The Trump Administration wants you to believe that by building a steel wall over part of our southern border will make America safer from terrorists.

Before we examine the merits of this idea, it should be known who is making money on the wall.  The latest design of Trump's 'wall' (which he acknowledges is a barrier more than a wall) includes high steel slats with spikes (the better to impale people and birds with). Some estimates have the slats costing upwards of $24.5M per mile (for a 1,993 mile border that logistically cannot be contiguous). That's a lot of money, especially with the steel tariffs that Trump has demanded.

Who stands to make a profit from the sale of the steel?  Unsurprisingly, a Russian steel company whose biggest shareholder is an oligarch and Trump family friend. The company, Evraz North America, supplied Keystone from its steel plants in Canada.  The oligarch who owns Evraz, Roman Abramovich, is a very close ally to Putin (owing much of his significant wealth to him) and a personal friend to Trump and the Kushners.

One of history’s greatest mass murderer understood something that apparently Trump does not.  Stalin supposedly once said, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”

Will the wall stop harmful ideas from entering America?  No.  As stated by John B. Alexander, you must realize that the most dangerous and virtually unprotected port of entry for terrorism is the human mind and no wall is going to prevent ideas from entering.  In Parameters, the Journal of the U.S. Army War College, Lt. Col. Timothy L. Thomas explains that the concept of “‘information warfare’ falls short when the individual soldier, not his equipment, becomes the target of attack.”  What is depicted here is that the targets for ideological persuasion are far wider than members of the military but the effects just as devastating.

In other words, WALLS ARE USELESS TO STOP IDEAS FROM ENTERING A MIND.

Bertrand Russell once said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."  Similarly in his poem, “The Second Coming,” Yeats says, ““The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

This problem is clearly illustrated in matters of morality and God.  There are many people who passionately assert that morality cannot exist without a belief in God.  This issue is dealt with in a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro.

Socrates was awaiting trial on the charge of corrupting youth and denying the existence of God. He was visited by Euthyphro who had come to have his father charged with murder since the father had killed a man.  Euthyphro’s father had had a hired worker who had killed a slave, so Euthyphro’s father threw the worker into a pit -- bound and gagged -- and then left for another city to ask the authorities there how to proceed. While gone, the worker died in the pit from starvation and exposure to the elements.  Euthyphro explains his father is angry with him for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting his father. Euthyphro explained that some suggest  my father did not kill him, and that if he did, dead man was but a murderer, and a son is immoral who prosecutes a father.

Socrates is stunned by Euthyphro’s confidence in bringing charges against his own father for murder. Socrates asked Euthyphro if it is always moral to prosecute someone for murder.  Euthyphro explains that prosecuting anyone who is guilty of murder or of any similar crime-whether he be your father or mother, or whoever he may be-that makes no difference; and not to prosecute them is immoral.  Ultimately, Euthyphro explains that morality is that which is dear to God, and immorality is that which is not dear to God.  Clearly Euthyphro has told us that without God there is no morality.

The idea that morality cannot exist without God is interesting.  If an act is moral simply because God commands it, then that means that any act – even the slaughtering of babies – is potentially moral. And if that is the case, then morality is intrinsically arbitrary, and the very word “moral” loses all meaning. Moral could just as easily be called evil. And if moral can be evil and evil can be moral, then it makes no sense to even use the words “moral” or “evil” to begin with. They cancel each other out. At best, we would just say that an action is something that God commands; calling it “moral” no longer signifies anything at all.

However,  if you agree that something doesn’t become moral simply because God commands it, but rather, believe that God commands actions that are moral because he sees or recognizes them as being moral in and of themselves, then morality exists outside of, and independently of, God. In short, God becomes redundant. He is not necessary for morality.

As Walter Sinnott-Armstrong who is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University concludes, based on his interpretation of the Euthyphro dilemma:

Assume that God commanded me not to rape. Did God have a reason to command this? If not, then His command was arbitrary, and an arbitrary command can’t make anything morally wrong. On the other hand, if God did have a reason to command us not to rape, then that reason is what makes rape morally wrong, and the command itself is superfluous. Hence, divine commands are either arbitrary or superfluous. Either way, morality cannot depend on God’s commands.

Euthyphro can’t seem understand the implications of Socrates’ question: does God command actions because they are moral in and of themselves, or do actions become moral only when and if God commands them? Perhaps its’ not that Euthyphro cannot understand the piercing significance of this question, but rather, that he can’t or will not allow himself to understand it. For to understand it suggests that morality does not depend on a god for its existence or content.

What if a president, backed into a corner and facing electoral defeat or impeachment, were to declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power?

In 1976, Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act that limited the scope of response to declared states of emergency. The act:
    Revoked the powers that had been granted to the president under the four states of emergency that were still active in 1976.
    Prescribed procedures for invoking any powers in the future.
    Declared that states of emergency would automatically end one year after their declaration unless the president publishes a notice of renewal in the Federal Register within 90 days of the termination date. He or she must also officially notify Congress of the renewal.
    Required each house of Congress meet every six months to consider a vote to end the state of emergency.

According to Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 440 (1934) characterized an emergency in terms of “urgency and relative infrequency of occurrence as well as equivalence to a public calamity resulting from fire, flood, or like disaster not reasonably subject to anticipation.”

So would our laws and institutions might not save us from a presidential power grab?  Rulings such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) in which the Supreme Court invalidated President Harry Truman’s assertion of assertion of "inherent" executive power to take over steel mills during the Korean War, have been the exception.  See, Maeva Marcus, Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential Power (Constitutional Conflicts) (Duke University Press 1994).  While an exception, the case does stand for the proposition that even in times of war, the executive power is subject to judicial scrutiny. 

