A pragmatic ruling on Trump’s travel ban preserves the peace for now—though Gorsuch is willing to stir the pot.

The Supreme Court’s announcement on President Donald Trump’s travel ban Monday morning gave each side something to point to as a temporary victory. The Court will hear arguments this fall on the merits of Trump’s executive order, and it split the baby on the question of what to do in the meantime. Until the Court renders a final decision, Trump’s entry ban will remain suspended in many cases, but go into effect for people who don’t have bona fide family, professional, and perhaps other similar reasons for coming into the U.S. Trump took a victory lap on Twitter – “Very grateful for the 9-O decision from the U. S. Supreme Court. We must keep America SAFE!" – but if he’d read the decision a little more carefully, it would be clear that the victory is only partial and only temporary. In fact, temporary victories might be the only kind anyone ever wins in this case.

The Court did agree to hear the case, but it also all but guaranteed that it will never render a decision on the merits. That’s because of the timing of the hearing. It won’t happen until the Court’s next session, in October. By then much of the order will have expired already: The order has a 90-day ban on nationals of six Middle Eastern countries entering the United States, a 120-day ban on the entry of any refugees, and a fiscal year 2017 cap on the total number of refugees. The Court started those clocks ticking today by letting the ban go into partial effect; by the time of the October hearing, both the fiscal year and the 90-day ban will be over, and only the 120-day refugee ban still in effect. Even that issue will become moot shortly thereafter, almost surely before the Justices get around to writing opinions. It's settled doctrine that federal courts won't decide moot issues, and every Justice knows it. In short, it seems that the Court agreed to hear a case that it plans never to decide.

Clearly the Court knows what is happening. Counting days on a calendar is not terribly difficult, not even for Supreme Court Justices. And if the Court wanted to decide the case before it became moot, it could schedule a morning of argument anytime in the next few weeks. Both sides’ lawyers are ready to go, and nothing in the Constitution requires the Court to take a long summer vacation. So the question is why the Court chose this evasive maneuver. And plausible explanations are easy to come by.

If the Court rules on the merits of the order, it must either endorse an ugly fit of executive-branch bigotry or else risk direct confrontation with an impulsive President who seems happy to go to war with federal judges. By splitting the difference, the Court prevents some of the worst human costs of the order, avoids committing itself to any ultimate view of the case, and contrives to let the whole affair end with a whimper. It’s a pragmatic institutionalist move, not a bold assertion of legal principles. But the current Court has a strong complement of pragmatists and institutionalists, led by the Chief Justice himself. As a young lawyer, John Roberts saucily quipped that only Justices and schoolchildren take the whole summer off; as Chief Justice, he knows the utility of being seasonally unavailable. (“Your case is very important to us. Please hold, and we’ll hear you out as soon as we’re back, a little more than ninety days from now.”)


More: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/26/the-supreme-courts-artful-dodge-215310

Meet Randy Bryce (@IronStache), Paul Ryan's Democratic challenger for WI-01:

Jerry Garcia passed away 22 years ago, but the legacy of the lead singer of the Grateful Dead lives on in a new effort to boost wild honeybee and monarch butterfly populations.

Embarking on a summer tour across America, Dead & Company, the group headed by former Garcia bandmates Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann (with special guest John Mayer), will give fans at each venue a way in which they can help repopulate the winged creatures.

The band will be hosting a charity outreach program in the form of Participation Row: a series of tents dedicated to presenting meaningful causes and organizations. One of the tents will feature the most recent work of the Jerry Garcia Foundation.

To encourage butterfly and bee conservation among Deadheads, the Foundation will be passing out free milkweed seeds and garden pollinator packs to the first 300 concert-goers to visit their tent at the venues, courtesy of the Save Our Monarchs Foundation.

More: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/the-grateful-dead-is-helping-to-save-bees-and-butterflies-through-jerry-garcias-legacy/

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Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum blasted President Donald Trump and his administration on Sunday for choosing Saudi Arabia as the destination for Trump’s first international trip as president.

Citing the oil-rich nation’s extensive record of human rights abuses, its all-powerful royal family’s grip on the nation’s finances and its abuse of women — who are forced to cover their faces, not allowed to drive and who must ask a male relative for permission to travel — Applebaum took Trump and his advisers to task on a number of points.

“(H)ere is a list, for the record,” she said, “of just a few of the ways in which President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia was bizarre, unseemly, unethical and un-American.”

Saudi Arabia was a rotten first choice, she said, of all the nations in the world the new president could visit.

“The past four American presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats, made their first trips to either Mexico and Canada, countries that are close trading partners, close allies, compatible democracies and of course neighbors,” she said. “Trump chose, instead, to make his first presidential visit to an oligarchic kleptocracy which forces women to hide their faces and forbids them to travel without a male guardian’s permission.”


More: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trumps-saudi-arabia-visit-was-bizarre-unseemly-unethical-and-un-american-wapo-columnist/



President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia (Screen capture)