Thursday, January 9, 2020

APPEALS COURT ALLOWS USE OF $3.6 BILLION ON TRUMP'S PRETEND WALL - NANCY PELOSI AND THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS ARE ANNOYED!

DO YOU EVER GET SICK OF THEIR ENDLESS HISPANDERING FOR THE ILLEGALS’ VOTES?

We Don't Trust You


Like all Americans, I've been deeply moved and horrified by the recent spate of mass shootings. Surely, I thought, there must be some commonsense gun regulations that could put an end to the carnage -- red-flag laws, longer waiting periods, age limits, something!
Leaving aside the usual suspects, who are rushing to the microphones to demand the immediate confiscation of all guns, liberals are appealing to us to come together in good faith and formulate a plan to keep guns out of the hands of these monsters, using fair process and common sense.
The only problem is that no one on their side believes in good faith, fair process or common sense. Here's the reality: We don't trust the other side, nor should we.
Americans used to be able to rely on two bulwarks to protect us from stupidity:
1) Legal process -- The genius of our founders was to strictly limit the power of capricious, and often armed, government officials and to create a government of laws that made major changes difficult, but not impossible.
You want a new amendment to the Constitution? Get 38 states to ratify it, two-thirds of the Senate to vote for it, the president to sign it. There -- you've changed the constitution. You oppose a law? Run for office, put a proposition on the ballot, donate to a campaign, persuade your fellow citizens -- or move to a different state.
2) Common sense -- We also used to be able to assume that a basic reasonableness undergirded our society, flowing across generational lines, political divides, racial differences and policy disputes. Until the 1970s, for example, federal courts mostly enforced actual legal and constitutional rights on the books. The other branches of government tended to perform their roles in good faith -- or at least not in obvious bad faith.
Whether you were a Taft Republican or a JFK Democrat, you believed that we had a border, that people here illegally would be processed according to law, that there were two sexes, that free speech was a hallmark of our nation, and that a kid could dress up as a cowboy or Indian for Halloween without being branded a "racist."
Naturally, therefore, my first instinct was to assume that our shared respect for process and decency remained. But I now realize that's wrong.
In 1994, nearly 60% of Californians voted to deny government services to illegal aliens. Proposition 187 was approved 59% to 41%, with the votes of 56% of African Americans, 57% of Asians -- and even a third of Hispanics. It won in every county of California except San Francisco. In heavily Latino Los Angeles County, Proposition 187 passed by a 12-point margin.
Liberals said: No problem, we'll take the case to a left-wing, Carter-appointed federal judge who will overturn the will of the voters! District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer held that the perfectly constitutional law was "unconstitutional" and, today, California taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars on food, housing, education, health care and prison cells for illegal immigrants.
Since the 1980s, nearly every time Americans have been allowed to vote on illegal immigration, they've opposed it -- denying government services to illegal aliens, denying bail to illegal aliens, imposing English language requirements, allowing police to request documentation from suspected illegal aliens and on and on and on.
All of these democratically achieved results were met with rage, insults, prejudice -- and often a court overturning the vote.
This culminated in 2016, when Americans decided to make an utterly preposterous candidate not a mayor or congressman, not even a governor, but president of the United States based on his promise to deport illegal aliens and build a wall.
We know how that turned out. (Don't weep for Brexit voters. Britons have only been waiting three years to get what they voted for. We've been waiting decades.)
It's not the underlying issue in any of these examples that's the problem -- it's the flouting of the democratic process. I'm not saying: We trusted you and got a bad result. I am saying: We trusted you, but you abandoned the Constitution and the law to get the result that you could not win honestly.
At least we still have our common sense! Surely, we can count on the next generation to believe in free speech down to the marrow of their bones. They clearly understand that college campuses, whatever else they are, must always be bastions of open inquiry and far-reaching debate. They obviously recognize the wisdom and majesty of the Constitution's Electoral College.
Nope! None of that is true.
Actress Debra Messing is collecting names of Trump supporters for a new Hollywood blacklist. Armed and masked left-wing brown-shirts patrol the streets of Portland, Oregon, beating up suspected Trump supporters. I tweet, "It's a nice day," and 2,000 people respond that they hope I will die.
We're dealing with people who are not honest brokers. We can no longer have any expectation of good faith, sound process or common sense.
In this environment, it's preposterous to believe that we can start putting asterisks on the Second Amendment and hope that it will survive.
We can't entrust our liberties to your dirty hands.




