Lots of ICE special agents are finding time on their hands, given that the current Administration does not want to deport criminal aliens — or even to arrest or charge them. So what are they doing? Making sure nobody disses their favorite sports teams!

ICE’s resources are also being devoted to suppress critical uses: “The profane debasing of a mascot — and really anything that denigrates a team — is guaranteed to be contraband, said Daniel Modricker, a spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That ‘Yankees Suck’ T-shirt you put on for special occasions? If it uses anything that looks like a team or league logo, it probably constitutes trademark infringement.”

Well, that’s about what you’d expect from Modricker, a toady’s toady who believes in the power of positive sucking-up to his political owners and operators. But Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet has a different take on it.

No, it really, really doesn’t.  “Profane debasing”–and when did mascots become sacred?–is not confusing.  I don’t think ICE has authority to seize diluting merchandise, and anyway very few of these will be using the profaned mascots “as a mark,” meaning the dilution exceptions for parody and criticism apply. This is a blatant misunderstanding of the law, being perpetuated by a federal official with only the small reassurance that federal agents won’t come down and rip a previously purchased shirt off your back.

Less annoying, but also sort of funny, is the attempt to answer the question “why are you spending so much time on fake jerseys” by pointing to problems caused by fake cribs and auto parts.  The Superbowl is a good opportunity to highlight the issue!

via Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log: Trademark overreach of the day: ICE says “Yankees Suck” infringes.

In pushing what’s called inside ICE “IPR,” or Intellectual Property Rights, Modricker and his supervisors are currying favor with ICE head John Morton. Morton has a record of accomplishment that’s gauzily thin, but one thing he did do was get the ICE/HSI shield on blu-ray discs along with the FBI’s. He’s spent the last two years, and vast amounts of taxpayer money on charter flights, stroking Hollywood and Big Content in general in hopes of a very rich post-government job, preferably at MPAA in LA. MPAA, run by second-generation crooked Senator, Corrupt Chris Dodd, didn’t think Morton was worth the stratospheric salary and perks he was demanding, but apparently he got his ask from a too-big-to-fail bank instead. At least according to ICE gadfly Debbie Schlussel, who reports Morton’s new job and resignation.

Debbie’s pretty hard on him, but if you were a president who had an agency he didn’t want to be enforcing any laws, you’d beat the bushes for a guy like Morton. A platypus is an ungainly animal, but it fits its evolutionary niche, and so does Morton.

On the other hand, if you have money in Capital One, the bank that hired Morton, now is a really good time to take it out and put it someplace safer — like your mattress, or having Gerry the Gambler hold it for you.

Even with Morton gone, IPR will probably still get more attention from ICE than the “ICE” stuff they’re supposed to be doing does. The NFL, for instance, is owned by fabulously rich people, who want and expect to be fabulously richer. ICE leadership, not just under Morton, responds to people like that. Ordinary citizens? The hundreds of thousands whose lives have been forever changed by criminal alien murderers and rapists? The victims of the half of FBI most-wanted violent criminals who are illegals? Those people aren’t in the 1%, and Morton and his ICE men have no time for that.

But anything that might interfere with using taxpayer resources to make Robert Kraft richer? Modricker and his fellow toadies are going to step on that with hockey skates on. For the benefit of the departing Morton, and whatever stuffed suit replaces him. It’ll still be the agency where the actual job is off limits, where special agents and supervisors have shoot-outs in the Federal Building over assignments, and where the surest way to get on your boss’s shit list is to arrest an actual violent criminal alien.

On the other hand, it’s not like they shipped Mexican cartels thousands of weapons, lost a suit because they mistreated one of their own agents (and PO’d the judge by having their in-house lawyers lie to him), and had one of their SES managers arrested prostituting himself in a New Orleans hotel. That’s the other ate-up agency.

Geez, look at how the cops talk about this guy. “Suspected Aryan Brotherhood member.” And they say they think he’s a “member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood.” They’re “working to confirm it.”

Gee whiz. Well, take a look at this angel, who showed up in the local fishwrap after threatening to burn his mom’s house down. (Yes, really):

We don’t know about you, but looking at his face, we had to go check our tackle box for missing lures and spinners. (Nope, we’ve got all our fishing tackle, that’s somebody else’s adorning Herr Unter-runter-führer’s fugly mug). We don’t know where anyone would get the idea he’s in the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang fond of Nazi symbology and posturing. You?

OK, well, apart from the three AB tats showing in the mugshot. They do seem to hint that he’s either onboard with them, or very disrespectful of their copyrights.

Story follows.

Suspected Aryan Brotherhood member Stephen Sanders pleaded not guilty to resisting arrest and criminal mischief at his probable cause hearing Jan. 15.
Sanders, of 16 Lita Lane in Newmarket, offered no plea on two counts of criminal threatening. According to court records those counts were dismissed by Judge David LeFrancois.
According to an affidavit signed by Officer Wayne Stevens, on Jan. 8, Sanders’ mother came to the police station telling officers that she had ordered Sanders to move out of her house. He reportedly came angry, telling his mother that “he would have his Aryan brothers burn her house down.”
Sanders also alleged that her son had threatened to stab another family member with a large kitchen knife.
Sgt. Jeremy Hankin responded to the Lita Lane address with the intention of arresting Sanders based on his mother’s information. Hankin and two other officers found Sanders sitting in his vehicle, police said. When asked to step out of the vehicle, Sanders initially refused, but then complied, police said.
Sanders argued with the officers after they informed him that he was under arrest for criminal threatening. Eventually Sanders was subdued on the ground and tasered, according to police.
Sanders is currently in Rockingham County Jail awaiting a trial management conference on Feb. 3.
When reached for comment on Tuesday, Lt. Jeff Simes said police believe Sanders is a member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood and are working to confirm it.

via Alleged Aryan Brotherhood member pleads not guilty – News – seacoastonline.com – Portsmouth, NH.

We’d just sum up by saying, there is nothing more pathetic than an American seeking to portray himself as a Nazi, the most thoroughly discredited identity since the Romans salted the fields of Carthage and destroyed the human-sacrifice temples of Baal (temples that perfectly prefigured the National Socialist regime’s Final Solution). By the summer of ’45 every Nazi from Ferdinand Porsche to Rudolf Hess was denying he had ever really been on board with the program — so where do these chuckleheads who want to join up with in now come from?

American Nazis. Lord love a duck. Although, we’d grant than an American seeking to play Communist is just about the same pathetic thing.