ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Trump Puts Iran On Notice

 

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said the United States was officially putting Iran on notice on Wednesday over its “destabilizing activity” after it test-fired a ballistic missile over the weekend.

“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” Flynn told a White House briefing, without explaining exactly what that meant.

Flynn said the ballistic missile launch on Sunday was in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution that called on Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

 

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/02/01/trump-white-house-puts-iran-on-notice-over-ballistic-missile-tes/21705121/

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Who is Gorsuch? “Eerily” like Scalia

Who Is Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s First Pick For The Supreme Court?

President Trump has selected federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill a Supreme Court seat that has sat vacant for nearly a year, setting up a blockbuster confirmation hearing that could put the new White House’s domestic political agenda on trial in the U.S. Senate.

The selection fulfills an early campaign promise by Trump to nominate a solidly conservative judge with a record of strictly interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Gorsuch, 49, sailed through an earlier confirmation process for a spot on the federal appeals court in Denver.

Only weeks after his nomination in 2006, the Senate confirmed him by voice vote. The American Bar Association rated him as “unanimously well qualified” at the time.

Gorsuch has a sterling legal pedigree. He clerked for two Supreme Court justices, Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He also served as a clerk on the second most important appeals court in the country, in Washington D.C., for conservative Judge David Sentelle.

Like Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he is in line to replace, Gorsuch has cultivated a reputation as a memorable and clear author of legal opinions. He also considers himself to be an originalist. Lawyers who practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, where Gorsuch currently works, said he is a popular and approachable judge.

SCOTUSblog, the leading Supreme Court blog, described some of Gorsuch’s parallels to Scalia as “eerie.”

Trump is true to his word: he picked someone just like Scalia

“He is an ardent textualist (like Scalia); he believes criminal laws should be clear and interpreted in favor of defendants even if that hurts government prosecutions (like Scalia); he is skeptical of efforts to purge religious expression from public spaces (like Scalia); he is highly dubious of legislative history (like Scalia); and he is less than enamored of the dormant commerce clause (like Scalia),” the blog wrote.

Among other rulings that came to national attention, Gorsuch sided in favor of “religious freedom” claims made by the Little Sisters of the Poor and the owners of the craft company Hobby Lobby, who challenged language in the Affordable Care Act that required them to pay for contraceptive coverage for employees. The Supreme Court backed those Hobby Lobby challengers, in a divided vote, in 2014.

In a lecture to the conservative Federalist Society in Washington more than three years ago, Gorsuch elicited laughter from the audience as he quoted from the 1853 Charles Dickens novel Bleak House, referenced the work of the late novelist David Foster Wallace, and discussed irony and the law.

“Like any human enterprise, the law’s crooked timber occasionally produces the opposite of the intended effect,” he said. “We turn to the law earnestly to promote a worthy idea and wind up with a host of unwelcome side effects that do more harm than good. … We depend upon the rule of law to guarantee freedom, but we have to give up freedom to live under the law’s rules.”

Off the bench, Gorsuch in 2006 published a book called The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, criticizing the practice and defending the “intrinsic value” of human life. He also contributed to The Law of Judicial Precedent last year.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/511850519/who-is-neil-gorsuch-trumps-first-pick-for-the-supreme-court

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Gorsuch Nominated to Supreme Court

Trump Nominates Federal Appeals Court Judge Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court

Trump’s Pick for the Court.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday night that he will nominate Neil Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge in Denver, to succeed Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

Gorsuch, who currently serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, was appointed in 2006 by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote.

A widely respected judge, he had the backing of two conservative legal groups that advised former President Barack Obama and included his name on a list of potential nominees.

The nomination is sure to be hotly contested. Democrats are still seething over the way Senate Republicans treated President Obama’s nominee to succeed Scalia, federal judge Merrick Garland, who wasn’t even given a hearing last year. Scalia died February 13, and there has been a vacancy on the nine-member court ever since. Republicans argued that the next president, not Obama, should get to choose the next justice.

