‘The Court’s Decision Fails To Safeguard The Promise Of Religious Liberty’: Any Questions?

By Five Dollar Feminist as originally published over at Wonkette and reposted here with permission

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Sorry, but this is not a Happy Nice Times post. We lost the Muslim Travel Ban case, but more importantly the Supreme Court is telling us loud and clear that it intends to play along with the charade that Donald Trump is a normal president who follows the law. That he can continue to burn down the executive branch and engage in rampant corruption, and the court will say, “Well, he says he did it for legitimate reason, so IT’S COOL.”

Could he shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose John Roberts? PROBABLY.

Not that Justice Roberts likes all this racist demagoguing. Perish the thought!

Yet it cannot be denied that the Federal Government and the Presidents who have carried its laws into effect have–from the Nation’s earliest days– performed unevenly in living up to those inspiring words.

Plaintiffs argue that this President’s words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition. But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.

And Anthony Kennedy is a sweet old grandpa who shakes his head sadly to see the president behave so unwisely. But he just can’t do anything about it. His hands are tied!

There are numerous instances in which the statements and actions of Government officials are not subject to judicial scrutiny or intervention. That does not mean those officials are free to disregard the Constitution and the rights it proclaims and protects. The oath that all officials take to adhere to the Constitution is not confined to those spheres in which the Judiciary can correct or even comment upon what those officials say or do. Indeed, the very fact that an official may have broad discretion, discretion free from judicial scrutiny, makes it all the more imperative for him or her to adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise.

 

So the fact that Trump called explicitly for a Muslim ban; that ten minutes after getting sworn in he signed an Executive Order slamming a wall down around the country to exclude Muslims who live in countries unlucky enough to lack a Trump Hotel; that he telegraphed his intent with references to “political correctness” and “we all know what that means”; that he calls other countries shitholes — all of that is irrelevant. Eventually Trump got the Defense and State Departments to cook up some post facto mumbo jumbo about Yemen’s government failing to comply with visa requirements, and that was good enough for the Court.

The Proclamation placed entry restrictions on the nationals of eight foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information about their nationals the President deemed inadequate. Foreign states were selected for inclusion based on a review undertaken pursuant to one of the President’s earlier Executive Orders. As part of that review, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in consultation with the State Department and intelligence agencies, developed an information and risk assessment “baseline.” DHS then collected and evaluated data for all foreign governments, identifying those having deficient information-sharing practices and presenting national security concerns, as well as other countries “at risk” of failing to meet the baseline.

Pay no attention to the Twitter diarrhea behind the curtain! Disregard all racist rants. Donald Trump will feed used toilet paper to the State Department, and they will launder it into the finest long-staple cotton.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871899511525961728

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/908645126146265090

Justice Sotomayor penned a valiant dissent, pointing out that Trump made no bones about his intent to keep Muslims out of the country.

The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.

But conservatives do not care. If they have to pretend that demented, orange POS is a real president to get their tax cuts through and wage war on the poor, the brown, the other, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

So please, spare us discussions of civility. Harry Reid is a hell of a guy, but he upheld the filibuster rule out of respect for civility. Mitch McConnell promptly took a shit on decades of Senate norms, all while decrying Democrats for partisanship and bad faith. And now we’re facing decades of 5-4 decisions gutting every liberal value we all hold dear. ENOUGH PLAYING NICE.

Vote this November like your life depends on it. Because it does.

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7 thoughts on “‘The Court’s Decision Fails To Safeguard The Promise Of Religious Liberty’: Any Questions?

  1. Yeah, I have a question. What makes you think that we weren’t voting like our lives depended on it in previous elections?

  2. As a percentage of eligible voters:
    – Trump received 27.20% (62,980,160) of all votes
    – Clinton received 28.43% (65,845,063) of all votes
    – “Did Not Vote” received 44.37% (102,731,399) of all votes

    “Did Not Vote” is comprised of the dispossessed, the apathetic, the apolitical, the poor, the lumpenproletariat, the PEOPLE.

    Talk to THEM.

    1. “Did Not Vote” is also includes those who did not vote in “November [2016] like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

      Estimates show more than 58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls during the 2016 election.

      That sucks.

    2. I think that Did Not Vote tally is because the majority of America assumed that the most arrogant shameful discredited ignorant disrespected mongrel would never win — seriously? Never. To be the representative of the United States of America? After all the crap we saw and heard, video evidence included so there was no doubts of truths. Live and in person at his campaign podium night after night, on full display for all to witness, a sociably unacceptable and disrespectful speaker; literally a joke of a candidate for America’s highest office – and still 62k thought he was the right choice? I absolutely do not understand how those people have the ability to tie their own shoes.

      As I have said before – right here on this blog – I voted – for the lesser of two evils. She did not win the electoral college vote.

      We need far better candidates and maybe no electoral college. We also need to clean out the slackers sitting on their ass in Congress.

  3. Thomas and Kennedy, who knows a thing or two about putting out political hacked opinions, are what’s left of the SCOTUS political hack team that gave us Bush v Gore, and thereby the clown: Bush 43.

    If you have the stomach to read that opinion*, as I did on the evening it was rendered (12.12.2000) and many times since, you get to know what it looks and smells like when political hackery substitutes for judicial analysis. Well, if you read this hack-piece of an opinion handed down today by the Chief, you can smell the rancid odor of politics substituting for judicial analysis.

    The one thing about the law, legal analysis and the truth. It cannot be hidden behind fancy words, longer sentences, bigger quotes, unsubstantiated conclusions, and illusory arguments.

    In the end what wins in the political hack opinion is the number 1: 5-4=1.

    For millions of those who don’t come out and vote, their lives do end up on the line because men like Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito and Scalia are appointed to the Court. They spend an inordinate amount of their time on the bench narrowing and whittling away the fundamental rights of Americans in favor of business, government and the wealthy.

    Don’t be fooled if every once in a while Roberts or Kennedy end up on the proper side of an opinion. There’s no there there. You’ll never know the true reason, e.g., what vote he got in return on another case.

    *https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/531/98/case.html

  4. If you don’t vote these ass-hats out you are going to be forsaken by a republican party that will let you die if you get sick, bankrupt you if you get sick, charge you for those mindless tax cuts (stealing) for their cash cow friends and king makers. If you don’t have a six,seven, eight, nine or even ten figure income they will squash you like a bug except, at the voting booth. That is their biggest fear, so forget about the god, gay, gun distractions because you can give our republic (which is you) a chance to be better. Vote, folks, vote.

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