The outer boundary of the president’s constitutional authority during emergencies remains poorly defined.  Presidential power is greatest when the president acts where Congress has failed to act indicating no legislative intent on how to act.  See, Crockett v. Reagan, 558 Supp. 893 (D.D.C. 1982), aff’d 720 F.2d 1355 (D.C. Cir. 1983); Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan,  568 F.Supp 596 (D.D.C. 1983) aff’d 770 F.2d202 (D.C. Cir. 1985).  This is why Pres. Bush asked Congress to pass legislation to support his Persian Gulf policy.

The high court also relied on Youngstown in Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 (2008). In that case, President Bush had pressured the state of Texas to review the murder conviction of a Mexican citizen who had tortured and raped two teenage girls in 1993, arguing that a 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) required law enforcement authorities to tell the accused of his right under the Vienna Convention to notify Mexican diplomats of his detention. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that ICJ rulings were not enforceable in the United States, and Bush's actions were unconstitutional. Quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded, "The president's authority to act, as with the exercise of any governmental power, 'must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.'"

It is for this reason that it is critical for people to express their concern to Congress

BY Alan Ball is a Professor of History at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.
http://www.scowstats.com/2019/01/10/justice-abrahamsons-prominence-part-3/


A recent post (inspired by Richard Posner’s Cardozo: A Study in Reputation) offered a means of assessing the influence of Justice Shirley Abrahamson during her unprecedented tenure on the bench.  This technique compared the number of times that appellate courts cited her opinions with the number of times that they cited opinions written by her colleagues in Madison.[1]  However, Posner did not confine himself to inspecting courts’ decisions, and neither will we, as there are other ways of gauging judicial stature.  One of these—the frequency with which a justice’s opinions and other endeavors are cited by law-review articles—is today’s topic.
Consider the contents of Table 1, showing the number of law-review citations of Justice Abrahamson’s activities and those of the 24 other justices who have served on the court during her 43 terms.[2]  Most striking here is the enormous number of articles mentioning Justice Abrahamson compared to the sums for the other justices.  In fact, Justice Abrahamson’s total of 993 is roughly six times the quantity for any of the next three justices: A.W. Bradley (175), Bablitch (173), and Coffey (161).  Although the numbers are estimates—different random samples and different means for handling gray areas would yield slightly different figures (see the following footnote)—no defensible method would eliminate Justice Abrahamson’s overwhelming dominance.[3] 
All justices write majority opinions, concurrences, and dissents, thereby guaranteeing them appearances in the text or at least the footnotes of law review articles (unless a justice is very new to the bench).  As a result, many (often most) of the law-review references in Table 1 are to judicial opinions authored or joined by the justices—akin to the citations of their opinions in other appellate decisions covered by the previous post.[4]  This is a meaningful measure of judicial influence, but another way to gain a sense of a justice’s standing is to focus on a subset of Table 1—namely, the number of law-review articles that mention (1) addresses delivered by a justice in public or professional settings and (2) articles (not judicial opinions) written by a justice.
These two activities take us into the realm of voluntary accomplishments that enhance a justice’s eminence—and differentiate Justice Abrahamson even more sharply from the other justices than was the case in Table 1.  As Table 2 reveals, the number of articles that cite Justice Abrahamson’s publications and speeches towers above the amounts for her colleagues—nearly seven times as many as the next highest total (that for Justice/Judge Sykes).[5]  Indeed, Justice Abrahamson’s figure of 465 is three times as large as the sum of the articles that cite the publications and speeches of all of the 24 other justices combined.[6]  Clearly, by this accounting, no other justice has been as prominent as Shirley Abrahamson—not even Justice Sykes, whose elevation to a federal judgeship greatly increased her number of hits.
The techniques developed from Posner’s book are doubtless not the only ways of estimating a justice’s stature (and I’m always grateful to benefit from advice).  But the tables in this post do suggest that most appraisals of the renown of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices will find Justice Abrahamson at the top of the rankings.

[1] Thanks again to Bill Tyroler for bringing Posner’s book to my attention.
[2] The coverage of law-review articles in Lexis does not extend back past 1982.  This, of course, reduces the number of hits for justices on the court at the beginning of our period—the late 1970s—which includes Justice Abrahamson.
[3] Let’s say that a search for law-review articles mentioning Justice X delivers hits in 600 articles.  Many of these hits will likely be “false positives”—other people with the same surname, for instance, or perfunctory references to Justice X, as in a list of the seven justices on the court in a given year.  If these can be filtered out, we will be left primarily with hits of the sort that we desire: (1) references to a judicial opinion by (or joined by) Justice X; (2) references to an article or book authored by Justice X; (3) references to an address given by Justice X; (4) a tribute to Justice X; (5) a quoted comment by Justice X on matters regarding the court; and (6) other actions by Justice X pertaining to the legal system (such as forming a committee to draft a recommendation on some matter).
To cope with the volume of hits, I adopted a sampling procedure resembling that employed by Posner.  For justices with only a few hits—30 or 40 law-review articles—I examined every article individually.  But for larger numbers of hits (over a thousand in some cases), I took a random sample of articles and determined the percentage of articles in this sample that had references of the sort that we are including.  The percentage could then be used to approximate a justice’s total number of significant hits.  For example, if Justice X had a raw total of 600 hits, and scrutiny of a random sample of 30 of these articles found that 75% of the sample contained references that we are counting, I would arrive at an estimate of 450 significant articles for Justice X (75% of 600).  Sample sizes varied from justice to justice, but they always represented a much larger percentage of a justice’s total number of hits than was the case in the example furnished in Posner’s study.
As with any selection criteria, there are some gray areas—notably, articles that refer to a justice’s election campaign.  Generally, I have counted articles with references to a justice’s campaign if these include substantive quotations from the justice or commentary on controversies associated with the campaign, but I have excluded minor references (such as a note that a justice won reelection in a particular year).
     I have also excluded minor references of other sorts, such as those encountered occasionally in biographical sketches of other people (“so and so clerked for Justice X before moving on to various positions of increasing prominence”), unless a reference discusses Justice X’s influence on a person’s career (very rare).  Excluded, too, are notes that a justice did not participate in a particular decision.  However, I have counted articles that cite other articles said to quote a justice on a matter under discussion in the first article.  None of these exclusions or inclusions occur frequently, and while disagreement might arise over the proper classification of one example or another, no rational approach would affect this post’s main theme (the massively larger numbers for Justice Abrahamson in Tables 1 and 2).
     Another question concerns the categorization of critical discussions of a justice’s conduct.  Although there are comparatively few such articles for most justices in this study, fully half or more of the references to Justices Ziegler and Gableman were disapproving—pertaining to judicial-ethics concerns for Justice Ziegler and election-campaign issues for Justice Gableman.  Should articles with such commentary be included in a post devoted to assessing a justice’s eminence?  In view of this post’s main theme—the much larger number of references to Justice Abrahamson than to the other justices—I will be conservative and count all of the judicial-ethics articles and electoral-campaign articles for Justices Ziegler and Gableman respectively.  The total number of hits of any sort for both justices is very small (46 for Justice Ziegler and 36 for Justice Gableman at the time that I ran my searches), and, thus, any approach to categorizing them will not alter the post’s principal conclusions.
[4] The previous post was confined to citations of the justices’ majority/lead opinions.  Today’s post includes references to separate opinions as well.
[5] I used the same estimation method for Table 2 as for Table 1.  Gray-area questions are extremely rare when searching for references to publications and speeches. 
[6] It bears emphasizing that the figures in this table are estimates, generated from random samples as described above.  If a justice wrote only a couple articles, and if these articles were rarely cited by other authors, there is a reasonable chance that they might not be captured by my random sample—resulting in an estimate of zero for that justice.

