By Carole McWilliams
We seriously need some constitutional experts to give a primer to our so-called president and his minions after Himself's verbal attacks on individual federal judges - activating his army of Twitter trolls to send hate messages and even death threats to those judges.
I'm thinking it might be a federal crime to threaten a federal judge. Maybe Himself should tell his trolls very publicly to stand down, and sound like he means it.
After a federal district judge in Washington state issued a national stay on Himself's decree stopping immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the U.S., a three-judge panel of the 9th Court of Appeals upheld the stay, prompting Himself to complain about "political" judges.
What that means is His Awesomeness ran up against judges performing their function of constitutional checks and balances. One problem is that His Awesomeness apparently hasn't bothered with legal review of his decrees before he issues them.
This past weekend, one of Himself's minions cited constitutional separation of powers, apparently meaning that Himself can do anything he wants with no judicial interference. That neglects the checks and balances part of separation of powers.
Another minion asserted that the president's actions aren't subject to judicial review. That sounds like a good definition of dictator, or king. If His Awesomeness can declare himself exempt on this, what will be next?
The Founding Fathers designed the U.S. Constitution to prevent a new tyrant from taking power, after fighting a war to get free of King George III.
Himself took an oath (on a bible, no less) to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. According to Article VI of the constitution, his minions also are "bound by oath or affirmation" to support the constitution.
There's a third branch of government in the separation of powers and checks and balances. It's called Congress. After eight years of not much other than obstruction of the Executive Branch, congressional Republicans are now the rubber stamp for Himself despite huge constituent feedback to the contrary.
The good of the country doesn't seem to be the priority in either case, except for kudos to some Republican senators who want to look into the unfolding issue of what sort of contacts Himself's people had with Vladimir Putin's people before and after the election.
A lot of Himself's supporters wanted to "drain the swamp" in Washington DC. I'd suggest that aside from not being a rubber stamp, the worthies could start by including the president in federal conflict-of-interest bans.
Each of these rubber stampers also took an "oath or affirmation" to "support" the Constitution (Article VI doesn't give specific wording).
At some point, Himself's conflicts of interest and violations of his oath may become so flagrant (if they haven't already) that the worthies' failure to respond puts them in violation of their own oaths.
They are finding to their discomfort that a lot of their constituents are determined to hold them accountable and make them do their darn jobs.
How about it, Scott Tipton and Cory Gardner?
