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Pittston man charged with possessing child pornography

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Pittston man charged with rape

<p>President Trump is running for re-election the same way he won in 2016, dividing the country into hostile camps and telling white voters he&#8217;s their only protection against black and brown immigrants.</p><p>So he has targeted Ilhan Omar, a naturalized American from Somalia elected to Congress in November, and suggested that she and other minority Democrats should &#8220;go back.&#8221; At a rally in North Carolina last week, the president&#8217;s supporters took his cue, chanting &#8220;send her back.&#8221;</p><p>Democrats responded with appropriate outrage to Trump&#8217;s vilification of dissenters with different skin colors along with his draconian policies of mass deportation and separating migrant children from their families.</p><p>But on immigration, Democrats are in danger of falling into Trump&#8217;s trap.</p><p>Most of the candidates have stampeded to the left on immigration, apparently in hopes of channeling voter indignation and winning support from Latinos.</p><p>Some, including Julian Castro and Elizabeth Warren, want to &#8220;decriminalize&#8221; crossing the border without papers and treat it as a less severe civil infraction.</p><p>Others, including Kamala Harris, have promised not to deport any migrant unless he or she has committed a serious crime.</p><p>At a debate last month, all 10 candidates onstage said they would ensure that undocumented migrants are guaranteed health care.</p><p>Trump responded by declaring the election over. &#8220;That&#8217;s the end of that race!&#8221; he tweeted.</p><p>Not necessarily. Immigration ought to be a losing issue for the president; most of his policies are unpopular.</p><p>A CNN poll last month found that most Americans disapprove of Trump&#8217;s crackdown on migrants. Most said immigrants in the country should be offered a path to legal residency, and most said the United States should allow refugees from Central America to seek asylum &#8212; a resounding repudiation of Trump&#8217;s policies.</p><p>But there&#8217;s a catch: Most voters also say they want limits on who can enter the country. Substantial majorities support making the border more secure and hiring more Border Patrol agents &#8212; but not building the wall the president yearns for.</p><p>Traditionally, Democrats have supported both sides of that equation &#8212; humane treatment for migrants and secure borders &#8212; and it was a popular position.</p><p>But so far this year, few have spoken up in favor of border enforcement of any kind. In the debates, only four of 20 candidates mentioned border security at all &#8212; and then only in passing.</p><p>&#8220;What is being lost is the overwhelming consensus that I know exists in the American public,&#8221; said Jeh Johnson, who headed Homeland Security under President Obama. &#8220;Yes, we should be fair and humane to people who are here &#8230; but we also want a secure border.&#8221;</p><p>In a blistering op-ed column for the Washington Post, Johnson accused Castro, Warren and Harris of taking &#8220;extreme policy positions that are unworkable &#8230; to win support from a vocal and committed segment of (the) party&#8217;s base &#8212; and simply for the sake of a good applause line.&#8221;</p><p>He argued that Harris&#8217; promise to forswear deportation for non-felons would be &#8220;tantamount to a public declaration &#8230; that our borders are effectively open to all.&#8221;</p><p>Other former officials said Castro&#8217;s proposal &#8212; to make unauthorized entry into the country a civil violation instead of a crime &#8212; would have little practical effect. Castro has argued that a law is needed to ensure no future president can revive family separations, the Trump policy of removing children from their relatives.</p><p>Latinos are divided too. The president of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, says he thinks guaranteeing healthcare for undocumented migrants is a bad idea. &#8220;There has to be some moderation,&#8221; Domingo Garcia said.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s going to be a generational split,&#8221; Matt Barreto, a UCLA professor who runs Latino Decisions, a polling firm, told me. &#8220;Younger voters are going to be more interested in bold, progressive actions. Older voters will be comfortable with more traditional positions.&#8221;</p><p>So here&#8217;s a challenge and an opportunity for any Democrat willing to tackle a tough problem in a balanced way &#8212; someone like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker or Michael Bennet.</p><p>Grab this issue and run with it.</p><p>Proclaim, as you already have, all the ways you reject what Trump has done. Reaffirm your commitment to protecting &#8220;Dreamers&#8221; &#8212; undocumented migrants who arrived as children &#8212; and to giving their parents a path to citizenship. Spell out how you&#8217;d fix the asylum process, reunite separated families, and reform the Border Patrol and ICE.</p><p>Then explain the other pieces voters want to hear: How would you make the border more secure? How would you make sure criminals don&#8217;t get in? Whom would you deport and why?</p><p>Sure, there&#8217;s a risk involved; activists on the left will denounce you as an apologist for the Obama administration, which deported some 3 million migrants in hopes of winning Republican support for an immigration reform bill. (It didn&#8217;t work.)</p><p>They&#8217;ve confronted Biden twice, in Philadelphia and Dover, N.H., but the former vice president has stood his ground. &#8220;I think people should have to get in line&#8221; to immigrate, he said.</p><p>This could be your Sister Souljah moment &#8212; the episode in 1992 when Bill Clinton, then a candidate, criticized an inflammatory hip-hop artist to show he wasn&#8217;t captive to his party&#8217;s interest groups.</p><p>You&#8217;ll probably have to suffer through an unpleasant moment or two. But you might win the support of millions of not-quite-progressive voters who are still looking for a champion.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Doyle McManus</p><p>Guest Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Their view: Democrats lurch too far left in response to Trump on immigration