Monday, June 05, 2017

Stop the world, I wanna get off....

I know, I know, I should return to (slightly) more thoughtful posts.

But honestly:  President Donald J. Trump is crazier than a shit-house rat.  And he has absolutely no clue what he is doing.


As of this writing, his latest tweet.   By the caps lock you will know he's serious.

His case on this "travel ban" is now before the Supreme Court.  As the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the 9th Circuit case have said:

“Its kinda odd to have the defendant in HawaiivTrump acting as our co-counsel. We don’t need the help but will take it!”
As Dahlia Lithwick points out:

1)  the lawyers for the DOJ have been at pains to describe this EO (both of them) as "extreme vetting," not a "travel ban."  One is easier to legitimize than the other, since one is for national security, the other simply exhibits animus (and there comes the rational basis test again).

2)  The lawyers have been trying to say any defects of the first EO were cured by the amelioration of the second.  But Trump's tweets contradict that argument:

 “These statements suggest that like [the first ban], [the second’s] purpose is to effectuate the promised Muslim ban, and that its changes … reflect an effort to help it survive judicial scrutiny, rather than to avoid targeting Muslims for exclusion from the United States.” 
3)

 The president seems to have no understanding that his Justice Department works with him and not against him, and that if he continues to signal that his views diverge from theirs, he is kneecapping Wall’s argument that Jeff Sessions’ and John Kelly’s steady presence somehow affords the president a presumption of normalcy. 
This is the most interesting issue to me:  the "presumption of normalcy."  The President gets deference because he is presumed to be rational; but his tweets indicate he is anything but.

He is openly shattering the idea that his government formulates considered national security decisions. Former DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted Monday morning that “He actually seems to have no idea he was the one who signed the ‘watered down, politically correct version.’ Not DOJ, him. Amazing.” Trump appears to be unaware that he signed the second order, not his Justice Department. 
The Court can't really show deference to a moron with a loaded shotgun who is waving it around aimlessly, in other words (a variant on the rational basis test, actually).  It has to conclude the moron shouldn't have the shotgun, which in this case is the executive order under question.  That may be a case of first impression in American jurisprudence.

This is not a good thing.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad Trump isn't just a little smarter becaue he'd have figured that out by now. Not that it would make him restrain himself.

    It makes me just slightly less terrified that he might learn to rig things as John Dean told Samantha Bee would be when things got really dangerous. Slightly less.

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