April 20, 2017; The Hill
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom some consider less than fully enlightened about…well, about a lot of things…let his old-timey colonialist mentality come out to play in public on The Mark Levin Show Tuesday evening.
Speaking about U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, who issued an order blocking the president’s revised travel ban, he said, “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”
Fifty-eight years of statehood, and this is what you get.
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Judge Watson, at the state of Hawaii’s request, prevented the federal government from suspending new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries and from suspending the U.S.’ refugee program.
Later, Ian Prior, the DOJ’s principal deputy director of public affairs, tried to…well, we don’t exactly know what he was trying to do when he said, by way of explanation, “Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific—a beautiful one, where the Attorney General’s granddaughter was born. The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the president’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.”
Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin, among many others, took exception to Sessions’ characterization of Hawaii and his understanding of our separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution, linking it to other scorn laid on the judiciary.
“President Trump previously called a federal judge in California a so-called judge. Now U.S. Attorney General Sessions appears to dismiss a federal judge in Hawaii as just a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific,” Chin said, in a news release. “Our Constitution created a separation of powers in the United States for a reason. Our federal courts, established under Article III of the Constitution, are co-equal partners with Congress and the president. It is disappointing AG Sessions does not acknowledge that.”—Ruth McCambridge
