RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Trump’s immigration executive order has been a fiasco from the start, but the damage is spreading as a federal appeals court on Thursday declined to lift a legal blockade. Now the White House order has become an opening for judges to restrict the power of the political branches to conduct foreign policy.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Seattle judge’s nationwide temporary restraining order against the refugee pause and travel suspension from seven countries with heightened terrorism risks. The court ruled that the government wasn’t likely to prevail on the merits in a suit brought by Washington state and Minnesota.

The liberals and never-Trump conservatives who’ve spent months predicting the arrival of American fascism are suddenly breast-beating about U.S. checks and balances. Apparently they lack confidence in American institutions unless they’re running them. But while we opposed Mr. Trump’s order on policy grounds, there is reason to worry now about judicial overreach.

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Remarkably, the three-judge panel’s 29-page decision doesn’t discuss the Supreme Court’s Youngstown doctrine, which teaches that the President’s actions are most legitimate under the Constitution when the executive works in concert with Congress. The plain text of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act gives the executive exclusive authority to suspend “the entry of any class of alien” that “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The Ninth Circuit also made a hash of the important limit on the judicial power called standing. The courts are only supposed to hear cases with specific and concrete injuries that they can resolve. Washington and Minnesota asserted vague and speculative harms to their public university systems, like being deprived of hypothetical talented immigrant students in the future. That’s not good enough under traditional Supreme Court standing doctrine.

Instead, the Ninth Circuit panel held that Mr. Trump’s order violated due process, such as ample notice of the new policy and a hearing for those affected. That might be true for lawful permanent residents travelling abroad, who were first included in the order and then excised under a memo from White House Counsel Don McGahn. (Then they, and not the states, should sue.)

But the Ninth Circuit’s due-process claims even apply to some categories of foreign nationals overseas who have yet to enter the country. The opinion repeatedly cites the Boumediene v. Bush decision of 2008, when the Supreme Court held that the enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detention by the government. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate confirmed House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R., Ga.), President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, in a 52-47 party-line vote early Friday morning, placing him atop a sprawling agency tasked with dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Price’s nomination served as the first major proxy fight in Congress over the fate of former President Barack Obama’s signature health law, which Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace. The 62-year-old former orthopedic surgeon has earned a reputation in Congress as a leader in pushing his party’s health-policy plans—especially an alternative to the ACA.

His confirmation boosts Republican efforts to rewrite the law sometimes called “Obamacare,” as well as overhaul Medicaid, a push that has been bogged down in recent weeks as the GOP struggles to unify behind a health law of its own. Democrats, beyond hoping to salvage the ACA, have criticized Mr. Price as an industry insider who they say will favor the medical industry at the expense of patients.
Mr. Price is also expected to follow through on an executive order, issued by Mr. Trump on the first day of his administration, directing federal agencies to pare back regulatory elements of the ACA in ways that don’t require congressional action. There is little evidence of action on that front so far, but Mr. Price’s installation could change that. One rule he could overturn, for example, is the Obama administration’s mandate that health plans include contraceptive coverage at no cost to the patient, a protection that isn’t explicitly written into the law. As a congressman, Mr. Price voted regularly against federal funding for abortion and expressed skepticism about federal contraception requirements.

The Senate vote on Mr. Price’s confirmation came just after 2 a.m., after Democrats used the full 30 hours of debate allotted to them to delay the proceedings.
Mr. Price’s confirmation process, like that of other high-profile Trump nominees, has been contentious and at times angry. Prominent Democrats, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Al Franken of Minnesota, grilled Mr. Price about his views on central ACA provisions—including an expansion of Medicaid, which analysts estimate has provided 12 million Americans coverage and which Mr. Price, who criticizes the Medicaid program as inefficient, has voted to repeal. CONTINUE AT SITE

HOW CAN THIS CAD SIT IN JUDGEMENT ON ANYONE? EVER?
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/dear-richard-blumenthal-youre-a-liar/

LIAR! There are four ways to lie in the court of public opinion:

By commission — e.g., saying you served in Vietnam when you haven’t.
By omission — e.g., by failing to note that you spent most of the Vietnam years assiduously trying to AVOID military service.
By understatement — e.g., like saying “on a few occasions I have misspoken about my service.”
By exaggeration — e.g., “When we returned, we saw nothing like this’’ (when speaking about Vietnam veterans as if you were one of them).

A Democratic senator who lied about his military service for decades is now calling on his colleagues to thoroughly vet the background of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), a member of the Senate committee that handles legal confirmation hearings, said that Appellate Court Judge Neil Gorsuch will face tough questions about his background. He said the Colorado-based judge will have “every aspect of his background” investigated by Democratic committee members before his nomination to the nation’s highest court moves forward.

“It is important that every aspect of his background be critically and closely scrutinized,” Blumenthal told the Wall Street Journal.

Blumenthal singled out a report in the Journal that questioned whether Gorsuch participated in pro-bono legal programs while attending Harvard Law School. The newspaper spoke to six of his contemporaries who did not recall Gorsuch providing free legal services to inmates or the poor as a student. The report failed to note that five of the six sources had donated thousands of dollars to liberal candidates and causes.

