Posts Tagged → order
Eye for eye, order for order
Unelected over-reaching judges driven by blatant partisan political activism are trying to thwart the will of The People by issuing decisions (“orders”) on Trump Administration activities that are far outside their courts’ constitutionally defined jurisdictions. Something like nearly 100% of these decisions in the past twenty years have been issued against President Trump alone, which shows that Democrat Party judicial tyranny is the same as Democrat Party executive branch tyranny. These people will burn down America’s constitutional norms simply to hold on to power.
Executive branch decisions that are solely the jurisdiction of the executive branch are not up for question or “orders” by the judicial branch. But this elementary separation of powers fact is not stopping these political activists in black robes, and something needs to be done to stop their power grab, to restore balance to the galaxy.
That some people, especially John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, want these outlandish decisions to be adjudicated through the lengthy, time-consumptive appellate process means just one thing: They want to stop President Trump’s agenda from being implemented by any means necessary. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional, they want the judiciary to be the sole arbiter of the judiciary’s own unconstitutional over-reach.
In other words, “We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.” The judiciary is so far mostly siding with itself in hogging more power than the Constitution grants to judges, and is unlikely to stop itself from hogging even more power.
This is not an acceptable way to run the American republic, and some thing or many things must be done to fend it off. Some are talking about impeaching the most rogue, most lawless, most openly partisan of these judges, such as James Boasberg and Beryl Howell. OK, one survey I saw showed a 2:1 margin in favor of impeaching them, so get on with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson. Impeachment will probably send a good signal, even if conviction and removal in the US Senate is not guaranteed. Impeachment hearings will tie up a judge’s work load and cause it to be re-distributed to other active judges.
Another way to end this radical judiciary’s assault on democracy is to take away their funding, and to then re-organize the courts, and then even more clearly defining their jurisdictions in the reorganization process. All of this is the sole purview of Congress, and while the Republicans have the majority, so should they act. So get on it with it, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, and do your duty.
Another way to respond to these lawless activist judges is to simply ignore their decisions. Issue blunt and stinging rebukes to their overeach, and carry on with executive branch activities as if they had never been involved. This will cause the Democrat Party’s mainstream media outlets to scream that there is a “constitutional crisis,” but again, I think there is sufficient new media firepower to over-ride that dead horse with the response that whatever “crisis” exists is solely due to the judicial branch’s inability to stay in its own constitutional lane.
However, there is a potential hybrid response the Trump Administration can make, that I am advocating here. While I have not seen anyone else write about it, I am certain plenty of politically active people have been thinking it: For every dingbat leftwing anti-America judicial “order”, such as Boasberg demanding that hardened illegal alien criminals – murderers, rapists – be returned to America from where they were legally deported to, the executive branch must issue a commensurate order in response.
For example, President Trump can issue an executive order requiring Judge Boasberg to personally retrieve all the illegal aliens he wants returned to America. With no promise that said wildman judge will be allowed back into America.
Or President Trump can issue an executive order that countermands exactly the precise wording of whatever unconstitutional order Judge Beryl “Howlin Wolf” Howell has issued.
Thus, this whole “crisis” becomes a battle of equal orders, from the rogue judiciary against the executive branch, and from the executive branch back against the power-hogging judiciary. This “eye for an eye” order-for-order response will flesh out the visible constitutional symmetry that President Trump’s administration needs the public to see. No longer will this situation be cast as “The courts have spoken…,” which always goes against the Republican president, but rather, it will be two co-equal branches of government issuing co-equal orders against one another, each order cancelling out the other.
An eye for an eye, an order for an order. And if the judiciary refuses to follow the executive orders, then so shall the executive branch be free to ignore the wild judicial orders, as well. True constitutional parity restored.
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.
Send in Delta Force to DC Govt offices?
President Trump was sworn in to office three days ago, on January 20th, and within 24 hours he had signed something like a hundred executive orders. Maybe more. I lost count. One Trump executive order covered 78 EOs signed by Joe Biden.
Two Trump policies in particular have garnered widespread discussion and deserve focus: The pardoning of roughly 1,500 January 6th political prisoners and hostages held by the Federal DC Swamp, and the immediate suspension of all DEI activities and staff in federal offices.
Every pardoned J6 hostage was required to be released from jail immediately, and every DEI staff person was required to leave office and stay out of federal offices. With all DEI activities ended, there was no reason for those staff to remain in office. The pardons are a legal directive, and when the rule of law prevails, the pardoned immediately walks out of jail to their relatives or friends.
In response to President Trump’s executive directives, open insubordination, really an open insurrection and mutiny against the government, by public taxpayer funded employees has unfolded. Many of the DEI staff were simply moved into new positions with new titles in their agencies, instead of going on administrative leave, as their boss directed them to do.
Many of the J6 political prisoners are still being held in jail, and some have been badly beaten by prison staff within just the last 24 hours. Other J6 hostages have been deliberately flown and released into remote places far away from their homes and families, with no money, hardly any clothes, some wearing only prison slippers in the dead of winter in cold parts of America.
