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United News of India
28-06-2025
- Politics
- United News of India
Words added to Preamble of Constitution were 'nasoor', 'sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatana":VP
New Delhi, June 28 (UNI) Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar today described as ''Nasoor'' (festering wound) and a sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatana the words secularism and socialism added in the Preamble of the Constitution during emergency, asserting that the Preamble should have been respected rather than tweaked, altered, and decimated. ''What a travesty of justice! First, we change something which is not changeable, alterable and then change it during Emergency. Preamble, the soul of the Constitution should have been respected rather than tweaked, altered, and decimated,'' he said at the Vice-President's Enclave marking the presentation of the first copy of 'Ambedkar's Messages' compiled by D. S. Veeraiah, author and former MLC Karnataka. He regretted that a very serious work which could not be altered, had been changed ''casually, farcically and with no sense of propriety.'' Describing the Preamble of any constitution as its ''soul,'' he said Preamble of the Indian Constitution is unique. Preamble is not changeable. Preamble is not alterable. Preamble is the basis on which the constitution has grown. Preamble is the seed of the Constitution. It is Soul of the constitution but this Preamble for Bharat was changed by 42nd Constitutional Amendment act of 1976, adding words Socialist, Secular and integrity'. 'We must reflect why our temples of democracy are sacrileged? Why are our temples of democracy ravaged by disruption?' Dr. Ambedkar did painstaking work. He would have surely focused on it. The founding fathers thought it befittingly wise to give us that Preamble. No country's Preamble has undergone change — except Bharat. But devastatingly, this change was effected for Bharat at a time when people were virtually enslaved. We the people, the ultimate fountain of power — the best of them were languishing in jails. They were denied access to the judicial system…So, what a travesty of justice ! First, we change something which is not changeable, alterable — something that emanates from We the People — and then, you change it during Emergency. When We the People were bleeding — in heart, in soul — they were in darkness', he added. 'We are changing the soul of the Constitution. We are, as a matter of fact, by this flash of words, added during the darkest period of Emergency — the darkest period for the Constitution of the country. And in the process, if you deeply reflect, we are giving wings to existential challenges. These words have been added as Nasoor (festering wound). These words will create upheaval. Addition of these words in the Preamble during the Emergency signals betrayal of the mindset of the framers of the Constitution. It is nothing but belittling the civilizational wealth and knowledge of this country for thousands of years. It is sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatana', he further underlined. Describing Dr Ambedkar as a visionary and statesman, the Vice President said Dr. Ambedkar should never be seen as a politician, he asked why was he given Bharat Ratna so late? Why so late? Why posthumously? UNI RB GNK 1836
Time Out
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Watch two decades of footage in 24 episodes at Bangkok CityCity Gallery
What happens when two decades of fragmented memories, political tension and home-recorded chaos are stitched back together, frame by frame? In I a Pixel, We the People, Chulayarnnon Siriphol turns twenty years of video work into a flickering constellation of resistance, memory and quiet revolt. Spanning 24 episodes, the project is equal parts retrospective and reinvention: home footage in faded hues, VHS ghosts, government archives, handheld fictions – all reassembled into a fragmented narrative that feels both intimate and unspeakably vast. Screened at Bangkok CityCity Gallery in six weekly instalments, April 26-Jun 21 (Wednesday to Saturday, 1pm-6pm), the work is not so much an exhibition as it is an unfolding. Each week brings a new season – four episodes at a time – demanding that the viewer return, absorb, connect the fragments and confront what it means to remember. In this 24-episode sprawl, what emerges is not a single, coherent picture but a mosaic stitched from what might otherwise be discarded. Siriphol's work suggests that if even one flicker were missing, the whole structure might collapse. It's a quiet rebellion against the dominant version of events – one that says the overlooked matters. That silence isn't absence. That the footnotes might actually be the main text. But the videos are only part of the story. The exhibition itself spills over into a dense installation, where mountains of household objects – hoarded over decades – rise like ruins inside the gallery. These aren't props or stage design; they're artefacts. The space becomes something closer to an archaeological site, where memory clings not only to images but to material remains. Each object hums with its own history, blurring the line between clutter and cultural record, detritus and documentation. I a Pixel, We the People doesn't promise clarity. It's not interested in delivering resolution or revolution on demand. Instead, it insists on the long view: a pixel at a time, a story pieced together from scraps. Stay six weeks if you want the whole picture. Or don't. Either way, it leaves something behind – flickering, unfinished, still mutating.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kamala Harris Warned America Not to Back Down in Her Fiery Comeback Speech: ‘Courage Is Contagious'
You may have noticed that former Vice President Kamala Harris has been laying pretty low since the 2024 election. But on April 30, she gave a speech at the gala for Emerge America—an organization that helps Democratic women run for office—that proved she hasn't given up the fight, and she doesn't want anyone else to give up either. In one particularly memorable moment, Harris called on Americans to speak out, saying, 'courage is contagious.' 'President Trump and his administration, and their allies, are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that if they make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,' she said. 'But what they have overlooked is that fear is not the only thing that's contagious. Courage is contagious.' She added a call to action: 'Let's lock it in.' While Harris's speech was uplifting, she also didn't hold back on her criticisms of Trump or his agenda, which she said was, 'decades in the making.' Harris said, 'It's an agenda, a narrow, self-serving vision of America where they punish truth tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power, and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.' She called out the Trump administration for 'disappearing' American citizens without due process and coming after judges, as well as for the, 'greatest man-made economic crisis' in modern history. She concluded her speech, 'This country is ours. It doesn't belong to whoever is in the White House. It belong to you. It belongs to us. It belongs to We the People.' Trump hasn't responded to Kamala Harris's remarks (yet), but we can already tell you that it's made a splash on social media. Users on X wrote, 'Vice President Kamala Harris waited until his 100 days to drag him. Perfection," and, 'Former VP Kamala Harris speaks TRUTH to POWER in her first major speech since the election,' and, 'Oh, Kamala Harris is so back.' On Bluesky, users called the former VP, 'brilliant' and praised her for dropping 'truth bombs.' Clearly, America is hearing her call. Originally Appeared on Glamour
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What happens if Trump continues to defy court orders?
