It's not just the Republican House of Representatives pulling out all the stops to sabotage President Obama's immigration reform executive action (see post below). Yesterday, a Republican judge in (where else?) Texas, responding to a suit by 26 Republican State attorneys general, put his head up his ass and came out with this:
Judge Andrew S. Hansen [Hanen] of Federal District Court in Brownsville, an appointee of President George W. Bush, issued an order prohibiting the administration from carrying out its deportation relief programs, for which applications were to begin Wednesday. In November, the president announced that his administration would exercise prosecutorial discretion by extending deportation reprieves to immigrants who met certain requirements, had family ties in the U.S., and did not have criminal records.The Administration has said it will appeal the judge's order to the 5th Circuit Court (where, most legal experts believe the order will be overturned), and issued this statement:
The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws — which is exactly what the President did when he announced commonsense policies to help fix our broken immigration system. Those policies are consistent with the laws passed by Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court, as well as five decades of precedent by presidents of both parties who have used their authority to set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws.As with the 5 Republican "justices" on the Supreme Court, the Federal judiciary (not to mention State courts =cough= Alabama = cough=) is sprinkled with far-right ideologues who are all- too- willing to ignore law and precedent in their losing, rear-guard action to damage the President and protect the powerful and the privileged. This has nothing to do with the merits (just as the King v. Burwell attack on the Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with the merits). It's all about delay, sabotage and obstruction, and it's the only thing the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party seems to be good at.
BONUS: Regarding "merit," here's Charlie Pierce on the Administration's claim of prosecutorial discretion in providing relief in deportations:
That Hanen is as full of shit as the Christmas goose should go without saying, but we'll say it, anyway. The discretion of both prosecutors and of the executive branch in deciding the merits and ultimate value of what cases they choose to pursue is well established in law, especially in U.S. v. Armstrong, a decision handed down by that hippie chief justice, the late William Rehnquist.That's all the analysis we need.
