Tag Archives: travel ban

legal news, Uncategorized

Yep, elections do have serious consequences

Oh, brother. Is there any more proof needed about the impact of presidential elections than the decision today handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court?

The high court ruled 5-4 today to uphold Donald J. Trump’s travel ban involving countries from a handful of mostly Muslim countries.

The conservative majority voted with the president; the liberal minority voted against him.

There you have it. Trump’s travel ban will stand. He will crow about it. He’ll proclaim that the court is a body comprising men of wisdom; bear in mind that the three women who sit on the court today voted against the travel ban. Had the decision gone the other way, he would declare the court to be “too political,” he would chastise the justices’ knowledge of the U.S. Constitution (if you can believe it).

The court decision today has reaffirmed the president’s decision to discriminate against people based on their religious faith. Nice.

The partisan vote on the court today also has brought a smile to another leading politician: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose obstructionism in the final year of the Barack Obama presidency denied Trump’s predecessor the right to fill a seat created by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Constitution gives the president the right to nominate judges; it also grants the Senate the right to “advise and consent” on those nominations. The Senate majority leader decided to obstruct the president’s ability to do his job.

President Obama nominated a solid moderate, Merrick Garland, to succeed Scalia. McConnell put the kibosh on it, declaring almost immediately after Scalia’s death that the president would not be able to fill the seat. McConnell would block it. And he did.

A new president was elected and it turned out to be Donald Trump, who then nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was approved narrowly by the Senate. Gorsuch proved to be the deciding vote in today’s ruling that upholds the Trump travel ban.

Do elections have consequences? You bet they do.

Frightening, yes? In my humble view — given the stakes involved at the Supreme Court — most assuredly.

International news, national news

Travel ban now in effect: Do you feel safe now?

Donald J. Trump’s travel ban is back in force now, thanks to a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court struck down previous lower-court rulings that set aside the ban, giving the president a limited victory in his campaign against Muslims around the world.

The president hails it as a way to make Americans safe from international terrorists. The ban affects those seeking to come to the United States from six Muslim-majority nations. If they do come here from any of those six nations, they must have some tangible, identifiable connection to this country: a relative, enrollment at a U.S. college or university.

He has vowed to protect us from those who seek to do us harm. The president asserted during the 2016 campaign that potential terrorists were “pouring into” our country and that, by golly, he intended to stop it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe I’ll feel one bit safer down the road when the travel ban becomes fully implemented.

This ban doesn’t account for the home-grown terrorists who have brought misery to fellow Americans. It doesn’t deal at all with the terrorists, or terror groups, opening fire in crowded movie theaters, in nightclubs, at a U.S. Army post, in a Charleston, S.C., church.

We all remember 9/11. We recall the hideous nature of that dastardly act. We scorned the terrorists as cowardly bastards. We have gone to war against them.

Have we been hit by terrorists in an attack even remotely similar since that terrible day? No. Our national security apparatus, though, has stopped many attempts during the past 16 years.

It’s the so-called “lone wolf” terrorist who is so very difficult to detect in advance of their act.

In my view, a travel ban cannot stop someone from sneaking into this country from, say, Sweden or France, or Brazil or Russia who then would commit an act of terror.

International news, legal news

Court (more or less) restores Trump’s travel ban

The notion of banning people from entering this nation because they come from places where most citizens practice a certain religion remains repugnant to me.

The United States of America is supposed to stand for a principle that welcomes all citizens of the world. That’s no longer the case.

Donald J. Trump’s ban on folks coming from six Muslim-majority nations has been kinda/sorta restored by the U.S. Supreme Court, which today issued a 6-3 ruling to back the president. Today’s ruling overturns a lower court decision that threw out the ban on the basis that it discriminates against people because of their religion.

What does it mean? I guess it bans anyone who comes here who lacks any “bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

Others can come in, according to the court.

My question remains the same: Will any of this make us safer against international terrorists? I do not believe that’s the case.

It’s just a partial ban

Nothing in the president’s initiative prevents U.S. citizens from committing acts of terror. The U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed those folks at Fort Hood in November 2009 is an American, to cite just one example.

I continue to cling to the notion that “extreme vetting,” which the president also has called for, isn’t a bad thing by itself. Indeed, U.S. customs and immigration officials need to do better at ensuring at points of entry that everyone coming here does not pose a threat; they’re doing that already.

Today’s ruling only settles it temporarily. The court’s next term begins in October and the justices will take it up fully then.

Score one for the president, though. He got a ruling he can live with, even though it won’t do a thing to make us safer against those who would harm us.

International news

Trump makes a hash out of terror response

Donald Trump has done it again.

The president has inserted himself and his policies into the middle of an international event fraught with tragedy and misery.

Then he went even farther. He criticized the mayor of London, the latest city victimized by terrorists, allegedly by taking a comment from the mayor out o context.

Seven people are dead in London after terrorists struck near the London Bridge. The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, made some remarks about the attack; Trump said the mayor made a statement about not being concerned about the safety of the city’s residents.

Then the president touted his twice-failed effort to impose a travel ban on people seeking to enter the United States from several Muslim-majority countries.

Let’s back up for a moment.

The London terrorists were home-grown monsters. No “travel ban” would have prevented them from doing what they did. The terror attacks in Belgium and France not too long ago also were perpetrated by citizens of those countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/04/trump-berates-london-mayor-sadiq-khan-terror-attacks

The same can be said about many of the terrorist actions that have occurred in the United States. The Orlando, Fla., massacre was done by an American; the Fort Hood massacre in 2009 was the act of an American — and an Army officer to boot!

How does a travel ban deter those monstrous acts? It doesn’t!

Might it be that Trump’s feud with Mayor Khan is steeped primarily in the fact that the mayor is a Muslim? Might that have more to do with his ridiculous tweet criticizing the mayor’s comment than anything else? Hey, I’m just asking.

International news, national news

No travel ban from W. Africa

Wait for it.

President Obama’s critics on the right are going to hit the ceiling — if they haven’t already — with news that the president has declined to impose a travel ban from West Africa into the United States.

The Ebola “outbreak” has many Americans scared. Well, the disease certainly has overwhelmed medical professionals in West Africa, but hardly here.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/white-house-rejects-calls-for-ebola-travel-ban/ar-BB9nv04

Why not impose a ban?

Obama believes the advice of the top medical minds in the world that a ban won’t do any better than what’s being employed now and it could be counterproductive by forcing people to hide from authorities in West Africa, thus, allowing the disease to go untreated.

Airport screeners at Atlanta, Washington, Newark and New York are taking temperatures of passengers coming off planes arriving from Ebola-stricken places. It’s a no-touch technology that enables screeners to use laser lights to record people’s temps.

Those who have greater-than-normal temperatures are then separated and examined more carefully.

Once again, the call here is to avoid panic and undue anxiety.

Two health-care professionals in Dallas have been exposed to the virus. They are being treated by the best medical teams anywhere on Earth. Still, many in the media — as well as some in Congress — have been proclaiming some sort of imagined “epidemic” of the disease in this country.

It doesn’t exist. It well may never exist.

How about letting the medical pros do their job?