Hasta La Gadget!

When Border Patrol officers kicked Maria out of the country, they didn’t have to go before a judge or allow her to see a lawyer. They only had to file an expedited removal order to deport her. She was a U.S. citizen, but U.S. officials didn’t believe her because the only language she spoke was Spanish. It took her years of legal wrangling to return.

Two other women, deported in a similarly speedy fashion, were gang-raped and shot after they were deported to Guatemala.

These and other cases are detailed in a report published Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the U.S. government routinely deports people with legitimate legal claims to stay in the country.

The report only gives the first names of the interviewees.

Based on a review of 136 cases, the ACLU report says the transition toward summary removal procedures since the 1990s has made it common for authorities to wrongly deport asylum seekers, people with strong U.S. ties and, in at least one case, a U.S. citizen.

Prior to a 1996 law called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the vast majority of those issued a deportation order faced a hearing with a judge, the report says. Now, some 83 percent of deportation orders are issued through rapid-fire removal processes that don’t involve a judge.

The report says the trend means that the details of individual cases can get ignored.

For example, the ACLU report says that border officials commonly fail to screen asylum seekers who have what authorities refer to as a “credible fear” of returning to their country of origin. Those who pass a credible fear screening are allowed to enter the United States while their asylum cases move forward.

Some 55 percent of the 89 interviewees deported summarily at the border said U.S. officials never asked if they feared returning to their home countries, or that they didn’t understand the questions because of language difficulties. Of those who were asked, some 40 percent say they weren’t referred to an asylum officer and were instead immediately deported.

“These summary procedures invite, and guarantee, error. And yet erroneous — even illegal — summary removal orders are difficult to challenge because of the speed of the process, the limited “evidence” required, and the absence of a complete record of the proceeding… Asylum seekers, longtime residents, and others with rights to be in the United States can be deported without a hearing in a matter of minutes.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report recommends immigration enforcement officials to adopt a policy of offering full hearings before immigration judges to those who have strong claims to remain in the country, including asylum seekers, people with U.S.-citizen family and those who have lived here for long periods of time.

The report also recommends training immigration enforcement officers not to use coercion or threats to prod people to accept deportation voluntarily, when in fact they may have the right to see a judge.

The ACLU also asks federal officials to reduce criminal prosecutions for illegal entry and illegal re-entry in order to avoid prosecuting people before they have a chance to present claims to stay in the country.

Immigration offenses are currently the most commonly prosecuted crimes on the federal docket.

Read the full ACLU report here.

First wireless charging stations, now mobile ordering? Yep, Starbucks is all about technology these days, and you’ll soon be able to place your coffee order by phone before you even arrive at a store.

On Wednesday the coffee chain introduced Mobile Order & Pay for stores in Portland, Oregon — and has plans to take the feature nationwide in 2015.

“When a customer’s order is placed using mobile ordering, it is immediately sent to their selected store and our world-class Starbucks partners, or baristas, will begin preparing the customer’s ordered items,” Starbucks spokeswoman Linda Mills told The Huffington Post. “The mobile ordering feature will provide the customer with an approximate wait time at their selected store prior to purchase.”

Mobile Order & Pay is only compatible with the Starbucks app for iPhone, as of now. Mills said customers in Portland can tap the “Menu” tab and tap “yes,” which will turn on GPS location services and the option to place an order.

The feature will be available for Android sometime in 2015, according to the website, and Mills says she expects mobile ordering will improve both customer and employee experience.

“The ease of use, both for customers and [baristas], is expected to increase speed of service, drive incremental transactions and increase throughput across Starbucks stores. We’re continually focused on offering convenience to customers by providing increased accessibility, speed and a stellar finished product.”

NEW YORK — The public may never see what evidence was presented to the grand jury that chose not to indict the New York City police officer who put the fatal chokehold on Eric Garner.

On Thursday, a judge approved the release of an extremely limited set of details about the proceedings. Those details are as follows: The grand jury met for nine weeks and heard from a total of 50 witnesses. Sixty exhibits were admitted into evidence. The grand jury was instructed in the law regarding the use of force by police officers.

Scroll down to read the judge’s full decision.

