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Tell the Fourth Circuit to Go Fly a Kite
The USS Enterprise, under the command of Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, was delayed by a storm during its return to Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Halsey and his staff learned of the December 7 attack through the desperate radio transmission of an American pilot who, upon nearing Pearl Harbor, identified himself as an American and was shot down. Finally able to enter Pearl Harbor on Dec. 8, Admiral Halsey surveyed the wreckage and the carnage and announced that, “Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”
For his part, President Roosevelt had just finished having lunch with his chief aid Harry Hopkins when Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox phoned in to report a radio message stating that Pearl Harbor was under attack. Hopkins allowed as to how he thought the report mistaken to which Roosevelt replied, after a moment’s consideration, that he thought the report most likely correct on the grounds that it sounded just the Japanese to talk about peace in the Pacific while simultaneously starting a war.
Fortunately for the free world, neither Admiral Halsey nor Franklin Roosevelt had to receive the United States Circuit Court Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval prior to taking action to defend the country, lest their initial comments betray some measure of bigotry or exclusion against the adherents of Shinto, the official religion of Japan. For had that been the case, the philosopher kings on the Circuit Court would presumably have had the right to preempt executive authority and commandeer American foreign policy on the spot.
And God help General MacArthur, who even went so far in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in the Pacific to officially terminate the Shinto religion, which proclaimed the divinity of the Japanese Emperor. Then again, perhaps today’s 4th Circuit Court would resent having their own divinity intruded upon by a mere demigod, and might therefore resist the urge to restrain MacArthur. But I rather doubt it, since Lord Acton’s dictum tends to argue against exertions of modesty. Yup, methinks the honorable judges would have preferred to plant MacArthur’s general’s stars on their own shoulders.
Never mind. It’s all academic at this point as, coincidentally, are most of the current President’s efforts to save American citizens from barbarians who murder little girls with nail bombs at a pop music concert. Because judges know best, after all. Just ask them. In the hours that followed the attack in Manchester, England, I wondered on social media whether Circuit Court judges might now lend their supernatural advice on how to prevent further attacks by Islamic radicals given the court’s predisposition against impinging on the the freedom of terrorists to travel across international boundaries in search of people to slaughter.
“Imagine there’s no country,” wrote John Lennon once upon a pipe dream. “It isn’t hard to do.” Well, it sure as hell isn’t hard to do these days, when the pipe dream flows like the blood of innocent children in the streets. And what received wisdom now greets the benighted masses as they bury their children and tend to the wounded? “No barriers, no borders, we all just need to co-exist,” intoned the singer Katie Perry from the seclusion of the barriers and walls and guards that protect her.
Of course, we aren’t required to take seriously the rattling noggins of pop stars just yet. But judges are another matter as the 4th Circuit Court just reminded us, because when their heads rattle, the implications can be deadly. Besotted with the inflated confidence which overwhelms a disciplined mind, the judges have upheld a nationwide stay on President Trump’s order banning travel from seven countries which have become hotbeds of terrorist training and dispatch, including the country that bequeathed the Manchester bomber’s parents to England.
“Now details of the life of Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber, are slowly emerging, many analysts will be struck by how many key aspects of his life are familiar from the profiles of previous terrorists.” writes Jason Burke in The Guardian. Let’s see now:
- Bomber’s parents immigrated from Libya: Check!
- Risk factors in second generation immigrants from troubled regions include “sense of geographic location, cultural gaps between generations and complex identity issues resulting in a sense of alienation.” Such problems, writes Burke, “are exacerbated by frequent trips back to a family’s place of origin.” Abedi has evidently divided his time between England and Libya where his parents have been for the last six years, his latest stay in Libya having been within the last couple of months. Check!
- Possible gang involvement: Check!
- Parental involvement with an Islamist militia alleged by US and UK authorities to have al-Qaida connections: Check!
- Ties to known terror network including five terrorists, three of whom are dead, with the remaining two in jail: Check!
“Though defensive violence will always be a ‘sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle,” wrote St. Augustine, “it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.” Then again, St. Augustine, a theologian and Doctor of the Church, died in 430 AD, sadly depriving him of the stupefyingly dulled sense of reason that now afflicts his betters on the 4th Circuit Court and endangers a nation.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing the rightfully esteemed and righteously angry Dave Sussman, who spent a portion of his childhood in England. “Children and their parents died tonight,” wrote Dave in the aftermath of the attack, “because England won’t ‘profile,’ especially in no-go zones.” “I don’t fear Muslims,” Sussman said during our interview, adding, “I fear the politicians that create the environment to allow extremism to spread like a cancer, to allow no-go zones where the followers of Sharia can poison the weak-minded, resulting in little children — children — [with] limbs blown apart at a pop concert in one of England’s great cities.”
In Riyadh last weekend, President Trump reminded some 50 leaders from across the Islamic world that, “piety to evil will bring you no dignity” and suggested, “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.” A few days later, the President found himself bemoaning the death and maiming of, “dozens of innocent people, beautiful young children, savagely murdered in this heinous attack upon humanity.”
But it’s all a ruse, don’tcha know, because one of America’s robed Olympian councils has managed to transcend the mere wording of the executive order to locate, “…an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Thus saith the 4th Circuit, verily, we cannot tolerate intolerance against intolerant barbarians who themselves harbor animus and manifest their religious discrimination by slaughtering infidels. As Ben Shapiro ably put it:
…Now, it’s bad lawyering to appeal to language outside the text of a statue or executive order in order to strike down that law — a law is specifically-worded, carefully-crafted in order to be implemented in a particular way. Pointing to loose language by advocates for any given law would give the courts ample reason to strike down that law.
