This Is What Passes for Leadership in Illinois?

On Friday, August 11, 2017, Bret Baier - Fox News - attempted to substantively interview Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner. The "Gov."made sure it didn't happen.

By interview's end, all I could think of was Charles Durning, who played the "Governor" in the "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" singing "The Sidestep!"

                      "Fellow Texans, I'm proudly standing her to humbly say ...
                       I'm for progress and the flag ....
                       I'm for goodness and for profit and for living clean ...

                       "Ooo, I love to dance the little sidestep
                        Now they see me, now they don't, I've come and gone ...
                        I love to cut a wide swath ... and lead the people on."


BAIER: Chicago’s a sanctuary city. Who are you with on this one, President Trump or Mayor Emanuel?

RAUNER: Well, I can tell you this .. one in seven people in Illinois are immigrants. So this is a very, very big issue. ... Our system is broken. We need ... reform. ... thoughtful rational discussion ....

Did the Governor answer? Or "sidestep?"

BAIER: So why shouldn’t Chicago follow federal law?

RAUNER: Well, I tell you this, the system is broken.

Answer? Or sidestep?

BAIER: You have SB-31 on your desk. According to the Chicago Tribute, the bill would prohibit police from searching, arresting, or detaining a person because of their immigration status, absent a federal criminal warrant. It would also create so-called safe zones in state-funded schools, [and] healthcare centers, ... and block state and local enforcement agencies from creating registries based ... national origin. Are you going to sign that bill?

RAUNER: So, our staff is evaluating that bill right now. ... We are meeting with law enforcement agencies and ... leaders in the state to get their views on it.

BAIER: There are some families who say they’ve lost loved ones because of sanctuary policy and they’re trying to meet with you. Do you want to hear that point of view?

RAUNER: I want to hear everybody’s point of view. ... Our immigration system is broken and we need to have a system that keeps the people of Illinois safe ....

BAIER: ... Do you agree with the president or not that sanctuary cities are a problem – yes or no?

RAUNER: Well, I’d tell you this; what I’d say is immigration in America is broken.

Answers? Or sidesteps?

Baier then replayed an interview with Tom Homan, Acting ICE Director.

HOMAN: Sanctuary cities are a criminal’s biggest friend. ... Sanctuary cities not only endanger public safety, they endanger my law enforcement officers.

BAIER: So do you agree with him?

RAUNER: ... If we have criminals who are in this country and committing crimes, we’ve got to get them out and we’ve got to get them prosecuted. ... We’ve got to keep the people if Illinois safe....

So, did Rauner ever answer any of Baier's questions? Who did Rauner say he was with? President Trump or Mayor Emmanuel? Could he even agree that "Chicago should follow federal law!"


Wearying of Rauner's Immigration "sidestep," Bret Baier looked for a straight answer on "Obamacare."

BAIER: President Trump wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, do you agree?

RAUNER: I can tell you so much of our Affordable Healthcare Act is broken, it needs to be repaired. I’ve expressed concerns about what it might do to some of our most vulnerable residents in Illinois ... The insurance exchanges ... are they broken. Look at the rates ... Insurance companies that are dropping out, we need some big changes in the system.

So did the Governor answer any question or reprise the "Sidestep?" Does he support Mr. Trump's call to "repeal and replace?" What specifically did Rauner mean by "repair?"

BAIER: Is President Trump a good president?

RAUNER: I could tell you this, my job as Governor is to work with every President ....

"Now they see me, now they don't, I've come and gone ...."

Rauner, however, was delighted to take partisan shots at Speaker Madigan has "been in office 35 years," during which time Illinois has "had massive job losses, deficits, biggest unfunded pension liabilities in America, ramped corruption (inaudible) patronage, and that Madigan's recent Income Tax hike "will not fix anything."


