by Lewis Morris: Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore sailed to victory last night over incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama’s special Senate election primary runoff. The race was called shortly after the polls closed, with Moore beating Strange 57% to 43%. Vote counters estimated a low turnout with around 15% of eligible voters coming out for the election. But it’s far more important than that indicates — it’s a marker in estimating President Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP. Strange was appointed to the Senate seat by former Gov. Robert Bentley in February after Jeff Sessions left it to become attorney general. It was thought at the time that Strange would hold the seat until the next general election in 2020, but politics threw him a curve. Bentley was removed from office after it was discovered he was using state funds to hide an affair. Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey replaced Bentley and called for a special election in December.
Strange, a former state attorney general who’d pushed to suspend impeachment proceedings against Bentley, bore the marks of the latter’s corruption. He soon found himself in a crowded primary battle with eight other Republicans. When no one emerged from the primary with a majority of the vote, the top two finishers, Strange and Moore, squared off.
The primary and the runoff, as with all special elections, was framed by some as a referendum on President Donald Trump, but more so it was one on the “establishment.” Trump was vocal in his support of Strange, and he made an appearance in Alabama on his behalf during the campaign. Vice President Mike Pence also turned out for Strange. Strange, in turn, has been a loyal supporter of Trump in the Senate — a reliable conservative vote.
What may have fatally wounded Strange, however, was that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also voiced support for him in the runoff and provided $9 million from the Senate Leadership Fund for Strange’s campaign. Moore used this support from the leadership as a means of attacking Strange and linking him to what he called “DC’s slime machine.” It worked.
Moore had some heavy-hitting support of his own during the race. Among those who came out for his campaign were Chuck Norris, Sarah Palin and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Bannon’s entry into the fray on behalf of Moore suggested that this race was going to be a proxy fight between competing visions of the GOP’s future. Just who represented what was grounds for widespread speculation, and the Trump haters (who hate Bannon even more, if that’s possible) were giddy at the possibility of this election leading to a civil war within the Republican Party.
They ended up being disappointed. News of Moore’s victory last night led to a congratulatory tweet from Trump. Bannon even asserted that Moore’s victory was a victory for Trump, even though the president openly supported Strange.
Moore is perhaps best known for his refusal in 2003 to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama state courthouse while serving as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. His defiance of the federal court order cost him his job, but he won it back in 2013, only to lose it again three years later for ordering judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses. On Monday, Moore demonstrated his support for the Second Amendment by drawing his gun at a campaign rally, a move that left Democrats with a case of the vapors. Few can question Moore’s conservatism and his dedication to principle. Some have wondered, though, if Moore will be able to play well with others in the Senate should he win the general election in December. His conservative credentials will serve the Republican agenda well, but his maverick style could do the opposite by adding more chaos to the unpredictable political climate.
Moore will face former U.S. attorney Doug Jones in the general election on Dec. 12. Jones won the Democrat primary in August. A win for Moore is crucial for Republicans. They have a majority with just 52 seats, and we already know that this isn’t enough to keep two or three rogues from blocking their own party’s agenda.
Moore has in his favor the fact that Alabama is a solid GOP state that has elected Republicans to the U.S. Senate continuously since 1997. In Sessions’ last election as senator in 2014, he ran unopposed. Trump won the state last year with 62% of the vote. This last fact could be pointed to as a reason for Republicans to be optimistic, yet cautious, given Trump’s volatility with the electorate. Democrats are sure to make the race about him, and it can be expected that they will nationalize the race. It could be a long wait until December. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/51524
{townhall.com} ~ The weird odyssey of President Donald Trump's travel bans continues. The original ban, signed as an executive order Jan. 27, barred absolutely all immigrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The countries had actually been chosen by the State Department of former President Barack liar-nObama. liar-nObama never signed a ban, but Trump did.
The first travel ban never took effect, as the federal courts in Brooklyn, Seattle, and Honolulu in which it was challenged by people from the affected countries who had visas to enter the United States enjoined it almost immediately. When the Department of Justice challenged those injunctions, it lost. The basis for the judicial invalidations of the first ban was that it constituted a government decision based on religion.
Since the religion clauses of the First Amendment protect everyone -- not just citizens -- and since the seven countries designated by the liar-nObama and Trump State departments and barred under Trump's executive order were predominantly Muslim, and since candidate Trump had made very harsh anti-Muslim comments during the campaign, the courts ruled that the travel ban was actually a Muslim ban and thus was unconstitutional.
Before the DOJ could appeal its losses to the Supreme Court, President Trump signed a second travel ban March 6. It rescinded the original ban and articulated a national security and geographic basis for barring entry from six countries eliminating Iraq. It, too, was challenged in the same federal courts as the first ban, and it suffered the same fate for the same reasons. This second ban reached the Supreme Court, which, by a 6-3 vote, invalidated the injunctions imposed by lower-court judges against it but carved out an exemption from the ban.
When the Department of Homeland Security defined "bona fide relationships" to include in-laws but not cousins or grandparents, that definition was challenged. The same federal judges who had invalidated the first and second bans then interpreted the phrase to permit the entry of anyone who had any family relationship in the U.S., any job offer, any offer of university admission or any offer of settlement here by a refugee program. The DOJ appealed that to the Supreme Court, and it removed the refugee settlement programs from the definition of bona fide relationships but permitted the remainder of the judicially determined phrase to stand. The Supreme Court also ordered oral argument on the constitutionality of the second travel ban and scheduled it for Oct. 10.
Last week, the court realized that the second ban expires later this week, well before Oct. 10. This is of profound constitutional significance because the expiration of the ban renders it moot. The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of all federal courts to real cases and controversies. If the ban does not exist on Oct. 10, there will be no case or controversy over it, and the Supreme Court will have no jurisdiction -- no federal court will -- to hear the case. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court canceled the Oct. 10 oral argument.
Cognizant of the mootness issues addressed above and aware that the second ban expires at the end of this week, the president signed a third travel ban last Sunday night. The third ban adds immigrants and refugees from Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela to the remaining countries articulated in the second ban. It includes the exemption of bona fide relationships, and it purports to be based on the unique problems from people whose origin is in an international hot spot. It is not couched as a Muslim ban. Of the added countries, North Korea is largely atheist, and Venezuela is largely Roman Catholic; the remaining countries are overwhelmingly Muslim.
The third ban, which takes effect Oct. 18 -- meaning that the president has chosen to impose no ban for 19 days -- will affect everyone without a bona fide relationship in the U.S., and it appears to be permanent. The third ban is far more legally sophisticated than its predecessors. It purports to address each country uniquely, and it clearly was written with an eye toward the lower-court rulings over which its predecessors stumbled.
I have serious misgivings about the morality and political wisdom of these travel bans. The right to travel and to escape oppression is a natural human right, with which no government may morally interfere. And the assumption that merely because a person belongs to a group defined by immutable characteristics of birth -- place of birth, in this case -- the person shares all the dominant traits of others in that group has been rejected as un-American for generations.
Yet the travel bans are constitutional. That is so because the Constitution reposes foreign policy in the president and because Congress has reposed in him the ability to establish and enforce travel bans, and the courts should be loath to second-guess the president on foreign policy. That is at least how the Supreme Court has spoken on this to date. Yet look for this ban to be enjoined by lower federal courts before it takes effect. Their antipathy to all things Trump seems unabated.
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