We are witnessing a raw power contest between the entrenched and heretofore unaccountable federal bureaucrats (Deep State or Administrative State), and their chief executive, their boss, the president of the United States. The president has issued directives, and the bureaucrats are telling him “Go eff yourself, we are not going to listen to you.”
Emboldened by decades of weak executive leadership and zero accountability (I have my own crazy war stories I can tell from my years working for the Federal government in DC three decades ago) (for a federal worker to get fired, both Heaven and Hell must be moved simultaneously, which is impossible to happen), federal employees are thumbing their noses at the president. I don’t think they are consciously daring him to follow up on his authority. Rather, the bizarre and artificially insulated, cozy culture that surrounds most federal workers has shielded them from ever experiencing real accountability, and it seems they do not expect to experience it. They can’t even imagine it.
From where a lot of outsiders stand, it sure looks like a large portion of the federal workforce has declared its autonomy from the chief executive, and is in the beginning of a full out insurrection against the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law. Recall that the American people chose this chief executive, this chief commanding military officer, this president. So when federal bureaucrats and military officers tell this president to Eff Off, they are telling the American people, the democratic process, the Constitution, and the rule of law to eff off.
We have not even begun to see the full DOJ, FBI, CIA, or Pentagon insurrrection, or a real showdown between ICE and lawless jurisdictions aiding and abetting illegal invaders.
And so, one concludes that President Trump must do the updated version of what President Lincoln did under similar circumstances in 1861: Send in the troops and secure Washington, DC.
In 2025, however, the US military is not riven by North-South/ Pro-Slavery-Anti-Slavery divisions, as Lincoln faced, or like George Washington faced between Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Rather, President Trump now faces a federal bureaucracy and a great portion of the US military that sees itself as autonomous from and removed from the American people. So who can President Trump rely upon to enforce his lawful orders and directives?
Sad to say, there are only a few military units that have withstood the anti-America, anti-democracy DEI onslaught, and who remain purely loyal to the constitutional chain of command and to their oaths of office: The elite American warriors, including the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, and Delta Force commandos. These are the people who President Trump can most reasonably rely upon to see that his orders are being fulfilled in a timely fashion.
These are the people who President Trump needs to send into the J6 prisons, the FBI headquarters, the CIA headquarters, the ATF headquarters, the Pentagon, with full arrest powers, to ensure that the constitutional chain of command is being honored. Or in the alternative, that the insurrectionists are arrested and processed through the proper courts.
And I would suggest that the proper courts to hold trials of the insurrectionists are all out in the hinterlands, like western Nebraska, northern Idaho, Wyoming, west Texas, where judges still know how to properly mete out justice.
We people need to just do what we need to do to move forward
America’s economy is now in artificial tatters, an unnecessary result of very poor public policies in reaction to the Wuhan coronavirus.
Politicians are not going to be able to solve this ridiculous virus panic. In fact, politicians are mostly making it much worse than it really is, and probably they are doing that on purpose. A lust for power, a desire to hurt a political opponent at any cost, even at the cost of hurting and inflicting huge personal losses on the citizens, seem to be the main reasons why governors in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kentucky, and elsewhere have thrown down the gauntlet and are acting like dictators.
The “orders” these governors and local governments have issued are laughably confused, full of inexplicable contradictions and clear violations of Americans’ most basic rights and freedoms. Kentucky’s governor warns churchgoers that he ordered the Kentucky State Police to take down license plates of cars parked in church parking lots on Easter Sunday and other days, so that they can be ticketed later. Michigan’s governor says power boats are not allowed, but sail boats and canoes are OK, but Michiganders may not visit their hunting cabins. In Valley County, Montana, the county health department [I originally and incorrectly wrote that it was Missoula, Montana, the ultra liberal city council there shaping the rest of the surrounding county] issued an order that coronavirus-free people wear pink arm bands in public. Another county in another state went so far as to issue an order that anyone with coronoavirus could be, and probably would be, picked up by the police and involuntarily committed to a special quarantine location. Here in Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf vetoed a bill passed by both the PA House and Senate that brought clarity and structure to his own bizarre order. Wolf now demands that everyone in public wear a mask and that people not wearing masks must not be served in the stores they are in. Local PA townships are not permitted to approve land subdivisions, even though the townships can and do meet by teleconference that pose no health risk to anyone. Home construction is stopped cold, not because Wolf has demonstrated that there is an identifiable risk of spreading a contagious disease from building homes, but simply because he says so.
These orders have nothing to do with actually serving the people of America. They are not actually helping people. The risks of the Kung Flu are obviously much higher in congested places like New York City than in flyover country. These orders are self-serving the politicians with more power and discretion over our personal lives than the political process would ever give them.
And this list of crazy, insane, tyrannical orders over the past few weeks goes on and on. Every one of these orders violates the most essential, core aspects of being an American. Again, with no measurable public benefit and yet at enormous cost to our individual finances.
One good thing that has emerged from the Chinese coronavirus panic is that we all get to see in broad daylight that there are many power-hungry Americans amongst us, who will use whatever power they have to get more power, and to crush dissent, strip us of our liberties, and use overwhelming coercive government force to throw us in jail for made-up violations. We used to laugh that such people could ever exist in our political system! Well, here they are, front and center, and they are no laughing matter!