To be clear, Madigan has been an utter disaster for Illinois. Now after, listening to Gov. Rauner, I am nauseated - nauseated by a smug, pompous politician who thinks it's clever to "sidestep" the interviewer's question. The voters deserve straight answers. Saying it's "broken" repeatedly, isn't a straight answer. Madigan? Rainer? Phooey! A plague on both their houses!

And if Gov. Rauner thinks he get re-elected by pandering to liberals and eschewing his base, he's nuts. How'd it work for Sen. Kirk?


Posted: QCOline.com September 5, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Why We Can't Prosecute a Sitting President

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has told Fox News that Justice Department memos state that a sitting president cannot be indicted, prosecuted or tried, without first having been impeached and removed from office. I agree.

The president of the United States is elected by the people (their "electors") in all 50 states.

Three articles of the U.S. Constitution deal with removal from office or impeachment:

Article 1 provides:

-- "The House of Representatives ... shall have the sole power of impeachment."

-- "The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.."

-- "Judgement in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgement and punishment, according to law."

Professor Dershowitz would read that as saying "but the party once convicted by the Senate shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgement and punishment." For the professor, there can be no prosecution, or punishment of a sitting president until after his removal from office pursuant to the Senate's impeachment conviction.

The reason for this is patently obvious.

If a sitting president can be indicted and tried by a special prosecutor, he could just as easily be indicted, and tried by any or all of the 93 U.S. Attorneys. Worse, he could be indicted, and tried by the hundreds of county prosecutors of every state in the union.

The danger is obvious. Chaos. If the president can be tried, convicted and imprisoned while in office, is he going to serve the remainder of his term while confined in a penitentiary? Is Joliet State Prison going to be the Midwestern White House? What if he appeals and wins?

If the president can be prosecuted while in office, any one prosecutor -- federal or state -- could nullify or attempt to nullify the will of the voters (and their electors) in the 50 states. What if the Cook County state's attorney charged the president with "official misconduct" for usurping Congressional power to declare war by taking out an Islamic State terrorist training camp in Libya without specific prior Congressional approval?


Would the president have to put all other issues on his desk on the back burner to defend himself in Cook County criminal court? Can 12 jurors nullify the results of a presidential election?

It is not difficult to imagine a concerted effort by 10 opposition prosecutors, acting as Lilliputians to tie down President Gulliver -- to divert his attention from the great matters of state and duties of his office, to the tawdry matter of defending himself against sundry official misconduct charges. If you think the efforts of the opposition party in Congress -- Republican or Democrat -- to obstruct the sitting president's agenda are hurting the country, imagine the chaos that opposition prosecutors could do if they had power to indict, try and imprison a sitting president.

The argument has been made that during the trial of a sitting president, the vice president and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments could make a written declaration that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," and that the vice president could then immediately assume the powers and duties of the presidency pursuant to the 25th Amendment.

The president could, however, make his counter-declaration that no inability exists. If he did, he would resume office unless two-thirds of the members of both Houses of Congress found that he was unable to discharge his duties.

The 25th Amendment was added to the Constitution (1967), not to allow members of the president's cabinet to suspend a physically and mentally competent president from office during a criminal trial, but rather to do so if the president should become physically or mentally disabled. It was passed in the wake of the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. What if the bullet, rather than killing the president, had left him alive but unable to "discharge the powers and duties of his office?"

The sole remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors is impeachment -- by the elected representatives of the people from all 50 states.

Posted: QCOline.com August 22, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Ever Hear of Tenure of Office Act of 1867?

What if President Trump should decide special prosecutor Robert Mueller is abusing his authority? That Mueller’s Russian meddling investigation is hindering the president’s duty to faithfully execute all the other laws? Can President Trump “fire” or remove him?

The simple answer is, “Yes.”

Article II of the U.S. Constitution gives the president power to appoint the “principal officers” of the U.S., subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. It is silent, however, as to the president’s power to remove those principal officers.


What if Congress were to pass a law providing that Mueller cannot be removed without the advice and consent of the Senate? Or without the approval of the courts?