President Donald Trump and his allies are in the middle of a weeks-long attempt to undermine the judges overseeing an avalanche of lawsuits against them. Judges who rule against him have been cast as corrupt, impeachable or criminal, and the president is incredulous that any federal judge could strike down a command from the executive branch as unconstitutional. The administration has already repeatedly tested how far it can defy court orders, but a legal fight over the president's authority to deport immigrants under a rarely used wartime law is steering the United States towards a dangerous constitutional crossroads, according to legal experts. A timeline for those deportation flights and court orders is crucial to determine whether administration officials openly defied the judicial branch. Officials could be held in contempt of court — an impeachable offense, according to Bruce Ackerman, Sterling professor of law and political science at Yale Law School and author of We the People, a multivolume series on the constitution. Trump's 'assaults on the rule of law' could mean 'we might well once again see an impeachment,' Ackerman told The Independent. But nobody is certain what will happen next. The administration is deploying a legal theory that would effectively grant the president limitless authority across the government and, by extension, over the courts, which have long acted as a critical check on the presidency. 'The unitary executive theory is really just a way to cloak the morphing of a democratically elected president into a dictator with the appearance of legality,' writes legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance. 'If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we?' she wrote. 'We are inevitably headed, whether it's in this case or another, to a confrontation between a president who has rejected the rule of law and a judge sworn to enforce it. We are in an exceedingly dangerous moment for democracy.' Last month, former Trump administration official Ty Cobb warned The Independent that it's not a matter of whether the courts will do their job to reign in abuse under the administration, but whether they will have any effect on Trump. 'Unless and until the Supreme Court intervenes, because that's the only court he seems to listen to,' Cobb told The Independent. 'And people should not expect that to slow down,' he said. 'If anything, they should expect the next two years to be a frantic assault on the Constitution.' Judges can issue criminal or civil contempt orders against relevant administration officials for violating court orders, according to Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School. 'Whether this will work against an administration truly determined to resist to the max, is a difficult question,' Somin told The Independent. 'I'd be lying if I said I know for sure how such a confrontation would end.' Less than a month into the administration, a federal judge accused the government of continuing to 'improperly freeze federal funds' and refusing to 'resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds' despite a 'clear and unambiguous' order to do so. Another federal judge has had to order administration officials to lift a freeze on USAID funding at least three times after the administration seemingly ignored them. And after the administration was ordered to restore funding to refugee resettlement groups, officials abruptly canceled their contracts altogether. Other judges have accused officials with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency of trying to evade scrutiny by failing to answer who, exactly, is running it. But the administration has turned to appeals courts and, in at least three cases, the Supreme Court, with Trump at one point saying his administration will 'always' abide by court rulings as he challenges threats to his agenda. The Trump administration is now suggesting it has broad authority under Article II of the Constitution, which covers the executive branch. In 2019, he claimed it gave him 'the right to do whatever I want.' Administration officials argue that Article II protects Trump's actions — like sending immigrants to another country — against any court orders. 'These inherent Article II powers, especially when exercised outside the United States, are not subject to judicial review or intervention,' Department of Justice attorneys wrote March 17. Three days earlier, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the fourth time in U.S. history to deport Venezuelans 'who are members' of Tren de Agua and 'are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.' The law was most recently invoked to forcibly relocate and detain Japanese Americans, including U.S. citizens, during the Second World War. 'This is war in many respects,' Trump said on Air Force One March 16. 'It's more dangerous than war because, you know, in war, they have uniforms.' It's a 'flagrantly illegal' attempt 'to dispense with due process,' according to Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the liberty and national security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. 'Tren de Aragua is a dangerous Venezuelan criminal gang, but immigration law already gives the president ample authority to deport Tren de Aragua members who inflict harm on our communities,' she said. Instead, the president 'has falsely proclaimed an invasion and predatory incursion to use a law written for wartime for peacetime immigration enforcement,' according to Ebright. 'The courts should shut this down,' she said. 