Tag: LAW

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A Strong Case For Trump’s Military Intervention In Venezuela

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An interesting segment on MSNOW featured Hagar Chemali, who made one of the most coherent and intellectually serious cases yet for President Trump’s military posture toward Venezuela. Going into the segment, the prevailing narrative across television news was nearly unanimous: Trump’s actions were framed as a reckless violation of international law, untethered from any legitimate U.S. national security interest. What Chemali did—methodically and without theatrics—was complicate that narrative in a way most pundits either cannot or will not.

Chemali did not dispute that Trump’s actions strain, and may even violate, existing international legal frameworks. Instead, she argued that focusing exclusively on legality misses the more consequential question of national security. According to Chemali, the post–World War II international system—particularly institutions like the United Nations—has become largely incapable of enforcing the very rules it was designed to uphold. That vacuum, she contends, has been aggressively exploited by rogue states and non-state actors who operate with near impunity, often embedding themselves in fragile or hostile regimes much closer to U.S. shores than many Americans appreciate.

What gives Chemali’s argument particular weight is her background. She is not a partisan talking head or an armchair strategist. Chemali served in senior roles at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, including in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, where she worked directly on counterterrorism, sanctions policy, and efforts to disrupt the financial networks of hostile states and extremist groups. She also held positions during the Obama administration and has worked closely with interagency national security teams, giving her firsthand exposure to how threats are assessed when cameras are not rolling. In other words, she understands how national security doctrine is applied in practice, not just debated on cable news panels.

From that vantage point, Chemali argues that Venezuela cannot be viewed in isolation. It is not merely a failing state or a humanitarian crisis; it has become a strategic foothold for U.S. adversaries seeking influence in the Western Hemisphere. In that context, she suggests, the United States asserting a policing role in the Americas is less about imperial ambition and more about responding to a security architecture that no longer functions. When international bodies fail to act—or selectively enforce rules—power vacuums do not remain empty for long.

Chemali’s analysis effectively provides the Trump administration with a serious national security rationale that goes beyond bluster or appeals to raw power. It offers a framework for countering the charge that the administration is acting lawlessly by arguing that the law itself has become disconnected from enforcement realities. Whether one agrees with that conclusion or not, it is a far more substantive defense than the caricature of Trump acting on impulse or ego.

Trump has occasionally gestured toward the Monroe Doctrine when addressing Venezuela, at times referring to his own version as the “Donroe Doctrine,” but he has rarely articulated the argument with the clarity or discipline Chemali brings to it. Her explanation distills what the administration seems to believe but has struggled to communicate: that American restraint, in a world where enforcement mechanisms are broken, can itself become a liability. Whether Trump adopts this rationale more explicitly going forward remains to be seen, but Chemali’s intervention may well give the administration an opening to reframe the debate on terms that are strategic rather than merely legalistic.

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Longtime Pentecostal Preacher Accused Of Child Sexual Abuse

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As the nation continues to reckon with the disturbing legacy of the Jeffrey Epstein case — where power, influence, and fear kept abuse hidden for years — a newly emergent story out of Missouri and Oklahoma reveals that the problem of predatory abuse hidden behind religious authority is deeply systemic and far broader than most Americans realize.

Over the past year, major investigative reporting has spotlighted veteran Pentecostal preacher Joseph Lyle “Joe” Campbell, a once-beloved children’s pastor with decades of ministry across the South and Midwest. For more than 40 years, Campbell built a reputation as a charismatic faith leader, ministering to thousands of children in Assemblies of God congregations and, more recently, at Jim Bakker’s Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri — a ministry broadcast on national Christian television networks. 

Despite repeated allegations dating back to the 1970s and 1980s that he sexually abused young girls under his spiritual care, Campbell continued preaching for decades without criminal consequences. Multiple women have come forward publicly, including in major NBC News reporting, saying they were abused as children or teens by Campbell while he held youth and children’s ministry positions. Many said they told church leaders and even civil authorities at the time, only to be dismissed, ignored, or told nothing could be done — a chilling echo of the fear and silence surrounding Epstein’s victims. 

The turning point arrived in December 2025 when a multi-county grand jury in Oklahoma returned an indictment against Campbell, now 68 years old, on serious criminal charges: one count of first-degree rape and one count of lewd or indecent acts with a child under 16. These allegations stem from events tied to his ministry in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1984, where prosecutors say he raped a girl believed to have been between 11 and 12 years old and sexually abused another 14-year-old while serving as a youth pastor. 

