But I beg to differ with Mr. Hinderaker; it’s not a “liberal” coup, but a leftist one.
[Update a few minutes later]
Could someone inform the federal judiciary that Jihadis are Muslims?
Like Charles Cooke, I don’t agree with the policy, but this ruling was lawless.
I dislike this EO as a matter of policy. I’m also outraged by this decision, and think Trump is absolutely right on the legal question.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) March 16, 2017
[Update a couple minutes later]
The courts in Hawaii and the 9th circuit have essentially stripped the president of his powers. It will take SCOTUS to restore. And funny how these people never mind the tyrannical and actually lawless behavior of Barack Obama.
[Update a while later]
Grandstanding judicial supremacy must end. Basically, the ruling was based on mind reading, and feelings.
A coup? Not seeing it. Deciding the constitutionality of executive branch actions is one of the important things that federal courts do. Were all those unanimous court decisions on the Obama administration’s watch, coups as well?
And if this really is a constitutional action, the administration will have better luck at the Supreme Court, particularly once a ninth justice is instated.
Deciding the constitutionality is indeed important. This particular decision is outrageous. I would venture to guess that you haven’t read the order, nor the controlling law giving the Executive this authority, nor the court’s ruling here. and you are also willfully ignoring similar executive orders by perhaps the previous five administrations.
This was not the place to exert judicial oversight. It is exactly this kind of action that stirred up enough people to vote Trump into office.
This is a coup.
The Executive Order is a tool of diplomacy as vested by an Act of Congress to the Executive under the Constitutional Separation of Powers.
Under the Westphalian System, granting citizens of one country passage to another country is not a fundamental human right, it is a courtesy one country extends to another country that is keeping its Sierra-Hotel-India-Tango together.
The countries on that list had not been doing that. The Executive Order, even when illegally abrogated by those judges, has had that effect in inspiring a new-found respect for the benefit of allowing entry into the United States by persons who had been until now encouraged by their leaders to chant “Death to America.”
Even the leaders of Pakistan have experience a revival of their own version of earnest religious belief in response to the possibility that they could be embargoed next.
The Order is a tool of diplomacy and the judges are mere tools. The judges should be immediately arrested — the charge being aiding and abetting belligerent foreign powers.
Hinderaker is describing much more than just this judicial action.
And the judge basically admitted that if it were a different president he’d have ruled differently. That is lawless.
There was an op-ed going around from some lefty law professor back when Gorsuch was nominated. Paraphrasing here but his actual words were this blunt, “If we can’t get a justice who will make rulings based on progressive ideology, we should settle for one who will rule by the law.”
This sums up leftist judicial and legal philosophy, subvert the rule of law while making the other side live by the letter of the law. They want a two tiered system where Democrats are above the law and Republicans are held to the letter, no exceptions.
The judicial branch of the “resistance” is making decisions outside of the rule of law, just like they do in other areas. But here, they are striking at the legitimacy of the peaceful transition of power and the very fabric of our republic.
The foundations of our society rely on a populace that acts in good faith and people with authority acting morally, ethically, and with restraint. There are so many things that are not explicitly illegal but that no ethical person would do.
The Democrat party is operating unmoored from morality, reason, and ethics, so they show no restraint. Their corruption of the “nonpartisan” government is in an effort to destroy our country and they might just get what they have been working for.
We need to hold democrats to the law, Good and Hard.
I’m wondering how many congress critters of that political persuasion could be properly brought up on felony charges on evidence we have in hand.
Rand, my position has nothing to do with a certain class of terrorist confessing to any one religion. It has to do with the Constitution vesting foreign policy in the Executive.
An Act of Congress gave the President broad power to permit or embargo trade in materials deemed to have defense purposes, and President Roosevelt used that Act to slap an embargo on steel and oil exports to the Empire of Japan. This action provoked the Japanese leadership into the attacks on Philippines and Pearl Harbor.
Maybe Roosevelt’s actions were stoopid and the Pacific War with Axis Japan was unnecessary. Maybe this is WW-II revisionism, that Roosevelt needed to stand up to the depredations of the Japanese Imperial Army in Asia.
Suppose some judge issued a stay? Would Roosevelt have stood by? Would the case be allowed to go up the appellate chain.
It won’t take the SCOTUS to strike this down. Nowhere in the constitution are Circuit courts or District courts mentioned, only the Supreme court. He could fire every single judge below the level of SCOTUS if he wanted to. Or triple the number of circuits and appoint solely conservative judges. Or simply order the TSA to enforce his entirely legal order.
That would be terrible for the USA.
Actually, as law professor InstaPundit has noted, we need to greatly expand the number of federal judges. The population has increased a great deal since the time when the number of federal judges, especially in the appeals courts, was set, as has the case load. The result is long legal delays. This isn’t the same as when FDR threatened to increase the number of supreme court justices to 15 so he could pack the court, although it could serve to dilute the progressive majority on some of the more notorious cases like the 9th Circuit Court (the most overturned circuit in the country).
That is a different tact than firing all of the judges but it still wouldn’t look good.
Leftists will attempt to manipulate public perceptions to align with their narrative. That’s what they always do. That alone isn’t reason to do what is correct and necessary. To surrender preemtively because something will be made to “look bad” it to permanently admit defeat.
