RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was like a wake inside the Department of Homeland Security’s D.C. headquarters on Tuesday, according to a source inside the DHS. The previous evening, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Obama administration’s immigration amnesty plan again, holding that the president has “no statutory authority” to take such unilateral action.

The court upheld the preliminary injunction issued February 16 by federal district court judge Andrew Hanen. Assuming the administration abides by the court order, the amnesty plan remains on hold.

Texas led a coalition of 26 states that filed suit against the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program that President Obama announced last November. They challenged the program on the grounds that it violated both the notice and comment requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.

DAPA would grant “lawful presence” to more than 4 million illegal aliens and give them Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) — renewable, three-year work permits. Moreover, as the government admitted in its opening brief, granting “lawful presence” status would make them eligible to receive “social security retirement benefits, social security disability benefits, or health insurance under Part A of the Medicare program.” The government did not deny the district court’s finding that such aliens would also become eligible for earned-income tax credits and entitled to numerous state benefits such as unemployment insurance and driver’s licenses.

The president’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) is the most extraordinary display of presidential lawlessness in recent memory. On Monday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rightly blocked that lawlessness from proceeding further.

Last November, President Obama announced that he would be halting enforcement of congressional statutes for certain illegal immigrants residing in the United States — some 5 to 6 million, by most estimates — and extending to them work permits, among a number of other benefits. He justified this politically as a necessary response to congressional inaction, and legally as “prosecutorial discretion.”

It was neither, as Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen made clear in February, when he granted an injunction blocking implementation of the action to Texas and 25 other states, which had sued the administration. The president “is not just rewriting the laws,” Hanen wrote; “he is creating them from scratch.” The Obama administration appealed to the Fifth Circuit to stay the injunction, but in May, a three-judge panel refused.

Maybe the separation of powers isn’t a dead letter after all. The U.S. Constitution’s core protection against tyranny got a reprieve late Monday when an appeals court upheld a federal judge’s injunction against President Obama’s unilateral immigration order.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2 to 1 that a legal challenge by 26 states has a high probability of success and thus the regulation should not be enforced until the case is decided on the merits. On Tuesday the Administration said it will appeal to the Supreme Court, which means this could be a landmark ruling before Mr. Obama leaves office.

The careful, 70-page opinion by Judge Jerry Smith eviscerates the Administration’s unprecedented claims of executive authority. The Homeland Security Department says it has executive discretion to decide whom to deport, but its detailed marching orders to immigration agents provide for almost no discretion in handling individual cases.

By bonfire of the academy we mean a conflict of values about the idea of a university that now threatens to undermine or destroy universities as a place of learning. Exhibit A is the ruin called the University of Missouri.

In the 1960s—at Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley and elsewhere—the self-described Student Left occupied buildings with what they often called “non-negotiable” demands. In the decades since, the academy—its leaders and faculties—by and large has accommodated many of those demands regarding appropriate academic subjects, admissions policies and what has become the aggressive and non-tolerant politics of identity and grievance.

This political trajectory arrived at its logical end this week at Missouri with the abrupt resignation of the school’s president, quickly followed by its number two official. The kids deposed them, as their liberal elders applauded either out of solidarity or cowardice.

This was an interesting presentation of often stark views.

“We witness our Christian faith and proclaim the word of God in the land where Islamic fundamentalists and extremists are in power,” stated recently a Pakistani Christian to a Washington, DC, area Christian gathering. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals back home, “Thomas” expressed with somewhat rudimentary English stark views about Islam during a church reception for about 30 and subsequent interview.

“You are very much free and blessed people,” Thomas noted for his American audience who “do not need guards while you worship.” By contrast, reception displays on Pakistani Christians included a photo of an adolescent pastor’s son standing guard with an assault rifle before a church. This “son is protecting the worshippers by putting his life in danger and father is preaching the gospel to save the life of the worshippers,” he stated.

An interviewed Thomas noted how guards averted massive casualties during a March 2015 attack on Lahore, Pakistan’s Catholic Church by preventing suicide bombers from entering, yet he distrusted Muslims in Pakistani security forces. While he perceived a lax official response to attacks upon Christian institutions or mosques of Pakistan’s Shiite minority, the army responded vigorously to a 2014 terrorist massacre at a Peshawar army children’s school. Christians often insist upon having private Christian guards for whom “their brothers and sisters are inside” church.

The Bible Believers benefited from living in nation governed by the rule of law. Under Sharia law, they would be condemned to death.

Daniel Greenfield ran an interesting story on November 9th, “The Atlantic: Freedom of Speech Victimizes Muslims,” about the Bible Believers case, in which an en banc court reversed the group’s responsibility for basically “disturbing the peace” of an Arab American festival in 2012.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday found that Wayne County violated the constitutional rights of a group of religious proselytizers who were kicked out of an Arab-American cultural festival in 2012.

In a rare reversal of a previous decision from three-judge appeals court panel, an en banc review by 15 judges yielded a majority ruling that Wayne County is civilly liable to the group of evangelical Christians who sued after being ordered to leave the festival by sheriff’s deputies.