If ever there was a need for an America with our Bill of Rights protecting individual due process rights and freedoms, this past month has demonstrated it.
So if the politicians are hell bent on screwing up our lives, and destroying America’s economy, then the only people who can fix this is us. You and me. The citizens and local officials who live here, pay taxes here, work here in America. We have to clean this mess up.
It is time for We, The People to put our foot down and show the politicians that despite their crazy power grabs and ridiculous demands upon us, we are going to do what is best for us. We can wear masks and stand apart in public, no problem. We would choose to do that anyhow. But we will open up our businesses again, we will go for walks again, we will drive on the roads for pleasure again, we will approve land subdivisions again, and you can call it civil disobedience, but we will live free again. There is no way any governor is going to enforce their nutty and unconstitutional order by rounding up everyone and putting them in jail.
And if any governor tries to do that, then there is the old tried-and-true torches, pitch forks, and a bucket of hot tar at the governor’s residence to get things straightened out again in a hurry. We are Americans, after all, not sheep.
PA Gov. Wolf’s fatwa
A fatwa is an Islamic edict issued by a senior Muslim Cleric. Most fatwas involve placing a bounty on some poor soul’s head, or placing some poor soul’s head on a stick, for some imaginary religious infraction. While liberals may not share that religious perspective per se, they do share the same love of issuing these cross-this-red-line-and-die edicts.
And so Governor Tom Wolf has issued his own fatwa in the name of public health, supposedly due to potential risks of spreading covid19, the coronavirus. But the fact is that this edict does very little to minimize potential infection, and greatly increases it while also dropping an atom bomb on Pennsylvania’s economy.
Wolf’s edict yesterday essentially commands all business to shut down yesterday. Like close the doors, send everyone home, and sit inside and wait. No lie here, no exaggeration, and the order is made more confusing by using the standard “essential” businesses.
Aren’t all businesses essential to the people who work in them? If you have made life-changing investments in your own small business, then keeping it going would seem awfully essential. And if your job is your sole source of income, then being able to go to your job as much as you can, so you get paid, would seem awfully essential. And if your business is the main place of employment in a small community, isn’t it also essential?
The greatest mystery of Wolf’s edict is that it is openly self-contradictory.
For example, pulp mills can stay in operation, but not the logging operations or forestry support necessary to get the wood products to the mills. That is to say, a guy in a skidder on a hillside way the hell out in the middle of nowhere is hereby forbidden by Governor Wolf from doing his job. Nor can the guy running the chainsaw; he too must sit at home. Also forbidden by Wolf. Because of supposed risk of exposure to or spreading covid19. If you ask me, a guy in a bulldozer or a skidder working in the woods has self-quarantined. But farming can continue on as usual, of course.
The list of the order’s mindless and mutually contradictory restrictions and allowances goes on and on for several pages. A friend of mine who works in the Wolf Administration tells me the list was probably written by an urban kid with no exposure to real life.
Of course his order says that all beer distributors can stay open! No one will ever meet there and mix!
So it seems that 90% of Pennsylvanians will be going to their local beer distributor to get Corona brewskis, and then go hang out together and barbecue together and eat together. Because the schools are all closed and the kids will be home driving their parents crazy. Because there is nothing else to do than socialize. And thus will Governor Tom Wolf not eliminate or reduce the potential for the spread of covid19…he will actually make it worse, by forcing everyone in the state to have a big hang out while bureaucrats sit around and think up other ridiculous boomerang restrictions for the rest of us to follow.
“Hi, we are from the government and we are here to help you.”
Run!
Tests of America’s endurance; we shall overcome
Barack Hussein Obama declared a law singlehandedly last night.
Not that it’s legal or constitutional for any president to impose so much change on American citizens by himself.
American checks and balances of power between the three branches of government require debate and approvals across the board to achieve law or the effects of law.
But we have just witnessed our first rogue, imperial president, whose disgust with everything about America means he has no time or respect for its laws, history, and Constitution.
Obama’s unilateral “amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens is a test of our nation’s endurance, just as we have experienced in the past. Say, the Civil War…….
We have overcome all of those tests and we shall overcome this test, too.
America’s dalliance with this false messiah Obama has resulted in an unprecedented assault on individual rights. Using the IRS and other federal agencies to aggressively “investigate” opponents of the Obama Administration has opened the flood gates among the citizens. Sure, a bunch of innocent citizens will go to jail to satisfy this one man’s hunger for power, but the citizenry increasingly takes notice.
Yes, Obama is making an effort to take over the internet, and thereby suppress citizen dissent in that space. He may very well try another unilateral “executive action” that assumes the bureaucracy will go along with him.
“Tyrants beware!” was a common motto among our founding citizenry. That tyrant, King George, also was arrogant and also believed that the iron fist of armed government coercion would put down the rebellion.
This tyrant, Obama, is well down that old path. What disturbs me is that so many Americans would rather see our democracy fail, or be sorely tested, than to be honest about Obama’s failure. What does that say about our neighbors and friends, upon whom we rely for so much and yet who would see the nation descend into chaos and rebellion.
Answers are tough to come by on this stuff. The questions alone are terrifying.