the declaration

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OF INDEPENDENCE

July 4, 1776

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.
He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

The Advocation of A Legal Peaceful Procedure 2026

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress,

JOHN HANCOCK

etc.

~

blame Tom Paine and the Old Timer Chronicle editor

RAWCLYDE

!

another quiet day on the u.s. capital grounds

fallout

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Fallout begins

in ‘Broadview Six’ case

meltdown

as prosecutor loses Washington posting

~~~

by Jason Meisner

Chicago Tribune

May 22 / 23, 2026

~~~

The incident on a sunny September morning outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview may have never been remembered, lost in all the turmoil surrounding Operation Midway Blitz and the resistance that grew out of it.

Instead, federal prosecutors went to a grand jury and secured felony conspiracy charges against six protesters who allegedly impeded an immigration agent’s vehicle, elevating the case now known as the “Broadview Six” to a defining moment of the Trump administration’s controversial deportation crackdown.

That made the spectacular collapse of the case this week all the more embarrassing for the U.S. attorney’s office, which has now been accused of missteps before the grand jury and a potential cover-up — including the redaction of grand jury materials — that led a federal judge to question whether she can rely on the word of the prosecutors appearing before her.

“Your sole goal is to do justice,” an agitated U.S. District Judge April Perry told the team of prosecutors during a remarkable closed-door session on Thursday, according to a transcript. “Your client is justice itself. I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”

An hour later, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros had just left a swearing-in ceremony for six new assistant U.S. attorneys when he made a rare appearance in court to personally apologize to the judge and announce he was dismissing all charges against the remaining four defendants in the case.

The move canceled a trial that had been scheduled to begin Tuesday and promised to be a spectacle. But regardless of the abrupt termination of the case, the Broadview Six case will likely continue to be an albatross for the U.S. attorney’s office for months to come.

The first fallout came Friday morning when attorneys for Oak Park Village Trustee Brian Straw filed an emergency motion seeking preservation of U.S. attorney’s office emails and texts about the case — a move that prosecutors later said they would oppose. The filing was a precursor to what will surely be a defense request for sanctions, which could range from financial reimbursement for their clients’ legal fees and potentially against the individual prosecutors in the case.

Another shoe dropped as U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office announced that the former lead prosecutor in the Broadview Six case, Sheri Mecklenburg, had been terminated from her new role with the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington.

Boutros’ office also made good on a promise to the judge to amend the original press release about the Broadview charges — something the main Department of Justice has generally refused to do. On Friday, the online release said at the top: “THE U.S. DISTRICT COURT GRANTED THE GOVERNMENT’S MOTION TO DISMISS THE CHARGES WITH PREJUDICE. ALL CHARGES AGAINST ALL DEFENDANTS HAVE BEEN DISMISSED.”

In her remarks Thursday, Perry indicated that given what occurred in the grand jury and after, claims of vindictive prosecution that she initially rejected could also deserve a second look.

“I, at the time, was operating on a presumption of regular grand jury proceedings, which these were very clearly not,” Perry said. “So based upon what I’ve seen in the grand jury transcripts, the calculus has changed and it has changed considerably.”

Perry said the defense was “entitled to a briefing and perhaps a hearing on the issue of vindictive prosecution,” in addition to sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations.

Boutros, meanwhile, has acknowledged there was misconduct in the grand jury. But he also publicly and privately defended the merits of bringing the case, saying the evidence showed a crime was committed and that his team was fully prepared to go to trial on Tuesday on the misdemeanor counts of impeding a federal official.
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“Once I became aware of the conduct in the grand jury, within 24 hours we dismissed (the indictment),” Boutros told Perry. “We then filed an information that has nothing to do with the grand jury, and I was prepared and still would have been prepared to go to trial on the misdemeanor count. Because I do believe in the rule of law.”

Boutros, who has consistently touted a mantra of Chicago being a “law and order” district, said the statute makes it a crime to impede any federal official, not just immigration agents.

“The conduct that took place there, if it had occurred to a federal judge or to a sitting member of Congress, we would not be having discussions about whether or not that was appropriate or not appropriate, and there would be uniform view in agreement that the conduct that took place is unacceptable in a civilized society,” Boutros said in court.

Hours later, in an all-office email, Boutros told his staff it was a “tough but important day” for the office, but doubled down on the defense of the case, calling the trial team of three prosecutors “courageous.”

“While I firmly believe that a crime was committed, this case was beset with a number of challenges,” Boutros wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Tribune. “But make no mistake, today was an important day for the Office… These prosecutors fought for the rule of law and fought for the safety and security of our federal officials and employees—and, we thank them for that.”

Boutros also praised Perry — whose insistence on seeing the unredacted grand jury transcripts exposed the wrongdoing — for representing a “strong and independent federal judiciary that wants to ensure itself and the public that our prosecutors and Office acted properly.”

“Because at the end of the day, our job is not to convict at all costs or even to just convict, but instead to do Justice and to do so while following the rules and respecting the rights of our defendants,” Boutros wrote in the email.