Gorsuch, 49, is a fourth generation Coloradan, born in Denver. His mother, Anne, was appointed by Ronald Reagan as the first woman to head the Environmental Protection Agency, which brought the family to Washington.

He got his first taste of the federal government as a U.S. Senate page while in high school.

Gorsuch graduated from Columbia University, where he co-founded a conservative satirical newspaper, and Harvard Law School. He was a law clerk to fellow Colorado native Byron White on the Supreme Court. White had just retired, so Gorsuch also clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

After a decade in private law practice, he spent two years as a senior official at the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.

He and his wife, Marie Louise, have two teenage daughters.

Gorsuch has not written or joined decisions on hot button social issues such as abortion, but he has expressed strong support for protecting religious liberty.

In 2013, he joined a 10th Circuit decision in favor of the owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, who said their strong religious convictions would be violated by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers provide contraceptive insurance coverage to their employees. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision.

Two years later, he dissented from his court’s ruling against a group of Catholic nuns, The Little Sisters of the Poor, who said that even telling the government that they were opposed to the contraceptive mandate would violate their religious principles. The Supreme Court, because of a 4-4 tie, was unable to decide the issue.

In an opinion widely praised by conservatives, Gorsuch questioned the doctrine invoked by courts when they defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of ambiguous laws. He suggested that it may “concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design.”

As Scalia sometimes did, Gorsuch has shown a willingness to interpret criminal laws in a way that goes against prosecutors when constitutional protections are involved.

Before becoming a judge, he wrote a book about assisted suicide and euthanasia. Laws banning both, he said, are consistent with the idea that “all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Several people familiar with the selection process said Trump seriously considered nominating two other federal judges — Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Pittsburgh and William Pryor from the 11th Circuit in Birmingham, Alabama. Both Hardiman and Pryor were included in Trump’s initial list of possible Supreme Court picks back in May. Gorsuch’s name was added to Trump’s second list released in September.

Pryor was considered the most conservative of the three and thought to be the most difficult to get through the Senate, given his incendiary criticism of the 44-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling that affirmed women have the constitutional right to abortion.

On average, the time between nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court is about eleven weeks. If Gorsuch’s experience follows the usual course, he could be on the court by late April, in time to hear and vote on the last few cases of the current term, which ends in June.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-nominates-federal-appeals-court-judge-neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-n714551

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20 Terrorists Entered US That Trump’s Ban Would Have Stopped

At least 20 alleged terrorists in the past three years were immigrants or refugees from the seven majority-Muslim nations President Trump temporarily banned migration from Friday.

You can’t come here but we are coming after you.

Immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen won’t be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. for the next three months. Several journalists from outlets such as The Washington Post and Vox have complained that Trump picked the wrong countries as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Afghanistan aren’t covered in the temporary immigration bans. Some pundits or politicians have gone as far as to say no terror is caused by immigrants from these nations.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security refused to make public the immigration status of individuals implicated in terrorism, so the exact number of immigrant terrorists is unknown.

However, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest used publicly available information and identified at least 17 individuals from these seven nations that from March 2014 to June 2016 were implicated in terrorism. Eight of these are terrorists convicted for crimes mainly related to giving material support or attempting to give material support to ISIS.

For example, Abdinassir Mohamud Ibrahim, a Somali refugee, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2015 for conspiring to provide material support to the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Harden, an Iraqi refugee who became a permanent legal resident, pled guilty in 2016 to providing material support to ISIS.

Since June 2016, men from these seven countries temporarily banned by Trump have continued to cause terror.  At least one individual was indicted for terrorism charges from a country temporarily banned from entering the U.S., and at least one was convicted of terrorism charges.

There have also been two perpetrators of stabbings that left a total 21 individuals injured. These stabbings were both committed by Somalian refugees, one was at a mall in St. Cloud, Minn., the other was at Ohio State University.

