Trump & Co. : Muhammad Ali's Son Illegally Profiled and Questioned at FL Airport

Photo: Trump and Ivanka. (Normally beautiful, she seems a little E.T.-like here.) From this page.

Well, let's get right to it. There'll be more to come, and I'll blog about the gravest insults to decency and reason that have already passed, but for now, here's the latest travesty from Trump & Co.:

The Travel Ban That's Not Supposed to Be in Effect

Is it a ban? He says it isn't, then he tweets it is. But just ask someone Muslim, and you'll see quickly that it is. Judges have struck it down as unconstitutional, but that hasn't stopped biased guards at airports. Though they shouldn't be prohibiting anyone from entering the country, as the ban is not supposed to be in effect, as per the courts, that hasn't stopped illegal searches and seizures, and illegal profiling and questioning.

The latest case is of the son and ex-wife of Muhammad Ali, the famous boxer and civil rights pioneer. Both were detained at a Florida airport in February. According to Chris Mancini, their lawyer--And is there anyone else benefiting more from Trump than American lawyers?!?--and friend, they were pulled aside at the airport "because of their Arabic-sounding names." Ali's ex-wife provided a picture of herself and Ali and was let go, but his son "wasn't as lucky."

As the linked article said:

Mancini said officials held and questioned Ali Jr. for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, "Where did you get your name from?" and "Are you Muslim?"

When Ali Jr. responded that yes, he is a Muslim, the officers kept questioning him about his religion and where he was born. Ali Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1972 and holds a U.S. passport.

The line of questioning is indicative of profiling and designed to produce answers that corroborate what officials want to hear, Mancini said. Neither Camacho-Ali [Ali's ex-wife] nor Ali Jr. have ever been subjected to detainment before, despite extensive global travel experience, he said.

"To the Ali family, it's crystal clear that this is directly linked to Mr. Trump's efforts to ban Muslims from the United States," Mancini said, referring to President Trump's executive order signed Jan. 27 that instituted a ban for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries.

I'm not the only one who smells "lawsuit" here:

Mancini said he and the Ali family are contemplating filing a federal lawsuit and are currently trying to find out how many other people have been subjected to the same treatment as Ali Jr.

"Imagine walking into an airport and being asked about your religion," he said. "This is classic customs profiling."

And, again, unconstitutional and illegal, since judges nationwide have shot down the ban. And, even if they hadn't.

Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben -- A Quick Book Review

Photo: from google.com/books, at this address

Another very appealing Bolitar novels, again proving the series is better than the stand-alones. In this one, a 13 year-old boy needs a bone marrow transfusion. A donor has been found, but then goes missing. Can Bolitar find him?

He can, and does, of course, and along the way he punches a bloated, soft-in-the-middle lawyer, kidnaps a millionairess, captures a serial killer, gains a great client, annoys the feds, and deals with daddy issues--with himself, and with his own father. The result is another mystery in the series that works well because it deals well with the real problems of its main character, problems we all face, especially guys in our 40s, as both Bolitar and myself happen to be.

One aspect here--the identity of an older man living by himself--was as obvious to me as it will be to you, but that's okay. You want to get some it yourself, right? Umberto Eco and James Joyce are great writers, but they're smarter than we are, too--and who wants to be outsmarted all the time, and condescended to at the end because the writers know they're too smart for us? I'm not calling Harlan Coben a dummy here--and he wouldn't want to be thought of in the snooty vein anyway. I'm saying the opposite: Coben knows his genre, and he knows he can't outclass the reader all the time. You've got to let them in on the fun sometimes.

I've said before that Coben, like Bolitar himself, tries too hard, and he does here as well. It's an okay too hard, like when he always (and I do mean each and every single damn time) admits to the cliche before he springs the cliche upon us. Sometimes he admits the cliche so he doesn't have to spring it upon us--but by doing so, he's springing it upon us, and it's cliche at this point to admit to the cliche in this way, and for this reason, anyway. But he makes it work. If you know the genre, you know the cliche, and you know the admission of the cliche, and when it comes, and you're already expecting it, he's got you in his hands, don't you see? It's all part of the game. Coben knows you're smart enough to know it, and he knows you'll be happy to know that he knows you're smart enough to know it. So in the end he's giving the reader what he wants. And, if you listen closely to the minor characters in this one, he's telling you why you're so happy to be acknowledged and pseudo-complimented.

And how easy it is to just go along with the game all the time. We stay on that path, right?

Police Log--Paranoia and Brazen Honesty

There's still two weeks to enter my free contest and win stuff.  To do so, please go to this link, or just scroll down to the previous entry.  Thanks.

