Gish gallop at the courthouse? Omg. These people...

...consults with others before answering particularly nuanced or difficult questions. On the whole, though, the DOJ case does seem like it is falling flat in front of the judges. In their defense, they haven't had much time to put this together. Trump Admin. is rushing the judicial review and it shows.

he's probably been with the DoJ long enough to know it's a piece of crap case.

And he is working for a tyrant, live on air before millions of ears. This is the biglyest thing he's ever done. He'll be lucky if all he gets is a tweet storm. Anything less that Jesus Christ himself will not satisfy Trump, and even Jesus would likely be derided by Trump. As I saw on another post here recently, Trump would likely mock him for only having 12 disciples... LOL

"I like saviors who weren't crucified."

and I had the same impression. He does not seem very eloquent for a lawyer. Maybe he is not used to argue in court. Probably all the good ones did not want to have anything to do with it and they send the guy who is in charge of the mail room.

Due to conflict of interests related to a law firm that they used to work for....so this guy had to be assigned to the case.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-07/trump-team-shuffles-lawyers-in-hours-before-travel-ban-hearing

This is not TV. It is not the movies. Have you ever actually heard a lawyer argue in court? They hem and haw, stutter, scramble for notes and everything else. Sorry the legal system is not the perfect actors reading from a script that you watch on TV.

So far the State is getting softballs from the liberal judges, allowing the solicitor to pontificate freely rather than defend or react. That in and of itself speaks to where the Judges minds are on this matter.

The Immigration and Nationality Act give the president incredibly broad and sweeping power and discretion over any and all immigration into this country. The first, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) was adopted in 1952. It provides that the president may find “that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” and “suspend the entry” of those aliens. The second, § 1152(1)(A), was added in 1965. It provides that “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.”

Combining these two suggests that the President can choose “classes” to exclude—as long as the “classes” aren’t based on “race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence”—which the travel ban order definitely is. That’s especially convincing since the anti-discrimination language was added after the “classes” language. But a court could say that the “any class” language limits the anti-discrimination language, instead of vice-versa.

The statutory language doesn’t ban discrimination based on religion, though. That’s a command drawn from the Equal Protection principle of the Fifth Amendment, as well as the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment.

Taken in sum, this makes it awfully hard to say the President's EO was unconstitutional. However, that is not what this hearing is about. This hearing is about a stay on the TRO. The State will likely win here, but lose at the SCOTUS, assuming there is a 9th (Trump) judge there by the time it is heard.

That said, the State lawyer is now stuttering, too, illustrating my point. Both sides are on very tedious and heavily interpretive legal grounds here.

"the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States." There is no evidence at all that excluding people from the 7 countries in question would be detrimental, and plenty of preliminary evidence that excluding them would be. I should think the judges would consider there to be no rational basis for the exclusion in light of the fact that all of the aliens who did cause harm in the US came from countries not on the list (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where Trump has business interests). If I were deciding this case I'd look very hard at that.

whole thing highly interpretive. This hearing is in front of a liberal court, and so the odds are in our favor. If we land in front of a conservative leaning SCOTUS, we will likely lose, and Presidential authority will be forever changed. After all the saber rattling from the right over Obama's EO's, this blitzkrieg by Trump of EO's and attempts to expand Presidential power is the absolute epitome and height of hypocrisy. Drives me crazy!!!

when this case gets there - they don't have to petition for cert; they can do a direct appeal because it would be an appeal from a 3-judge panel on a preliminary injunction. That will go pretty fast. If there are only 8 Supremes a 4-4 decision means the 9th Circuit's decision stands.

They can't really rely on Korematsu because even though it was never expressly overturned it's been thoroughly discredited. And even if Gorsuch gets there in time he isn't necessarily an automatic vote for the government. He is a big fan of Scalia, and Scalia once said about that case, that Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion was the past court opinion he admired most, commenting that "It was nice to know that at least somebody on the court realized that that was wrong."

will, under instruction of the administration, slow walk the process to wait on Trumps SCOTUS pick. However, they may not be able to hold it off that long as a matter of both process and politics; in which case, yes, the split will then revert to the pending 9th Circuit. Frankly, I just believe the Trump Admin will pull out all the stops to get this decision to go his way. It is a critical mater of ego to him. He will commit impeachable offenses to protect his ego, and this may be where it starts.

to his authority / megalomania. He will do anything to make this a win, to set the tone of his so called presidency. Anything to win this. I agree, he will do something that is illegal enough to rise to the level of impeachment..

Which keeps in consistent with the lower Court ruling but leaving it open to be heard at a later date when the Court is at 9

If it does go to an 8 member SCOTUS, there is a chance that chief justice Roberts will decide that they cannot have a split decision, as this matter is too important to the country.

is granted massively broad powers to determine. That is the basis of the argument: Presidential power weighed against a specific interpretation of constitutional law.

he's dancing as fast as he can and it's not good.

Just say "I'm here so I won't get fined" every time they ask a question But seriously, they KNOW it is unconstitutional and yet they have to make some effort to defend it or else their freaky boss will have a total meltdown and fire them on prime time.

I can imagine the tell all books that will be written about this president

Well, the other guys sounded much more astute and well spoken.

so say appellate court judges. They are smart and read their homework. they know what is at issue but they give the sides the chance to argue for some ancient reason or another.

of the Bic was discernable. I have noticed it before in telephonic arguments when a party's lawyer is getting hammered by a judge. No question about it. The government's attorney was not from the A team. Also, he kept talking over J Friedman like she was his law clerk. I predict a 3-2 decision with an opinion reaching constitutional issues, including the establishment clause. Although, the WA Solicitor Gen. did make a compelling argument that it could be sent back to the District Court. Procedurally, the government has created chaos in this case by appealing a mere TRO as if it were a Prelim. Inj. Seems like the incompetency of this administration is fouling the Justice Dept. Or, is somebody or are somebodies just not trying very hard? No... they have very bad facts and very bad law. SCROTUS does not like losers, tsk tsk.

He really did not bring his A game and it seemed like he had no assistance whatsoever

Clearly he was the more experienced in deflection and steering the examination back to his points. He gives good segue. And had a far better grasp of the law. IMO.

I think one is from Carter and one from Clinton. Or Obama for the second.

The case is won with the briefs.

Us peacocks are trial lawyers. That is when our torrents of bullshit range wide and deep.

ahem he's um from Mexico City and thanks to dad being a racist , dad split the family right down the middle. Even though my brother went. My Cousin married him in 2011, thereby becoming an American. Then 2 things dad said would never happened , happened. 1. marriage wouldn't last a year so why go 2. She'd never have a kid with the guy. My cousins daughter was born in October 2016

He got his Law degree earlier in the year from MN.


Still I don't know him well enough to ask what his thoughts are on this , nor would I bother to ask. If he makes a comment on facebook then I would listen in. And I hate phoning things in, I'd rather be there in person.