4th Circuit Rules 10-3 Against Trump Muslim Ban

Donald Trump ranted against the 9th Circuit when his first attempt at a ban against Muslims went down in flames. Now, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has struck down Der Trumpenführer's second attempt at banning Muslims from entering America.    In its ruling, the Court recognized the motivation behind the executive order: religious based  intolerance and animus. The ruling will not sit well with Christofascists but ought to be encouraging for those who continue to believe in true religious freedom - not the perverted Christofascist version - and the First Amendment.  Salon looks at the ruling which will likely push the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Here are highlights:

Yet another federal court ruled against President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from six majority-Muslim nations. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the so-called Muslim travel ban executive order “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” The court refused to lift a nationwide injunction blocking the ban.  

In a 10-3 ruling, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, noted that President Trump’s power to deny entry to immigrants, while “broad,” isn’t “absolute.”

[A]n Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination. Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another. Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked

Trump’s revised ban “cannot be divorced from the cohesive narrative linking it to the animus that inspired it,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote.

Trump’s revised ban was announced in March after the first version of the ban was shot down by federal courts. But the ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days never got off the ground because federal courts blocked it just hours before it was set to go into effect.

New PPP Poll: Two Weeks Since Inauguration, Voters Yearn For Obama

A new PPP Poll ought to be sending alarm bells off among Congressional Republicans, not to mention among Der Trumpenführer's inner circle. Taken just two (2) weeks after Trump's inauguration, the poll results are damning with in many instances a majority of Americans being firmly against Trump's polices and his conduct.  By a very wide margin, Americans want Der Trumpenführer to obey the rulings of the federal courts even as childish brat like tweets continue to spew from The Orange One.  Perhaps most interesting is the fact that except within the ranks of Trump supporters, the opposition to Trump - and by extension Congressional Republicans - is growing.  Here are highlights from the poll findings:

Less than 2 weeks into Donald Trump's tenure as President, 40%  of voters already want to impeach him. That's up from 35% of voters who wanted to impeach him a week ago. 

Beyond a significant percentage of voters already thinking that Trump should be removed from office, it hasn't taken long for voters to miss the good old days of Barack Obama...52% say they'd rather Obama was President, to only 43% who are glad Trump is.
 Why so much unhappiness with Trump? Voters think basically everything he's doing is wrong:
 -Overall voters are pretty evenly split on Trump's executive order on immigration from last week, with 47% supporting it to 49% who are opposed. But when you get beyond the overall package, the pieces of the executive order become more clearly unpopular. 52% of voters think that the order was intended to be a Muslim ban, to only 41% who don't think that was the intent. And the idea of a Muslim ban is extremely unpopular with the American people- only 26% are in favor of it, to 65% who are against it. . . . Finally voters see a basic competence issue with Trump's handling of the executive order- only 39% of voters think it was well executed, to 55% who believe it was poorly executed.

-It hasn't taken long for voters to develop a pretty dim view of Trump advisor Steve Bannon, and become wary of the extent to which he's being given power within the administration. Only 19% of voters see Bannon favorably, to 40% who have a negative opinion of him. Only 34% of voters approve of his being given a seat on the principals committee of the National Security Council, to 44% who are opposed to that. What's particularly telling is that only 19% of voters think Bannon belongs in that seat on the National Security Council more than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  the Director of National Intelligence, to 59% who believe those folks are more deserving of that place at the table. Even Trump voters think he's gone too far on that front- by a 40/35 margin they think the more traditional members should have that position rather than Bannon.
 -Very few voters go along with Trump when it comes to his voter fraud paranoia.  Only 26% of voters think millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 Presidential election, to 55% who believe that's not a real thing. This is another issue where even a significant number of Trump voters become wary of his claim- 47% believe it but 27% don't and another 26% aren't sure. It's been unusual to find things where a majority of Trump's voters don't go along with him.
 -Obamacare continues to become more popular the more talk there is about repealing it. 46% of voters now say they support it to just 41% who are opposed. And only 33% of voters think the best course of action is for Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act and start over, to 62% who think it would be better to keep it and fix the parts that need fixing.  

Another aspect of Trump's unpopularity is that he's losing all of his fights. In the last week he's gone on the attack on Twitter against John McCain, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN and in each case we find voters siding with Trump's adversary:
 -By a 51/37 spread voters say John McCain has more credibility than Trump.
 -By a 52/41 spread voters say the Washington Post has more credibility than
Trump.
 -By a 51/42 spread voters say the New York Times has more credibility than
Trump.
 -By a 50/42 spread voters say CNN has more credibility than Trump.
 -Only 13% of voters approve of the job Congress is doing, to 68% who disapprove.  Paul Ryan has a 35/43 approval rating, and Mitch McConnell's is 17/55.  Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot 45/42. 

Going back to Obamacare, one of my favorite poll result is this:

Q16 Which of the following would you most like to see the Congress do about the Affordable Care Act, given the choices of keeping what works and fixing what doesn’t, or repealing it and starting over with a new healthcare law?
 62% Would most like the Congress to keep what works in the Affordable Care Act and fix what doesn’t 33% Would most like the Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act and start over with a new
healthcare law 5% Not sure

 #NotMyPresident

Will Ordinary Americans Carry out Inhumane Acts for Trump/Pence?