If the president has the power of appointment, the president has the absolute constitutional power to remove that executive branch officer without the consent of the Senate, even though the officer’s appointment was subject to Senate approval.

In 1926, in the case of Myers v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court decided that issue.

Frank S. Myers was a first-class postmaster, appointed under an act of Congress which provided “postmasters of the first, second and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the president by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ...”

President Wilson dismissed Myers from his post. The Senate did not consent to the president’s removal. Myers sued.

The court framed the issue as follows:

“This case presents the question whether, under the Constitution, the president has the exclusive power of removing executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

The court engaged in an exhaustive historical examination of the issue that included analysis of legislation, beginning with the 1789 Bill to Establish a Department of Foreign Affairs, considered by the First Congress, which would have allowed the president unfettered discretion to remove any officer conducting the foreign affairs of the nation.

It concluded with examination of the 1867 Tenure of Office Act which barred President Andrew Johnson from removing Secretary of War Edward Stanton without Senate consent. (Stanton refused to support President Andrew Johnson’s lenient plan to reconstruct the South, and instead supported the rigorous congressional Reconstruction of the radical Republicans).

The court concluded:

“When, on the merits, we find our conclusion strongly favoring the view which prevailed in the First Congress, we have no hesitation in holding that conclusion to be correct, and it therefore follows that the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, insofar as it attempted to prevent the president from removing an executive officer who had been appointed by him by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, was invalid, and that subsequent legislation of the same effect was equally so.


“For the reasons given, we must therefore hold that the provision of the law of 1867, by which the unrestricted power of removal of first-class postmasters is denied to the president, is in violation of the Constitution, and invalid.”

The court’s holding was based squarely on the 1789 remarks of James Madison and his supporters during the debate on the Bill to Establish a Department of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Madison, in the House discussion, dwelt at length upon the necessity for construing Article II to give the president the sole power of removal in his responsibility for the conduct of the executive branch, and re-enforced this by emphasizing his duty expressly declared in the third section of the article to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

According to Madison, “The vesting of the executive power in the president was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws. But the president, alone and unaided, could not execute the laws. He must execute them by the assistance of subordinates.

“As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws.

“The further implication must be, in the absence of any express limitation respecting removals, that, as his selection of administrative officers is essential to the execution of the laws by him, so must be his power of removing those for whom he cannot continue to be responsible.”

Posted: QCOline.com August 10, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Must Guards Turn Other Cheek to Spitting Inmates?

In Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Bob Ewell spits in Atticus Finch’s face.





Finch had acted as court appointed defense counsel for Tom Robinson, and had defended him against a perjured rape charge leveled by Ewell and his daughter.

Finch replied, “I’m too old to fight.”


But what are real-life prison guards at Harrisburg Juvenile Detention facility supposed to do when incarcerated delinquents who have turned 18 (adult) spit in their faces?

There was a time when if a convicted juvenile delinquent spat in a guard’s face, the spitter found himself in solitary confinement for a period deemed sufficient by the prison authorities to deter such misconduct. Then the American Civil Liberties Union and the federal court got involved, and the use of solitary was severely curtailed by the federal judge’s “Remedial Plan.”

As summarized in the ACLU’s most recent pleading, the plan “specified limited purposes for which [solitary] confinement may be used behavior management [not to exceed 24 hours] ... and specifically provides that ‘All other forms of confinement shall be prohibited, including, but not limited to for purposes of disciplining or punishing a youth.”

The ACLU now alleges that those delinquents who have turned 18 (become “adults”), are now being prosecuted for aggravated battery, and upon conviction sentenced to adult prison or probation -- spitting on someone is a battery, and when that someone is a correctional officer, it becomes aggravated battery. The ACLU argues “this kind of excessive punishment is ruinous for young lives.”