Blumenthal said he expected the report to play a role in confirmation hearings.

“This issue goes to credibility and qualifications,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal’s own credibility has been called into question since he entered public life. When Blumenthal first ran for the Senate in 2010, the New York Times revealed that he had lied for years about fighting in the Vietnam War. Blumenthal repeatedly touted his supposed combat experience in speeches to veterans groups and civic organizations, saying he had “served in Vietnam.”

However, a review of his military records revealed that he procured five deferments from the military before joining the Marine Reserve. During the war he traveled as far west as Washington, where he helped the Toys for Tots program, but never saw actual combat.

“What is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events,” the Times reported.

Blumenthal claimed to have misspoken, though that did not explain his failure to correct the record when numerous media reports and profiles described him as a Vietnam veteran.

Blumenthal’s office did not return requests for comment.

If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death in February 2016. Already a majority of Democrats have vowed to filibuster the nominee in retribution for Republicans’ refusal to hold hearings for D.C. Appellate Judge Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia.

Blumenthal was one of six senators scheduled to meet Gorsuch on Wednesday and is one of just nine Democrats to intimate that he supported giving Gorsuch an up or down vote. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate. Nine Democratic votes would give Republicans enough support to hold a vote without changing Senate rules, which require a 60-vote majority to break a filibuster.

Over 60 percent of California voters went for Hillary Clinton — a margin of more than 4 million votes over Donald Trump.

Since Clinton’s defeat, the state seems to have become unhinged over Trump’s unexpected election.

“Calexit” supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California’s secession from the United States.

Some California officials have talked of the state not remitting its legally obligated tax dollars to the federal government. They talk of expanding its sanctuary cities into an entire sanctuary state that would nullify federal immigration law.

Californians also now talk about the value of the old Confederate idea of “states’ rights.” They whine that their state gives far too much revenue to Washington and gets too little back.

Residents boast about how their cool culture has little in common with the rest of the U.S. Some Californians claim the state could easily go it alone, divorced from the United States.

Sound a bit familiar?

In December 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union in furor over the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln did not receive 50 percent of the popular vote. He espoused values the state insisted did not reflect its own.

In eerie irony, liberal California is now mirror-imaging the arguments of reactionary South Carolina and other Southern states that vowed to go it alone in 1860 and 1861.

Like California, South Carolina insisted it could nullify federal laws within its state borders.

Like California, South Carolina promised to withhold federal revenues.

Like California, South Carolina and other Confederate states bragged that their unique economies did not need the Union.

They boasted that “King Cotton” had created the wealthiest class in the United States. Silicon Valley now often assumes that Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are near-trillion-dollar companies that are a world unto their own.

In early January, Vincent Tolliver, a candidate for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, wrote in an e-mail to The Hill that fellow candidate Keith Ellison, the first known Muslim to sit in Congress, should not be party chairman because of Islamic attitudes toward gays. “Islamic law is clear on the subject,” wrote Tolliver, “and being gay is a direct violation of it. In some Muslim countries, being gay is a crime punishable by death.” Tolliver added that he was “shocked” that the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group with close ties to the Democratic Party, had been “silent on the issue.” (In fact, the HRC has enthusiastically endorsed Ellison, notwithstanding his past links to Louis Farrakhan and his current involvement with CAIR, the Muslim American Society, and the Islamic Society of North America.)

The DNC was quick to act on Tolliver’s complaint: it promptly removed him from consideration for the party chairmanship. “The Democratic Party welcomes all Americans from all backgrounds,” declared interim chairwoman Donna Brazile (famous for passing debate questions to Hillary and then lying about it). “What we do not welcome is people discriminating against others based on who they are or how they worship.” Brazile, an open lesbian, called Tolliver’s remarks about Islam “disgusting” and stated that because of those comments, he was “no longer a candidate for DNC Chair.”

Brazile’s statement was a timely reminder that on the progressive left, where facts and ethical principles take a back seat to identity politics, Muslims are now the top-ranking victim group, and gays – gay men, anyway – are at the very bottom, below blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, women, transsexuals, disabled Americans, weight-challenged Americans, etc. Never mind that what Tolliver said about Islamic attitudes toward gays is entirely correct: on the progressive left, acknowledging such uncomfortable truths is verboten.

Why are gays no longer the darlings of the left? Part of the reason is the mainstreaming of the academic concept known as intersection: if you’re a gay white male, yes, you’re gay, all right, but you’re also the two worst things you can be in the eyes of the left: white and male. Which means that on balance, according to the leftist calculus, you’re more privileged than you are oppressed. That’s especially true, of course, now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. Indeed, although the left celebrated the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges well into the night, when the sun rose the next day gay people suddenly looked very unsexy. Is it mere coincidence that at almost the exact same moment when the gay-rights movement won its big victory, the transsexual movement appeared as if from out of nowhere to take its place on the progressive agenda? Suddenly we’re being asked to memorize dozens of new pronouns to cover gender categories nobody had ever heard of a year or two ago. Only yesterday, gay marriage felt exotic; now being gay – just plain gay – feels downright square.