Until then, I thought I'd pass this along.  This is a snippet from my local paper's police log, where some very wacky people do some very wacky things.  And in Warwick, R.I., no less.  If this stuff is happening here, ca you imagine the shenangigans happening in L.A., NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc.?

From the Police Log (and from the Warwick Beacon's address):

PARANOIA

Officer [   ] reported he was doing a fixed traffic post around 4:40 p.m. on Feb. 4 when a man approached him and told him it felt like people were following him. [The officer] said he talked with him some more and learned the man thought every car that was driving past was following him and looking at him and told [the officer] that he should know because [the officer] was one of the people investigating him. He said the man claimed he spoke with numerous lawyers and they all confirmed that he was being investigated. [The officer] said he asked him who was investigating him and he said the police, although he did not know where he was or who he was talking to but he knew that Warwick Police were investigating him. He said the man was alternately excited and calm and inquisitive. He said he called for another car and patted the man down. [The officer] said he was nervous about the way the man’s hands would go into his pockets and then into a bowling bag. He said he had no weapons on him but did have what looked like $1,487 worth of gold Teddy Roosevelt $1 coins. [The officer] said he also found a prescription bottle in the bag and the man said, “That is Adderall.” He said the man claimed he had a prescription for the drug but the particular pills [the officer] was holding belonged to his sister. He said he and a sergeant discussed what to do with the man and they decided he needed professional psychiatric help. [The officer] said he confiscated the pills but did not arrest the man because Kent Hospital does not do psyche evaluations on people who have been arrested. He said they took him to Kent, where the staff began to explain how the evaluation would proceed and he became impatient and belligerent and turned and said, “[Expletive] it, you are just going to have to arrest me for the Adderall.” He was taken to headquarters, where he was charged with possession of a controlled substance and held for the bail commissioner. [The officer] said they learned that the man, who earlier said his name was Kenneth [   ], was in fact Giovanni [   ], 25, of [   ] Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa., and that he was staying at a local extended-stay motel. [The officer] said he asked the man why he had so many presidential coins, 54 identical rolls of Roosevelt $1 coins, and [the man] told him he was a collector but there as nothing else in the bag to indicate it was a collection. He said they did run a check on [the man] and discovered numerous arrests and convictions for robbery, burglary, fraud and receiving stolen goods in several states. [The officer] said a Google search turned up an account of $2.4 million worth of presidential coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in 2011. [The officer] said there was enough probable cause to believe the coins were stolen and that the Secret Service, who were investigating the heist in Philadelphia, be notified of the arrest.

(Me again.)  Now that's messed up!  How does a heavily-medicated, homeless paranoid schizophrenic man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, get to Warwick, Rhode Island with 1,487 Teddy Roosevelt $1 coins in a bowling bag?  What?!?  Loved his response, too: He's a collector!  He probably sounded offended while he said it, too.

I couldn't make that up.  Or this:

Det. [   ] reported that a woman who was asked to come into headquarters about some fraudulent checks she’d cashed and quickly learned that it was about a purse that was stolen from a customer at Sullivan’s Publick House on Dec. 13 of last year. [The detective] reported that they had surveillance of the woman taking the purse and leaving by the back door but had more evidence that she used the credit cards in the purse at several places in Warwick and other places, but, under the circumstances, he welcomed her candor in regard to the fraudulent checks. She claimed she was cashing five checks worth $1,270 over the past week for a friend of hers and she only got $20 for one check but got a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes for the others. She said her friend was stealing the checks from an 80-year-old Warwick man who trusted her.

[A different detective] reported that he was there when [the first detective] was asking “the suspect in a stolen purse caper from Sullivan’s” and took the opportunity to ask her about charges made on her sister’s credit cards last November and about her sister’s laptop that went missing in December and charges on her debit card in March. He said she admitted using the debit card but denied stealing the computer. By the time the interview was over, [   ], 44, of [   ] Ave., Warwick, was charged with five counts of felony fraudulent checks, three counts of fraudulent computer access and larceny for the stolen purse that reportedly contained $140 in cash along with the credit cards.

(Me, again.)  It's hard to tell with writing from reports, but I do believe there was a little tongue-in-cheek with the underlined sentence above, as it seems a bit too dry and straightforward to me.  "He welcomed her candor," indeed.  Sounds like the first detective waved the second one over not because he feared for his safety, but because, "Hey, Harry, come here, you gotta hear this."

And this is all in one day, in one police blotter.

So let me know what you think, and maybe I'll offer up more of this stuff.

My Day in Court

Photo: Movie promo poster of The Verdict from its Wikipedia page.  Loved this movie.  One of Paul Newman's two best roles, in my opinion, right up there with Nobody's Fool.

I've been away for awhile again, as my PC is still unusable right now, as my upstairs is still getting renovated.  Though I should have the time soon to put my office back together, and then I'll get one of these babies posted every three days or so, like I usually do.

