In response to a critic of Portland, a Sanctuary City

This post was written in response to a post that appeared at http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sanctuary

Tessera, you are making a number of false assumptions here. You call sanctuary cities, "sanctuaries for criminals", when in fact they are the opposite. They are sanctuaries from criminals.
I've known many immigrants. I was adopted by one. His brother lived in the US as the owner of a successful small business until he died recently. Neither of these men were remotely criminal. They came to the US seeking sanctuary from war and persecution.

If you look at our history, you will see the same story repeated over and over again. Immigrants came to our shores to escape starvation, repression, or sudden death at the hands of true criminals. That's what history tells us. That's why the US has always welcomed immigrants.

The story you are repeating--for I know you did not invent it yourself--is an utter lie. You compare immigrants to burglars, assassins, and thieves. Those are not the immigrants I know. The people I know who seek sanctuary are children and their parents, who left countries where criminal gangs have taken the place of civil government. They deserve our love, not the hatred you pour out onto the page.

Coincidentally, the measures being proposed by our soulless government are precisely those that will turn the largest number of young men into criminals. ICE arrests these people near the border and releases them on the other side of it, where criminal gangs can abduct them, torture them, and force them to become members. Those young men, once converted, will return to this country as criminals.

So you see, the sanctuary movement is not accepting criminals into this country. It is welcoming young men and women who have nowhere else to go and saving them from a life of crime.
Paradoxically, the government that you claim is preserving the rule of law is actually in the process of destroying it. Rule of law requires that people be convicted of a crime before they can be punished for it. Yet here you are, claiming immigrants to be criminals and calling for their punishment. On what evidence? On the words of a right-wing website you happen to have read?

Possibly you were frightened by those words of hate and dissension. No wonder! The authors intended to scare you and used every means at their command to do so. But we must resist these enemies of humanity whenever they appear.

We must emulate the members of the Underground Railroad in the antebellum South, who saved slaves from an inhuman system of bondage and gave them a chance to be free. We must emulate the underground in Europe during the great slaughter of Jews, who hid them, shepherded them away from Europe, and brought them to America, where they and their descendants are still living today.

Most of all, we must resist people who use lies and propaganda to foster hatred and division. We can't let them sucker us into their heinous game. Please reconsider your position on this issue and adopt the ways of understanding and love.

Scam:: Beware FeaturedRentals and Apartment Hunters Inc... they are hunting US!

(originally published a year ago, on getsatisfaction.com): 

To Walkscore.com: Your apartment listings appear to have been invaded by a nasty scamming organization called Apartment Hunters Inc. I have been searching for apartments through your site and when I try to contact the property, the link mostly leads to rentjungle.com. When I click on "contact" on their site, it leads to FeaturedRentals.com, a company that requires you to pay $49 before they let you get contact information. This company emailed me, and when I followed their "sign up" link, I found that behind them is an organization called Apartment Hunters Inc, which has all sorts of complaints against them for posting fraudulent listings and ripping people off. The Better Business Bureau gives them a rating of "F". I have had to search apartment complexes by name, and look for their websites, in order to avoid these people. I really hope you address this problem, as I will not continue using and recommending your service otherwise. 

I have been experiencing this, not just with one listing, but REPEATEDLY, with MANY listings. RentJungle's link led me to FeaturedRentals.com, which now is giving a three-day free "trial" before charging you $49 for thirty days of their "service". I looked at the address of some of the listings elsewhere and found that they were already off the market. 

Then I got an email from Featured Rentals.com, telling me the unit was "empty and available for immediate occupancy", and providing a "sign up" link. When I followed that link to see where it went, I came to a page where they wanted my credit card number and other info. I noticed that the "real" web address at the top of the screen showed "ApartmentHunters.com". Searching them and adding "review" revealed a huge amount of complaints about scamming and fraudulent listing of already-rented properties. 

Here is just one of the listings that I followed: https://www.walkscore.com/score/12388... 

You DO have a problem, Walk Score, and you need to address it!!

~Holly Masri

What did the President know and when did he know it?

You'd have to ask the Russians about that.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a professional expert on Soviet espionage techniques, has generously given us a peek into the world of Soviet espionage. He has described the purpose of Donnie's meeting with 2 Russian espionage assets and indicated that it went exactly as the Russian spymasters had hoped. That Donnie did not recognize this as an important meeting is hardly surprising.

The meeting was intended to feel out the Trump campaign and discover what Trump would do if the Russians ran their intended program of disruption and propaganda. The answer of course is that Trump would do nothing and did nothing in fact.

The question that needs to be asked now is, why did the Russians accept Donnie's indifference to their overture as permission to go full-speed ahead? Shouldn't they also be sure of Donald's response? Shouldn't the Russians ascertain whether Donnie told his father, Donald, about the meeting before they went ahead with their planned cyber attack? It seems to me they would want more assurance than the compliance of the candidate's son. Unless, of course, they had already gotten that assurance from Donald, something along the lines of, "Donnie speaks for me." But even then, they would want some assurance after the overture was made.

What if the Russians did receive such an assurance, in plain view, and the whole world heard it but didn't know what it meant?

Donald could have sent the ok to them in the form of a coded message, such as, "Why did Hillary erase 33,000 emails?" That would have fit into the cover story that Donnie told about what happened in the meeting, and it was a specific message the Russians would be sure to get but which would not obviously be an assent.

Everything Donald Trump and his associates did after this meeting is completely consistent with my assumption. Nothing that Donnie says about the meeting that cannot be independently verified makes any sense at all.