One of the most frightening things about the atrocities perpetrated by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime were the horrors done to people by seemingly otherwise ordinary Germans.  Brutality and inhuman acts that one would never expect in a civilized society were done without flinching. Meanwhile, other Germans claimed to know nothing about the horrors that were being done daily.  A piece from the Baltimore Sun looks at the phenomenon and then looks at some of the inhuman things done by Americans during the first days of Der Trumpenführer - I saw the name on another bog and loved it -  Muslim ban and ask the question that should be haunting decent Americans everywhere: would our friends and neighbors willingly abuse others if they were merely "following orders"?  Add to this the studies that have shown individuals raised in deeply religious fundamentalist homes show far less empathy towards others and we could be facing a nightmare given the ascendancy of the Christofascists and alt-right extremists under Der Trumpenführer.  Here are article highlights:

A week ago, men and women went to work at airports around the United States as they always do. They showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, perhaps dropped off their kids at school. Then they reported to their jobs as federal government employees, where, according to news reports, one of them handcuffed a 5-year-old child, separated him from his mother and detained him alone for several hours at Dulles airport.

At least one other federal employee at Dulles reportedly detained a woman who was traveling with her two children, both U.S. citizens, for 20 hours without food. A relative says the mother was handcuffed (even when she went to the bathroom) and threatened with deportation to Somalia.

At Kennedy Airport, still other federal employees detained and handcuffed a 65-year-old woman traveling from Qatar to visit her son, who is a U.S. citizen and serviceman stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. The woman was held for more than 33 hours, according to the New York Times, and denied use of a wheelchair.

The men and women who work for the federal government completed these and other tasks and then returned to their families, where perhaps they had dinner and read stories to their children before bedtime.

[N]o would-be autocrat can act alone. As a practical matter, he needs subordinates willing to carry out orders. Of course, neither Donald Trump nor Steve Bannon personally detained any of the more than 100 people held at airports over the weekend pursuant to the administration's executive order on immigration, visitation and travel to the United States. They relied on assistance.

What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.

The famous Milgram experiment and subsequent studies suggest that many people will obey instructions from an authority figure, even if it means harming another person. It is also perfectly understandable (which does not mean it is justifiable). How many of us would refuse to follow an instruction from a superior at work? It is natural to want to keep one's job, even if at the price of inflicting cruelty on another human being, even perhaps a child.

It is far easier to do nothing, to trust that, somehow, America's dangerous course will be set right. But this is a dangerous gamble, and in fact an abdication of our responsibility as Americans and indeed as human beings. If we do nothing, that is a choice. It means we accept a government that has demonstrated it is capable of inflicting cruelty on the innocent and defenseless.  What will we do?

Virginia Joins Federal Court Challenge to Trump's Muslim Travel Ban

As the legal challenges to and wide spread condemnation of Donald Trump, a/k/a, Der Fuhrer's continue to grow, especially in the wake of Trump's firing of the acting Attorney General for refusing to enforce his illegal action, the Commonwealth of Virginia has now joined the expanding number federal court challenges.  Both Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (pictured above) and Governor Terry McAuliffe back Virginia's challenge which is adversely impacting Virginia businesses, university faculty members, and, of course, university students.  The Washington Post looks at this development and the manner in which the rights of those already holding valid visas have been trampled.  Here are article highlights:

The Commonwealth of Virginia intervened Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to President Trump’s ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz had been approved for permanent residence status in the United States, where they planned to join their father. Their attorneys say they were coerced, with no legal counsel present, to sign papers they didn’t understand, giving up visas they had worked for years to secure.

Fifty or sixty other legal residents were similarly detained at Dulles, the attorneys allege, saying that many were likewise unfairly persuaded to sign away their right to stay. A lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in California reported similar scenarios at Los Angeles International Airport.

The lawsuit, in federal court in Virginia, is among several filed across the country challenging the president’s ban.

At a news conference Tuesday, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) called Trump’s executive order “sweeping, poorly understood and chaotically implemented,” and said it “led to the violation of the constitutional and statutory rights of numerous residents of Virginia.”

He justified Virginia’s interest in joining the lawsuit by saying the executive order affects “numerous” residents of the state, especially students and staff at colleges and universities. As a result, he said, the state would face difficulty in attracting students and faculty, and would suffer financial damage.

Herring said that more than 100 students at Virginia Commonwealth University alone are either unable to leave to visit their families or return to campus from overseas.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who stood beside Herring for the announcement, said he had been “receiving calls from folks throughout the commonwealth” since the executive order last Friday. “I have been notified by scores of companies who are now worried about their employees,” he said. “This is not the United States of America that we know.”

[W]hen [Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz] they arrived at Dulles, the brothers were handcuffed and their immigration paperwork was seized, their attorneys said. They were given documents to sign and allegedly told that if they did not, they would be removed from the country and barred from coming back for five years. They were not allowed to see legal counsel.

Under pressure, their attorneys said, they signed the documents without realizing that by doing so they had renounced their legal U.S. status. Agents stamped “canceled” on their visas and told them to get on a flight at their own expense to Ethi­o­pia, where they had stopped on their way from Yemen, the attorneys said.

On Saturday night, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued an order guaranteeing access to attorneys for all legal permanent residents detained at Dulles and barring the removal of those residents for seven days. But the Aziz brothers had already been sent to Ethi­o­pia. And in their most recent court filing, their attorneys said that after the judge’s order was issued, customs officials at the airport continued to bar access on the grounds that the people they had stopped were in “processing,” not “detention.”

“The full impact of President Trump’s ban remains unclear because the government has not complied fully and transparently with a valid temporary restraining order issued by a federal court,” Herring said. 

I continue to feel like I am watching things unfold much as 1930's Germans who opposed Hitler observed their nation descend into dictatorship and the trampling on civil rights become the norm.