@blatham,
Nonsense
The Yates dismissal provides Trump opponents with a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that they are motivated in their criticism by something other than obsessive hatred or unhinged paranoia.
Ms Yates was placeholder necessitated by the foot dragging of the Democrats. She was allowed to remain in place by the Trump Admin as a temporary caretaker. If she had been summarily dismissed from the outset, as would have been Trump's right, you would almost assuredly have had something negative to say about it. Instead she was permitted to remain in place as Acting DOJ - no small thing - with the tacit understanding that her role was to keep the wheels of the DOJ turning and certainly not to involve herself in political controversies. Most of the Obama Admin holdovers in Fed agencies sought to be retained and were quite pleased when their requests were granted. Every single one of them could have resigned before or after Trump was sworn in and a few people of actual principle did just that.
As you are so fond of telling us what is very important to note, the following, in relation to this matter, are certainly so:
There
has been a legal opinion from the DOJ relative to the EO, The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel reviewed it after it was drafted
and signed off on its legality. . Apparently Yates was unaware of this fact before she climbed onto the grandstand (Which is stunning, but typical) or she ignored it (Which is stunning, but also typical)
Neither Yates nor any DOJ attorney developed an additional, alternative legal opinion prior to her launching her political move, nor did she ever cite any specific legal grounds for her discomfort with the EO, instead placing the emphasis for her decision on the fact that she was concerned about its
rightness. She didn't like or agree with the thing.
While Yates and everyone else has a perfect right to question Trump's motivation for the EO and to note that it was the end product of a Trump initiated discussion about banning all Muslims from entering the country, neither have anything at all to do with what the EO actually says and whether it is legal or, for that matter, moral.
It is irrefutable that the EO is not a Muslim ban. It doesn't matter one whit in terms its propriety and application that it has its origins with the stream of conscious rhetoric of the new president, or anything Rudy Giuliani may say have said about it on news show. The argument made by Yates that either, and particularly the latter, were important elements of her analysis of the order is laughable. The EO is not an obtuse, vaguely worded document that demands a careful consideration of the intent that formed it.
As for the intent, from a legal standpoint, it doesn't matter that Trump may have seriously wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country, because even after applying the broadest most partisan fueled interpretation of what it actually says, only someone with a staggering degree of intellectual dishonesty or utter stupidity, can continue to claim it is a Muslim Ban.
From a political standpoint, obviously people can twist the EO any which way they want to serve their purpose of furthering their claim that Trump is an unhinged dictator in the making. They can, and to their shame they have.
An alternative analysis that is far more credible and should assuage people's fears, not inflame them is that while Trump may have wanted to ban all Muslims on the basis of their religion, after consideration of the political implications and its legality what he has come up with is not at all a blanket ban but a carefully crafted, and prudently limited solution to the perceived problem.
You can argue whether or not the problem was real or as significant as he imagines and you can argue whether or not the EO will effectively address that problem but it should reassure you that even if the initial idea was improperly discriminatory, the system and his own acceptance of limitations produced something much different from the original concept.
Of course this analysis of the situation doesn't support the narrative of a fascist dictator running amok and trampling on rights so will be dismissed out of hand.
Yates, in questioning the legality and morality of the EO viewed the entire matter through a partisan political prism, and rather than consulting the Administration with her supposedly legitimate concerns she chose to address them in a way that guaranteed media attention and forced Trump to take additional action that could be used in the left's political war against him. It wasn't a particularly clever political ploy but it served his purpose. I suspect the timing of Yates' memo to the DOJ staff was intended to drag the matter out further and give her political allies more time to use it in the press and allow them to better set the stage for the inevitable firing to be compared to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. I can imagine the columns of Dana Milbank or EJ Dionne recounting Nixon's firing of Cox and warning us that if Trump fires Yates it will be tantamount to an admission that she is correct. Rubbish of course, but that's the stock in trade of progressive pundits these days.
As it turned out, Trump's political advisers are either getting their sea legs or voices previously unheard are now being heard, because the response to Yate's opening gambit was almost immediate and unambiguous and with time to get their people out to cable news shows when Americans might still be watching. It wasn't genius and it didn't extinguish all controversy, but it was smart and further skill will be needed as the left attempts to blow yet another incident entirely out of proportion.
As previously noted, the only legal opinion the Acting Attorney General had to inform her decision was one that certified its legality and so the only basis on which she could honestly base her objection was her personal sense that the order was not right. Since her intentions were purely political, it's not at all surprising that she didn't followed a course that would have allowed her to act on her misgivings and maintain her integrity: Advise her boss of her concerns and if unable to persuade him to her way of thinking, resign. This approach would still have scored political points because the MSM would still have used it as a political club, but clearly, Yates had no concern for her personal integrity and either saw or was convinced of an alternative approach that would inflict maximum political damage and provide her with considerable advantage by setting her up as the new Wendy Davis, hero of the Left future candidate for a seat in the House, or if she is absurdly ambitious as Davis, the Governor's Mansion of her home State.
So, putting aside for now the clear truth that the EO is not a ban on Muslims nor an effort rid our country or the opening gambit in Trump design on a dictatorship, any reasonable and honest assessment of the Yate affair should be that this was a politically motivated stunt and that Trump's firing of her was entirely legitimate and in no way and admission that that Yates is correct and/or the EO is not proper.
Of course this doesn't mean that Trump is not a dangerous amateur with autocratic inclinations, blundering about on the world stage. I of course don't agree with such an analysis although I do have my concerns about his presidency. It's possible that you can be wrong about Yates but not about everything else. Highly unlikely but possible. However by turning every Trump related incident into evidence of his evil and/or incompetence you have revealed, what many of us knew from the start, that this thread has nothing to do with monitoring Trump and offering intelligent and even moderately biased commentary, it is your A2K platform for disseminating anti-Trump propaganda.
