June 04, 2025
Irrationality at Reason
Timothy Birdnow
More proof libertarians just don't get it. Neither do some of the so-called "constitutionalists" who have conveniently forgotten that the Constitution has been used as toiletry for decades now and is now being employed as a weapon to preserve the power of those who befouled it.
The president treats legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat
Most of these "legal constraints" of which he bemoans were put in place not that long ago and are tools to stymie any effort to truly reform Washington.
FTA:
I Suppose author Jacob Sullum can be forgiven for not knowing that the very next day an appalate court overturned this ruling. So if it was a case of Trump treating "legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat" then apparently an independent court is doing the same.
The fact is Congress granted this authority to the President and it's been used by almost every President since Carter. There are no constraints written into the law. IF Congress doesn't like it they can pass a law overturning it, but they won't.
Trump HAS to move with great dispatch. He has two years of guaranteed momentum. If the GOP loses the midterms there will be no legal remedies for anything and Trump knows that. He has to act decisively and now. And this is exactly what the public voted for when they elected a man convicted of a felony to be President.
The article continues:
Now we have as many as 30 MILLION illegal aliens scattered all around the country and this dimwit thinks we should deport under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which would reqauire a lenthy hearing and appeal from each and every one of these thirty million. Even if the number is half that (and I don't believe it for a second) we're talking about fifteen MILLION trials. This guy is writing for a magazine called Reason; he should be capable of doing basic math.
And the longer these people stay the more damage they do. They are suckling off the government and stealing taxpayer dollars at a time when we can't afford it. They are stealing jobs from Americans who want to work. They have already inflated the housing prices. And we know there are terrorists here too; we just saw one terrorist attack in Colorado by an illegal alien.
You are going to find it extremely hard to deport these people the longer they stay; look at the "Dreamers" who were only supposed to be here temporarily.
And Trump was elected to a large extent by promising to kick these people out of the country. The public wants this.
Again, time is of the essence, and the longer it takes to get going the more the opposition will organize to resist. Just look at that judge who helped a criminal illegal alien escape ICE! That will metastasize if we dilly-dalley.
To continue:
So this fellow would rather follow form, ignoring the fact that most of the illegal aliens here are precisely that and the Biden Administration broke the law letting them in. He reminds me of the quartermaster in the movie Zulu Dawn; yelling at desperate soldiers trying to get bullets and carefully, slowing meting them out while British soldiers were falling to the onslaught of Zulu warriors.
I tire of these Ashley Wilkes types who are happy to lose as long as they can tell themselves they are the bigger person, and haven't sullied their pointless honor by getting down and dirty in the political mud. We've been cursed by those types for generations now. There are many on the Right who were happy being losers and having their own little fiefdoms. Trump came along and showed how to win - and they don't want to win. Better to lose with good form!
There are times for being slow and deliberate; this isn't one of them. We need to move. We have for decades been trapped like flies in amber, with the rising tide of radicalism pushing ever forward and people who do not understand that this is in fact a war for our very survival, that our nation is at stake, argue for slavish obeisance to the law and a slow, phegmatic approach which doesn't catch up to where we once were before the Left ran roughshod. It's a loser's game.
Uh, Trump and DHS were not trying to deport criminals alone. He wants to kick out so many of the radicals who are here, and especially in the universities. This author has to know he isn't going to get anyone out using the byzantine procedures in place. Everything in America is aimed at making it easy to get in, hard to get out. It's like a prison - there's a one-way door. It's been under construction since Ted Kennedy reformed our immigration laws back in the sixties.
Here the author's heart is revealed and his Nevertrump pathology is on display:
But who is disregarding the law? Trump has faced more judicial challenges than any President in history; it's a planned play by the Democrats. They are calling in all their favors from judges who have had it easy until now. The LAW isn't being followed; it's being used as a weapon to stop Trump from enacting the agenda he was elected to enact. Trump has won most of these challenges on appeal, but that sucks up time and costs American taxpayers money. The Democrats are afraid to oppose him too vigorously; it only makes him more popular. So they are using their pet judges.
I would add Joe Biden appointed most of them. Biden appointed 252 judges to the Federal Bench. Obama appointed the largest share of currently active federal judges at 38%, or 334 judges, while George W. Bush named 20%. Clinton appointed 11%. The fact is enemies of MAGA infest most of our courts.
And this author thinks using the system is going to work. Fat chance. Especially since Trump is trying to restore the old system and break the new, and all of these judges are there because they came out of Babylon.
Mr. Sullum concludes with a quote from John Marshall (the guy who granted himself the power of judicial review despite it not being anywehre in the Constitution) saying it is the province of judges to say what the law is. That's fine but they aren't doing that; they are rewriting the law to say what THEY want it to say. We have Trump precisely because of judicial activism.
Trump DOES care, contrary to what Sullum says. He cares enough to fight against the creeping usurpation of power by courts. Trump is doing nothing that previous Presidents hadn't already done. The difference is that his enemies will use any and all means, fair and foul, to stop the restoration of the Republic.
