(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

What is this shit, seriously? From the ACLU:

Torres’ ordeal began in August 2018, when he was pulled over and arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Torres, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2009, was carrying multiple forms of identification, including his driver’s license and other security credentials. Torres was booked at the Ascension Parish Jail, and the next day the Parish Court ordered his release. But Torres wasn’t released. Instead, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office placed an “immigration hold” on Torres on the suspicion that he was unlawfully present in the United States. The basis for this suspicion? He had a Latinx name and brown skin. Staff at the sheriff’s office explained that they had a policy of detaining all Latinx people for immigration review.

And this, from Business Insider?

The Justice Department sent immigration court employees an email this week that linked to an article attacking immigration judges with offensive and anti-Semitic slurs, BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday. The article was posted on the white nationalist website VDare, which routinely traffics in racist and anti-immigration rhetoric and has explicitly targeted immigration judges in the past...Tabbador wrote that the article "directly attacks" immigration judges "with racial and ethnically tinged slurs," and the label 'Kritarch,'" according to BuzzFeed. "The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic," Tabbador added.

And this, from CBS Austin?

In a two-page fundraising mailer dated Aug. 2 — a day before the El Paso massacre — Abbott spoke in alarmist terms about the need to “DEFEND” Texas at the border, cautioning the supposed political implications that could come with unchecked illegal immigration. “The national Democrat machine has made no secret of the fact that it hopes to ‘turn Texas blue.’ If they can do it in California, they can do it in Texas — if we let them,” Abbott wrote in the fundraising appeal, which was obtained by The Texas Tribune. Though only U.S. citizens can vote, the governor signed off with another pointed warning: “Unless you and I want liberals to succeed in their plan to transform Texas — and our entire country — through illegal immigration, this is a message we MUST send.”

What is this shit, anyway? Handout Getty Images

And, finally, this, from the WaPo?

In a lengthy Twitter thread that has since gone viral, Dyer, who covers film and TV for Empire magazine in the United Kingdom, detailed how the CBP agent accused him of “being part of the ‘fake news media’ ” before launching into a “surprising and inappropriate” diatribe that echoed rhetoric used by President Trump in his frequent attacks against the media. Dyer told The Washington Post he had flown from London to Los Angeles for Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif., where he plans to write about Star Wars.

“He wanted to know if I’d ever worked for CNN or MSNBC or other outlets that are ‘spreading lies to the American people,’” Dyer tweeted, referencing two media organizations Trump has repeatedly blasted as “fake news.” “He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy.”

The way that authoritarianism works best is in the small places, in the day-to-day encounters with authority. That's how a country becomes acclimated to the subjugation that will come from the bigger power of the state. Right now, there is no question that, in one way or the other, the President* of the United States has given to every level of authority permission to act on their worst instincts. You are going to see more of this, from town police and county sheriffs and local judges. What is this shit, anyway? It's open season on the open society.

Well, this is fairly weird. From The Daily Beast:

Wearing a hat emblazoned with Make America Grateful Again, Byrne was given free rein by Bulls and Bears host David Asman, and he immediately took advantage of that, taking the program on a wild ride. After briefly discussing the financial shape of the company he’s leaving, Byrne said he was “ejecting” from Overstock.com because he’d been warned that if he came back to America, the “Washington apparatus is going to grind me into dust,” an assertion he would make several times throughout the 16-minute segment. Referencing his previous claims that he had helped the “Men in Black” with their Clinton and Russia investigations, Byrne stated that he had assisted law enforcement with cracking a murder 17 years ago and that this eventually resulted in them asking for his help in 2015 and 2016.

“I figured out the name of who sent me the orders and this has been confirmed. The name of the man who sent me was Peter Strzok,” Byrne exclaimed, naming the embattled former FBI agent at the center of the right’s Spygate conspiracies. “This is going to be quite a whirlwind.” At times bursting into tears, Byrne alleged there was a “big coverup” of “political espionage” that was connected to President Trump, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, insisting that “this is not a theory” of his because he was “in the room when it happened.”...

So this was weird. FOX Business

"Both catching my friend's murderer and taking on Wall Street were consistent with my values and it was my honor to help the Men in Black and it was the third time that they came to me,” he said at one point. “And I got some request, I did not know who the hell it came from and it was fishy and three years later on watching television and I realized who it was—it was Peter Strzok and [former Deputy FBI Director] Andy McCabe, that the orders came from.”

This all started when Byrne copped to a tryst with Maria Butina, the Soviet spy. That was strange enough. Now, though, it looks like it's the most normal part of the whole story. By next year, people are going to be using Peter Strzok to get out of parking tickets.

WWOZ Pick To Click: "Shreveport Stomp" (Wilbur de Paris): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1912, are Italian and Turkish representatives signing the adorably named Treaty of Ouchy, which ended their squabble over Tripoli. The Italo-Turkish war was one of the several prelims to World War I. (The Serbs blamed the big war on Italy's aggression there.) And while the Treaty of Ouchy is undoubtably an adorable name, the all-time champion remains the Diet of Worms. History is so cool.

This past Wednesday, Joe Strummer would have been 67 years old. On March 9, 1980, a friend talked me into seeing The Clash at the old Orpheum Theater in Boston. I knew nothing about them. I came out of that show with my love for rock-and-roll completely revived. I know a lot of people feel that way about Springsteen, who was breaking big at the same time, but it was The Clash that lit the fire in me again. This was the song that did it, by the way. RIP, Joe.

R.I.P., Joe. Bob Riha Jr Getty Images

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Mirror? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Remains of a stegosaur, a dinosaur made famous through the Jurassic Park films, were studied by a team from the Natural History Museum and belong to a new genus which walked the earth around 168 million years ago...Despite the specimen including only a few vertebrae and an upper arm bone, scientists concluded it was a new species and genus which dates to the middle Jurassic period - much earlier than most known stegosaurs.

"The discovery of Adratiklit boulahfa is particularly exciting as we have dated it to the middle Jurassic," said Dr Maidment. "Most known stegosaurs date from far later in the Jurassic period, making this the oldest definite stegosaur described and helping to increase our understanding of the evolution of this group of dinosaurs."

I don't remember a stegosaur in the Jurassic Park movies, but I could've missed one. They were always one of the funkier looking dinosaurs, and they clearly were designed to live then in order to make us happy now.

I hereby order that you're all Top Commenters. I'll be taking next week off, unless something really untoward happens. I need to gear up for when the real bloodletting begins after Labor Day. There'll be some content up here. Not sure what, although it may be some greatest hits since this is our annual summer shed tour. Thanks always to you folks who make this place what it is. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and don't make me pull this car over. I mean it now.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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