[continued from previous message]   
      
   The student who was arrested graduated with a Masters Degree from   
   Columbia in December of last year. He is Mahmoud Khalil a Palestinian   
   man married to an American woman who is reportedly eight months   
   pregnant. Khalil has legal permanent resident status in the US, the so   
   called “green card.” The Trump administration, without citing any   
   precedents or history of criminal behavior, has insisted that it can   
   hold Khalil without charging him and can do whatever it wants with   
   him, even though the only issue relating to him is that he was   
   exercising his free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the   
   US Constitution.   
      
   Last Monday, President Trump confirmed that “Khalil’s arrest and   
   attempted deportation are part of his administration’s effort to crack   
   down on ‘students at Columbia and other Universities across the   
   Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American   
   activity’… This is the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil has been   
   shipped off to a federal prison in Louisiana one thousand miles from   
   his home in Manhattan, presumably to distance him from supporters in   
   New York, even though the government cannot produce any evidence that   
   he threatened anyone or committed a crime. On Wednesday, the   
   Department of Homeland Security released a document citing an alleged   
   provision in immigration law that gives the government authority to   
   deport anyone if “The Secretary of State has determined that [his/her]   
   presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse   
   foreign policy consequences for the United States.” What those   
   “consequences” might be in the case of Khalil was not described and   
   should be considered challengeable by the defense lawyers.   
      
   The congressman who is being pressured is Tom Massie from Kentucky. He   
   is considering running for the state’s soon to be vacated Senate seat,   
   but Trump has called for him to “primaried” by the Republican Party so   
   he will not even receive the nomination. Also, the Republican Jewish   
   Coalition has pledged “unlimited spending to block Massie” if he   
   decides to run. Massie is among the most consistent opponents of   
   legislation to support Israel and to criminalize so-called   
   antisemitism in the House, so the prospect of his running “is already   
   generating fierce opposition from the local and national Jewish   
   community.” Massie is best known in some circles for maintaining   
   during an interview on Tucker Carlson’s program that he is the only   
   Congressman who doesn’t have “an AIPAC guy” on his staff that serves   
   as an Israel Lobby “babysitter.” Massie also opposes having members of   
   Congress who are secret “dual nationals,” which would presumably would   
   impact most on Jewish American legislators who also hold Israeli   
   citizenship. Massie is highly respected in both conservative and   
   libertarian circles and is consistently antiwar and also a critic of   
   corruption and overspending on the part of the federal government.   
   That is what passes for malevolent behavior these days.   
      
   If the Trump Administration, working hand-in-hand with the Israeli   
   government and the US Israel Lobby, can get away with the trashing of   
   the US Constitution’s most fundamental freedom that of free speech,   
   there will be “hell to pay,” to employ Donald’s favorite metaphor.   
   Once the principle is established that the head of state can do no   
   wrong even when what is being done is visibly suicidal, the United   
   States that we Americans now living once knew will be gone forever.   
   And the tragedy is compounded as it will have largely come about in   
   unnecessary service to a tiny racist nation that is manifestly and   
   quite openly the most evil place on earth.   
      
   https://cnionline.org/the-death-of-free-speech-in-america/   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)