There is no federal law that stipulates that children and parents be separated at the border, no matter how families entered the United States.

Claims that the “law to separate families” was passed in 1997, those claims originated with a February 2018 Department of Homeland Security statement referencing “[l]egal loopholes [that] are exploited by minors, family units, and human smugglers.” The DHS statement claimed existing immigration policies “create a pull factor that invites more illegal immigration and encourages parents to pay and entrust their children to criminal organizations.”

However, neither the 1997 Flores settlement nor a 2008 human trafficking law cited in that release in any way stipulated that the government separate children from their parents:
A White House spokesman referred [Factcheck.org] to a DHS statement regarding a 1997 legal settlement and 2008 antitrafficking law affecting minors who are apprehended without a parent present:
Under the 1997 settlement, DHS could detain unaccompanied children captured at the border for only 20 days before releasing them to foster families, shelters or sponsors, pending resolution of their immigration cases. The settlement was later expanded through other court rulings to include both unaccompanied and accompanied children.
The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 requires unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada to be placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or relatives in the U.S., while they go through removal proceedings. The bipartisan bill was approved by unanimous consent and signed by Bush.
But neither the court settlement nor the 2008 law require the Trump administration to “break up families.”A cluster of rumors about the controversial separation of families at the border held that the policy came before the Trump administration, either stemming from a 1997 “law” or purported policies of previous administrations. Those claims were false. No federal law required or suggested the family separation policy announced by Attorney General Sessions in several sets of remarks during April and May 2018.
An increase in child detainees separated from parents stemmed directly from a change in enforcement policy repeatedly announced by Sessions in April and May 2018, under which adults (with or without children) are criminally prosecuted for attempting to enter the United States:
The “zero-tolerance” policy he announced [in May 2018] sees adults who try to cross the border, many planning to seek asylum, being placed in custody and facing criminal prosecution for illegal entry.
As a result, hundreds of minors are now being housed in detention centres, and kept away from their parents.
Over a recent six-week period, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their parents after illegally crossing the border, figures released on [15 June 2018].
[Attorney General] Sessions said those entering the US irregularly would be criminally prosecuted, a change to a long-standing policy of charging most of those crossing for the first time with a misdemeanour offence.News items about Sessions’ comments on border policy often included a statement he made at a gathering for the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies in Arizona on 7 May 2018:
So, if you cross the border unlawfully, even a first offense, we’re going to prosecute you….
If you’re smuggling a child, we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law. If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.In other articles, Sessions was quoted as saying on the same date:
If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law … If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.
[…]
We don’t want to separate families, but we don’t want families to enter the border illegally[.] We urge them not to do so.On 5 June 2018, CBS News covered an interview Sessions provided to radio host Hugh Hewitt. During the broadcast, Hewitt asked Sessions if it was “absolutely necessary… to separate parents from children when they are detained or apprehended at the border.” Several responses from Sessions were included in the article:
If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity. You have to, you will be prosecuted if you bring, if you come illegally. And if you bring children, you’ll still be prosecuted.
[…]
[T]he United States can’t be a total guarantor that every parent who comes to the country unlawfully with a child is guaranteed that they won’t be, is guaranteed that they will be able to have their hand on that child the entire time. That’s just not the way it works … I don’t think it’s a moral right, Hugh. … If you come to the country, you should come through, first, through the port of entry and make a claim of asylum if you think you have a legitimate asylum claim. You shouldn’t try to get across the border at some desert site, some remote site unlawfully and expect not to be promptly deported. We’ve caught, over the years, millions of people, and they’ve been promptly deported. They don’t get trial in federal court.

