Thursday, March 16, 2017

Still Not How That Works

     While I have been trying to avoid politics, politics is like an obtuse, friendly salesman with halitosis: it keeps showing up, all smiles and awfulness.

     The latest?  This morning, Tam observed that certain corners of the Internet are running rife with anti-Hawaiian sentiment after a 9th Circuit judge in that state put a temporary block on President Trump's travel restrictions until the courts could have a look at it.  Calls for boycotts (of pineapple, mahi-mahi and leis?) were not long in showing up, along with various flavors of negative commentary -- directed at the state, its history and its people.

     The problem with that, of course, is while Federal judges may indeed be soaking in the culture of wherever it is they're serving, the people, history, etc. of that region don't get a vote in the judge's decisions: those are based on his reading of the applicable law and judicial precedent (and, occasionally, whim).  --Which will be tested, probably most severely, as this case makes its way through the Federal court system.  That testing will be by people who do that sort of thing for a living, not by Japanese tourists, a consortium from Dole or even that nice young taxicab driver you remember from the time you vacationed there.  The White House is suggesting this Executive order may be fought all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court if necessary, a process which will quite rapidly stop having anything to do with a U. S. state on a remote Pacific island -- an island, by the way, which not only suffered the sneak attack of 7 December 1941, but which knows a little about informal immigrants and unvettable visitors making trouble, from at least the 18th Century through the 20th.

     It's a big, complicated world and very little of it actually runs on the politics of identity and grievance.  Nor on whining and ranting on the Internets.

8 comments:

Dogboy49 said...

I liked the first paragraph. After that, meh....

Roberta X said...

I should care?

dogboy49 said...

Nope....

pigpen51 said...

I am not a constitutional scholar, but I have read it, and have a copy of it right here at all times. Not knowing all the ins and outs of the laws and rules, I believe that the courts are wrong on this one, and that the president is the one to conduct foreign policy. The congress has advise and consent on treaty's and such, so that tells me that they have some input. I think in a non partisan courts system, this would be a no brainer. But we will never have a country like that, and perhaps that is for the better. Partisanship brings every idea into play, and hopefully allows a more representative act to happen. I don't think that is the right way to govern, myself. We don't want to have a direct democracy, it is too unwieldy. I did notice that there were no airport protests on the television news shows. Maybe people are calming down some and letting Trump sink or swim on his own merits. I think that is the proper way to act. And I always like everything you write, even if I don't always agree with it. You are intelligent and insightful, and make me think. I know, you feel the same way, you don't care. You are writing for you, and others can like it or not. Just know for every Dogboy there are a ton of us who love what you do.

Old NFO said...

Once again this judge used what was said during the campaign to base a legal decision on... I guess one way to do this would be to stop ALL immigration from everywhere for the requisite time period, then there would be NO way to say it was a muslim ban... sigh

The Old Man said...

OldNFO is correct, according to the USC the president controls immigration to the US. And presidents have used that power in the past. I do imagine there would be epic pearl-clutching and teeth-gnashing on both sides if the political spectrum if he shut down immigration to the US for six months from everywhere.
And killed the H1-B program while removing the "anchor baby" program in the same XO....
Pop some corn.

The Neon Madman said...

Stay away, good lady. StaND back from that fetid pit of politics. That way lies madness. You have been doing OK for the last week or so, stay strong.

OldTexan said...

I liked the last paragraph, I try to remind myself that mine is really a small world where I can make a few decisions like whether to shoot skeet tomorrow and steel challenge on Saturday meantime all the big world stuff will go on, just like the weather and no one in D.C. is going to ask me what I think or how to fix anything.

All the big political mucking up is going to play out and I don't need to watch this batch of sausage being made. That's all so be safe and healthy and enjoy the coming springtime.