But if you are 18, and on the street, and you spit in a cop’s face, you’ll certainly be charged with battery. And if you have a prior significant record, either as a juvenile or an adult, you may be charged with aggravated battery and face adult prison. So why should an incarcerated 18-year-old juvenile be treated more favorably than another 18-year-old on the street and not incarcerated, who spits in the face of a policeman?

Do you really think judges send delinquents to Harrisburg for “insignificant” first offenses? Probation is almost always tried first, except for serious or violent offenses.

But assuming for purposes of argument that “rehabilitation” is the only purpose of a delinquency proceeding, that is not true in an adult prosecution. Therein, while rehabilitation remains a goal of sentencing, it must be balanced against the need to punish, and deter the offender and others, and protect the public.

Yet, in its pleading, the ACLU pooh poohs the Harrisburg staff’s concerns:

“The staff are concerned that there are fewer consequences for serious misconduct and they express the questionable opinion that the threat of being placed in [solitary] confinement is a valuable deterrent to aggressive and assaultive youth.”

OK. So, what other “meaningful alternative” is there? What if each of the roughly 126 delinquents at the Harrisburg spits in the face of every guard who comes within range? What if just five do? What if one or more of the spitters carry AIDS or some other infectious disease? What if 24-hour detention is inadequate to stop the spitting?

If you can’t put the spitters in solitary, and/or prosecute those who have reached the age of 18 as adults for aggravated battery, what are the guards supposed to do? Wear hazmat suits?

I have long believed, that except for the most serious abuses, judges are not competent to run prisons. Federal judges have no jurisdiction to prosecute inmates for state law violations, such as disorderly conduct, battery or aggravated battery. Their injunctions typically only tell the prison authorities (not the inmates) what they can or cannot do.

If you enjoin the use of solitary confinement, and adult prosecutions, what’s left?

Can a guard whack a spitter with a billy club? Perhaps up to three times, but not too hard? If solitary for more than 24 hours is “cruel and unusual punishment,” why wouldn’t billy clubbing be deemed worse? The pillory have been verboten since colonial times. Is the judge going to approve the guards using self defense? Can they spit back? Punch the spitter in the nose? Or are they expected to imitate Atticus Finch?

What would the ACLU attorneys do if every time one of them visited a Harrisburg inmate, the inmate spat in his face? What would the federal judge do if he became the target?

Rehabilitation of juvenile inmates is a worthy goal. But rehabilitation requires the cooperation of the juvenile. Spitting on correction officers hardly seems consistent with the juvenile seriously working to “rehabilitate” himself.

Posted: QCOline.com August 1, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

Free Speech and Free Counter-speech. Our First Amendment Rights

When the Supreme Court in Citizens United held that all corporations -- profit, non-profit and ecclesiastical -- had the First Amendment right to use their corporate funds to voice and "broadcast" their political and economic ideas (as The New York Times or The Washington Post do on a daily basis), the court was vilified.

The essence of Citizens United was that your right to "speak" necessarily assumes that someone who disagrees with you has the right to engage in "counter-speech."

When I was a law student, one of my professors said, "A nation teaming with a myriad of competing entities, large and small, each espousing and pursuing its own competing interest, must of necessity remain free and democratic. The totalitarian state can brook no dissenting entities."

His remark was reminiscent of what the great Justice Oliver Holmes said in Abrams v. U.S. "Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition.

"To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent …

"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe ... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market ….

"That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

"Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country."

So what is happening in our modern "free marketplace of ideas?"

When I was a boy, living in a Chicago suburb, Chicago had four major newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, the Sun Times, the Daily News and the Herald American. They spoke with very different voices. The Tribune was staunchly conservative. The Sun Times was pro-Democrat, but independent of Chicago political control. The Daily News was scholarly and literary. The Herald American was something right out of Ben Hecht's play, the"Front Page."

Today, only the Tribune and Sun Times survive.

Running parallel to the demise of many newspapers is the phenomenon of merger. In June 2000, the Tribune acquired the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company.