Sessions did not make the statement attributed to him, but he did make a series of remarks in early April 2018 about a new border initiative involving the separation of children from parents at border crossings:
If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law … If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.
[…]
We don’t want to separate families, but we don’t want families to enter the border illegally[.] We urge them not to do so.On 7 May 2018, CNN reported that until April 2018, immigration officials used discretion to handle families or unaccompanied minors entering the United States without documentation:
It has long been a misdemeanor federal offense to be caught illegally entering the US, punishable by up to six months in prison, but the administration has not always referred everyone caught for prosecution. Those apprehended were swiftly put into immigration proceedings and, unless they met the threshold to pursue a valid asylum claim, can be quickly deported from the country.
The current DHS plan makes no special arrangements for those who claim asylum when apprehended. While they will be allowed to pursue their claims and could eventually be found to have a legitimate right to live in the US, they could still already have a conviction for illegal entry.On 7 May 2018, CNN reported that until April 2018, immigration officials used discretion to handle families or unaccompanied minors entering the United States without documentation:
It has long been a misdemeanor federal offense to be caught illegally entering the US, punishable by up to six months in prison, but the administration has not always referred everyone caught for prosecution. Those apprehended were swiftly put into immigration proceedings and, unless they met the threshold to pursue a valid asylum claim, can be quickly deported from the country.
The current DHS plan makes no special arrangements for those who claim asylum when apprehended. While they will be allowed to pursue their claims and could eventually be found to have a legitimate right to live in the US, they could still already have a conviction for illegal entry.

sources:https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-ag-say-if-inflict-fear-pain-children/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-law-separate-families-passed-1997/

Over the past few decades, the number of imprisoned parents in the U.S. has skyrocketed. From 1991 to 2007, it jumped by more than 357,000. Today, more than half of the 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails are parents of minor children.  Between 2006 and 2016, tens of thousands of children were placed into foster care solely because a parent was incarcerated. For about 5,000 of these children, their parent's rights were eventually terminated.  No significant racial disparities were found in the relative rates at which these parents’ rights are terminated. But given that African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated — 1 in 10 black children have a parent behind bars, compared with about 1 in 60 white youth — this phenomenon impacts them in outsized numbers.

Mothers and fathers who have a child placed in foster care because they are incarcerated — but who have not been accused of child abuse, neglect, endangerment, or even drug or alcohol use — are more likely to have their parental rights terminated than those who physically or sexually assault their kids. 

When a someone goes to prison, nearly 65 percent of families are suddenly unable to pay for basic needs such as food and housing, the report found. About 70 percent of those families are caring for children under the age of 18. Women like Smith are often responsible for court-related costs associated with the conviction, and many families go into debt to pay those fees, leaving even less for food and shelter. When that family member gets out of jail, their loved ones are left with the task of supporting their reentry. This burden is ongoing since people with a criminal record often are unable to find work upon their release.

 “Poverty, in particular, perpetuates the cycle of incarceration, while incarceration itself leads to greater poverty,” according to “Who pays? The True cost of Incarceration on Families (Ella Baker Center for Human Rights).


In about 1 in 8 of these cases, incarcerated parents lose their parental rights, regardless of the seriousness of their offenses, according to the analysis of records maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between 2006 and 2016. That rate has held steady over time. Female prisoners, whose children are five times more likely than those of male inmates to end up in foster care, have their rights taken away most often.
Since 2010, a handful of states including New York, Washington and Illinois have passed legislation to help mothers and fathers in prison keep their children. And in the coming months, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) plans to introduce in Congress an “incarcerated parents’ bill of rights,” which she said in an interview would make sure that most imprisoned parents who maintain a role in their kids’ lives do not have their rights terminated.

Read more: HOW INCARCERATED PARENTS ARE LOSING THEIR CHILDREN FOREVER
Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families

Immigrants are Less Likely to be Criminals Than the Native-BornHigher Immigration is Associated with Lower Crime Rates

• Between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent and the number of unauthorized immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million.
• During the same period, FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48 percent—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41 percent, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary. 

Immigrants are Less Likely than the Native-Born to Be Behind Bars 

• According to an original analysis of data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the authors of this report, roughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born. This disparity in incarceration rates has existed for decades, as evidenced by data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses. In each of those years, the incarceration rates of the native-born were anywhere from two to five times higher than that of immigrants.
• The 2010 Census data reveals that incarceration rates among the young, less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men who make up the bulk of the unauthorized population are significantly lower than the incarceration rate among native-born young men without a high-school diploma. In 2010, less-educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent—more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign-born Mexican men, and five times greater than the 1.7 percent rate among foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men.

Immigrants are Less Likely Than the Native-Born to Engage in Criminal Behavior 

• A variety of different studies using different methodologies have found that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to engage in either violent or nonviolent “antisocial” behaviors; that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be repeat offenders among “high risk” adolescents; and that immigrant youth who were students in U.S. middle and high schools in the mid-1990s and are now young adults have among the lowest delinquency rates of all young people. 
  
• SOURCE:http://immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/research/the_criminalization_of_immigration_in_the_united_states.pdf
  

In my years as a public defender, I experienced more than once a judge or court commissioner threaten to hold me in contempt for being late to court or due to some other action on my part. Thankfully I had wonderful attorney supervisors like Neil McGinn or Lewis Epps who smoothed things over. However, just in case, I did prepare the following outline. Given the current contempt threats by judges to attorneys for eye-rolling or insisting the presumption of innocence be given a client, they might wish to review the following outline.
 
A.        THE THREAT OF CONTEMPT
 
`When the judge threatens to hold you (or your client) in contempt, either because of a prior action or conditionally in the event that an offending action is repeated,
 
1.   Express regret that the court believes your action may be contemptuous, and state that you had no intention to embarrass or obstruct the court.
 
2.   The contempt power of a court is to be used sparingly and not in a arbitrary, capricious or oppressive manner.  In re Adam's Rib,  39 Wis. 2d 741, 746(1967).
 
