-By Warner Todd Huston
On Wednesday an extremist, left-wing “judge” in Hawaii — who turns out to be Obama’s law school classmate — proved that the law doesn’t mean anything at all to a liberal by issuing an illicit order to halt President Trump’s latest travel order only hours before it was to take effect.
Hawaii District Judge Derrick Watson issued a hold on Trump’s March 6 Executive Order 13780 which was aimed at putting a temporary moratorium on travel from several terror-torn nations. Trump’s order was predicated on a careful review of legal and constitutional rulings, plus national security reasons, to put a temporary halt immigration from six terrorism-prone Muslim countries, all formerly identified as countries of concern by the Obama administration last year. The order to halt the influx of so-called “refugees” from these nations was ordered pending the creation of new screening procedures to exclude those who may in fact be terrorists posing as immigrants or “refugees.”
With his order, this leftist “judge” specifically mentioned two sections of EO 13,780; sections 2 and 6.
Section 2 reads:
The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall conduct a worldwide review to identify whether, and if so what, additional information will be needed from each foreign country to adjudicate an application by a national of that country for a visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual is not a security or public-safety threat. The Secretary of Homeland Security may conclude that certain information is needed from particular countries even if it is not needed from every country.
… I therefore direct that the entry into the United States of nationals of those six countries [Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen] be suspended for 90 days from the effective date of this order, subject to the limitations, waivers, and exceptions set forth in sections 3 and 12 of this order.
Section 6 puts a 120-day block on refugees already approved: “The Secretary of State shall suspend travel of refugees into the United States under the USRAP, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall suspend decisions on applications for refugee status, for 120 days after the effective date of this order, subject to waivers pursuant to subsection (c) of this section.”
With his block, the Hawaii judge set aside all laws, rules, and the U.S. Constitution and instead relied on his mythic ability to assume he knows what Trump really means with his Executive Order.
Watson essentially admitted to this during the proceedings when he told the government’s lawyer, “Are you saying we close our eyes to the sequence of statements before this?”
Watson said his reasoning is justified by Trump’s statement made to CNN in March of last year: “But there’s a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States… [a]nd of people that are not Muslim.”
Watson went on to insist that Trump’s order is am illegal “religious test” of refugees meant only to exclude Muslims. Even as he admits that in legal terms there is no proof of his contention, Watson insists that he can read minds saying:
“Because a reasonable, objective observer – enlightened by specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance – would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose, the Court finds that Plaintiffs…are likely to succeed on the merits of their Establishment Clause claim.”
Sadly — no, infuriatingly is a better word — every single aspect of Watson’s order is based on liberal lies. And as far as Heritage Foundation scholar Hans Von Spakovsky is concerned it is just par for the course for liberals posing as judges who use their status to engage in politics instead of being guided by the law.
“It is a very bad development that threatens our democracy … [and] it looks like it is going to get worse [because] we’re going to have more and more litigation, and it is very clear that the progressive left wants to use the courts to fight way our democracy works,” Spakovsky told Breitbart News. “I think what they doing is very anti-democratic.”
President Trump also slammed the left-wing judge’s political move. “This new order was tailored to the dictates of the Ninth Circuit’s, in my opinion, flawed ruling,” Trump said. “This is the opinion of many — an unprecedented judicial overreach.”
So, who is this judge Derrick Kahala Watson? Well, first off, he was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama and that shouldn’t be surprising. After all, Watson was one of Obama’s classmates at Harvard Law School in the 1980s.
There was also an odd “coincidence” with the timing of Watson’s attack on Donald Trump’s travel ban. It was issued only a short time after Barack Obama was reported as paying a “surprise visit” to Honolulu where Watson lives.
Whoever or whatever this left-wing judge thinks he is, everything in his order and his reasoning is garbage legal-wise.
As I noted above, first and foremost Watson’s order is based on what his *feelings* are about what Trump *really means* with his EO. Based on this “judge’s” feelings we are to believe Trump hates all Muslims and wishes to use his office to hurt them. Watson even admits in several parts of his illicit order that there isn’t a single legal flaw in the White House’s order. Ah, but judge Watson “knows” better, you see. He doesn’t need rules and laws to back up his orders. He has his left-wing crystal ball that can peer into the soul of men to read their innermost thoughts.
Watson’s entire ruling is based on his feelings about Trump’s shadowy motivations. Not the law.
The judge also lied straight out in his order when he wrote the following (my bold):
In a January 27, 2017 interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, President Trump said that persecuted Christians would be given priority under the first Executive Order. He said (once again, falsely): ‘Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.’
How is what Trump said liable to be termed “once again falsely”?
The FACT is that of the 10,000 Syrian “refugees” Obama allowed into the U.S., only a 56 were Christians. Seems to me like Trump was 100% right. There is no way Trump’s characterization of Obama’s actions can be “once again” a false characterizing of the numbers.
Watson also claimed that the Constitution’s “Establishment Clause” gave the Muslims who appeared before him the right to standing. But the fact is, the courts have repeatedly proclaimed that the Establishment Clause does not apply to immigration cases because immigrants have no Constitutional rights as citizens.
In truth, what we have here is an example of a liberal “judge” infesting our government and using his power to implement a liberal agenda instead of properly adjudicating a case before him based on any logical or legitimate reading of the law. It is proof positive that liberals have no regard for the law or the Constitution. They are guided 100% by an anti-American, liberal agenda that is not bound by our laws or our customs.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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