On December 17, 2025, U.S. Marshals arrested Campbell at a location in Elkland, Missouri and lodged him in the Greene County Jail in Springfield, Missouri, before his expected transfer to Oklahoma where the charges were filed.  While the state’s legal system has not yet publicly announced an official trial date as of now, the indictment makes clear that prosecutors intend to move forward — and if convicted, Campbell faces up to life in prison. 

What makes this case especially disturbing is that the alleged abuse was first reported decades ago but was never prosecuted at the time. According to survivors and investigative reporting, church officials and some local authorities repeatedly failed to act on those early reports, allowing Campbell not only to stay in ministry but to grow his influence. This mirrors one of the central outrages in the Epstein saga — that powerful or charismatic figures could evade accountability for years while their victims suffered in silence. 

One victim, Phaedra Creed, who appeared on NBC-affiliated segments discussing the case, said she and others were too afraid to come forward earlier because they feared not being believed or being physically harmed — the same kinds of fears Epstein’s accusers long described. 

Now, as Campbell awaits his day in court, the larger questions hang over this case just as they did with Epstein: How many knew? Who enabled him? And why did it take so long for justice to begin? It is far too easy for prosecutors, church leaders, and law enforcement to treat Campbell’s arrest as the end of an ugly chapter. But unless there is a transparent investigation into what church authorities, denominational leaders, and civil officials knew — and when they knew it — this will be another example of systemic betrayal rather than genuine accountability.

Campbell may be facing the possibility of a life sentence, but without uncovering the broader network of complicity that allowed him to evade consequences for decades, the real lesson of this case — and its painful parallels with Epstein — will be lost.

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Trump Admin’s Troubling Art Of The Label

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An illuminating segment on MSNOW’s Weekend Primetime examined how the Trump administration has refined what can only be described as the art of the label—an exercise in branding human beings as threats and then using that label alone to justify the application of overwhelming military force. Host James Sample walked viewers through how this practice operates in real time: individuals or groups are branded with ominous-sounding designations, and those designations, largely untested and unchallenged, become sufficient grounds for detention, deportation, or death. The alarming part is not merely the labeling itself, but how seamlessly these hollow classifications are converted into acts of state violence, often without any discernible legal foundation or meaningful oversight.

For a country that endlessly invokes the rule of law and treats “due process” as a sacred principle, it is chilling to watch how easily government officials can, on little more than assertion, affix a label to a person and render that individual a legitimate military target. Once the label is applied, the usual safeguards—evidence, hearings, accountability—simply vanish. Even more disturbing is the near-total absence of resistance from Congress or sustained scrutiny from the media, allowing the executive branch to operate as judge, jury, and executioner based on nothing more than its own say-so.

Sample illustrated how this tactic has evolved and expanded. It began, he explained, with migrants being labeled as members of the dangerous gang Tren de Aragua, a claim often unsupported by evidence, and then using that unvetted designation to justify sending them to CECOT, where they were subjected to brutal conditions and torture. The label alone did the work; no adjudication was required, no proof demanded. From there, the administration escalated, branding people aboard boats in the Caribbean as “narcoterrorists” and then using that designation to justify blowing the vessels out of the water, killing those on board. Beyond the invocation of the narcoterrorism label itself, the administration offered little to persuade the public that the people killed actually met that definition.

According to Sample, the most recent and perhaps most dangerous iteration of this practice has emerged in Africa, where the administration has labeled certain regions in Nigeria and Somalia as ISIS-controlled areas and then relied solely on that characterization to carry out military strikes. In Nigeria, one such attack reportedly occurred on Christmas Day, underscoring the moral numbness that accompanies this kind of empty labeling. When entire regions can be reduced to a single word—“ISIS”—and that word becomes a license to kill, the line between lawful military action and lawless violence all but disappears.

At some point, Congress must intervene and reclaim its constitutionally mandated role. That intervention should begin with demanding answers about these labels: how they are defined, what evidence supports them, and what legal reasoning is used to transform them into justifications for lethal force. The military lawyers who sign off on these actions should be required to testify publicly and explain their rationale to the American people. Only sustained oversight and transparency can halt the dangerous slide toward governance by label, where words replace law and accountability is an afterthought. One can only hope Congress acts before more lives are lost to this reckless and hollow exercise of power.

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Is CJ Roberts The New Roger Taney?

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An interesting discussion unfolded on MSNOW’s All In with Chris Hayes in a segment that was initially intended to examine whether the courts have held up against the threat of authoritarianism posed by Trump 2.0. What emerged instead was a sobering assessment of the judiciary’s uneven performance—and a striking indictment of the Supreme Court’s role in enabling, rather than constraining, presidential power.