Daniel Donovan Jr., the Richmond County district attorney who prosecuted the case, said in a statement Thursday that he “respected the Court’s exercise of its discretion, and will abide by the Court’s Order.”

“As such,” Donovan continued, “I will have no further comment in connection with the grand jury proceedings relating to the matter of The Investigation into the Death of Eric Garner.”

After the grand jury voted not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo on Wednesday, Donovan had applied for a court order “seeking authorization to publicly release specific information.”

“Regarding comments that I can or cannot make, unlike other jurisdictions that have statutes that permit a district attorney to disclose specific details regarding what took place during a grand jury proceeding, New York law does not permit a district attorney to engage in such disclosure,” he said in his statement.

Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, died on July 17 after Pantaleo put him in a chokehold during an arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. A viral video showed Garner screaming, “I can’t breathe,” 11 times until his body goes limp. Chokeholds are banned by New York City Police Department guidelines.

Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed Garner’s arrest, told The Daily News on Thursday that when he testified, “nobody in the grand jury was even paying attention to what I had to say. People were on their phones, people were talking. I feel like they didn’t give [Garner] a fair grand jury.”

Orta, who said he testified for just 10 minutes, told the paper that he feels “like it wasn’t fair at all” and that “it wasn’t fair from the start.”

The scant details made public about the Garner grand jury pale in comparison to the complete set of documents released about the grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The release of those documents last week raised serious questions about how St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch conducted those proceedings.

On Thursday morning, Rev. Al Sharpton announced that the families of both Garner and Brown would join a march on Washington next Saturday, Dec. 13.

In a press conference, Sharpton and other civil rights leaders called for state and local prosecutors to be removed from all criminal cases with police as defendants. Because those prosecutors work so closely with police on other cases, the civil rights advocates argued, it’s a fundamental conflict of interest to have them prosecute police in court. Sharpton suggested the U.S. Department of Justice open an office specifically to handle such cases.

The planned march, Sharpton said, is the beginning of a “series of efforts that will lead to how we redo the grand jury review of policing in this country.”

Garner

The definition of marriage has changed dramatically over the past ten years. In the way we think of and define “marriage,” there has never been a more intrinsic and foundational change happening than right now. Our structural definition of the legal, emotional, and sexual act of committed partnership is on the cusp of something totally new.

There is such a major shift in how we define marriage that it can be compared to the 1960’s and 1970’s sexual revolution, where we saw all boundaries and mores and values challenged and struck down at their cultural roots. Now, in this century, we see a new era, the 2010’s and 2020’s are witnessing a revolution in marriage that has never been experienced before.

And there is more to come.

Marriage, up until now, has been defined by five things:

One, being married to one person,
Two, marriage is between a man and a woman,
Three, marriage meant that you were partners for a lifetime,
Four, marriage was a promise based on integrity as well as a legal contract and,
Five, marriage meant sexual fidelity to one person; forever.

Now, marriage is defined differently. And not just by liberals or democrats in the blue states.

One, Marriage is still defined by being married to one person, unless of course, you are a Mormon. But you can also stretch the definition to include things like polyamory. Polyamory means “poly, many” and “amorous, love” which translates to being in a relationship where you can love more than one person at the same time. More polyamorous couples are living in openly agreed to multiple partner relationships in this country than can fill the island of Manhattan. And that is only the people that openly identify as ‘poly.’ Some have this arrangement but do not care to call themselves ‘poly’ or check off the box when researchers come around to ask who the other partner is that’s sleeping in the guest room. Although polygamy is not legal in the U.S. (polygamy means to marry more than one person at the same time), polyamory is a lifestyle where couples choose to be in loving and committed relationships with more than one person, sometimes living all together in one home.

Two, marriage is no longer defined as purely an agreement between a man and a woman. The DOMA, or Defense of Marriage Act has been struck down in much of the U.S. and gay marriage is legal in 35 states, as of the writing of this article. Which means that it is legal for two men or two women to marry; or two transsexuals or two gender diverse people of any identification to marry legally. Marriage is no longer defined by gender, but by love and the desire to commit, regardless of sexual identity.

