OPINION:
Were it not for President Donald Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric about Muslims and national security, his latest revised travel ban order would pass constitutional muster with barely a legal argument.
We know this because even the very left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union admitted in court testimony that Trump’s order “could be constitutional” — if it had come from Hillary Clinton.
But from Trump?
Oh, no. That’s unconstitutional.
That was seriously the ACLU’s remarks to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where Trump’s latest travel order version sits for judicial review.
Think about that for a moment. What that means is judges tasked with interpreting a paper matter of law are quite OK with taking their eyes off the text and diving deep into the background of the writer.
In other words, it’s not the Constitution the judges are using to determine lawful versus unlawful. It’s rather the motivations and intentions of the supposed lawbreaker — well, more to truth, the perceived motivations and intentions, because as we all know, there are no mind readers in the human race.
It’s a best-guess, at best.
Here’s a bit from Powerline that sums nicely: “The Democrats who attacked President Trump’s travel order in front of carefully-selected Democratic judges made the extraordinary claim that the president’s statements on the stump, as a candidate, were somehow relevant to whether the order was constitutional. This claim implies than an order may be unconstitutional if issued by one president, while the exact same order would be perfectly fine if issued by another.”
It’s a head-shaker, all right. Yet that’s what ACLU’s Omar Jadwat argued, saying Trump’s order — the one that temporarily suspends the refugee program and that blocks new visas for those from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — could indeed be “constitutional” had it been authored by Clinton.
Why doesn’t the ACLU just get it over with and argue that Trump’s guilty — of being Republican? That’d be more honest.
But this is the same guy, Jadwat, who argued, with straight face, this: Trump’s order is also invalid because it’s “completed unprecedented.”
To that, one of the Fourth Circuit judges asked: “So the first order on anything is invalid?”
Nope — just from Republicans.
That’s not what was said in court. But we all know, that’s what Democrats and the far left are thinking.
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