THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As Mango Mussolini works hard to make his border crisis into an actual crisis, he needs to make a good show of doing something along the border. His latest efforts continue to use the military in roles it is not trained for and which interfere with actual readiness training.

The Pentagon is preparing to approve a loosening of rules that bar troops from interacting with migrants entering the United States, expanding the military’s involvement in President Trump’s operation along the southern border.

Senior Defense Department officials have recommended that acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan approve a new request from the Department of Homeland Security to provide military lawyers, cooks and drivers to assist with handling a surge of migrants along the southern border.

The move would require authorizing waivers for more than 300 troops to a long-standing policy prohibiting military personnel from coming into contact with migrants.

The Pentagon has approved only one previous request to waive the policy since the beginning of Trump’s recent border buildup, in order to provide migrants with emergency medical care if required. There are about 2,900 active-duty and 2,000 National Guard troops along the border.

According to internal Pentagon documents obtained by The Washington Post, the requested expansion of military activity along the border would cost an estimated $21.9 million through the end of fiscal year 2019. [To come from one of the many Pentagon slush funds]

In a sign of the sensitivities surrounding a move that might be seen as putting troops in a law enforcement role, the documents note that military personnel would remain in a “segregated driver’s compartment” when driving migrants to detention facilities. Customs and Border Protection officials would provide security on those trips.

Likewise, when they are asked to distribute food to migrants in detention facilities and periodically “document the provision of care” of those detained migrants, they would be accompanied at all times by law enforcement personnel.

As part of the proposal, military attorneys meanwhile would assist with deportation hearings in New Mexico, Louisiana and New York.

All of those activities, the documents note, require Shanahan to “grant a temporary exception to the ‘no contact with migrants’ policy.’ ” The documents also note that military personnel are barred from undertaking law enforcement activities in keeping with the Posse Comitatus Act.

Another exception from the rules to please His Orangeness. The people on the ground will be careful to play by the rules but the scum at the top will be eagerly looking for more ways to go beyond the law. And every extr day it continues, every extra step they push the boundaries will get them closer to the Orange Reich.