Thursday, July 03, 2025

Thursday Ramble: Effing Idiots

Noteworthy today, we are closer to the year 2050, than we are to the year 2000. And the millennium bug still has not brought modern civilization to its knees. 


This was written last Friday morning, as the US Supreme Court was closing out the session with the most politically difficult cases, no doubt with armored SUVs waiting in the garage to whisk them away to their summer retreats while the smoke clears and the cries die down. 

The Opinion in the first case came out, the one on Birthright Citizenship and my reaction was what a bunch of effing idiots. Not the Supreme Court Justices, they are being very careful jurists, doing their jobs, and not the lawyers for the Justice Department, they are being very careful in their research, and crafting their appeal. The the lawyers for the immigration advocates who failed to review existing Federal Case Law, on procedural issues. 

The appeal was brought purely on the issue of a Federal District Court, issuing a national injunction.  The case law is clear that this exceeds the authority of the Federal District Courts (or Circuit Courts) under federal law. The District Court should not have issued the sweeping injunction and the lawyers for CASA should have made the case law clear to the Court that the injunction needed to be more limited. 

The Justice Department lawyers, wisely stuck to this procedural issue knowing that they were likely to prevail, and avoided the bigger issue of birthright citizenship. When the opportunity is presented to avoid the third rail issue, the wise lawyers limit the issue to the easy one. 

Effing idiots should go back and take Civ-Pro 1 and Civ-Pro 2, Professor Abramson would have failed them on THE exam for this kind of an effing mistake.  

To fix our messed up immigration system, Congress needs to update our immigration laws, and no one seems to be demanding that be done. 

20 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. One of the things we tried to reach young lawyers, was to never assume the judge knows everything.

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  2. The GOP plan is capture and imprison, and the Democrats don't seem to have a plan other than throwing up their arms.
    So, we'll have concentration camps and people being denied their rights.

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    1. The law is clearly on the side of birthright citizenship, opposition needs to be very mindful in how these cases are litigated. Letting emotion get in the way, of wise lawyering will being bad result.

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  3. "the millennium bug still has not brought modern civilization to its knees", no someone else is doing that...

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    1. Maybe some anti-virus software can fix him.

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  4. My lawyer friends said pretty much the same thing. We are living in scary times.

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    1. TImes that demand great attention to details.

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  5. The president is right to say that there are serious problems with our immigration system that have been ignored by presidents before him. Fixing our immigration system can't be done by a president alone. These complicated problems can only be solved in the legislature with both parties working together. But today's legislature doesn't act like the separate branch of government the founders wanted. Legislators today are either slavish devotees of Trump, supporting him even when he’s violating the constitution, or complete Trump haters opposing even his good ideas. We, the people and the immigrants, deserve better. Legislators need to work with the other party to find a middle ground that will be supported by most of the country. If they won’t do that, we should elect others who will.

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    1. Months before the election, congress had a bipartisan immigration reform bill, and the House killed it at Trump's request.

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  6. Yes, the world is full of effing idiots.

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  7. Oh my, you used the eff word!

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    1. I have a licence plate from Ireland, that has the phrase in Gaelic.

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  8. I'm still confused, tho, if the constitution protects birthright citizenship, then, how can this administration ignore it and threaten to take it away?

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    1. By ignoring the law, knowing that by the time a challenge makes it way through the legal system, much of the damage will be done. It is hard to unring the bell.

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    2. The Supreme Court can not issue a national injunction to stop the executive when they are breaking the law of the constitution?
      Such a confusing, slow process when the country is in danger.

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    3. With very limited exceptions, the Supreme Court can only rule on cases that are being appealed from lower courts, and there you have to exhaust the appeals process in the lower courts before the case will be considered. So if Mr. Z files suit in the federal district court in the eastern district of Kentucky, and the court rules, that can be appealed to the 6th circuit court of appeals (in Cincinnati) once that court has ruled the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court. On birthright citizenship if the district court rules in favor of Mr. Z, the government could appeal, but probably won't. They will take those small losses, rather than risk being ruled against up the line.

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  9. I prefer the eff word to the dee-jay-tee word.

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    Replies
    1. Feckin Eejit is how the Irish say it.

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