That merger added seven daily newspapers to the Tribune's chain, including the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, and the Long Island-based Newday. Additionally, the Tribune acquired TV stations in New York and LA to go along with WGN-Chicago.

As each independent newspaper, TV station or radio station died off, America lost one more independent purveyor of ideas. As media holding companies gobble up small media companies, "thought monopoly" tends to replace diverse and independent thought.

But what should be more worrisome is the emergence of the intolerant tyranny of "political correctness." Disfavored speakers are shouted down so their voices can't be heard. Riot, as at Berkeley, becomes the left's weapon of choice to suppress disfavored speech. The infallible apostles of the religion of "clean energy," hold that "error has no rights," and that any politician or corporation espousing contrary "heretical" views must be silenced -- denied any right of "counter-speech." What other way of thinking can justify the attempted assassination of Rep. Steve Scalise and his fellow baseball-practicing Republican Congressmen because their politics was objectionable to the shooter?

When I was a boy, that's exactly the way things were in the USSR. All newspapers and media were a monopoly of the Communist Party and the Soviet State. All Soviet "truth" came from Pravda, or other state-controlled media. There was no marketplace of ideas.

Dissent was punishable with a one-way ticket to Siberia. Ancient history? How is counter speech being tolerated in Venezuela today?

The choice is yours: a free marketplace of ideas, or totalitarianism.

Posted: QCOline.com July 16, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

When First Amendment Prohibitions and Rights Collide

                       “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 

                       free exercise thereof.” -- 1st Amendment, U.S. Constitution

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, decided a major 1st Amendment case involving both the establishment of religion and the free exercise of religion clauses of the 1st Amendment.

So what happens when a state's effort to avoid establishing a religion collides with a church's free exercise of its religion?

The court summarized the facts:

"The Missouri Department of Natural Resources offers state grants to help public and private schools, nonprofit daycare centers, and other nonprofit entities purchase rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires.

"Trinity Lutheran applied for such a grant for its preschool and daycare center.

"The ... Center is ... open throughout the year to serve working families. It admits students of any religion. Enrollment stands at about 90 children, ranging from age two to five.

"... it would have received one, but for the fact that Trinity Lutheran is a church.

"The Department had a policy of categorically disqualifying churches and other religious organizations from receiving grants under its playground resurfacing program.

"The Department ultimately awarded 14 grants in 2012. Because the Center was operated by Trinity Lutheran Church, it was denied a grant."

The Court then set out the issue:

"The question presented is whether the Department’s policy violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Trinity Lutheran sued alleging that the department’s failure to approve the venter’s application, pursuant to its policy of denying grants to religiously affiliated applicants, violates the free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment. The lower courts held for the department. The Supreme Court reversed, saying:

"The Free Exercise Clause 'protect[s] religious observers against unequal treatment' and subjects to the strictest scrutiny, laws that target the religious for 'special disabilities' based on their 'religious status.'

"... this Court has repeatedly confirmed that denying a generally available benefit solely on account of religious identity imposes a penalty on the free exercise of religion that can be justified only by a state interest 'of the highest order.'

"Consequently, [a state] cannot exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans ... or the members of any other faith, because of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation.

"A law, we said, may not discriminate against 'some or all religious beliefs.' Nor may a law regulate or outlaw conduct because it is religiously motivated. ...

"The Department’s policy expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character."


The Missouri Department contended that merely declining to extend funds to Trinity Lutheran does not prohibit the church from engaging in any religious conduct or otherwise exercising its religious rights.

The court answered:

"It is true the Department has not criminalized the way Trinity Lutheran worships or told the Church that it cannot subscribe to a certain view of the Gospel. But, ... the Free Exercise Clause protects against 'indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions.'

"The express discrimination against religious exercise here is not the denial of a grant, but rather the refusal to allow the Church -- solely because it is a church -- to compete with secular organizations for a grant. ... The 'injury in fact' is the inability to compete on an equal footing in the bidding process, not the loss of a contract).