There was broad agreement among the panelists that the lower federal courts have largely done their job. District courts and federal appellate courts have repeatedly pushed back against Trump-era policies that stretch or outright exceed constitutional authority, issuing rulings that reflect a continued commitment to legal norms and institutional guardrails. In that sense, the judiciary below the Supreme Court was seen as functioning as a genuine check on executive overreach. That consensus, however, collapsed the moment the conversation turned to the nation’s highest court.

On the Supreme Court, the panel was unified in its criticism. Rather than reinforcing the limits imposed by the Constitution, the Court was described as an active enabler of the Trump administration, routinely undermining or reversing lower-court efforts to restrain him. The justices, in this telling, have not merely failed to defend democracy but have helped hollow it out, often by cloaking deeply political outcomes in the language of neutral legal principle.

The segment took a dramatic turn when NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray made a blunt and explosive claim: that Chief Justice John Roberts has now surpassed Roger Taney as the most damaging chief justice in American history. Taney, long regarded as the Court’s nadir, presided over the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that Black Americans could not be citizens and helped propel the nation toward civil war. To suggest that Roberts belongs in the same conversation—let alone that he is worse—was a jarring assertion, and Murray did not soften it.

Professor Murray argued that Roberts has authored at least four opinions that she described as “the absolute most corrosive for democracy.” She pointed first to Rucho v. Common Cause, a decision that effectively blessed extreme partisan gerrymandering by declaring it a nonjusticiable political question. In doing so, the Court closed the federal courthouse doors to challenges against a practice that allows politicians to choose their voters, entrenching minority rule in state after state. She then cited Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act by striking down its preclearance formula, a move that unleashed a wave of voter suppression laws across the country almost immediately. Murray also pointed to Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity case, which dramatically expanded the scope of executive immunity and signaled that a president may be functionally above the law when acting under the guise of official duties.

Although she did not explicitly name a fourth decision, the implication was hard to miss. Citizens United looms over any discussion of democratic corrosion, having opened the floodgates to unlimited, often opaque political spending and accelerating the transformation of American democracy into something approaching oligarchy. Taken together, these rulings form a throughline in which democratic participation is narrowed, accountability is weakened, and power is consolidated in the hands of the few—all under the stewardship of a chief justice who has repeatedly claimed to care deeply about the Court’s legitimacy.

Whether the argument that “Roberts is worse than Taney” gains wider traction remains to be seen, but it is crucial to note that Professor Murray is far from alone in making it. Legal scholars and commentators have increasingly drawn parallels between Taney’s Court, which entrenched slavery and inequality, and a modern Court that has systematically undermined voting rights, empowered unchecked executive authority, and normalized vast concentrations of political power. What made the moment on All In so striking was not just the severity of the claim, but the growing sense that it no longer sounds fringe. Instead, it reflects a mounting recognition that the greatest threats to American democracy may now be coming not from lawless actors outside the system, but from those entrusted to interpret and preserve it.

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DOGE Accused Of Amassing Massive Data For Political Dosiers

Bombshell report on the 04/30/25 edition of the Rachel Maddow Show (citing the NY times) says that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is amassing massive amounts of people’s private data from various government agencies in an effort to create a central database that could potentially be used/abused to create “dossiers” of political opponents of President Trump.

Yours Truly captured part of Maddow’s commentary in the tweet below (X below if you like🙄😂).

NY Times’ Julia Angwin told host Maddow that this [dossier politics] is very common in authoritarian countries, especially China. She specifically said: “China is sort of the example that does this. They have these master files that they have on every citizen, everything that they’ve ever done, it’s called social credit score, and they use it to punish dissent.”

Importantly, and quite scaringly, Angwin says compared to other Western nations, America’s privacy laws are the worst equipped to dealing with the dangers of such a centralized database. She adds that our system was designed based on this notion that government officials will always be acting in good faith, and thus tread carefully re the private data of citizens.

If this reporting holds up, it looks like America is gearing up for the biggest civil liberties fight of her 400 year existence. I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but given since the passage of the Patriot Act right after 09/11, we’ve witnessed increasing encroachments to our civil liberties, and privacy in particular. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, advances in technology have for all intents and purposes, rendered the 4thamendment moot. Consequently, there’s no privacy to defend. Congress has had numerous opportunities to deal with the problem, but abdicated at every turn. Too late to solve the problem now.🤷. 