The lower courts were created by Congress under the authority granted in Article III (so yes, actually, they are mentioned). Unless that section of the Constitution, or the Act establishing the lower courts, grants the President the power to fire judges, he can’t do it.
Newt said congress should defund and disband the 9th circuit.
It absolutely is and has been a coup for years. Unconstitutional has been redefined to mean we win/you lose for the left.
If we don’t fight the intentional evil the unintentional doesn’t matter. We have three branches of govt. Constitutionally only one is supposed to make law. But the executive has the right and obligation to enforce immigration rules.
Trump has pushed the left into a Xanatos Gambit. There is no way for them to win on this.
The closest they can get to a win is to block the ban and hence prove they actively support importation of terrorists into America against the wishes of the President. Trump will hammer them on that for the rest of his term, and, when one of their importees launches a terrorist attack, it will be entirely their fault.
The worst thing that can happen for them would be for the Supreme Court to uphold the judge’s decision, and thereby prove that the entire Judiciary is corrupt to the core. That would give Trump all the ammunition he needs to smash it.
And the best thing for Trump will be for the Supreme Court to uphold his right to restrict immigration, at which point he can do whatever he wants. All thanks to idiot leftists virtue-signalling.
With enemies this stupid, Trump doesn’t need friends.
The closest they can get to a win is to block the ban and hence prove they actively support importation of terrorists into America against the wishes of the President.
To temporarily block the immigration moratorium. Trump’s position has been the moratorium is time sensitive and time limited. By the time it winds its way through the courts, the moratorium would already have been over but instead it will just begin activation. The “win” will be in delaying something that should have taken place immediately, which even the judge in Hawaii admits would have happened if it was any other person except for Trump.
The worst thing that can happen for them would be for the Supreme Court to uphold the judge’s decision, and thereby prove that the entire Judiciary is corrupt to the core. That would give Trump all the ammunition he needs to smash it.
That would be the worst thing for our country. We don’t need a President that is justified in smashing the judiciary. That type of behavior will live on long after Trump. So will the precedent of a judiciary that views itself outside of the law.
We are on a dangerous path here. It is one thing if the Democrat media shoots itself in the foot. It is an entirely different thing if the judiciary destroys its good faith.
What we need is a judiciary that rules on the law and not on their political feelings and biased stereotypes. Just like the media, we need a judiciary that does their job ethically and doesn’t engage in activism. When these institutions go rogue, they destroy the system and the trust that people have in it.
“We don’t need a President that is justified in smashing the judiciary.”
The Judiciary has clearly been taken over by SJWs who care nothing about actual law. That leaves you with a choice between smashing them or civil war.
Take your pick.
Neither of those choices are good. I prefer that leftist judges take their responsibility more seriously and show the restraint that ethical people have when wielding power. That is the best course of action, whether it happens or not.
That our friends to the left still can’t see that they are setting precedents that non-Democrats can use or how judges acting outside the law will cause deep societal problems is troubling.
Maybe instead of going after the judiciary, Trump could resettle the refugees in Hawaii.
“I prefer that leftist judges take their responsibility more seriously and show the restraint that ethical people have when wielding power. ”
And I want a flying unicorn.
That’s not gonna happen, either.
But, yes, sending all the refugees to Hawaii would be a reasonable short-term solution. It still won’t change the fact that the Judiciary are totally politicized.
Trump is playing the Left like a carny sideshow barker selling the rubes tickets to “See the Egress”.
So SJW’s are totally incapable of practicing “taqiyya”, that is making any kind of temporary truce with Mr. Trump to advance their agenda?
Suppose they went along with the travel ban, “OK, it is not a ban against one religion, it is only a ban with a handful of war-torn countries and only temporary” and then a terrorist attack happens anyway, they can hop up and down and say, “See, Trump doesn’t have a clue as to what he is doing.”
“Grandstanding judicial supremacy must end. ”
It will only end when there is a stiff price to pay for doing it. During the Obama Fascism the press and the administration lauded such excursions into legislation. Not only was there no price to pay – it was cheered. There were positive feedbacks for doing it.
And the more they did it, the more it became accepted practice.
Losing liberty like that is very easy. Getting it back is very hard.
There is impeachment, but that doesn’t work so long as over 1/3 of the Senate endorses the lawlessness. If we get a Constitutional Convention we might advance an amendment where the legislatures of some super-majority of the States could remove a misbehaving judge.
I dislike the cowardly way the Republicans are obsessed with “optics”: that they can’t impeach if there aren’t enough votes in the Senate for conviction.
The House should impeach anyway and send the case to the Senate for trial, whether there enough votes for conviction or not. Do this with a series of rogue judges, and if the same crew of Senators keeps voting to acquit, the public will know who supports and condones lawlessness.
Too bad Hawaii wasn’t a state that a judge in Hawaii could not have blocked Roosevelt’s ban on iron and oil shipments to Japan?
So what then? Japan does not bring America directly into the war and Imperial Japan takes over Asia? Well, I guess we wouldn’t have China to worry about and Russia and Japan would be pointing their nukes at each other?