Three, when we marry, we no longer assume we will marry for a lifetime. Divorce in this country is so prevalent, that it would be unusual to think that it never occurs to a bride or groom when they say their vows,

“Hey, if this doesn’t work out, I can always get divorced.”

Most couples don’t want to think about divorce at the altar. In fact, most couples think they are different and special, and that divorce will never happen to them. While, in fact, the rates of divorce still hover at about fifty percent of all married couples.

The divorce rate was lower around 2009 and 2010, when the recession forced couples to stay together out of financial need, and because of the housing market they stayed together in houses they couldn’t sell. But in 2011, the market improved, and a surge of couples put their homes up for sale and went to divorce court. The divorce rates rose back to their previously high numbers.

Four, marriage has always been a legal contract as well as a vow. Divorce compromises what we may have honestly thought at the time was a sincere desire to do right by our spouse. Divorce can be heartbreaking, for both partners. In this country, since the sixties, when it became legal for women to divorce and sue for custody and child support, the process has become available to everyone. But it is expensive, and legal fees can run as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars. The emotional frustration of the legal system is caused many times by couples seeking revenge and trying to gain financial remuneration for their heartache. Both children and families suffer. Until recently, we have not had many alternatives.

Now, we have a new system of divorce developing in our country. The sharp rise in divorce mediation, collaborative divorce, and divorce counseling has helped couples to divorce with integrity and with respect. It helps to keep the children in caring shared custody arrangements. Step family relationships are smoother. Things like ‘conscious uncoupling,’ or ‘divorcing with integrity‘ are a possibility for any couple looking to end their marital contract with dignity and respect for their partner. It is not necessary to rewrite the whole history of your marriage to justify a divorce.

More couples are creating rituals to end their marriage, with love and respect for the lives they have shared. While divorce is still hard, we are becoming more culturally aware that there has to be a better, less expensive and less painful way to do it, if so many of us are going to experience it at some point in our lives.

And five, marriage is no longer a guarantee of sexual fidelity. Monogamy is defined as ‘being married to one person.’ It is a legal term, pledging your love at the time of your wedding is not the same thing as making a legal vow against cheating. With the ease of access to online cheating, and the use of internet pornography, it is easier than ever for infidelity to interfere with a marriage. And with smart phones in hand, this is the first time in history where couples can cheat on their partner lying in bed next to them.

Studies show that 45 to 55% of people will stray at some point in their marriage. Some marriages may appear monogamous on the surface, but have secret affairs. Some have affairs and recover, moving on to a more committed type of marriage. Some partners negotiate a more fluid type of monogamy with outside partners or sexual agreements that do not threaten their emotional monogamy. The integrity of the relationship is maintained through emotional commitment, not sexual exclusivity.

These changes are happening now. But what will happen in the future? Fifty years from now?

Right now it takes two to marry but only one to end the marriage. The end of a marriage is usually defined by the decline of emotional feelings toward one partner, who then makes a unilateral decision that leads to a legal decision to end the contract.

In the future, in order to avoid this, marriage will be defined by shorter, more renewable contracts, in five year increments, or smaller two year contracts with options to renew. These agreements will be revisited at the end of their lease, and either renewed or ended, depending on how the requirements and expectations of the contract are being fulfilled. Both partners will make the decision to stay and renew or both will agree to move on. We renew our license every four years, why not renew our marriage contract?

In the future, gay marriage will have been legal for decades. More arrangements between couples will include open marriages with sexual agreements, polyamory will be more common and perhaps even polygamy will be visited in the legal system.

More of us will be bisexual, transexual and even more sexually androgonous than ever before. More babies will be born without clear gender identity and will not have surgery to assign a sex. We will judge less on sexual identity and more on how we treat one another.

More families will live in village like arrangements where expanded child care covers our offspring’s needs and more of us contribute to the workplace based on our skills, interests and aptitudes. We will share resources, and work toward the reclaiming of our planet.

Even now, couples are waiting till later than ever before to marry, and some are freezing their eggs, hoping to put off child bearing. This will continue, with fertility treatment moving into egg donorship and surrogate parenting with less IVF and hormone treatment.