Some gays still think the left has their back. When Obama left office, gays flooded You Tube and Twitter with messages thanking him for gay marriage – which he’d had absolutely nothing to do with (and which he, like Hillary, had in fact opposed for most of his administration). On November 8, gay Americans, buying into the entirely baseless premise that Hillary gives a damn about them, voted overwhelmingly for her – a woman whose family foundation has banked millions from Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which imprison gays, and Saudi Arabia, which executes them. Meanwhile the same gay voters jeered at Trump, who in 2005 publicly congratulated Elton John and David Furnish on their marriage; who, according to one local, “changed…Palm Beach” by admitting gay couples as members of Mar-a-Lago; who actually waved a rainbow flag at one of his campaign rallies; who’s been praised eloquently by one of the smartest gays in the country, billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel; who reacted with an un-Obama-like rage and candor to the jihadist massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; and who, upon accepting the Republican nomination, promised to “do everything in my power” to protect gay Americans “from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”

Few people have heard of Congressman Ted Lieu. He spends most of his time ranting about President Trump like some sort of insane stalker.

The last time he made national news was when he insanely threatened legislative action against a home improvement store for pulling ads from a show he liked. After Lowe’s stopped advertising on All-American Muslim, he sent a letter which hung precariously between Stalin and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He sent a letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert A. Niblock warning that if he didn’t get those ads running again there would be hell to pay. “If Lowe’s continues its religious bigotry, I will encourage boycotts of Lowe’s and look into legislative remedies.”

When asked by Fox 11 News last night why he wasn’t focusing on the state’s major problems… Lieu answered that people could always shop at Home Depot.

Now Lieu is on board with moving from obstructionism to just trolling with bills.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) reportedly plans to file a bill that would require the White House to have an in-house psychiatrist.

“I’m looking at it from the perspective of, if there are questions about the mental health of the president of the United States, what may be the best way to get the president treatment?” Lieu told the Huffington Post.

But Ted is the one who actually sounds nuts.

Lieu said he thinks a republic cannot tolerate a president who lies pathologically, claiming such circumstances are dangerous and can lead to authoritarian regimes. He also urged residents to write letters to editors of publications to help publicize their dissent with Trump’s recent actions.

Lieu said he, like many of his constituents, struggles to explain Trump’s presidency to his children. He said he thinks Trump is especially dangerous since he makes the public believe fake news is everywhere and causes them to doubt reality. He urged listeners to tell their children reputable news sources such as the Los Angeles Times and ABC News do their best to report the facts, and that Trump’s disapproval of such agencies does not invalidate their legitimacy.

Can we get an in-house psychiatrist here.

Despite childish Democrat obstructionism, including a needless all night talkfest to delay the inevitable outcome, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as this nation’s next attorney general by a vote of 52-47. As with his other cabinet nominations, President Trump needs only a majority of senators to confirm, thanks to former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to change the filibuster rules. Only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, showed courage in bucking the herd mentality of his “resistance” party and voted in favor of Sessions.

Contrast the Democrats’ irresponsible behavior with how Republicans treated Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general in 2009. Back then, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged quick action by the Senate:

“I would hope that we would have a prompt confirmation so he can restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department, it is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay. The attorney general is the top law enforcement officer in the country; he is a key member of the national security team.”

The Republicans obliged, despite serious questions regarding Holder’s role in President Clinton’s controversial pardons of Marc Rich and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists while Holder was serving as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Department of Justice. Republicans did not put up procedural roadblocks. The Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to confirm Holder. The Senate as a whole then confirmed Holder by a lopsided bipartisan vote of 75 to 21.

Ironically, Senator Sessions voted in favor of Holder, saying he was sure that Holder would be “a responsible legal officer and not a politician.” His decision to vote to confirm Holder, despite serious policy differences, demonstrated Sessions’ own bipartisanship and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the president’s cabinet nominees. Yet when it became Sessions’ turn to be considered for the same position as Holder’s, his fellow Democratic senators turned viciously partisan. They threw every slur at him they could think of, and used every procedural trick in the book to slow down the confirmation of a fellow senator to whom they should have shown deference.

Democrats resorted to their usual tactic of rolling out the race card. Senator Leahy, for example, stated last month that “Sen. Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took to the Senate floor Tuesday evening to quote from a decades-old letter attacking Sessions, in blatant violation of a Senate rule against impugning the character of a fellow senator on the floor of the Senate. Following rebuke of her for violating the Senate floor rule, she tweeted, “I will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory & racist comments that have no place in our justice system.”

Mr. Sessions in fact filed multiple desegregation lawsuits as U.S. attorney and filed charges against a state leader of the Ku Klux Klan in a capital case, which he followed through on when he became the state attorney general. As mentioned above, he voted for Eric Holder, the nation’s first African-American attorney general. Back in 2009, during Holder’s confirmation hearing, Senator Leahy had nothing but high praise for the man he has now turned against. “Sen. Sessions is here: of course, Sen. Sessions is also a former U.S. attorney and knows what one goes through in that regard,” Senator Leahy said back then, “and we’ve relied on him for that experience. And, Sen. Sessions, it’s over to you.” Senator Sessions responded, “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, congratulations, Mr. Holder, on the nomination.”