'If the courts allow it to stand, this move could pave the way for abuses against any group of immigrants the president decides to target — not just Venezuelans — even if they are lawfully present in the U.S. and have no criminal history.' On March 15, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order to block removals under the Alien Enemies Act. Barack Obama-appointed District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., scheduled a brief hearing at 5 p.m. that same day, then adjourned 20 minutes later to allow the administration to determine whether flights carrying anyone under the Alien Enemies Act are underway. The parties were due back in court at 6 p.m. Then, at 5:26 p.m., one of two flights chartered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement departed Texas for Honduras, according to flight records reviewed by The Washington Post. Another flight followed at 5:45 p.m. bound for El Salvador. Roughly one hour later, the judge — verbally — blocked Trump's application of the Alien Enemies Act. His written order appeared on the docket at 7:26 p.m. Neither of the planes had landed in El Salvador before the judge's order. And then a third flight left Texas for El Salvador 10 minutes later. On Sunday morning, at 7:47 a.m. — more than 12 hours after the judge's order from the bench and his written ruling — Bukele responded to news of the judge's ruling with a post on social media: 'Oopsie, too late.' The message was shared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Following Judge Baosberg's order, attorney General Pam Bondi issued a press release accusing the judge of having 'supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.' On social media, Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle raged against an 'unelected federal judge who has 'hired' more executive branch employees than President Trump.' 'This is a judicial power grab. Plain and simple,' he wrote. Threats to the judge soon followed. 'The time has come,' wrote Trump ally and Article III Project founder Mike Davis. 'Tell Congress to Impeach DC Obama Judge Jeb Boasberg for Keeping Terrorists in America.' Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said he plans to file articles of impeachment against Boasberg. Moments before a hearing March 17 over questions about the deportation flights and whether administration officials ignored a court order, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to 'immediately' remove the case from Boasberg's courtroom. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and administration officials have insisted that the administration didn't 'refuse to comply' with the court's order while at the same time admonished a district judge who, she claims, 'cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.' 'This is sophistry,' according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council. 'The judge's authority bound the heads of the agency in Washington, D.C. He ordered them to turn around any planes in the air and not to deport them under the Alien Enemies Act. They refused. That's contempt of court.' 'We are not stopping,' Trump's border czar Tom Homan told Fox News. 'I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We are coming.' In court, the Trump administration has argued that questions surrounding the timing of the flights and who was on the planes are sensitive national security matters, and that Trump was no longer in the court's jurisdiction because the flights were in international waters, and that the judge's verbal order didn't carry the same weight as a written one. Leavitt claimed to reporters March 17 that 'there are actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a written order' — arguments that a Justice Department attorney made a few hours later in court. Judge Boasberg and legal experts were extremely skeptical. There are several relatively recent precedents that suggest the president is on a 'course that may well lead to his impeachment,' including states' refusal to obey the Supreme Court's order to desegregate schools in Brown v Board of Education, and Richard Nixon's refusal to comply with subpoenas for incriminating evidence in the Watergate scandal, among the impeachable offenses against him, according to Ackerman. There is also the landmark decision in 1832's Worcester v Georgia, which laid the foundation for Native American sovereignty over their territory. The court ruled that the state could not interfere with the Cherokee Nation's affairs and was entitled to federal protections. But President Andrew Jackson virtually ignored the decision, reportedly responding with the apocryphal quote: 'John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.' Jackson ultimately commenced with the forced removal of Native Americans, resulting in the deaths of thousands. 'Are Trump's lawyers going to invoke the precedent of a death march?' Ackerman told The Independent. 'Is that his precedent, or Brown v Board of Education, or is it Richard Nixon?'
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Iowa State Rep. J.D. Scholten holds rally in Sioux City
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Iowa State Representative J.D. Scholten (D) held a 'We the People' rally in Sioux City on Friday night. The rally took place at The Marquee downtown. Around 40 people were in attendance, enjoying some beverages. The rally had musicians performing, along with people speaking out about how they're feeling about what's been happening on the state and federal levels, such as potential cuts to the U.S. Department of Education and how the Iowa legislative session is going so far. Scholten said that when it comes to the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), there should be efficiency, and the federal government should try to have an audit system. However, he said that what DOGE is doing is not efficient and 'ridiculous.' 'It's not efficient to fire USDA people who are working on getting the bird flu under control and then all of a sudden, rehire them back. It's not efficient to do a lot of these things, for what, it's to give more tax breaks to the super wealthy. well, a lot of us aren't the super wealthy and a lot of us have needs and so the working class is getting screwed out of all of this. And that's what a lot of people are feeling, that frustration,' said State Rep. Scholten, (D) District 1. Morningside University hosts first 'She Grows' event One of the rally attendees, Sioux City resident Bernie Scolaro, said this is not the time to be silent about what's going on in the government and that people should stand up for themselves. 'We're watching the state and the national government take away and strip away a lot of rights for people, just most recently, with the Iowa Civil Rights Code, they took away trans(gender) rights and LGBTQ rights are in jeopardy, as women's rights. And I'm really concerned about what our government is beginning to look like,' Scolaro said Scholten will be holding two more rallies this weekend: one in Des Moines on Saturday and one in Davenport on Sunday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