The dismissal of the Broadview case, meanwhile, adds to the U.S. attorney’s office’s already abysmal record in cases related to Midway Blitz.

A total of 33 people have been criminally charged by the office on counts ranging from assaulting agents to murder-for-hire. As of Friday, 24 of those have been cleared, including several where grand juries refused to return indictments and others where prosecutors dismissed charges ahead of trial. Four others have entered into deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. attorney’s office that will see charges eventually dismissed.

Only one defendant, Juan Espinoza Martinez, has gone to trial. In January, a jury swiftly acquitted him on charges alleging he tried to put a bounty on the head of then-Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, who was leading Midway Blitz.

Two people have pleaded guilty in cases related to the assault of an agent. Charges are pending against three others, including Diego Emmanuel Reyes, who was recently charged with ramming an ICE agent’s vehicle in Brighton Park on Oct. 4. Reyes’ indictment was made public on the day the Broadview Six case collapsed.

The Broadview Six case was beset by controversy from the moment the indictment was brought last October as the defense has alleged the case was brought amid pressure from the administration of President Donald Trump and was nothing more than an attempt to silence protesters of the president’s draconian immigration policies.

Charged in the case were Straw; former congressional candidate Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh; her deputy campaign manager, Andre Martin; 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman Michael Rabbitt; Catherine Sharp, a onetime candidate for the Cook County Board; and Joselyn Walsh, a part-time garden store worker and singer.

Prosecutors alleged the defendants were part of a group that surrounded an ICE vehicle outside the Broadview facility during a Sept. 26 protest and “banged aggressively” on the vehicle’s side and back windows, hood and doors, and crowded together to impede the vehicle.

At the time, Trump’s controversial immigration enforcement mission was in high gear and tensions were sky-high. The Broadview facility was filled with dozens of immigrants who’d been snatched off the streets. Clashes between protesters and agents were an almost daily occurrence and were often met with tear gas and pepper spray.

Video of the incident that would have been central to the trial showed the group of some 100 protesters, who had been peacefully protesting at an intersection just east of the facility, pushing against the front of the agent’s black Chevrolet Tahoe, while others threw objects like stuffed animals. Chants arose, including one saying, “(Expletive) this pig!”

Straw, wearing a jacket clearly marked with an Oak Park logo, was captured on one video tossing his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee onto the windshield of the Tahoe. Rabbitt, meanwhile, joined in on chants of “shame!” as he put his hand on the right side of the vehicle. Abughazaleh and Martin could be seen doing the same along the Tahoe’s left side.

As the SUV neared a perimeter fence, agents in military fatigues started firing pepper spray balls into the crowd. The SUV rolled to safety after taking minor damage, including a broken side mirror and windshield wiper. Someone scratched “PIG” into the side of the car. No one was hurt.

In the ensuing months, attorneys for the six people charged, most of whom had ties to local Democratic politics, accused the U.S. attorney’s office of a politically motivated prosecution. They sought records of any White House influence on the decision to bring charges — which prosecutors vehemently denied. And they filed motions arguing the indictment concocted a conspiracy out of thin air and criminalized First Amendment-protected free speech.

In February, the original prosecutor who had led the grand jury, Mecklenburg, left the U.S. attorney’s office for a job with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. Weeks later, all charges against Sharp and Walsh were dismissed. And in April, prosecutors announced the lone felony conspiracy count against the remaining defendants was also being cut.

But it wasn’t until this past week, days before the trial on the remaining misdemeanor counts was set to begin, that the case finally fell apart completely when Perry agreed to look at unredacted grand jury transcripts to “see if there is anything suspicious” about portions that had been mysteriously removed by the U.S. attorney’s office.

What the transcripts revealed was shocking, Perry said. Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings.

The first grand jury refused to return an indictment, leading to a second panel being convened, a transcript of Perry’s remarks showed. That time, several grand jurors “made comments” and walked out of the proceedings. The testimony of the agent ended abruptly, and they had to start anew the next day to get the indictment.

“I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” Perry said.

The unredacted grand jury transcripts have since been turned over to the defense. In his motion Friday seeking preservation of U.S. attorney’s office emails, Parente said he finds the level of misconduct “nauseating” and that he “has lost complete faith and confidence in this U.S. Attorney’s Office to do the right thing on its own.”

“The government used this court to dismiss counts, file a superseding information, all without ever disclosing a single reason behind its mysterious shell game,” Parente wrote. “Having now digested the actual transcripts of what occurred in these secret Grand Jury proceedings counsel has no doubt that severe sanctions will be forthcoming.”

Mecklenburg, meanwhile, was let go from her position at the Senate Judiciary Committee due to the “gravity of the charges” in the Broadview case, according to a written statement from a Durbin spokesperson Friday.

“Senator Durbin agrees with Judge Perry’s concerns about this deeply flawed prosecution,” the statement read. “Our office had no knowledge of this alleged misconduct until yesterday’s reporting.”

~~~

old timer chronicle editor

rawclyde

!