3.   There are two types of contempt:  remedial or punitive.  Sec. 785.02.  Remedial contempt is a non summary procedure which requires due process.  Sec. 785.03(1).  Summary contempt requires no special due process considerations and is therefore expressly limited to" contempt of court in the actual presence of the court."  Sec. 785.03(2).
                        a.  An attorney"s failure to attend court at a scheduled time  does not occur in the presence of the court so that the non summary provisions and due process applies.  Gower v. Marinette County Cir. Court, 154 Wis. 2d 1, 452 N.W. 2d 355 (1990).
                                    b. In the Matter of Sanctions in State v. Willie Rodgers: Scott F. Anderson, v. Circuit Court for Milwaukee County, The Honorable Robert Crawford, Presiding, 219 Wis. 2d 1, 578 N.W.2d 633(1998) the court held that: (1) a circuit court's interest in creating a particular courtroom culture did not outweigh the need for fairness or the need for the circuit court to make a record when imposing sanctions for an attorney's tardiness; (2) a circuit court's failure to delineate the factors that influenced its decision constituted an erroneous exercise of its discretion; (3) the record did not demonstrate that the circuit court examined the relevant facts, applied a proper standard of law, or used a demonstrated rational process to reach a conclusion that a reasonable trial judge would reach; and (4) because the circuit court did not articulate its reasoning on the record, the court was unable to conclude that the sanction was just.  The Court held that “A court should use caution in imposing sanctions against attorneys. Mistakes by attorneys can often be corrected without sanctions if they are isolated mistakes resulting from inexperience, inadvertence or misunderstanding. A judge should utilize opportunities to criticize and correct unprofessional conduct of attorneys and counselors, brought to his or her attention. Furthermore, circuit courts should tailor sanctions to the severity of the misconduct. . . . . For a reviewing court to determine whether the sanctions imposed in a particular case are just, a circuit court must make a record of the reasons for imposing sanctions in that case. To make a record, the circuit court should give the attorney an opportunity to explain his or her tardiness. The record must address the disruptive impact on the court's calendar resulting from the attorney's late arrival, the reasonableness of the attorney's explanation and the severity of the sanction to be imposed.
 
4.   Should it appear that the judge wishes to proceed to contempt proceeding, request adjournment of the proceeding to protect your due process right to appointment of counsel.  Sec. 977.05(4)(k).
 
5.   Court commissioners, municipal courts and administrative agencies DO NOT have contempt powers but must instead petition a circuit court to hold someone in contempt.  Sec. 785.06; State ex rel. Stedman v. Rohner, 149 Wis. 2d 146, 438 N.W. 2d 585 (1989).
 
6.   Unless the context make the proposition obvious, ask precisely what action has provoked the court, why the court believes your acts to be improper.  MAKE SURE THIS IS ALL ACCURATELY REFLECTED ON THE RECORD AND OBTAIN A TRANSCRIPT.  See, O'Leary v. Allphin, 64 Ill. 2d 500,514 (1976).
 
      a. If it pertains to the facts of your case, explain that the contempt order unreasonably restricts your advocacy because: 
                        • it deprives your client of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel and Sixth Amendment right to choice of counsel( which is limited)
                        • it deprives your client of 5th & 14th amendment due process rights by unreasonably restricting his right  to be heard, by burdening the client with unclear legal requirements, by forbidding vigorous advocacy which the law mandates
                        • violates privilege against self-incrimination
                        • it infringes upon your or your client's constitutional right of freedom of expression and  association
                        • improperly compels disclosure of work product or mental theory/ impressions of the case
 
7.   Respectfully challenge any inaccurate factual statement made by the court, and any erroneous conclusions of law.
 
- BUT -
 
                        Be careful not to utter any factual statements or concessions which arguably might furnish an adequate factual basis for summary contempt;
 
- AND -
 
            Do not be afraid to refuse to answer any self-incriminating questions.
 
 
8.   Prepare in advance the documents required to assure presentation of an expeditious motion for bail on appeal.
 
      Take steps to assure the availability of a lawyer to assist if an emergency should arise.
 
 
B.        ON BEING HELD IN CONTEMPT
 
                        If the judge announces his present intention to hold you in contempt, and if your sense of the situation indicates that an apology would be inappropriate or ineffective,
 
1.   Move for precise specification of the charges.
 
2.   Move to withdraw from present case since you cannot represent client under such restrictive conditions.
 
3.   If contempt order comes during trial, move for mistrial on above stated grounds.
 
4.   Request time to retain counsel and to answer the charges.
 
5.   Request that the matter be heard before a different judge, asserting, so far as applicable, that.
(a)  The judge has become personally embroiled in the case to the extent that he can no longer proceed with the required objectivity.
 
(b)  You will seek to prove in your defense that the allegedly contemptuous conduct was responsive to provocations on the part of the judge.
 
6.   Do not hesitate to challenge an erroneous factual assertions made by the judge.  Failure to do so at this time may result in effective loss of the right to challenge his assertions at a later time.  If the factual setting is complex, state clearly that your present exceptions to the judge's statement are not necessarily your only ones, and that you need additional time to consider his statement.
 
7.   Note specifically every element of the supposed contempt which even arguably falls outside the judge's personal and official knowledge.  Object to summary proceedings on the ground that the judge does not possess the requisite first-hand information.
 
(a)  You have, and should never hesitate to exercise a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination which prevents the judge from compelling the factual disclosures from you.  On the other hand, any information which you provide could equip the judge with the requisite personal knowledge which empowers him to take summary action.
 
(b)  If any witness is called, or any inquiry is made by the judge, insist upon your right to notice and upon an opportunity to retain and consult with counsel.  Remember than any inquiry by the judge is an effective negation of the possession by him of the personal judicial knowledge which is an indispensable predicate to summary contempt proceedings.
 
