SCOTUS UPHOLDS TRUMP'S TRAVEL BAN ON SEVERAL MUSLIM COUNTRIES (GORUSH)

SCOTUS UPHOLDS TRUMP'S TRAVEL BAN ON SEVERAL MUSLIM COUNTRIES (GORUSH):

IRAN
LIBYA
SYRIA
YEMEN
SOMALIA
CHAD
NORTH KOREA
VENEZUELA

NEIL GORUSH BALANCES SCOTUS & RULES AS SCALIA MAY HAVE.

DEMOCRATS STOP WAITING FOR TRUMP'S IMPEACHMENT OR TRYING TO ENCOURAGE AN ASSASSINATION.

INSTEAD KEY DEMS SHOULD BE STRATEGIZING TO WIN IN 2018 OR 2020.


Sources: BBC, CTV News, NY Times, TIME, Youtube


***** Supreme Court allows Trump travel ban to take full effect


The US Supreme Court has ruled President Donald Trump's travel ban on six mainly Muslim countries can go fully into effect.

But the directive against travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen still faces legal challenges.

On Monday, seven of the nine justices lifted injunctions imposed by lower courts on the policy.

The ruling covers the third version of the directive that President Trump has issued since taking office.

The presidential proclamation also imposed restrictions on travellers from North Korea and some Venezuelan government officials, which have gone into effect.

In striking down the other parts, lower court judges had cited Mr Trump's campaign description of his policy as a "Muslim ban".

Further arguments will be heard this week by federal courts in San Francisco, California, and Richmond, Virginia.

In June, the Supreme Court allowed an earlier version of the policy to take partial effect.

The president's travel bans have each been frustrated by the courts to some degree:

In January, he signed an order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspending all refugee entry. The measure prompted protests and legal challenges across dozens of states
A revised version in March exempted green card holders and dual citizens. By June, the Supreme Court allowed most of it to go into effect, a including 120-day ban on all refugees entering the US, but granted a wide exemption for those with a "bona fide connection" to the US
President Trump's third order was announced in late September. It added non-Muslim-majority nations North Korea and Venezuela, provisions which lower courts have allowed to proceed
What have lower courts said?

In striking down the other parts, federal judges have cited Mr Trump's campaign description of his policy as a "Muslim ban".

Lower courts have also found the policy violated the first amendment of the US constitution covering freedom of religion.

In October, a Maryland federal judge said: "The 'initial' announcement of the Muslim ban, offered repeatedly and explicitly through President Trump's own statements, forcefully and persuasively expressed his purpose in unequivocal terms."

A federal judge in Hawaii said the administration "lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be 'detrimental to the interests of the United States'".

A court in Virginia ruled: "The illogic of the government's contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed," the court ruling said, pointing out that the countries' populations were between 90% and 99% Muslim.

GORSUCH REPLACES SCALIA; BALANCES SCOTUS (CONGRATS)

GORSUCH REPLACES SCALIA; BALANCES SCOTUS:

FULL CONSERVATIVE POWER RETURNS TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

CONGRATS


Sources: Los Angeles Times, The White House, YouTube


***** Gorsuch thanks Trump as he takes oath as Supreme Court justice


Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch went to the White House on Monday to take a second oath and to publicly thank President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, the lawyers in the White House counsel’s office, and Republican Senate leaders for helping put him on the nation’s highest court.

“This process has reminded me of how outrageously blessed I am,” Gorsuch said in the Rose Garden ceremony.

There has been some controversy in the past decade over whether it was appropriate for a newly confirmed justice to be sworn in at the White House. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens said such ceremonies give the appearance the new justice is going to the court as the president’s appointee rather than an independent justice.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan took their oaths at the Supreme Court and did not go the White House for a public ceremony. When they had a ceremonial investiture in the courtroom, President Obama attended. But in prior decades, the newly confirmed justices routinely went to the White House to take the oath alongside the president.

Rose Garden ceremony, the president said he was proud and pleased to have chosen an outstanding jurist to replace to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. “I got it done in the first 100 days!” he said.