I would think a publicatin named Reason would feature more than cartoonish logic and mischaracterizations.
More proof libertarians just don't get it. Neither do some of the so-called "constitutionalists" who have conveniently forgotten that the Constitution has been used as toiletry for decades now and is now being employed as a weapon to preserve the power of those who befouled it.
The president treats legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat
Most of these "legal constraints" of which he bemoans were put in place not that long ago and are tools to stymie any effort to truly reform Washington.
FTA:
"Last week, a federal court ruled that President Donald Trump had exceeded his statutory authority by imposing a raft of tariffs based on the "national emergency" supposedly caused by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit. Those tariffs are part of an alarming pattern: In his rush to enact his agenda, Trump frequently treats legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat.
The U.S. Court of International Trade rejected Trump's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify sweeping import taxes he announced in February and April. The three-judge panel said that 48-year-old law, which does not even mention tariffs and had never been used this way before, does not authorize the president to "impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world."
The U.S. Court of International Trade rejected Trump's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify sweeping import taxes he announced in February and April. The three-judge panel said that 48-year-old law, which does not even mention tariffs and had never been used this way before, does not authorize the president to "impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world."
I Suppose author Jacob Sullum can be forgiven for not knowing that the very next day an appalate court overturned this ruling. So if it was a case of Trump treating "legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat" then apparently an independent court is doing the same.
The fact is Congress granted this authority to the President and it's been used by almost every President since Carter. There are no constraints written into the law. IF Congress doesn't like it they can pass a law overturning it, but they won't.
Trump HAS to move with great dispatch. He has two years of guaranteed momentum. If the GOP loses the midterms there will be no legal remedies for anything and Trump knows that. He has to act decisively and now. And this is exactly what the public voted for when they elected a man convicted of a felony to be President.
The article continues:
"Trump's immigration crackdown features similar legal shortcuts. After he asserted the power to summarily deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang as "alien enemies," for example, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they had a due process right to contest that designation.
That decision did not address Trump's dubious interpretation of the 227-year-old Alien Enemies Act. But several federal judges, including a Trump appointee, subsequently concluded that it made no sense to portray gang members as "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of a "hostile nation or government" that had launched an "invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."
As with tariffs, Trump had a more legally defensible option: deportation of unauthorized residents under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But in both cases, he chose the course he thought would avoid pesky procedural requirements.
That decision did not address Trump's dubious interpretation of the 227-year-old Alien Enemies Act. But several federal judges, including a Trump appointee, subsequently concluded that it made no sense to portray gang members as "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of a "hostile nation or government" that had launched an "invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."
As with tariffs, Trump had a more legally defensible option: deportation of unauthorized residents under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But in both cases, he chose the course he thought would avoid pesky procedural requirements.
Now we have as many as 30 MILLION illegal aliens scattered all around the country and this dimwit thinks we should deport under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which would reqauire a lenthy hearing and appeal from each and every one of these thirty million. Even if the number is half that (and I don't believe it for a second) we're talking about fifteen MILLION trials. This guy is writing for a magazine called Reason; he should be capable of doing basic math.
And the longer these people stay the more damage they do. They are suckling off the government and stealing taxpayer dollars at a time when we can't afford it. They are stealing jobs from Americans who want to work. They have already inflated the housing prices. And we know there are terrorists here too; we just saw one terrorist attack in Colorado by an illegal alien.
You are going to find it extremely hard to deport these people the longer they stay; look at the "Dreamers" who were only supposed to be here temporarily.
And Trump was elected to a large extent by promising to kick these people out of the country. The public wants this.
Again, time is of the essence, and the longer it takes to get going the more the opposition will organize to resist. Just look at that judge who helped a criminal illegal alien escape ICE! That will metastasize if we dilly-dalley.
To continue:
"Trump's immigration crackdown features similar legal shortcuts. After he asserted the power to summarily deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang as "alien enemies," for example, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they had a due process right to contest that designation.
That decision did not address Trump's dubious interpretation of the 227-year-old Alien Enemies Act. But several federal judges, including a Trump appointee, subsequently concluded that it made no sense to portray gang members as "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of a "hostile nation or government" that had launched an "invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."
As with tariffs, Trump had a more legally defensible option: deportation of unauthorized residents under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But in both cases, he chose the course he thought would avoid pesky procedural requirements.
Something similar happened when Immigration and Customs Enforcement suddenly terminated thousands of records in the database of foreign students with visas authorizing them to attend American universities. Although that move was described as part of a "Student Criminal Alien Initiative," it affected many people without disqualifying criminal records—in some cases, without any criminal records at all.
Those terminations "reflect an instinct that has become prevalent in our society to effectuate change: move fast and break things," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White wrote when he issued a preliminary injunction against the initiative on May 22. "That instinct must be checked when it conflicts with established principles of law."
