If I’m not mistaken, the 9th district court, as part of their reasoning, said that the government had failed to show that there was any sort of tangible threat that warranted the travel restrictions. Putting aside your own argument for the moment, do you agree with the White House, then, that the court was out of line?
My own view is that the travel restrictions, by virtue of appearing to be a Muslim ban (whether it is or not) makes us less safe by feeding into anti-US propaganda, helping terrorists recruit, etc.
Edit: many former intelligence and state department officials are on record as being in agreement with my stated view above. Do you think the current administration knows better than the likes of Madeline Albright, et al.?
Edit: also, the White House has claimed that allowing in people from those countries represents a threat to our safety, which kind of makes whether or not there is a benefit fair game, in my opinion. Regardless, they said it. Does it matter to you, whether they actually have evidence to support that or they are simply attempting to rule by fear?
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.
This is his own campaign website.
If a court asks “Gee, I wonder what the motivation behind this ban is. Is it really just a Muslim ban with a thin veneer of legitimacy painted on it to try and hide an awful truth?” the answer is not going to be hard to find.
Yes, I think the court was out of line. The President’s intent was clear, not unreasonable, and within his legal authority.
You may be correct – again, it doesn’t matter. He was elected into the position which allows these discretionary decisions to be made.[quote=“Misguided, post:606, topic:128236”]
Does it matter to you, whether they actually have evidence to support that or they are simply attempting to rule by fear?
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I want them to make the best decisions possible. Do you have all of the information required to judge their decisions fully? Do you believe that Trump is banning all citizens from particular countries? Do you believe Trump is banning all citizens who practice a particular religion? Is it possible that he’s instituting a ban based on a correlation of those factors? It is possible that there is some other information he has that the general public doesn’t have influencing his decisions.
The evidence is literally in countless interviews from Trump’s own mouth and his own campaign web page still says the intent is to shut down Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
There must be a rational basis linking the action to a legitimate public concern. For instance, it is within Trump’s authority to tell the IRS to audit everybody with the first name of Joe, but there is no rational basis for such an order because it does not plausibly address any legitimate public concern.
The court did not rule by looking into his soul. The question was whether there was a rational basis for Trump’s actions.
Notably, the court has not yet ruled on this question. Instead, it decided that the plaintiff’s argument - that there is no rational basis - has sufficient possibility of prevailing. The court also decided that if the plaintiffs do ultimately prevail, then irreversible harm will come to some people in the process of reaching that decision, because everyone understands that justice is slow. Therefore, they issued a temporary restraining order. Trump still has an opportunity to prove a rational basis for his order, but he cannot enforce it until he does so.
By ‘see into a man’s soul’ you mean ‘read his website, listen to what he says, listen to what his advisers say’ etc.? I think you are maybe exaggerating a little!
Ultimately though, the courts will be ruling on these things (along with the contents of the order). The context is not irrelevant to the courts. This has already happened.
Quite true, though I don’t believe that gives him the right to do anything he chooses (even if the intent were noble) without questioning whether it is the right thing to do. And yet, that is EXACTLY what Miller said this weekend, that any action the President takes is not to be questioned.
I can’t get on board with that. To me, questioning our leaders is a foundation of our democracy. And I find it particularly disturbing that the White House dismisses any suggestion that his policies are unpopular as “fake news”.
That’s the thing that concerns me the most. People that have strength of conviction aren’t afraid to have their beliefs challenged. They are not afraid of criticism. A democracy doesn’t stop press at borders to see what they might be saying on social media and refuse admittance if they won’t comply.
This administration is trying to quash freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to peaceably assemble. Yes, I want to be kept safe, but not at the cost of abandoning the constitution.
@telefrog and they could have done that. They could have called for a temporary halt to new visas and no one would have batted an eyelash, I don’t think.
Executive privilege is a government demand to withhold evidence from the court in the name of national security. So Trump would have to claim that his blanket ban is justified by information regarding every single person in the named countries that he cannot share.
I think if they had credible evidence of a specific threat, they would have made that argument, but to the best of my knowledge they haven’t, other than to say the president determined this move was important for national security. Moreover, I find it unlikely that any concrete threat would involve all of the nations listed. But I’m no security expert.
And there’s also the story of the American born NASA engineer who was retained and asked to give up his phone and password upon return to the states from abroad. Who knows what the hell the pretense for that was supposed to be.
Yeah, that kind of stuff just screams “fascist state” to me. Or stopping Canadians at the border and asking them if they were pro/anti trump (especially around the time of the women’s March).
Whether or not people agree with the policies of the administration should not be a deciding factor for allowing entry into the country, not in a democracy that values freedom of speech, etc.
It must be tough for conservatives to reconcile their insistence that Trump “doesn’t mean what he’s saying” with a federal court which is legally obligated to consider what the president says to be evidence for the president’s intentions.
But that doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, profiling someone based on their religion is, by definition, bigotry.
Let’s establish some facts:
The vast, vast majority of muslims are normal peaceful people.
Even if you were able to establish something like, “Most terrorists are muslims!” that still does not provide some rational basis for profiling and assuming some sort of guilt about someone… because such things could be done for everyone.
That is, MOST serial killers are white men. But this doesn’t mean that I can presume that you are a serial killer. Obviously. It doesn’t even make sense, because while most serial killers are white men, that doesn’t change the fact that 99.999999% of white men are in fact NOT serial killers.
And the same goes for muslims, and refugees.
And this is ultimately the problem with the ban, in that it has no statistical basis for us to believe that it will achieve anything beneficial at all. There is no reason, from a scientific, rational perspective, to believe that this ban will achieve any increase in safety at all. Feel free to present an argument to the contrary if you have one, but be prepared to present real, concrete data.
Ah, no… it’s absolutely relevant to the discussion, because you are offering a trade. You are saying that we can treat these people in this way, in a manner we do not normally treat people, in order to achieve an increased level of safety for the people. That is the deal you are suggesting.
So then it absolutely is immensely relevant to the discussion for you to establish how, exactly, this will make anyone safer. Because if that cannot be established, then the deal is bad.
This is nonsensical. Even if you perceive that the status quo is unacceptable, that in itself does not automatically justify ANY action.
Suggesting that, “well, it’s bad, so any action is better than doing nothing!” is absurd. Hitler said killing 6 million jews was the right move… and hey, things were indeed bad for the germans in the 20’s… so I guess that his crap was justified!
No man, that’s nonsense.
This ban caused real, tangible harm to tons of people… From the minor inconvenience of wasted time, to the much more significant cases where people from impoverished places were actually sent back and forced to pay more money to try and travel again.
If you’re going to cause harm to people, even if it is only a minor inconvenience, then you need to justify it.
What about those citizens who have family who were turned away, for no reason, as a result of this ban? Do you care about THOSE citizens?
And beyond that, do you care about non-americans? Are they less than humans? Less deserving of dignity and respect?