I’ve been quite consistent about this issue. This was me ranting and raving about very issue way back in 2019😳👇When some big time MSMer starts bandwagoning over the issue, make sure to remind them that Yours Truly was already crying about this in 2019…when MSM thought it was just another “conspiracy theory”.🙄

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Targeted Individuals Hold Rally At Historic Houston Courthouse Steps

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Attorney Ana Toledo Addresses A Targeted Individuals Rally From The Steps Of The Historic Houston Courthouse On 301 Fannin Street (01/12/2024)

On Friday 01/12/24, in commemoration of the one year anniversary of the filing of TJ v Garland lawsuit, Attorney Ana Toledo led a targeted individuals rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse on 301 Fannin Street. The lawsuit seeks to have 18 plaintiffs, who Ana alleges have been placed there by the FBI under an unconstitutional “secret criteria”, removed from the terrorism watchlist.

Ana Toledo(0:02): “The FBI has abused the watchlist, what’s known as the terrorism watchlist for a long time…and 400,000 targeted individuals in the United States, and indeed around the world, have been put on this list. Today marks one year anniversary since we filed TJ v Garland, an extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to remove the names of innocent listed individuals from the terrorist screening database (TSDB) in two secret categories that are not known to the public, and not even to the people that are in them, because the FBI has admitted, they don’t represent a terrorist threat and they are not screened as such. Therefore these innocent Americans, and innocent civilians around the world, don’t encounter problems when traveling...[the list] of all those innocent people that are labeled as suspected terrorists…is distributed through the national crime information center (NCIC), to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, which translates to over 100,000 agents, to over 532 private corporations such as Air BnB, Western Union and many others that retaliate against people that don’t even know are on the list, and 1440 organizations such as universities that could very well deny entrance to somebody to a university of higher education just because unbeknownst to them, they are on this nefarious watchlist.”

Speaking specifically about the TJ v Garland lawsuit, Ana said(2:21): “We urge you to look at the appeal pending before the 5th Circuit[Court of Appeal], TJ v Garland case. It’s case #23-23402. It’s fully briefed and we’re ready for oral argumentation…The single remedy we seek, is the removal of the 18 plaintiffs from the TSDB categories 3 & 4, that are secret categories that the FBI has admitted, they put people on that list under secret criteria. That is not the America we were born into. That is not what the constitution provides. Please be aware, the watchlist in not the entire list. Pursuant to DOJ, the watchlist–the known and suspected terrorist list–comprises 0.5% of the entire list, so if that list is at two million, we don’t want to know how many innocent civilians have been placed secretly under codes 3 & 4, which represents 97% of the terrorist screening database pursuant to DOJ, not pursuant to Targeted Justice.”

Apparently, per Ana, an investigation by the DOJ Inspector-General recently found that the FBI doesn’t even follow its own regulations regarding watchlisting. Ana specifically said: “One of the most nefarious conclusions of an audit report by DOJ Inspector-General, report 08-16, is that the FBI field offices nominate and place people on the terrorist screening database without complying with agency regulations, now let that sink in. Innocent Americans that have never been arrested, tried, or convicted of any terrorist offense, and that by FBI’s own admission, do not meet the reasonable suspicion criteria, are secretly placed on this list. The labeling of innocent Americans, and people around the world, as suspected terrorists, deprives them of basic rights, constitutional and human rights. This has got to stop.”

Ana also took issue with the mainstream media’s strange silence regarding this issue, saying(6:34): “The evidence that the U.S. government is suppressing any dialogue about this, [targeted individuals], any discussion about it, is that despite the distribution of the press release on social media and through email, the press did not come here today. They are not interested in the freedom that second class citizens, targeted individuals, have a right to.”

It’s important to note that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has recently expressed similar watchlisting concerns, and is asking President Biden and the DOJ to address these problems.

No reasonable person looking at the people standing behind Attorney Ana Toledo at the downtown Houston courthouse steps, would conclude that these were the kind of people the terrorist screening database was originally meant to weed out. Sadly, however, it’s normal people like these–your mother, sister, uncle, cousin, who maybe said the wrong/inflammatory thing on social media or elsewhere, or complained about some corruption in high places–who end up getting ensnared by these watchlists/targeting lists, and are then punished in ways regular Americans will never comprehend, up to and including using military assets. Its a total travesty that needs to be fixed and those responsible held to account. In other words, the grave injustice here is not just the malicious watchlisting, but also, the unconstitutional torture that goes with it–organized stalking, financial sabotage, assaults/experiments using DEWs, remote neuromonitoring…the quintessential weaponization of government, which in many cases, constitute violations of the Geneva Conventions against Torture(CAT)

Bottom line folks, this rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse marks a watershed moment for the struggle to free targeted individuals in that it officially takes the fight from the dark corners of social media, where often severely shadowbanned TIs anonymously scream from X(formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, Tik Tok and other social media platforms, to real life activism. Put another way, it is very different, much more effective when real, normal people show up and cogently make their grievances known in public. It becomes very hard for the abusers to use their tried and true defense–“Oh, TIs are just a bunch of loons on social media.”