 
 
C.        ON ENTRY OF THE FORMAL JUDGMENT OF CONTEMPT
 
                        If an order is entered which actually holds you in contempt and imposes punishment:
 
1.   Announce your intention to appeal, and move for bail pending appeal.
 
2.   If the motion is denied, file your notice of appeal with the clerk in the courtroom and renew your motion.  (If assistance is available, have the notice of appeal filed in the clerk's office and get a stamped copy for future use.)
 
3.   If bail is again denied, immediately prepare the best record available, authenticating the documents by affidavit, rather than clerk's certificate in order to avoid delay, and file the documents with the motion for bail in the appellate court.
 
D.        WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS IF FOUND IN CONTEMPT?
 
In Share Corp. v. Pro-Specialists, Inc., 107 Wis. 2d 318, 320 N.W. 2d 24 (Ct. App. 1982), the court of appeals held that a non summary criminal contempt proceeding is not a criminal action subject to the provisions of Ch. 973, Wis. Stats.  The court in Share Corp went on to delineate the law in contempt of court in Wisconsin, beginning at 107 Wis. 2d 323.
 
There are two forms of contempt of court - civil and criminal.  Civil contempt is remedial and coercive.  It generally involves the enforcement of a private right through fines or imprisonment which can be purged by compliance with the order that led to the contempt.  Criminal contempt, on the other hand, involves punishment for past actions that is determinate and not purgeable. Its purpose is to vindicate the authority and dignity of the court.
 
All courts of record have the inherent power to punish for criminal contempt those who willfully and intentionally disobey their lawful orders.  However, that power is subject to reasonable legislation regulation.  Section 757.04, Stats., outlines the procedure to be followed in criminal contempts.  Unless the conduct which is thought to be contempt is committed within the presence of the court, the non summary procedure provisions of sec. 757.04 (2) are applicable.  A non summary criminal contempt must be prosecuted on notice and verified petition by the district attorney, attorney general or a specially appointed attorney.  The defendant is entitled to a reasonable time to prepare the defense, the right to bail, the substitution of a judge, and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  The defendant is also entitled to a right against self-incrimination, the right to call witnesses, and the right to a jury trial if the sentence is for more than six months.
 
Section 757.06, Stats. defines the available sanctions for criminal contempt.  Under sec. 757.06 (2), punishment for a non summary criminal contempt "in no case may exceed" a $5,000 fine and/or imprisonment for one year.  Section 757.06 (3) specifically provides that "[f]ines collected... may not be applied for the benefit of any party in a civil proceeding."
 
Costs are penal in nature.  We conclude that the language of sec. 757.06, Stats., prohibits the imposition of any penalty, including the assessment of costs, over and above the fines and imprisonment for non summary criminal contempt.
 
NOTE:            The contempt sections of ch. 757, Wis. Stats., noted in the Share Corp. decision have been renumbered and are currently found at ch. 785, Wis. Stats.
 
References:
 
            Holt v. Virginia, 381 U.S. 131 (1965), affirming counsel's right and duty to make any motion reasonably necessary to advance a client's cause (in this case, motions to disqualify trial judge and for change of venue).  Remember, criminal defense counsel "is not a potted plant."
 
            Cammer v. United States, 350 U.S. 399 (1956), held that defense attorney could not be found in contempt for conducting mail survey of federal grand jurors as to their bias against communist defendants.
 
            Maness v. Meyers, 419 U.S. 449 (1975), held than an attorney could not be held in contempt for advising his client not to turn over potentially incriminating evidence requested by subpoena.
 
            Chap. 785, Wis. Stats. and Annotations
 
            Matter of Contempt in State v. Kruse,---Wis. 2d ---, 533 N.W. 2d 819 (1995) reversing, 186 Wis. 2d 323
 
            Gower v. Marinette County Circuit Court, 154 Wis. 2d 1(1990)
 
            Lemmons v. Racine County Circ. Court, 148 Wis. 2d 740 (Ct.App. 1989)
 
            Share Corp. v. Pro-Specialist, Inc., 107 Wis. 2d 575 (Ct. App. 1986)
 
            State v. Dickson, 53 Wis. 2d 532(1972)
 
            Tess-Mattner, "Civil and Criminal Contempt in Wisconsin,"  66 Marquette Law Review 369 (1983).
           
            Boer, Note- "Due Process- Power of Legislature to Punish For Contempt"  1973 Wis. Law Review 268
 
            Dobbs, "Contempt of Court:  A Survey,"  56 Cornell L. Rev. 183 (1971).
 
Annotations:   14 L. Ed. 2d 934, 12 A.L.R. 2d 1059, and general ALR Index to Annotations under "Contempt"

The mind is a curious instrument.  It is by the workings of our mind that we assign things value or certainty.  For instance, we all know that 2+2=4, right?  René Descartes the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who has been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy might disagree with you.  In his work entitled Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes explains that realm of pure ideas considers that self-evident idea such as two plus two equals four may, in fact, have no reality outside the mind. According to the First Meditation (1641), the standard of truth is self-evidence of clear and distinct ideas. However, Descartes questions the correspondence of these ideas to reality.  This is illustrated by Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta (1834) which contains the following passage:

    Thus, you will never find in all nature two identical objects; in the natural order, therefore, two and two can never make four, for, to attain that result, we must combine units that are exactly alike, and you know that it is impossible to find two leaves alike on the same tree, or two identical individuals in the same species of tree.
    That axiom of your numeration, false in visible nature, is false likewise in the invisible universe of your abstractions, where the same variety is found in your ideas, which are the objects of the visible world extended by their interrelations; indeed, the differences are more striking there than elsewhere.

How a government can play with numbers to have them mean whatever they need at the moment is clearly illustrated in George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.  In the novel, the equation 2+2 =5 is used as an example of an obviously false dogma that one may be required to believe, similar to other obviously false slogans promoted by the government in the novel.  Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith, uses the phrase to wonder if the State might declare "two plus two equals five" as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes it, that makes it true. The Inner Party interrogator of thought-criminals, O'Brien, says of the mathematically false statement that control over physical reality is unimportant; so long as one controls one's own perceptions to what the Party wills, then any corporeal act is possible, in accordance with the principles of doublethink ("Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once").

