The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that President Trump has the authority to ban travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries if he thinks that it is necessary to protect the country, a priority of the president’s since his first week in office.
The vote was 5 to 4, with conservatives in the majority and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the opinion.Roberts' opinion was a twisted masterpiece in evading the bald- faced evidence, provided by the shitgibbon himself, that the travel ban was instituted as a ban on people practicing the Muslim faith:
Roberts wrote that the presidential proclamation that led to the ban “is squarely within the scope of presidential authority.” And he rejected arguments that it was based on the predominant religion of most of the affected countries.
“The Proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” he wrote. “The text says nothing about religion.”How conveeeenient! It was so nice of the Stormtrumpers, during the course of months of appeals, to erase any textual language mentioning a religion, even though every sentient person knows what the intent of the ban has always been. Lower courts consistently struck down the ban for very obvious reasons: the shitgibbon's bull- horned, oft- repeated prejudice against Muslims and his equating his "travel ban" with a Muslim ban so many times. And how curious that six of the eight countries covered by the ban are Muslim- majority:
The current ban, issued last fall, barred various travelers from eight countries, six of them with Muslim majorities. They are Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. But restrictions on North Korea and Venezuela were not part of the challenge. Chad was later removed from the list.But, hey, hack Roberts and his hack Republican cohorts didn't read the word "Muslim" so, perfectly legit.
Recall that in the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, the hack Republicans went way out of their way to sniff out any possible bias against the Christian loons who wouldn't make a damn cake for a gay couple, but were unable in this case to smell the rancid odor of anti- Muslim bias from the shitgibbon's order.
Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor spoke the plain truth and for what we used to stand for as a country. This is part of Sotomayor's dissent:
The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. That alone suffices to show that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Establishment Clause claim. The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens...The decision can be read here, with concurrences and dissents (pdf).
How different this and other cases might have been had a Supreme Court seat not been uncivilly allowed to be vacant for the last year of President Obama's administration, or had roughly 70,000 votes switched in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016.
(Image: No checks and balances on the hack Republican Supreme Court.)