Or any law, for that matter. But “lawyering” has apparently been deteriorating since the days of St. Augustine leaving us … where exactly? What words of solace can the philosopher kings on the court offer the families of the dead? What advice have they to offer on how prevent the next attack perpetrated by the moral asses who now have an affirmative right to immigrate to the US?
It is beyond time to restore balance to this judicial tyranny. As Daniel Horowitz writes in Conservative Review, “Congress can pass a law along party lines, yet we won’t regard that as the law of the land until a court upholds it. Yet, a court can be split along the same party lines — and is unelected and unaccountable — but somehow that is given MORE legitimacy than a legislature.”
US Code 8, §1735, for example, requires the executive branch to suspend visas to state sponsors of terrorism, five of which are on the list of countries included in President Trump’s executive order. The 4th Circuit Court simply has no authority to effectively order the President not to enforce this section of law, but that’s exactly what the Court is attempting to do. Moreover, US Code 8, §1201(h)(i) bestows plenary authority on customs officers to both deny the issuance of a visa and to revoke existing visas.
“What’s more,” writes Horowitz, “this provision of the law, which passed the Senate 96-2 in 2004, explicitly stripped the courts of any jurisdiction to adjudicate the revocation of visas for anyone seeking entry into the country (as opposed to someone living here who is being deported). The jurisdiction-stripping provision includes even a basic habeas corpus petition. How in the world can the courts be allowed to get involved in this matter?”
The answer is that the courts’ involvement presupposes a passive response from the other two branches of government, a passivity that will cost lives if not reversed. The current assault on the constitutional balance of power, indeed, on the right of free citizens to ensure their own security through representative government, has been short-circuited by an intellectual class prone to self-loathing and driven by a related contempt for an American culture which affords it the very freedom it puts to such destructive use.
It is time that the remaining branches of government summon the spine to reassert themselves. The problem is not just the barbarians, but also those who open the gates to them.
Published in General
Well said.
Better yet. I’d tell the 4th circuit to go shove it where the sun don’t shine. What an outrage.
Okay, what the heck are you talking about? I got lost a third of the way through. Did the fourth circuit do something? Does that something have to do with Halsey and MacArthur? I have no idea what your point was because you buried it too deep.
We have to confront rather than coddle evil.
And the fourth circuit is evil because . . . .?
They’re the coddlers.
Sorry about that. I had hoped to establish some historical context by pointing out what could have happened had the judiciary demonstrated the sort of arrogance in the 1940s that it is demonstrating now. I thought it a bit of a scenic route, but I didn’t think I’d lose anyone along the way. This is what happens when I go too long without being able to write an in-depth piece — I get carried away. Thanks for hanging in there, though. Just wait till the movie comes out!
Yes Indeed!
Game, set, match.
ignore the ruling
enforce the law
enforce the ban
I hope the Trump administration will point out that the law of the land is indeed the law of the land, even if a few black-robed imbeciles tell us it doesn’t matter.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
So the harm caused by a 90 day halt to issuing new visas is irreparable? Couldn’t it be mostly repaired by, ya know, issuing a visa 90 days later? Better late than never as the old saying goes.
Now nail bombs on the other hand, those cause some truly irreparable harm.
The ban has already expired there is nothing to enforce. They could have done a review of the screening process but I have heard nothing about that. So the ban was a cheap political stunt not serious policy. At this point the argument is over whether the President has the power to ban travel as a matter of political grand standing.
It’s evil because it substituted its judgment for that of the Congress, which had already determined the president should have power to suspend immigration of any class of persons at any time.
A court is not supposed to do this.
Everyone, including the president, should be able to rely on the laws as written. For a court to say, ok, this order is legal (as it did) but we don’t like Trump’s attitude, is like upholding a cop giving you a ticket for going 60 mph in a 65 mph zone. “Your Honor, its true she wasn’t speeding, but she coulda been! And I have witnesses here to testify that they heard her say she enjoys driving really fast!”
Nothing about the 9th or 4th .Cir despcisions followed any kind of established legal principles–nor equitable principles, as you point out. An injunction should not issue in the abscence of irreparable harm.
deleted by skyler
If they want to be political, they should face election.
State judges face election here in California. It’s a up-or-down election at the end of each term, and they almost always win, but in 1986 Chief Justice Rose Bird lost and was thus removed from the California Supreme Court due to her unpopular opposition to the death penalty.
Seems like a reasonable check on the power of the judiciary to me.
I voted against Rose Bird and her two cronies who were also on the ballot.
She reversed the death sentence of a cop killer because the prosecution had failed to prove that shooting someone five times in the chest indicated intent.
@valiuth I sure hope you are not a Bridge player. Using a Trump card would be more than you could stand. Is it possible that visas are being delayed bureaucratically and on the sly? No State Dept officials available to process would be a way around this judicial over reach. But just don’t say anything lest it get back to a judge somewhere in Oregon who would find a severely unconstitutional imposition on someone or some thing.
It is clear that the President has this power. He has this power for a reason. You have the power to call it grandstanding if you wish, as do the judges on the Fourth Circuit. However, they did not uphold the stay on the basis that it is an overreach of presidential power because it is not an overreach. They upheld the stay on the basis that stuff Trump said, months before writing up the travel restriction, indicated to them that he did not do it for the stated reason but from malice arising from his irrational anti-Muslim bigotry.
If I said something like that about you here at Ricochet, the Moderators would accuse me of mind-reading and redact my comments.