“This is a very, very special moment,” Trump told Gorsuch as he was about take the oath. “I have no doubt you will go down as one of the truly great justices in the history of the United States Supreme Court.”

Gorsuch won his seat after an unusually partisan battle. Senate Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), refused to consider Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee, and they were forced to change the filibuster rule to confirm Trump's nominee after Democrats sought to block a vote on Gorsuch.

Earlier Monday morning, Gorsuch took the constitutional oath in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court. He then went to the White House to take a second “judicial oath” in a public ceremony.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts and the other seven associate justices were in attendance at the Rose Garden ceremony, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy administered the oath to Gorsuch, who served as his law clerk in the 1993-94 term.

Gorsuch will soon be hearing and deciding cases involving the Trump administration, including possibly whether to uphold the president’s temporary travel ban on people from six majority-Muslim nations. Two federal judges decided to put the ban on hold, and lawyers for the administration are appealing.

Trump used the ceremony to tout the changes he has brought to Washington. “We are in a process of reviewing and renewing, and also rebuilding, our country. A new optimism is sweeping across our land, and a new faith in America is filling our hearts and lifting our sights,” he declared.

The president also praised Justice Kennedy as “a man of outstanding accomplishment. Throughout his nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, [he] has been praised by all for his dedicated and dignified service. We owe him an enormous debt of gratitude, and I am honored that he is with us today.”

Kennedy, 80, is now the longest serving justice. And though a Republican appointee, he has been somewhat of a disappointment to conservatives. Last year, he joined with the court’s liberals to strike strict abortion clinic regulations from Texas, and the year before, he wrote the landmark decision making same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

If Kennedy were to retire in the next few years, it would give the president and Senate Republicans the opportunity to give conservatives firm control of the court. As if to reassure Kennedy, Trump’s lawyers have mentioned several of his former law clerks as strong candidates for the next Supreme Court nomination.

NEIL GORSUCH: DEMS STOP THE BULL & GIVE UP-OR-DOWN VOTE NOW

NEIL GORSUCH: DEMS STOP THE BULL & GIVE UP-OR-DOWN VOTE:

GORSUCH IS NOT ROBERT BORK.

GORSUCH IS BALANCED, QUALIFIED AND FIRMLY UPHOLDS US CONSTITUTION.


Sources: CBS News, CNN, The Hill, YouTube


***** McConnell Says "Give Gorsuch An Up-Or-Down Vote"


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling for Democrats to give President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, an up-or-down vote.

In a piece published Monday in Politico, McConnell called Gorsuch an "exceptional nominee." He said Gorsuch is recognized as "an accomplished, principled and fair jurist," adding that when he was nominated to his current seat on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, "no one cast a single negative vote against his nomination."

"Now, Schumer says he has such 'serious concerns' about Gorsuch that he’s threatening to filibuster his nomination and leave open the seat indefinitely," McConnell said.

"What changed?"

Gorsuch hasn't changed, McConnell said.

"So why would Democrats contemplate doing something so radical and out of the mainstream now — against a superbly qualified judge Democrats didn’t raise objections to before, a man Democrats have praised many times since?" he asked.

"Turns out, much of the opposition we’re seeing from far left groups and Democratic senators isn’t really about Judge Gorsuch at all. It’s about President Donald Trump."

McConnell went on to blast the Democrats for vowing to fight whomever the president tapped for the Supreme Court before Trump even named his nominee.

The Senate majority leader acknowledged the Democrats are having a "rough time coming to grips with the election results."

"I realize that Leader Schumer in particular is under immense pressure from the radical fringes of our politics," he wrote.

"But he and his party can’t allow themselves to be led around by the far left."

McConnell said he's been consistent in his belief that the next president should select the next Supreme Court justice.

He said he maintained that opinion — even when many believed former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would be elected.

"But now the election season is over, and we have a new president who has nominated a superbly qualified candidate to fill that ninth seat," he said.

"Democrats now have a choice. They can tear our country apart further, or they can stand up and lead. I invite Leader Schumer and his party, who repeatedly declared how necessary it was to have nine justices on the court, to now follow through on their refrain of 'we need nine' by giving this tremendously well-qualified nominee fair consideration and an up-or-down vote."