The point of this mental exercise is to show that numbers are not the absolute truths we believe them to be.  All too often, numbers used in the real world are but window dressing to some moral or social conclusion we have already drawn.

Take for instance Florida Volusia County Sheriff Bob Vogel who denied that race played any role in his deputies' decisions on whom to stop, suggesting instead that whites are simply less likely than African‑Americans or Hispanics to be transporting drug money.  See, Steve Berry & Jeff Brazil, “Blacks, Hispanics Big Losers in Cash Seizures: A Review of Volusia Sheriff's Records Shows that Minorities are the Targets in 90 Percent of Cash Seizures Without Arrests, Orlando Sentinel, June 15, 1992, at A1.

Police Chief Flynn commits the Milwaukee Police Department to an unconscious bias when doing stop and frisks.  "People that live in disadvantaged communities plagued by crime expect the cops to do something about it. And what we do is intervene. We stop cars. We stop individuals. We stop suspects and we attempt to lower the amounts of violence," Flynn said  Racial data of Milwaukee police stops released; Department continues to collect data despite overturned law (WISN May 10, 2012).  In fact, Police Chief Flynn has gone on record to encourage his police officers[1] to stop innocent people to maintain law and order under his “targeted crime-fighting approach.”  Police Chief Flynn has said: “Yes, of course we are going to stop lots of innocent people.”

Much like Vogel, officers who are accused of disproportionately targeting African‑Americans or other minorities typically defend their conduct by citing statistics that show higher rates of crime and arrests among minorities. See, “Developments in the Law‑‑Race and the Criminal Process, Racial Discrimination on the Beat: Extending the Racial Critique to Police Conduct,” 101 HARV. L. REV. 1494, 1496 (1988) ("[P]olice defend the use of race as a basis for forming suspicion precisely because of racially disparate arrest patterns: because members of racial minorities commit more crimes, police argue, it is not invidious discrimination to treat minorities differently.").
The questionable tendency to seek justification in disproportionate arrest statistics has had the unfortunate effect of perpetuating a fallacy, generating more unbalanced arrest patterns that consequently provide a basis for continued selective enforcement.  101 HARV. L. REV. at 1508-09.  This creates a “separate but equal” criminal code- one for blacks and one for whites.  Thus a Presidential Council recently concluded:

Discriminatory behavior on the part of police and elsewhere in the criminal justice system may contribute to blacks’ high representation in arrests, convictions, and prison admissions. Changing America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being by Race and Hispanic Origin (Council of Economic Advisors For the President’s Initiative on Race, September, 1998) 57

The problem of the self-fulfilling prophecy and profiling was addressed by the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey.  Attorney General Peter Verniero, Interim Report of the State Police Review Team Regarding Allegations of Racial Profiling, (April 20, 1999)(Verniero Report).  After first explaining that racial profiling is a national problem, the report demonstrated the tautological nature of using proactive arrest numbers:

[S]ome law enforcement executives have argued that it is appropriate for police officers on patrol to rely upon racial characteristics provided that objective crime trend analysis validates the use of these characteristics as risk factors in predicting and responding to criminal activity…Many of the facts that are relied upon to support the relevance of race and ethnicity in crime trend analysis, however, only demonstrate the flawed logic of racial profiling, which largely reflects a priori stereotypes that minority citizens are more likely than whites to be engaged in certain forms of criminal activity.  This form of scientific analysis, in other words, is hardly objective… some of the numbers they rely upon are self-selected and thus inherently misleading.  Verniero Report at 65, 66.
The Verniero report proceeds to explain that the fact that a disproportionate percentage of drug arrests are minorities does not mean that any particular minority citizen is more likely than a non-minority citizen to be committing a drug offense. Verniero Report at 67-70.  The report than states:

To the extent that [] police and other law enforcement agencies arrest minority motorists more frequently based on stereotypes, these events, in turn, generate statistics that confirm higher crime rates among minorities, which in turn, reinforces the underpinnings of the very stereotypes that gave rise to the initial stops.  In short, police officers may be subjecting minority citizens to heightened scrutiny and more probing investigative tactics that lead to more arrests that are then used to justify those same tactics.  This insidious cycle has served to create an ever-widing gap in the perception of fairness that persons of color and whites have about law enforcement and the criminal justice system…[U]sing profiles that rely on racial or ethnic stereotypes is no better, and in many respects is far worse, than allowing individual officers to rely on inchoate and unparticularized suspicions or hunches. Verniero Report at 70-72.

Ah hah! You may say.  How do we know if these disproportionate numbers are legitimate because of African American crime rates or an illegitimate product of discrimination in the criminal justice system.  To make that distinction one must compare the numbers of Black Americans in prison with the number of Black Americans who commit crime.  If Black Americans are in prison in higher proportion to their crime rate, they are victims of discrimination in the criminal justice system.

The National Criminal Justice Commission made this comparison.  After two years of study and research by a diverse panel of experts, the Commission concluded:

Relative to population size, about five times as many African-Americans as whites get arrested for the serious index crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.  About three times as many African-Americans as whites get arrested for less serious crimes, which make up the bulk of arrests and currently flood the criminal justice system.  If after arrest there were no racial bias in the criminal justice system, the racial makeup of the prison population should at least roughly reflect the racial disparity in arrest rates – if three times as many African-Americans get arrested for less serious crimes, then there should be roughly three times as many African-Americans per capita in prison for those crimes.  But the racial difference among African-Americans and whites in prison is overwhelmingly wider than arrest rates suggest it should be absent racial bias.  There are seven African-American to each white in prison…Most studies reveal what most police officers will casually admit: that race is used as a factor when the police decide to follow, detain, search, or arrest…To justify the use of race in forming this suspicion, these officers might point to racial disparities in arrest patterns: if minorities get arrested more often, they argue, then minorities must be committing more crime.  This is a self-fulfilling statistical prophecy: racial stereotypes influence police to arrest minorities, thereby creating the arrest statistics needed to justify the racial stereotype.  Steven R. Donziger, Ed., The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission (Harper Perennial 1996) 107-09.  Emphasis original.