In the future, couples will have monogamy agreements that are defined early in their relationship and revisited often, in open, honest conversations that include their desires and fantasies, and are renewed with new visions of their relationship on a regular basis. Sex will be seen not as a threat to the relationship but as a way to maintain the individual’s health and well being, and will not become compulsive or split off outside the marriage, since shame around it will have decreased. Sex will be integrated into a full, healthy, partnership, in any way the couple agrees to.

Right now, about 40% of Americans think marriage is obsolete as a concept. They are not sure it is even necessary. As a result, less couples than ever before are married, and marriage rates will continue to decline into the future. There is no longer motivation to marry. Couples no longer need to marry to have children, to pass on their property or to have sex. In one hundred years, marriage may not even exist.

But we will always want a primary partner. It is a basic human propensity to fall in love, to have a special person, an “other, ” someone with whom we feel a deeper, more spiritual connection.

But could we have this connection with many partners, not just one? How many soulmates could we have in one lifetime? Right now we are practicing serial monogamy, moving from one marriage to a second and even a third, not really staying with the same mate till death do we part. Is it possible we are starting to recognize that we are living longer, and we may have the time for more than one important relationship within our lifetime?

But perhaps this makes sense. Perhaps as we evolve as humans we will understand that we do not have just one soulmate. This idea is lovely, but limiting. Perhaps we have many soulmates, perhaps a whole tribe of them that travel with us throughout our time on earth, those we have met and those we haven’t met yet.

Or maybe, if we advance enough, we will learn that not only is our spouse our soulmate, but everyone we meet and everyone we see, throughout our whole lives, including strangers on the street, people on the news, those in other countries we will never know, those we hate, and those we love, all of them – they are all our soul mates.

Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert and the author of The New Monogamy. She speaks internationally on global relational change.

WASHINGTON — Any day now, the U.S. and Turkey may finally reach an agreement on jointly combating the Islamic State. But in the meantime, Turkey appears less helpful to the U.S. mission than ever: There is growing evidence that Islamic State militants conducted a battle on Turkish soil this past weekend.

The reports, if confirmed, would illustrate that Turkey’s ongoing reluctance to escalate pressure against the Islamic State has had real costs — and that, even if the country does become more involved in the fight, skepticism about its true intentions will linger.

According to reports by moderate Syrian rebels, a United Kingdom-based monitoring group and outside analysts, the Islamic State was able to use Turkish territory in an advance on the Syrian border town of Kobani on Saturday, Nov. 29. At least 30 people were killed around Kobani during the Islamic State’s attacks on the town.

The Turkish government has denied the allegations that the incident took place on its territory.

Kurdish groups, who have historic grievances against the Turkish state, have previously made similar claims. But the strong consensus surrounding this latest incident is perhaps the clearest example to date of how Turkey’s failure to more actively target the Islamic State is aiding the militant group.

If accurate, the reports of this battle would be problematic for both Turkey and the U.S.

Turkey is a well-armed NATO member whose government has stated it opposes the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. For Turkish territory to serve as a tactical asset to the militant group would be, in the words of a pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, a “scandal.”

For the U.S., the reports are embarrassing because they show the limits of what can be done to combat the Islamic State without more direct Turkish cooperation. The U.S. has invested deeply in the Kobani battle, focusing a vast number of airstrikes on Islamic State forces there. But through it all, the militants may have retained a key advantage: the ability to operate on Turkish soil.

The first claims about the Islamic State launching an attack from Turkey emerged on Saturday from Syrian Kurdish sources and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitoring group based in the UK.

The Observatory posted a video of the alleged battle the same day.

A representative of the PYD, the political group that controls Kobani, told Kurdish affairs analyst Mutlu Civiroglu she believed the claims, according to a tweet posted Saturday by Civiroglu.

Just spoke to Cochair of @pydinfo Asya Ebdulla in #Kobane about today ISIS attacks. She is sure that attacks came from Turkish side #Kobani

— Mutlu Civiroglu (@mutludc) November 29, 2014

The following day, Aaron Stein, a widely published analyst of Turkish policy and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, published his own open source analysis of the claims. Using satellite map imagery, sightings of Turkish tanks in Islamic State videos and a border delineation by the State Department, Stein argued that the ISIS fighters took advantage of a “sort of ‘no-mans-land’ between where [Turkey] has set-up its defenses and the border” to attack Kobani from the north. His analysis corroborated previous reports that Turkish forces have left a swath of border territory undefended, making it possible for the militants to operate there.