Anyway, the new experience this week was when I spent Friday in court--not for something I did wrong, either.  I've been an onlooker in a courtroom a few times, but I've never testified with a lawyer before.  (I did testify once in front of a judge because of a speeding ticket I got as a college student, but that's another blog entry.)  I learned a few things:

--Possibly even more than justice, judges want expediency.  Mine had over 50 cases of its type to get through on Friday alone; he had a system that moved, moved, moved.  Open folder.  Say names.  Get the lawyer to say what kind of case it is (contest, etc.).  This took awhile.  At the end of it, he practically begged everyone to talk to the parties in the hallway and reach a conclusion themselves; otherwise he had several days of cases in front of him at that time, never mind the others in the upcoming days.  I can see that life would be hellish if many of those aren't settled by the parties.  To my surprise, many of them were.  So he called them up, asked the plaintiff what the deal was, and told the defendants that these agreements were now also court orders.  He asked if everyone understood the agreements, if they entered them of their own free will, and if they had any other questions for him.  He got rid of maybe 1/3 of his docket this way.  He was very happy when people solved the problems themselves, and said so.  He had sort of a sense of humor.

--Judges take the cases in front of other judges.  Not like divorce cases, as in the infamous mistake by Brian de Palma in The Untouchables, but simple matters like mine.  So a courtroom cop came into the courtroom and told my courtroom's cop that the judge next door was out of cases and was willing to take some of his.  My judge said he wasn't ready for that, as he had just one case at that time to send over.  Like his butt was on fire, my lawyer jumped up and said our case was of the same type, and that we were willing to go next door immediately.  The judge okayed this.  On the way over, me and my lawyer went over a few things, and then suddenly I was in front of the (smiling, classy and attractive) judge, saying my Yesses and Nos nervously (the judge seemed to be giving me one of those understanding smiles) and then she ruled in my favor for everything I was asking for.  Once in front of the judge, the whole thing took about twenty seconds.

--It's not just a tv or movie thing: apparently crossing The Bar is a serious thing.  I blissfully walked up to my lawyer to let him know the court had misspelled something important, and he practically pushed me into the hallway.  Embarrassed, and with a nervous smile, he told me that the courtroom cop would've tackled me to the floor if he'd been in the room.  (I hadn't noticed that he wasn't; my venture wasn't a planned thing.)  I'm curious now as to how the judge took it, or if he'd even noticed.

--My lawyer clapped me on the back and said that I'd done a great job.  He's done that a million times and probably forget how nerve-wracking it can be.  If I put him on my job's stage, I bet he'd be nervous as hell, too.

--Only movie and tv courtrooms look polished and ornately wooden.  Mine had a flat, grey carpet from around 1982, and it had folds and bumps in it, too.  I was hoping someone would trip over those, but nobody did.  The judge's desk and chair, and the witness box, were simple wooden things, nothing special, and the podiums for the defendant and plaintiff were low-grade wood and something else I can't place.  The snazziest part of the courtroom were the lawyers' chairs.  Everyone else got thin wooden pews.  The Bar, which I crossed, seemed like nice, but faux, marble.

--About 50 cases for 5 lawyers.  Two of them seemed to represent at least half of all of the individuals and companies.  And the lawyers are into expediency almost as much as the judges are.  Mine jumped up like his butt was on fire to get us into the other courtroom because he couldn't wait to get out of there.

--Not to judge, but you can tell the plaintiffs from the defendants.  The plaintiffs, such as myself, wore suits or other professional clothing and ties.  The defendants, and I do mean all of them, wore ripped gym pants, or jeans from another decade, and were often unshowered and overall icky.  One guy's scalp was red and rashy, and another woman looked like she hadn't showered or changed her clothing in this calendar year.  One defendant leaned on the podium, and spoke and interrupted the judge like he owned the place.  He lost.  What are these people thinking?

--The only thing worse than looking and behaving like that is not showing up at all.  Mine didn't.  The plaintiff's lawyer asks for an immediate judgment, and they always get it in their favor.  Fast.  When I went to the other judge's courtroom, the first thing she said was: "I assume you're in front of me now because the other party didn't show up?"  When my lawyer said, "Yes, your Honor," she sat there and clearly waited for us to be done with our act so she could make her judgment for us.  And when you don't show up, the plaintiff's lawyer will ask the judge to also award court costs and lawyer fees, which my judge did.  Can't get blood from a stone, but we got the judgments, anyway.

--Very disappointing: No gavels, and no pounding of gavels.  Apparently that's for effect on the screen.  And no one said anything excessively stupid, like on Judge Judy, so there weren't any speeches or moralizing, either.

--Judges mediate as much, if not more, than they judge.