Clearly, all arrest statistics do is reinforce sterotypes and agendas already in place by policy-makers.  They do nothing more than prove that 2+2 can equal 5.


[1] The old adage “So the station…so the street” describes how the values demonstrated inside the organization have a powerful influence on police behavior in the community.  The way police leaders exercise their power inside the organization signals to officers how they are expected to use their power on the street.  So if the Milwaukee Police Chief makes a statement that lots of innocent people are going to be stopped in Milwaukee, individual officers will stop lots of innocent people in Milwaukee.  Rahr, Sue and Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals. New Perspectives in Policing Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2015. NCJ 248654.  Both Ms. Rahr, former King County Sheriff, Seattle, Washington, and Police Chief Flynn were members of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety who sponsored this paper.

The source of the Big Lie technique is this passage, taken from Chapter 10 of James Murphy's translation of Mein Kampf:

    But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.   

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.   

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.    — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1], Project Gutenberg of Australia - Mein Kampf tr. James Murphy. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008.

Later, Joseph Goebbels put forth a slightly different theory which has come to be more commonly associated with the expression "big lie". Goebbels wrote the following paragraph in an article dated 12 January 1941, 16 years after Hitler's first use of the phrase. The article, titled Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik (English: "From Churchill's Lie Factory") was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel:The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

In a remarkable insight of how Hitler used the big lie, the United States Office of Strategic Services prepared a report entitled, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler His Life and Legend” which said:His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.  Hitler was able to implement the big lie because he had “ a matchless instinct for taking advantage of every breeze to raise a political whirlwind. No official scandal was so petty that he could not magnify it into high treason; he could ferret out the most deviously [unreadable] corruption in high places and plaster the town with the bad news."  Id.  Hitler had the ability to “repudiate his own conscience in arriving at political decisions has eliminated the force which usually checks and complicates the forward-going thoughts and resolutions of most socially responsible statesmen.”  Id.  Moreover Hitler had the ability to “persuade others to repudiate their individual consciences.”  Id.

Today, it is an unfortunate truth that the practice of the big lie is used today by President Trump and his supporters and seen in media.  See, Did Fake News On Facebook Help Elect Trump? Here's What We Know; Social media and fake news in the 2016 election.  Simply put, Trump lies continuously and with a second thought.  All false statements involving Donald Trump.  The number of these types of lies by Trump vastly exceeds the lies of previous presidents. Glen Kessler of the Washington Post compiled a list of more than 2000 misleading or false statements in Trump’s first 355 days in office.  Leonhardt, et al., of the New York Times, using a much more conservative definition of false statements, compiled 103 separate untruths during Trump’s first ten months in office. These lists often include flip-flops, self-contradictions, unwarranted credit taking, and exaggerations.That is half the question.  The other, perhaps more important question, is why do people believe the big lie?

Scholars have known for decades that people tend to search for and believe information that confirms what they already think is true. The new elements are social media and the global networks of friends who use it. People let their guard down on online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where friends, family members, and coworkers share photos, gossip, and a wide variety of other information. That’s one reason why people may fall for false news, as Distinguished Professor of Communication & Co-Director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University S. Shyam Sundar, explains in “Why we believe fake news,” The Conversation. Another reason: People are less skeptical of information they encounter on platforms they have personalized — through friend requests and “liked” pages, for instance — to reflect their interests and identity.  Sundar characterizes his research findings in this way: “We discovered that participants who had customized their news portal were less likely to scrutinize the fake news and more likely to believe it.”

A growing body of research also indicates that repeated exposure to false statements can lead people to believe those falsehoods. An experimental study, led by Vanderbilt University assistant professor of psychology Lisa Fazio, showed that people sometimes are more likely to believe repeated untrue facts than even their own knowledge about a topic. For example, even after study participants had answered correctly that the short pleated skirt worn by Scots is called a kilt, their chances of believing the false statement “A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots” increased after they read that sentence multiple times.  In another study, subjects rated how certain they were that 60 statements were true or false.  Some statements were repeated others were not.  Repeated statements were more likely found true than statements which were not repeated. 

Similarly, a study forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General “actual fake news headlines presented as they were seen on Facebook, we show that even a single exposure increases subsequent perceptions of accuracy, both within the same session and after a week. Moreover, this “illusory truth effect” for fake news headlines occurs despite a low level of overall believability, and even when the stories are labeled as contested by fact-checkers or are inconsistent with the reader’s political ideology. These results suggest that social media platforms help to incubate belief in blatantly false news stories, and that tagging such stories as disputed is not an effective solution to this problem. Interestingly, however, we also find that prior exposure does not impact entirely implausible statements (e.g., “The Earth is a perfect square”). These observations indicate that although extreme implausibility is a boundary condition of the illusory truth effect, only a small degree of potential plausibility is sufficient for repetition to increase perceived accuracy. As a consequence, the scope and impact of repetition on beliefs is greater than previously assumed.”

Perhaps what is scariest is what happens when people are confronted with the true information to contradict the lie.  In their well-cited 2010 study, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” they found that people sometimes hold more firmly to false beliefs when confronted with factual information. For example, when political conservatives were presented with correct information about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they were even more likely to believe Iraq had those weapons.  As the study concludes: corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. Corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.