Stein concluded that the Islamic State and the YPG, the fighting force defending Kobani, had indeed conducted a battle on Turkish soil. He said that an Islamic State suicide car bomb entered the Kobani area from Turkish territory, followed by Islamic State fighters. Kurdish forces then pushed the ISIS militants back and continued fighting on Turkish soil.

Other observers weighed in with their own support for the reports.

“I find Aaron Stein’s analysis quite convincing,” Aymenn Jawad Al-Tammimi, a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and a contributor to the Syria Comment blog, told The Huffington Post by email on Sunday.

Tammimi added that a member of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army who is currently in Kobani told him that the FSA had battled the Islamic State on Turkish land.

ISIS supporters hailed news of the battle as a triumph.

But Turkey maintains that the reports are untrue. “Claims that the vehicle reached the border gate by crossing through Turkish soil are a lie,” a statement from the government read.

Many remain skeptical about Turkey’s commitment to combating the extremist militant group. Kurds within Turkey continue to clash with the authorities over the Islamic State issue, most recently in a Tuesday incident in which Kurdish demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at the police and faced down tear gas.

Since the weekend, Kurdish sources have made further claims that a new round of Islamic State attacks was launched from Turkish territory, though others have yet to corroborate these assertions. The sources also said that Turkish soldiers were targeting Kurdish refugees from Kobani who had crossed the border to seek shelter.

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Turkish soldiers randomly raided a Suruc hostel of #Kobane refugees arresting 10, breaking doors and causing havoc! pic.twitter.com/TXiVijMCJZ

— @Hevallo (@Hevallo) December 2, 2014

Even as multiple accusations of Turkish complicity were being made, news reports suggested on Monday that the U.S. may be close to securing a Turkish commitment to fighting the Islamic State.

The two countries have been in intense discussions over the idea of establishing a no-fly zone along the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkey sees such a zone as essential. Without it, Turkish policymakers believe, the moderate U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces will be unable to rebuild their strength and emerge as an effective fighting force against the Islamic State, while civilian suffering will continue to rise. Reports indicate that if the U.S. agreed to support a no-fly zone with air cover, Turkey would send forces of its own into Syria and, crucially, meet a U.S. demand by granting American jets access to its strategically important Incirlik air base.

But U.S. policymakers have long expressed reservations about setting up the zone, primarily because it would risk boosting tensions with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The dispute exemplifies the two allies’ differing priorities: Turkey is intent on more directly undermining the Assad regime, but he is not the target of the U.S. involvement in Syria.

U.S.-Turkish ties have been notably strained since the Obama administration decided to enter Syria exclusively to fight the Islamic State, even as Turkey continued to urge it to confront Assad as well.

In addition to the Assad issue, Turkey has also been disappointed by the Obama administration’s support for the Syrian Kurds. The YPG, the Kurdish fighting force defending Kobani, is linked to the PKK, a group that has battled the Turkish state and that features on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Even so, the PKK has for weeks been sharing coordinates with U.S. bombers.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan received authority from Parliament in October to employ Turkish forces against the Islamic State. But he has yet to use that power.

Other factors behind the Turkish delay, analysts say, include fears that the Islamic State could whip up support within the country and launch attacks on Turkish soil. Turkey may also be concerned that without a promise of expanded U.S. involvement, it will have to bear the burden of an expanding international war in northern Syria — including more refugees and increased violence — on its own.

Joshua Walker, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund and a former senior State Department advisor, told HuffPost in a Monday email that Turkey is unlikely to change its stance unless the U.S. alters its strategy in Syria.

“Presently there is a cold peace between Ankara and ISIS given that neither side sees it in their interest to provoke the other,” Walker wrote.

He noted that high-level U.S. outreach to Turkey — including visits by Vice President Joe Biden and Gen. John Allen, the envoy for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State — had yet to bear fruit, even as the militant group “made its ambitions clear.”

Walker added that even though he believed Turkey should be taking the Islamic State more seriously, “there has been little evidence of a changed Turkish position.”