Appeals Court Releases $3.6 Billion for Border Wall

Workers build a border fence in a private property located in the limits of the US States of Texas and New Mexico taken from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico on May 26, 2019. (Photo by HERIKA MARTÍNEZ / AFP) (Photo credit should read HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty
1:36
A federal appeals court released $3.6 billion in border wall funding Wednesday that had been blocked by a lawsuit.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted the curbs while the Department of Justice prepares to appeal a lower judge’s decision to block the spending because of the lawsuit.
Reuters reported:
In a 2-1 ruling, the panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed an injunction in a similar border wall case from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court also said there was a “substantial likelihood” that the parties challenging the funding transfer – the county of El Paso, Texas, and the Border Network for Human Rights – lacked standing to sue the Trump administration.
So far, and amid dogged resistance by Democratic legislators, Trump’s deputies have upgraded roughly 100 miles of older wall. The extra money — which was transferred from other spending programs by President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration — will allow the agencies to construct another 174 miles of wall, including new wall on stretches of the border which lack any barrier.
“The Fifth Circuit’s order allowing the Trump administration to proceed came in a brief 2-1 decision, with appointees of Presidents Reagan and Trump in the majority, and an Obama appointee in dissent,” says a report in the Wall Street Journal. “The order wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the case, but gives the administration a green light for now.”

Appeals Court Allows Use of $3.6 Billion in Military Construction Funds for Border Wall

The Fifth Circuit’s order allowing the Trump administration to proceed wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the case




Construction of the border wall near Donna, Texas, in December. PHOTO: VERONICA G. CARDENAS/REUTERS


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A federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to use billions of dollars in military construction money to build a long-promised wall along the border with Mexico.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, on Wednesday granted the administration’s request to stay the effect of a recent lower court ruling from Texas that had blocked the spending.
The $3.6 billion in U.S. Defense Department funds comprises a significant chunk of the money the Trump administration had intended to put toward border-wall construction this year, with a goal of building about 500 miles of the wall by the end of 2020.
In December, a federal-district court in El Paso, Texas, blocked the administration from moving the money, which had been earmarked for about 127 domestic and foreign military construction projects. Without it, Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told reporters last month the administration likely wouldn’t meet its construction goals.
The Fifth Circuit’s order allowing the Trump administration to proceed came in a brief 2-1 decision, with appointees of Presidents Reagan and Trump in the majority, and an Obama appointee in dissent. The order wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the case, but gives the administration a green light for now.
The court’s majority cited a Supreme Court order from July that allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with related plans to use military funds for border barrier construction.
The majority also said the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration, the county of El Paso, Texas, and the advocacy group Border Network for Human Rights, likely lacked standing to bring a lawsuit.
President Trump declared a national emergency over border security in February 2019, ordering government agencies to search for a total of $6.7 billion they could divert from military and other projects toward construction of a wall that has formed a central plank of his presidency. That declaration allowed him to skirt Congress, which had only allotted $1.38 billion toward new border barriers.
So far, the administration has built nearly a hundred miles of border wall, though nearly all of it replaced existing, often flimsier barriers. Small sections of new barrier have been erected in Donna, Texas, along the Rio Grande. But the administration’s plans are being slowed by private land owners along large stretches of the border who are resisting federal efforts to seize their land.
Write to Michelle Hackman at Michelle.Hackman@wsj.com

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