in front of a judge. You are put on the next flight back to your country.

We have the ability for the vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants to quickly confirm their illegal status and return them to their country of origin. Since the problem has been allowed to grow to the tens of millions, there will unsurprisingly be some mistakes along the way. If those mistakes are measured in a fraction of a fraction of a percent, I don't have any problem with that. Once again, show me the American citizens being deported or denied entry back into the country by an intentional process and we will have some sort of agreement. But you can't show that.

If you believe the people here illegally have a right to the resources of our country, we just have a fundamental disagreement. I do not believe they have any claim to medical treatment, education, assistance programs, or voting rights. Along those same lines, I do not believe they have any claim to our judicial system, unless of course we are attempting to incarcerate, fine, or otherwise restrict that human being from anything other than their unlawful presence within our borders.

Once again, it is simply intentionally naive or disingenuous to act as though we can't figure out who the vast majority of the illegal aliens are. They didn't come here from Mars. They are overwhelmingly from countries south of our border that have fully functioning governments with records systems that track their citizens just as we track ours.

The left is just trying to make this about something it isn't because ultimately what they want is for them to stay.

16 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Government screw-ups are not justification for abandoning government action. This used to be a pretty standard policy of the left, considering how many of their programs were grossly mismanaged and abused.

The protections afforded to American citizens, and others legally present within our borders, cannot be extended to every person on the planet.

It is not hard to prove citizenship. Neither for the government nor the accused party.

The left is just trying to make this about something it isn't because ultimately what they want is for them to stay.

Straw man.

You should re-read the declaration of independence and the constitution. You do not understand them.

In what forum will you be proving this and to whom?

Ad-hominin

18 minutes ago, busdriver said:

Straw man.

You should re-read the declaration of independence and the constitution. You do not understand them.

In what forum will you be proving this and to whom?

Ad-hominin

Maybe you should read the actual debates the framers of the 14th amendment had. Neither the declaration of Independence nor the original Constitution addresses this situation, which is exactly why the 14th amendment had to be written. Thank God the founding fathers knew that we would one day have you to be the sole interpreter of their wisdom 🤣😂

I'm not sure how you can have an ad hominem against a political group, but okay. It also happens to be true.

As far as the forum for identifying yourself as a citizen, I will accept the least formal and most rapid forum that results in a negligible number of improper citizen deportations. Since you've been unable to identify a single recent case of an American citizen being improperly deported, we could just assume that it hasn't happened. As for the historical cases, those all sound about right. I especially liked the part where the deported citizens got hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for the government screw up. I'd be happy to 10x that penalty for any citizen involved in a similar miscarriage of Justice. That's not justification to tear it all down. There will always be fuck ups.

Until then, from the time you are approached by the authorities (first opportunity), to the time you spend in a detention center awaiting processing with translators available (second opportunity), to an informal meeting with an immigration officer where you are allowed to make your case with phone and Internet access (third opportunity), to the time it takes to board your deportation flight (fourth opportunity), that would be plenty.

But again this is all just an exercise false ignorance. You know damn well that proving citizenship isn't a problem. This is functionally identical to the voter ID debates that have been held in such bad faith by the left that it is almost beyond comprehension. It takes the same level of fake stupidity to believe that black people in America don't have access to identification as it does to believe that immigrants don't have access to proof of legal status. Do you have any immigrants in your family? My mother still has her green card number memorized. This just isn't a thing.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Lord Ratner

Here is an example. OK, can we put the thread back on track? The Cabinet.