"In this case, there is no dispute that Trinity Lutheran is put to the choice between being a church and receiving a government benefit. The rule is simple: No churches need apply."

Missouri argued its "compelling interest" was its "policy preference" for "skating" as far as possible from any possible "establishment of religion."

The court responded:

“The state interest asserted here -- in achieving greater separation of church and State than is already ensured under the Establishment Clause of the Federal Constitution -- is limited by the Free Exercise Clause.”

So the bottom line is this: If the state is handing out balls and bats and/or playground equipment to not-for-profits, if you are a church, get your application in. They can't deny your request simply because your program is church-affiliated. Caveat: establishment of religion precedents would allow the state to refuse to fund a course of study designed to make the applicant a priest or a minister.

Posted: QCOline.com July 9, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea

US Needs One Immigration Policy, Not 700

"The Congress shall have power ... to establish a uniform rule of naturalization ... throughout the United States." -- U.S. Constitution, Article 1.

The Appellate Courts of the 4th and 9th circuits had affirmed most of the Preliminary Injunctive Relief granted against President Trump's Executive Order No 2 by lower district courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has now unanimously stayed those appellate court orders -- except as to those "foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." (i.e., "the exception")

The court has set hearing on the merits of all issues of the consolidated cases for October 2017.


Were I writing the President's Supreme Court brief on the main issue (note: not on "the exception"], appealing from the 9th Circuit's Immigration rulings, my brief would go something like this:

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Galvan v. Press, stated that under Article I of the Constitution, the power to make immigration laws “is entrusted exclusively to Congress.”

In Fiallo v. Bell, the Supreme Court stated, "Over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over the admission of aliens. ... The conditions of entry for every alien, the particular classes of aliens that shall be denied entry altogether, the basis for determining such classification ... have been recognized as matters solely for the responsibility of the Congress.”

So, what if Congress, in an exercise of exclusive power to make immigration laws, were to make the following hypothetical findings and law?

"The unrestricted entry into the United States of nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen would be detrimental to the interests of the United States and directs that the entry of nationals from those designated countries be barred for 90 days."

Would the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, or any other federal court have power to enjoin that exercise of congressional power?

What is the meaning of the word "exclusive?" Does Congress have "exclusive" power, if a court can enjoin exercise of that power?

If the power to make immigration laws “is entrusted exclusively to Congress,” and is "solely the responsibility of the Congress," that power is neither "exclusive" or "sole" if any court can bar Congress from exercising that power.

But what if Congress delegates its power to control immigration to the president -- the chief executive? Indeed, in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, Section 212(f), that is precisely what Congress did.

"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

In writing that law, Congress exercised its "EXCLUSIVE" power over immigration. It delegated its "exclusive" power to make "findings" [president finds] to the president. It also delegated to the president, its "exclusive" power to "deem what is appropriate" [he "may deem to be appropriate"].


So, if the president "deems it appropriate" to bar entry by nationals from six countries where Muslims are slaughtering Muslims for 90 days because he fears that at least some of those immigrants or refugees will bring their "holy wars" here, and that that would be detrimental to our security, can any court second-guess him? Make its own determination of what is detrimental? What vetting is appropriate and required for our national security?

Under Section 212(f), the president alone, as chief executive, has been designated by Congress as Congress' agent. Pursuant to that delegation, President Trump has made his executive order.

(The "hypothetical legislation" set out above is a verbatim excerpt lifted from President Trump's Revised Immigration Executive Order, EO No. 2.)

The main question which the Supreme Court will decide in October is who decides whether the president's finding is legally sufficient? Who decides whether immigration from a particular country will be detrimental to the U.S.? The president, or 700 federal court judges? Will we have one immigration policy, or 700?

If you think the latter, what competence does any judge have to manage immigration?

National security? The answer is obvious: NONE.

Posted: QCOline.com July 3, 2017
Copyright 2017, John Donald O'Shea