Why the aggressive questions?
Yes, if you read the thread, I fully understand what is Happening in Portland. You are exaggerating somewhat, but what is occuring in portland is deplorable.
I concur that Barr and trump are sending in brownshirts there for political reasons, and their brownshirts are abusing peoples rights.
However, I was asked a question and answered it. Remember, whether or not you despair of what is happening in Portland, facts are still facts.
who said otherwise?
Local police cant do that. The Constitution clearly gives Feds supremacy.
And arresting them or shooting them etc- is exactly what trump andBarr want to happen. They would call it a insurrection, declare martial law, suspend habeas corpus, and of course- call off the election.
No, the only thing to do is sue them, protest to Congress, get the ACLU and Federal courts to do something,
They are there as some idiot protestors set a fire in the federal Courthouse with fireworks, thus giving Barr the excuse he needed.
You said
The furor was about more than just them not wearing nametags. That was part of it, but it was their actions as well.
And, while I understand why they would not wear nametags while in a prison dealing with a riot, they are not in a prison dealing with a riot, so they don’t really have the same excuse.
Collective punishment for the actions of individuals. I wonder how that road goes.
And that is assuming that it was actually an idiot protester, and not a govt agent or other provocateur.
It was just a weak excuse. but “arson” was all the excuse Barr needed.
Certainly possible, but doubtful. Barr certainly has been doing crap like that.
This is the Reichstag fire that Barr needed.
Regarding whether Portland protests are peaceful:
Sure there are probably big chunks of protestors that are peaceful, but ignoring the violence and claiming it doesn’t exist is bizarre. And expecting the police to have stuff thrown and fired at them and to just allow that to happen is also bizarre. I don’t know what the answer is when you have a protest that is 95% peaceful and 5% violent but they’re all mixed together, it’s complex, but to simply state that only the 95% exists is weird.
Federal agents and their actions:
The reports I’m reading bother me. I’m glad the ACLU exists as a counter and I hope they will press the issue if their actions were illegal.
I complain about it when it is the government being lawless. You can call it hypocrisy if you like, but with each post you’ve made here I care less and less about what your opinion might be. And I didn’t think that was possible.
On another board I peruse one poster made an observation that has been elevated into a law: You can’t make a reputation posting here but you can sure ruin one.
And if it is 99% peaceful, 1% violent?
99.9% peaceful?
If you have a thousand people protesting, it only takes one to make it “violent”.
There are two ways of dealing with that. Either you do not allow protests, or you acknowledge that that 1 individual is not representative of the rest of the protest.
Also, I have seen peaceful protests driven into violence by the actions of the police, so I’m not sure you can really blame the peaceful protesters for that either.
Except that is not going to work, as the inability of these paths has already been established. Your suggestion is functionally equivalent to doing nothing. You can argue that doing nothing is better than trying to intervene, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that complaining to Congress and the courts will do anything.
@Ludovic, did you intend to reply to me? Because my notifications and the post header say that you did; but it looks like you’re actually replying to k9bfriender and DrDeth.
Even if you assume that there are violent protester that need the intervention of law, the answer is reasonable grounds, arrest, Miranda and indictment.
What we have is South American Junta style protest suppression.
No, I must have clicked on the wrong “reply” button.
So then what? Look the Federal Police actions in Portland are so new that the ACLU and the courts havent had time to do anything.
The ACLU and Courts have accomplished miracles.
Easy to do. Discourse has them all over the place. 
Is one enough? Are three too many?
Martinis? – that reads like a quote, but Thurber and martinis is what comes up when I google it, and that quote isn’t quite right.
There’s one by each post, one for the thread, one at the reply box, so I suppose if the limit is 10K posts there’d be up to 10,002 per thread. And I suppose actually the old boards had even more, as each post had ‘reply with quote’, ‘multiquote’, and ‘quick reply’; they just weren’t as conspicuous.
We seem to be off track. One properly identified and properly behaving police force per demonstration is probably about right. However many are carrying on in Portland right now appear to be too many.
thorny, I believe it’s an allusion to an old TV commercial for Fletcher’s Castoria, a children’s laxative.
Thanks. – if I ever saw that one, I seem to have managed to forget it.
Now I’m singing the product name to the tune of Fletcher Memorial Home from The Final Cut.