Hopefully we get to see more of these rallies and importantly, a meaningful response from authorities regarding the serious allegations Attorney Ana Toledo and her Targeted Justice are making. Oh and the mainstream media, both nationally and locally(Houston), it’s about time you started doing your jobs. The public deserves to get answers to these serious questions regarding the abuse of the watchlisting system.

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OathKeepers Indictment Raises Serious Questions About Higher Up Involvement

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The bombshell seditious conspiracy indictment of 11 members of the militia group OathKeepers following their involvement in the January 6th insurrection, is raising serious questions as to how far up the law enforcement, military, and intelligence food chain, the conspiracy went. Specifically, given the level of tactical military sophistication they displayed on January 6th, there are valid questions as to whether Trump-allied senior members of U.S. law enforcement, military, and intelligence apparatus, gave material support, or even worse, are still members of this dangerous militia group that attempted to violently overthrow the government. A segment on CNN’s Outfront with Erin Burnett(01/13/22) delved into this very topic.

Host Erin Burnett said in relevant part: “Prior planning, coordination, sedition, weapons. The 11 people charged today, were[in a]conspiracy, and they are not small fish, like many of the more than 700 people already charged, some of who may have been wrapped up in the moment. Not the case with these individuals. This group had a level of combat training, they were prepared to use force, they had a stash of weapons that they brought for that specific intent, and the question tonight is…now you’ve got a conspiracy, you’ve got planning, you’ve got it all laid out. How much higher does that go?”

Any reasonable person presented with the OathKeepers indictment would reasonably conclude, as host Erin Burnett did, that given the sophistication of their January 6th operation, people higher up in the law enforcement, military, intelligence and even political food chain, were providing material support to the OathKeepers. Providing material support to this dangerous militia group would also necessarily imply that they are members of the group–a scary thought indeed.

CNN’s Sara Sidner followed up with an in depth look at OathKeepers leader Stewart Rhodes in an appearance on New Day (01/14/22), where she dropped a bombshell that further bolsters the troubling prospect that the OathKeepers may have enjoyed material support from insiders within our law enforcement, military and intelligence ranks.

Sara Sidner said: “One of the things the OathKeepers do, is they try and recruit either current or former military, current or former members of law enforcement, current or former people who have been part of the intelligence apparatus in the United States, whether it be the FBI , CIA, anybody that they can get and bring into the organization, and when you think about that, it means that they have tactical training to do something like this[January 6th], and to plan something like this.”

This raises serious questions including but not limited to, what kind of arms and illegally acquired intelligence the OathKeepers currently have, whether in light of this indictment, it’s still okay to have active members of our law enforcement, military, and intelligence apparatus being active members of this violent militia group, etc.

Bottom line folks, Erin Burnett’s question as to how high up this conspiracy goes, is a very serious one, that needs to be seriously addressed by Congress, especially the January 6th Committee, and the mainstream media. For the record, this question has been raised before by concerned members of the public, including Yours Truly, but always treated as one requiring a voluntary answer from our law enforcement, military and intelligence brass. Given the seriousness of this OathKeepers indictment, this question should no longer be one that requires a voluntary answer. The mainstream media and Congress, preferably the January 6th Committee, must demand an answer from leaders in our law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies, as to how much the OathKeepers have infiltrated their ranks. This is a serious national security problem, and it should be treated as such. A major part of the January 6th Committee’s mission is to prevent another January 6th-type insurrection. Reasonable people will agree that rooting out extremism within our law enforcement, military, and intelligence ranks will go a long way in fulfilling that mission.

Specific emphasis should be placed on Trumper states like Texas, which has a heavy OathKeepers presence, and was involved all the way to the top(AG Paxton and other political leaders) in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. What other nefarious activities are the OathKeepers enlisted for in such states? Did the Texas political establishment provide material support to the OathKeepers, for their January 6th operation?

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