Tag Archives: foreign policy

The “Muslim Travel” Moratorium Case

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The Supreme Court is hearing this case as it pertains to the current Executive Order that imposes a moratorium on entry into the US by persons coming from certain specified nations.  (In aside, I emphasize that calling the EO a “Muslim ban” is dishonest. It presents an impermanent moratorium on entry from nations representing a bare 10% of the world’s Muslims, and it presents the same impermanent moratorium on non-Muslim countries, like northern Korea.)

Lower courts have invoked campaign rhetoric, the clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO on the matter, a made-up permanence of the moratorium, and on and on, to create a court-manufactured policy determination that the EO was somehow prejudiced in some way.  With that fantasy, those lower courts have struck the EOs, one after another.

The lower courts have been imposing their own prejudices.

What’s in the text of the Executive Order? Is the EO itself legal? These are the only questions legitimately before the Justices. Campaign rhetoric is not in the EO, and so cannot be considered. The clumsiness of the rollout of the first EO had nothing to do with the EO—or with the one presently before the Justices—and so cannot be considered by the Justices.  The duration of the moratorium is a political decision, and so cannot be considered.

In Connecticut National Bank v Germain, the Supremes held

…time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there.

The concept plainly holds for EOs as well.  If it’s not in the EO, the EO doesn’t say it.

Whether the EO’s moratorium on entry into the US from a selected set of nations is good or bad policy is certainly worthy of debate, but it’s strictly and solely a political debate to be had by We the People, and through us, our elected representatives. Politics and associated policy decisions are beyond the ken of courts.

The Comey Memos

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The memos can be read here.  Aside from all the commentary on the memos’ content, a couple of other things jump out at me.

One is the level of classification: SECRET/NOFORN.  Comey noted at their start that he was unsure of the memos’ classification, so he marked them SECRET and invited his addressees to correct that as required.  One or more of them considered NOFORN—nor for foreign viewing, even if otherwise cleared to the level of secrecy; this is an addendum that gets added to unclassified material, too, on occasion—to be a suitable addition.  Reading around the redactions, this seems an obvious need.

The bigger deal though, is the amount of redaction that actually was done.  Out of 15 total pages of memos, some 34 lines had something redacted, and most of that was just a couple of words or a short phrase.  That little bit didn’t take all this time and the threat of a subpoena to get the memos marked and released to the House committees demanding them.  That emphasizes the question of what the FBI was trying to hide with its intransigence in stonewalling the release.

And that raises another question in my pea brain: having read the memos, there’s nothing in them that should have caused embarrassment to the FBI.  So: what else is the FBI hiding, what is it holding back that we haven’t heard about?

Progressive-Democratic Party Intransigence

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Leaving aside Senator Rand Paul’s (R, KY) obstructiveness, the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators are opposing, as a bloc, Mike Pompeo’s confirmation as Secretary of State.  As The Wall Street Journal put it Wednesday,

Their new standard seems to be that any nominee who agrees with the elected President is disqualified.

And

What a message that would send to America’s enemies as President Trump prepares for his North Korea summit, decides on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal, and confronts a hostile Russia. Democrats say they don’t trust Mr Trump, but in denying him senior advisers they make it more likely he will govern by himself. Mark it down as one more example that hatred for Mr Trump has caused many of his opponents to abandon rational judgment.

However, in this sort of case, I think the WSJ‘s angst is overwrought and the Progressive-Democrats’ intransigence not so effective.  There are serious requirements for having an actual, sitting Secretary of State. However, Trump can get his advice from whomever he chooses; he doesn’t need formally sitting Cabinet members. He also can get folks who represent him to other nations from anywhere he wants. Advice and such representatives are what kitchen cabinets—a Progressive-Democratic Party invention—are for.

Nonsense

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Germany wants to be excused from American sanctions against Russia, sanctions that were imposed over Russia’s misbehaviors.  The misbehaviors include meddling in our elections, and Russia’s continued efforts to meddle in our upcoming elections.

Germany does a lot of business with Russia. Trade between the two countries rose to €54.5 billion ($67.4 billion) last year from €45 billion in 2016, despite increasingly stringent sanctions, and German companies have invested more than €20 billion in Russia in recent years.

This is nonsense.  And Germany plainly has been sidestepping existing sanctions right along.  The desire to be excused stems more from Germany’s choosing to be hostage to Russian oil and natural gas supplies than anything else.  Germany’s voluntary hostage status is accelerating through its support for a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea that would run directly from Russia to Germany.

No, the sanctions are intended to hold Russia to account for its misbehaviors, to punish Russia for them.  No punishment occurs if exceptions are given out over this or that excuse or for any reason at all.  Sanctions may well be inconvenient for some entities other than the target, and that’s unfortunate.  Nevertheless, Germany needs to shape up and stop masquerading itself as victim.

“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”*

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From Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars:

In France during the 1920s, teachers’ unions had all but banned patriotic references to French victories (which were regarded as “bellicose” and “a danger for the organization of peace”) and removed books that considered battles such as Verdun as anything other than a tragedy that affected both sides equally.

Sound familiar?

How about this:

Of the Anschluss, Germany’s forced annexation of Austria, Chancellor Franz von Papen later concluded, “not only had there been no armed conflict, but no foreign power had seen fit to intervene.  They adopted the same passive attitude as they had shown toward the reintroduction of conscription in Germany and the reoccupation of the Rhineland.  The result was that Hitler became impervious to the advice of all those who wished him to exercise moderation in his foreign policy.”

 

*Extra points for naming the speaker of the quote.  No search engines, no Wikipedia; although consulting your print libraries is allowed.  Graduates of the Hillsdale collection of schools should know this from memory.