Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: What Will Happen With Trump’s Travel Ban And Immigration EO?
Don Surber: One thing I have not done since he entered the race in 2015 is give Donald Trump any advice on what to do. I reserve my bad advice for others politicians. His track record is too good. He has me scratch my head from time to time, but eventually I see his point.
He can either press ahead with the case and make Democrats remain on the side of terrorists, or he can rewrite the executive order (which I gave read and see nothing to rewrite) and close off those seven nations. I thin the former course is the correct course to take because this is a fight worth winning. The cost is minimal. Bad headlines? He thrives off them. I really don’t see a downside.
The 9th circuit over the weekend decided to rehear the case en banc — essentially appeal the case itself. The lawyer blogs I read say this is unusual and means the judges are embarrassed and do not want to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Republicans have long wanted to break up the 9th. There you go.]
JoshuaPundit: Before I get to main course, an aperitif of truth to wash away the foul taste of some common disinformation. First, the implementation of the travel order was not ‘sloppy’ or rushed. Before signing and implementing the EO, the president sent it to the White House Office of Legal Counsel. That office exists for one purpose, to carefully vet any proposed action and advise the president as to its legality and/or any possible legal pitfalls. The president’s executive order was carefully vetted and passed with flying colors before the president signed and released it.
Second, a number of the usual suspects have said with a straight face that no terrorist attacks on Americans have ever originated from natives of the 7 countries in question. That is a deliberate, bald faced lie. And there’s a lot more where that came from. Apparently these creeps think the American people are as stupid as they think we are.
Trump’s only mistake was in thinking that his legal authority was so obvious in this matter and the national security considerations so obvious that it would be implemented forthwith, even if a flood of demonstrations ensued. He didn’t count on the judge shopping and subsequent legal challenge that were so obviously planned in advance.
It’s no accident this went down in Washington State, and that has little to do with any moral implications, all the signs and chants aside.Always follow the money. The People’s Republic of Seattle and environs has a great many corporations that depend on a continued supply of comparatively low wage H1B visa holders for companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, and Starbucks. Heaven forbid they should employ Americans and pay a decent wage! So much for these companies’ egalitarian,’liberal’ principles, hmmm? According to the language of the lawsuit that was filed, “Many of those immigrant workers are from Muslim-majority countries.”
Other institutions mentioned in the lawsuit are universities in the area who claimed that the order”caused immediate harm to Washington’s public universities, which are state agencies.”
When you do some checking, you find that foreign students are a major cash cow for Washington’s universities, because they pay full tuition. Only Washington DC, Massachusetts, New York and Delaware have a higher percentage of foreign students. Hey, who cares if Mahmoud from Iran is actually a spy, or wants to plant a bomb in an airport terminal at Sea-Tac? Gotta make a buck, especially if we can look virtuous and thwart Trump-Hitler while we’re doing it. Another source of income comes from the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to various organizations via the Refugee Resettlement program for resettling ‘refugees’ in unsuspecting communities across the heartland. There have already been a number of crimes and incidents stemming from this practice in parts of the country where this sort of thing used to be virtually unknown.
So a lot of the uproar is simply about money.
Will the Travel Ban and Immigration EO be implemented? Well, eventually, but it will probably take the Supreme Court to do it, the fact that there’s absolutely no legal basis not to. The 9th circuit has been reversed more times than any other district court, so what’s one more?
A lesson I hope The Donald takes from this is that these swine will do anything they can to slow walk and impede whatever he does, no matter what it is or how beneficial and necessary for the country it is.Those are unimportant details for the Left.
Stately McDaniel Manor:
I’ve been amused to watch the media, assorted pundits, and virtually all leftists screaming in hysterical agony over everything President Trump does, or is said-falsely-to have done, or is said-falsely-to be planning to do. I am particularly amused, however, at the talking heads that solemnly intone Mr. Trump’s immigration order, which has been abused by the 9th Circuit, commonly known as the 9th Circus for its propensity to make up the law as it goes along, is “sucking all the air out of the room.” Old Washington hands may be breathless over this single issue, but Mr. Trump-and the American people-are not.
