Welcome to this educational and explosive, brand-new edition of Light ‘Em Up!

Share us with a friend! We are now being actively downloaded in 131 countries!

We continue our intense focus on how the Rule of law and democracy are being endangered.

Democracy hangs in the balance and is under constant daily attack — threatened on every front.

What better example than the current Department of Justice (DOJ) ordering its civil rights division to halt the majority of its functions, including a freeze on pursuing any:

— new cases

— indictments or

— consent decree settlements.

For civil rights this is a crisis! It has only been 59 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. This was a landmark piece of legislation that helped to dismantle many discriminatory barriers and enforce the voting rights of African Americans. Imagine having that office shut down during the LBJ Administration! The KKK would have won!

In a democracy, the majority can wield immense power, potentially leading to the suppression of dissenting voices and the marginalization of minority groups.

You had better begin to ask yourself the tough question:

Are you okay with your civil rights being suspended until 2028 and maybe beyond?

White people, too, can have their civil rights violated. Are you ready for that?

Will the police be able to simply continue to brutalize people and get away with it as the Louisiana State Police did on May 10th, 2019, with Ronald Greene?

Greene was an unarmed 49-year-old black man who, on a dark night in Monroe, Louisiana, 6 members of the LSP “goon squad” tazed, punched, kicked, pepper sprayed, and dragged face down on the concrete, only to place him in a chokehold until he died.

Good night and good luck! Under this current Trump administration your civil rights will be “enforced” like his were.

We are staring in the face of “soft despotism" or "soft tyranny".

This occurs when a powerful, centralized state, while not overtly oppressive, gradually takes over the responsibilities and decision-making of individuals and communities.

The state becomes like a benevolent but overbearing parent, providing for citizens' needs and ensuring their well-being, but in doing so, it diminishes their capacity for independent thought and action. We’ve arrived there, stop fooling yourself otherwise.

We’ll discuss and analyze the current push from the ultra-conservative-talk-show host, Ben Shapiro to petition the adjudicated felon Donald Trump to federally pardon Derek Chauvin, the felon, former police officer — who drove his knee into the neck of George Floyd for more than 9 minutes, hastening his death on May 25th, 2020.

We have passed the 5-year mark of this deadly encounter on the streets in Minneapolis, MN and tell me, what has changed for the better?

Shapiro clearly sees this as an opportunity to continue to support his white, racist agenda as it gins up his base of white nationalist followers. MAGA-folk and beyond!

We ask out loud:

Could a president do that?

What would it matter, since Chauvin also is in prison on state charges?

And we’ll wrap things up looking at what happens to democracy when police regularly brutalize its citizens as the “politics of policing” has changed drastically since George Floyd’s’ death.

The truth is under attack! The truth is worth defending!

Tune in for all of the explosive details.

Justice comes to those that fight, not those that cry!

Without fear or favor we follow the facts and tackle the topics that touch your lives.

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Welcome to this explosive edition of Light ‘Em Up!

In these critical and delicate times that we find ourselves in — democracy is in clear and present danger.

As nothing feels certain or safe and everything appears to be in “transition” we interrogate and examine the Trump Administration and its efforts to suspend the “great writ” of Habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus is a legal doctrine whose original purpose was to contest detention by the king. The origins of the writ, or “written order” (its Latin name means, loosely, “produce the body”), can be traced to 13th century England.

On June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, the barons who had banded together to impose legal restrictions on King John's power forced him to affix his seal to the Magna Carta.

One of its curbs on the sovereign’s power reads, in part, “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned…except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

The writ of habeas corpus appears in the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, section 9, clause 2 includes this single sentence: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Habeas corpus requires a jailer to produce a prisoner in a court of law so the basis for detention can be reviewed. The Constitution presupposes this right, but its use has been sharply restricted during past wars.

Fast forward to the present, as Donald Trump continues on his “revenge tour” — his administration has shown itself to be big on conducting legal proceedings without due process for the defendants it pursues, just as George W. Bush did with “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, post 9-11.

The Trump White House continues to break things like “Wreck it Ralph”— and has floated the idea of suspending Habeas corpus in the context of an “alien invasion” as it pertains to immigration, sparking widespread and grave concerns about the erosion of fundamental rights and the separation of powers.

With mass deportations taking place without due process and the suspension of Habeas corpus, the rule of law and democracy itself is under a serious threat.

While the Constitution allows for the suspension of Habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion where the public safety is at stake, it is a power that must be exercised sparingly and only in extraordinary circumstances. Circumstances that we clearly are NOT in.

With this probing, penetrating and pointed look … we ask out loud if we are on a collision course with the tyranny that brought about a coup d’ état in Chile in 1973, where the military ousted then President Allende, General Agusto Pinochet seized power, democracy collapsed and repression, murder and great suffering followed (all backed and funded by the US CIA & State Department in the Nixon administration).

As we challenge you to think critically, we probe further, examining the historical suspension of Habeas corpus, we think you’ll be surprised to hear that one of the Presidents considered to be the “GOAT” (greatest of all time) suspended the writ of Habeas corpus, and we’ll deliver the facts not the fiction surrounding this.

We’ll itemize some of the “pitfalls” and potential terrible consequences of decisions such as this, as we’ve learned through a FOIA request that the FBI has ordered its agents to scale back white-collar crime investigations to pursue more immigration crime instead.

The rule of law and democracy are endangered!

Previous Supreme Courts have held in reverence and referred to Habeas corpus as, “the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.”

The current Supreme Court has been at best tepid in its support and defense of the U.S. Con

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Tonight, on this explosive, educational, investigative episode of Light ‘Em Up we will explore in-depth the issues of:

— The treatment of migrants & refugees

— Criminal Immigration

— How the radical right-wing politicized and took advantage of the death of Laken Riley when in reality they really didn’t give a single, solitary care about her — taking advantage of and using her death as a political football.

With this, our 95th episode, we are now heard in 122 countries around the globe.

Again, we challenge you to listen and think critically to this episode.

With the recent passing of Pope Francis, at the age of 88, on Monday April 21st -- the day after the Christian world celebrates Easter — we wanted to examine in-depth the “theory” of those people who claim to be “Christian” yet use race, color and country of origin as a sledge-hammer for fascism.

Whether they claim to be:

— Christian Nationalists

— Christian Fascists

— Christian Conservatives

— Evangelicals

You name it … people who claim to be “doing the work of Jesus Christ” while steadily:

— Denigrating

— Persecuting and prosecuting migrants … the foreign born

— LGBTQ individuals and

— People of color.

“Othering” pretty much everyone who isn’t them.

April 30th marked 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term — over the past three months, the president has issued more than 100 executive orders that aim to bypass Congress and change policy through unilateral action. His administration has:

— Imposed sweeping tariffs on virtually every country in the world

— Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization

— Declared a national emergency at the southern border

— It has purported to rewrite election rules and end birthright citizenship.

— It is attacking major law firms and universities and much, much more.

But we ask, has this flurry of orders affected fundamental change?

To date, there have already been 46 challenges to executive orders pending in court, and the administration has had no outright victory in any of them. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have put the brakes on Trump’s fascist plans for change.

Will the courts continue to thwart his lawless agenda?

This is a pivotal moment in the history of this country that will affect it for all time going forward — as the Trump administration strives to keep the politics of fear and panic alive.

Without fear or favor we follow the facts and tackle the topics that touch your lives.

Tune in for all of the explosive details. Follow our sponsors: Newsly & Feedspot.

Promised links found within the body of the podcast audio file:

Criminal Alien Statistics | U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Letter of The Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States Of America - The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC)

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