The same instinct is apparent in Trump's conflict with Harvard University. The administration froze more than $2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard, ostensibly because the university, by tolerating antisemitism on campus, had failed to meet its "responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."
That decision ignored the legal process for rescinding federal funding based on such alleged violations. The process includes "a lot of steps, but they're important," the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression notes. "They protect students by making sure colleges live up to their obligations. And they protect colleges by making sure they have an opportunity to contest the allegations as well as a chance to make things right.
That decision did not address Trump's dubious interpretation of the 227-year-old Alien Enemies Act. But several federal judges, including a Trump appointee, subsequently concluded that it made no sense to portray gang members as "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of a "hostile nation or government" that had launched an "invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."
As with tariffs, Trump had a more legally defensible option: deportation of unauthorized residents under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But in both cases, he chose the course he thought would avoid pesky procedural requirements.
Something similar happened when Immigration and Customs Enforcement suddenly terminated thousands of records in the database of foreign students with visas authorizing them to attend American universities. Although that move was described as part of a "Student Criminal Alien Initiative," it affected many people without disqualifying criminal records—in some cases, without any criminal records at all.
Those terminations "reflect an instinct that has become prevalent in our society to effectuate change: move fast and break things," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White wrote when he issued a preliminary injunction against the initiative on May 22. "That instinct must be checked when it conflicts with established principles of law."
The same instinct is apparent in Trump's conflict with Harvard University. The administration froze more than $2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard, ostensibly because the university, by tolerating antisemitism on campus, had failed to meet its "responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."
That decision ignored the legal process for rescinding federal funding based on such alleged violations. The process includes "a lot of steps, but they're important," the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression notes. "They protect students by making sure colleges live up to their obligations. And they protect colleges by making sure they have an opportunity to contest the allegations as well as a chance to make things right.
So this fellow would rather follow form, ignoring the fact that most of the illegal aliens here are precisely that and the Biden Administration broke the law letting them in. He reminds me of the quartermaster in the movie Zulu Dawn; yelling at desperate soldiers trying to get bullets and carefully, slowing meting them out while British soldiers were falling to the onslaught of Zulu warriors.
I tire of these Ashley Wilkes types who are happy to lose as long as they can tell themselves they are the bigger person, and haven't sullied their pointless honor by getting down and dirty in the political mud. We've been cursed by those types for generations now. There are many on the Right who were happy being losers and having their own little fiefdoms. Trump came along and showed how to win - and they don't want to win. Better to lose with good form!
There are times for being slow and deliberate; this isn't one of them. We need to move. We have for decades been trapped like flies in amber, with the rising tide of radicalism pushing ever forward and people who do not understand that this is in fact a war for our very survival, that our nation is at stake, argue for slavish obeisance to the law and a slow, phegmatic approach which doesn't catch up to where we once were before the Left ran roughshod. It's a loser's game.
Uh, Trump and DHS were not trying to deport criminals alone. He wants to kick out so many of the radicals who are here, and especially in the universities. This author has to know he isn't going to get anyone out using the byzantine procedures in place. Everything in America is aimed at making it easy to get in, hard to get out. It's like a prison - there's a one-way door. It's been under construction since Ted Kennedy reformed our immigration laws back in the sixties.
Here the author's heart is revealed and his Nevertrump pathology is on display:
Trump's disregard for the law is coupled with angry dismay at judicial review. As he sees it, any judge who dares to impede his will is a "Radical Left Lunatic," a "troublemaker" and "agitator" who "should be IMPEACHED!!!
But who is disregarding the law? Trump has faced more judicial challenges than any President in history; it's a planned play by the Democrats. They are calling in all their favors from judges who have had it easy until now. The LAW isn't being followed; it's being used as a weapon to stop Trump from enacting the agenda he was elected to enact. Trump has won most of these challenges on appeal, but that sucks up time and costs American taxpayers money. The Democrats are afraid to oppose him too vigorously; it only makes him more popular. So they are using their pet judges.
I would add Joe Biden appointed most of them. Biden appointed 252 judges to the Federal Bench. Obama appointed the largest share of currently active federal judges at 38%, or 334 judges, while George W. Bush named 20%. Clinton appointed 11%. The fact is enemies of MAGA infest most of our courts.
And this author thinks using the system is going to work. Fat chance. Especially since Trump is trying to restore the old system and break the new, and all of these judges are there because they came out of Babylon.
Mr. Sullum concludes with a quote from John Marshall (the guy who granted himself the power of judicial review despite it not being anywehre in the Constitution) saying it is the province of judges to say what the law is. That's fine but they aren't doing that; they are rewriting the law to say what THEY want it to say. We have Trump precisely because of judicial activism.
Trump DOES care, contrary to what Sullum says. He cares enough to fight against the creeping usurpation of power by courts. Trump is doing nothing that previous Presidents hadn't already done. The difference is that his enemies will use any and all means, fair and foul, to stop the restoration of the Republic.
I would think a publicatin named Reason would feature more than cartoonish logic and mischaracterizations.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:04 AM
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