So, anyone here in Portland?

[GethN7]

From what I understand, the guys doing the detaining in Portland have been identified recently, specifically as affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security, acting under what, according to my read of the law suggests, proper authority as determined by their federal charter.

Now, I want to go on record saying I'm a strong law and order type, but I also do admit it's concerning it's come to the fact organizations such as DHS are resorting to this. At the same time, I'd like to gently remind even the strongest anti-federal type it has long been a bulwark of US law that federal property and it's defense has always trumped state authority, a position Lincoln made clear in the American Civil War and which has stuck ever since.

While I support peaceable protest, attacks on federal property and/or it's employees can and will be met with by federal force. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

And I'd also like to remind people the authority to allow the DHS to act like this has long since legally passed the test of the Supreme Court thanks to a little thing called the PATRIOT Act, which I personally don't like, but has been defended thus far on legal grounds.

So while I utterly sympathize with those who consider this federal overreach, and even I'm disturbed it's come to this despite my own admitted biases, it is, however distasteful, legally enforcable. And said authority does trump the state so long as their DHS officials adhere towards detaining those who acted with destruction or harm to federal property and/or it's employees.

So, the response to graffiti and protests against police brutality is to grab people off the street at random in unmarked rental vans, intimidate them, then when they ask for a lawyer, release them onto the street without charge. It's to fire on protesters with 'less-lethal' ammunition that leaves victims crippled for life. Even if that bullshit is legal, and I have serious doubts about that, it's morally cowardly and disgusting, and a shining example yet again what your country has become. Video evidence keeps piling up. It's not the protesters that escalate to violence. It's the authorities, the heavily armed thugs in riot gear backed up by military vehicles, that are starting the violence and then blatantly lying about it, no matter how much evidence there is against them. They murder people on camera, and nothing is done. Your police, your border patrol, your goddamn prison officers, are being sent out to wage war on your own citizens, and you go 'oh well, it's legal for them to do that, so if you wanna protest, well, play stupid games win stupid prizes.'

It's worth noting while I disagree with your overall contention of the situation, and while I'd argue the response of the authorities has remarkably restrained compared to the lawbreakers who have firebombed cars and buildings and tried to assault police including trying to blind them laser pointers, you do have a point about how it's contemptible it's come to the point federal authority has acquired the legal right to supplant police and skip the process of right reading to detain people who are suspected of assault or vandalism of federal property.

In that regard, I admit, I find it chilling. At the same time, this is a pretty extraordinary situation of mass civil unrest, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made the Supreme Court decision that the suspension of certain freedoms may take place temporarily in the interests of public safety, so long as done under appropriately legal authority as signed off on by the Supreme Court, and DHS is doing just that.

I still lament we got to this point, and agree it's chilling this point got reached, but I disagree it's the authorities who are the real villains, else we'd be seeing a lot more senseless bloodshed than we have as they would have no compunction against murdering protestors (legitimate or otherwise) in broad daylight, witnesses or not.