As I’ve recently written, https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/split-the-ninth/ and apparently can’t write often enough, Mr. Trump is actually used to work. He works hard, each and every day, just like working Americans that pay taxes and keep our economy afloat. He works long hours, just like the aforementioned Americans, and he can work on more than one thing at a time. Look in the dictionary under “multitasker,” and one will find a photo of Mr. Trump, and millions upon millions of other competent, non-politician and pundit Americans.
President Trump and those that work for him are more than capable of dealing with the 9th Circus, and of simultaneously handling innumerable other tasks. This is why the federal government employees some 3 million people, so they can handle a great many tasks at once. I know they’re out of practice, and this will take some adjustment after eight years of a President who only occasionally did a bit of work, and that, grudgingly, but it’s the new normal. The new Sheriff has already arrived, shot most of the bad guys, and kissed the pretty saloon owner.
Now, after that little bit of a multitasking example, let’s continue to this week’s topic.
I have, upon occasion, found myself in agreement with Alan Dershowitz. We have agreed on the Trayvon Martin case, the Freddie Gray case, and a variety of other legal issues, and we agree on what Mr. Trump should do with this immigration executive order: simply write a new, leaner and meaner executive order addressing every issue raised by the lunatics of the 9th Circuit. Clean it up, make it absolutely unassailable by any sane jurist. Simultaneously, pursue the other executive order in the courts, or perhaps, just long enough to make it moot.
Various leftist attorney’s general will file suit against the new order, but the ultimate goal will be the Supreme Court, and the proper record must be built for that Court. It is even possible the four progressives might vote to uphold the Constitution in this case-the Constitution and federal law are that clear-though one should never count on that sort of rationality.
We must now expect unrelenting lawfare. Virtually everything Mr. Trump does will be met with lawsuits by progressives. In this case, the Constitution is crystal clear, as is federal law: the President of the United States has exclusive power-government has powers, people have rights-to regulate immigration. He can do what he did: stop immigration from any country dead in its tracks. Foreign nationals have no rights under the Constitution, and under federal law, states have no standing to sue in this matter. Federal courts have no legitimate role.
So the 9th Circuit did what it always does: it ignored the Constitution and the law and made it up.
This is a crisis foreseen by those Americans that voted for Donald Trump. The inevitability that federal courts, packed with progressives rather than honest men and women willing to honor their oaths to preserve and defend the Constitution and uphold the law, would ignore their oaths, and blatantly establish rule by federal judge, daring us to do something about it. With a progressive majority on the Supreme Court, eventually, the only means of restoring the Constitution would be violence, and no sane person wants it to come to that.
It’s time for Congress, working with Mr. Trump, to write new laws, carefully and narrowly written laws, that remove-leaving no wiggle room-the ability of the states, private parties, and others to claim standing to sue the President in matters of national security and immigration. To do otherwise is to join Democrats in national suicide.
It’s also time for Attorney General Sessions to drain the swamp that is the Department of Justice. Actually demanding its employees work on the side of America and the rule of law for a change would be novel indeed. Putting in the A-Team, or bringing in outside pros not twisted by progressive ideology, to argue the government’s cases would help too.
What’s that you say? Even if the weasels in Congress do that, the courts will just ignore the law, just as they ignore any law they don’t like now? Perhaps, but we have to start somewhere, and in the meantime, Mr. Trump will be continuing to work, each and every day, on a multitude of important issues. That’s why Democrats are slow-walking his cabinet secretaries. When they’re in office, Mr. Trump will pick up a pace that’s already leaving progressives breathless.
It can’t come soon enough, and it’s about time.
The Glittering Eye :One way or another President Trump’s executive order suspending travel from seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa will be upheld. Either the Ninth Circuit en banc will uphold it (30% confidence) or the Supreme Court will uphold it (75% confidence).
Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : Perhaps the 9th circuit’s decision will be a lesson learned and cause the Trump Administration not to be so quick to issue executive orders until every detail, legality, and consequence of such order is explored. It looked and was sloppy in its crafting and execution. President Trump should understand how everything he does is going to be scrutinized by the political left and the progressive media. He cannot make amateurish mistakes. President Trump should let this go and issue a new executive order. He also needs to push the Senate for the speedy confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch for Supreme Court justice. We need a conservative constitutionalist to replace Justice Scalia in order to advance our conservative agenda.
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