Due to the executive order signed by Trump, within half a year the Department of Homeland Security will release the immigration status of terrorists.

Read more:  http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/30/at-least-20-alleged-terrorists-since-2014-came-from-countries-affected-by-trumps-immigration-ban/#ixzz4XMcFi2v5

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Acting AG Demands Trump’s Laws Be Enforced

Democrats lose again.

Washington (CNN) The United States acting attorney general — for the next few days, at least — is a little-known, but longstanding federal prosecutor.

Dana Boente, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was sworn in as acting attorney general at 9 p.m. Monday evening after President Donald Trump fired the former acting head, Sally Yates, for her unwillingness to defend the administration’s executive action on immigration. A few hours later, Boente issued a statement rescinding Yates’ order, instructing DOJ lawyers to “defend the lawful orders of our President.”

Boente’s tenure as the head of the Justice Department will only last a few days, pending attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions’ approval by the Senate. But Boente has instantly been thrown into the winds of a revealing political storm just 10 days into his presidency.

Boente has served the Justice Department for 31 years, according to his official biography, and has been the permanent US attorney for the Virginia court since December 2015. He served in the same role from October 2008 to September 2009, and as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana from December 2012 to September 2013, at which point he was appointed to the acting US attorney role back in Virginia.

“I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed,” Boente said in a statement produced by the White House in announcing the appointment. “I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected.”

Boente’s most prominent recent case was leading the corruption trial of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court last year. Boente declined this past September to retry the case.

“This investigation, prosecution and sentence will help restore and maintain the high integrity of the governor’s office,” Boente said in January 2015 when McDonnell was sentenced, “while affirming our commitment to prosecuting public officials who commit crimes.”

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Why the Hell Does Texas Have a Muslims Day?

Texas ‘Muslim Day’ beefs up security over political climate

Insert bomb here…

Muslim organizers of a rally at the Texas Capitol said they were taking extra security precautions Tuesday, including hiring private security guards, as hundreds arrived on buses amid growing discord over President Donald Trump’s immigration ban.

Although the “Texas Muslim Capitol Day” is a biennial event that was scheduled months before Trump won the presidency, the tenor and size of the rally was likely to drastically differ from previous years after Trump on Friday banned all entries from seven Muslim-majority nations.

It also threatened to overshadow Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivering his second State of the State address that was likely to include the Republican enthusiastically embracing Trump’s crackdown on so-called “sanctuary cities.” His speech also is being closely watched to see how or even whether Abbott weighs in on Trump’s broader immigration ban.

Mustaafa Carroll, executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said this was the first year they had provided armed security on buses heading to Austin for the rally. He said it was mainly to help his people feel at ease amid heightened tensions nationwide and a small band of anti-Muslim protesters who greeted them in 2015.

Two years ago, one Republican legislator instructed her staff to ask Muslims visiting her office to take a loyalty pledge to the U.S.

“They’re beefing up security, and they’re very aware of what’s going on and the climate,” Carroll said.

Trump’s tumultuous early going will loom over a new agenda that Abbott is laying out while his state faces being dramatically impacted by a border wall, immigration crackdowns and trade tensions with neighboring Mexico. Abbott has stopped short of endorsing a wall along the entire length of the Texas-Mexico border, and was silent after a Trump spokesman last week raised the prospect of paying for the wall with a 20 percent tax on all imports from Mexico, the state’s largest trading partner.

But Abbott is already threatening to cut off some state funding to Texas jails that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration agents, echoing Trump’s order to financially punish cities with sanctuary policies. Abbott has said he wants to go even further and sign new laws that would “criminalize” sanctuary policies and give the state authority to oust locally elected officials.

Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez, who runs the Austin jails in Texas’ most liberal city, plans to stop honoring all federal immigration detainers on Wednesday and only comply with holds for murder, aggravated sexual assault and human trafficking.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article129750294.html#storylink=cpy