unfortunely, these Congress-critters (b@$t@rds) need to be defeated.
(SotH Boehmer And McConnell, both of the Wdc Establishment Party)
Posted on 12/24/2014 4:27:42 PM PST by Libloather
Elionardo Juarez-Escobar, a 42-year-old Honduran landscaper, was driving through a Pittsburgh suburb one evening last April when he saw a police sobriety check ahead. Drunk and without a license, he tried to avoid it. New Sewickley Township police managed to pull him over anyway.
When they did, they found empty beer cans in the back seat, a minor named Henry Gomez on the passenger side and an inebriated driver. Escobar failed a field sobriety test, blowing 0.18, more than twice Pennsylvania's legal limit. He was arrested and charged with two counts of driving under the influence, corruption of minors, furnishing liquor to a minor and driving without a license.
If a federal judge has his way, Escobar's case will become the most consequential DUI in U.S. history.
That case began its transformation from the quotidian to the cosmic when local authorities determined that Escobar had twice entered the U.S. illegally. Immigration officials deported him in December 2005. Some time after that (Escobar says he can't remember when), he crossed the border into Texas, eventually making his way to Pittsburgh, where he reunited with his brother.
Local law enforcement turned Escobar over to federal authorities, who imprisoned him on July 22. A week later, a grand jury indicted him on charges of having returned to the U.S. after his deportation, a criminal offense. Escobar's court-appointed attorney advised him to enter a guilty plea, clearing the way for a December court date before Federal District Court Judge Arthur Schwab.
In the normal course of events, Schwab would have accepted Escobar's plea, sentenced him to time served, and handed him over to immigration authorities for a civil proceeding, which would determine whether he would again be deported.
But on Nov. 20, President Obama announced that his administration would grant "deferred action" to certain classes of undocumented individuals, sparing them deportation and freeing them to "come out of the shadows." Henceforth, the government would apprehend and deport only those who pose "a demonstrable risk to national security" or who have been "convicted of specifically enumerated crimes." The U.S. would deport "felons," as the president summed up the new policy, "not families."
Schwab asked prosecutors and Escobar's lawyers to prepare briefs on whether the president's action affected the case. Both concluded that it did not. Neither the defense nor the prosecution alleged that the administration's actions were unconstitutional. Both agreed that the president's freshly minted immigration policies did not apply to the criminal proceedings before the court, only to the subsequent civil deportation proceedings, if at all.
Schwab was undeterred. In the order he issued last week, the federal judge declared the president's policy unconstitutional. He further held that if it were constitutional, Escobar must be given the opportunity to withdraw his guilty plea, since Schwab is persuaded that the defendant is more "family" than "felon." Schwab sees that rhetorical flourish by the president's speechwriters as capturing the critical legal distinction between those subject to deportation and those who may qualify for lawful status under the new policy.
Schwab may be correct as to the constitutionality of the president's actions. He notes that the president himself on multiple occasions said that only Congress can change immigration policy. Schwab agreed with that now-discarded presidential view. "Inaction by the Congress," he wrote, "does not make unconstitutional executive action constitutional."
He rejected the president's recent contrivance that he has authority to make Congress an offer it can't refuse: enact an immigration policy to my liking or watch me establish such a policy on my own. "Congress's lawmaking power," Schwab wrote, "is not subject to presidential supervision or control."
He also spurned the president's assertion that his action amounts to nothing more than prosecutorial discretion, since it "provides for a systematic and rigid process by which a broad group of individuals will be treated differently than others based upon arbitrary classifications, rather than case-by-case examination," effectively extending "substantive rights" to millions. The Constitution reserves the power to establish such sweeping policy preferences to Congress, not the President, Schwab rightly observes.
But if he is correct in concluding that the president's "unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers," Schwab is guilty of similar unconstitutional excess. The validity of the administration's executive action was not before the court. There was no disagreement between defense and prosecution on the only matter Schwab was asked to adjudicate: the defendant's guilt. Escobar pleaded guilty. Schwab's contortions in using the Escobar case to opine on the constitutionality of the immigration policy are every bit as flawed as the defenses the administration has advanced for that policy. Judicial overreach is no remedy for executive overreach.
The president has lately gone on an imperial joyride, speeding through constitutional red lights and careening into the oncoming lane of congressional authority. Now he has met his robed doppelganger: a judge as indifferent to constitutional limits on judicial power as the president is to constitutional limits on executive power.
Schwab's reasoning is not likely to prevail. If it does, a president gone rogue will have met his match in a judge gone rogue.
Rock and a Hard Place.
I want Sarah!
She’s proven she can go Rogue.
Bump
How could the MSM foist this clown on the public, and how could the voting public not only elect him, but do it twice! How we can elect a man who has sequestered virtually every document from his past, and have a MSM that refuse to ask him why just dumbfounds me. Evidently, all it takes to get elected is a ton of lies and a bunch of taxpayer paid-for cell phones.
This looks interesting. Saving my place with this post.
“”would grant “deferred action” to certain classes of undocumented individuals””
Does anyone - anywhere - have any idea what the game plan is here? What are the “certain classes?” Is there a plan or just more flying by the seat of the pants administration? Why do Mexicans presuppose the law (?) will apply just to them? I would guess they are the largest majority of illegals here but just how are these millions going to be chosen to come out of the “shadows?”
Is this a set up to pit one nationality against another? To end up with a number of unhappy illegals from different countries? Oh! why do I even ask the dumb questions?
The author of this article is wrong. The judge is entitled to raise and address any issue that he believes is necessary for him to address in the course of issuing a decision. He gave the parties notice and the opportunity to submit briefing. He did what he was required to. What happened was unusual; it was definitely not “rogue.”
UNIPARTY
My old eyes see: UNIPANTY
..........this is laughable.........a federal judge is well within the lines to make any comment he feels like in any ruling he makes.
This writer was just trying to be too cute by ten!
How could the MSM foist this clown on the public, and how could the voting public not only elect him, but do it twice! . . . . .
_____________________________________________________
What a silly question after electing a president twice who got his semen on a 19 year old girl’s dress as it spilled from her mouth.
We have a very sick electorate.
I thought the Judge’s reasoning was quite clear.
I think he wrote the opinion to block any future attempt by the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea.
A court always has the right to determine its own jurisdiction; even if both parties agree that a court has jurisdiction over a matter, a judge can disagree.
Further, a court has the right, if not the obligation, to assert itself under the Separation of Powers doctrine in the Constitution. I don’t see that the court’s action departs from the fundamental principle stated by Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison that it is fundamental for a court in exercising its judicial authority to state what the law is.
The writer of this article also missed out on why Judge Schwab got involved with this issue—he queried the parties as to whether the defendant’s “equal protection under the law” rights might be violated by the President’s order. Both parties had their own agenda for saying that the rights were not violated—they wanted the Judge to accept the plea deal and move on. The Judge, looking at the bigger picture, disagreed.
I read the court’s opinion in this matter, and it seemed very logical and well defended. It is funny that libs squeal like stuck pigs when a bright conservative judge beats them at their own game. Only thing is, he was not being “activist”, but rather carrying out his sworn duty in a case or controversy to state what the law is. The constitution trumps both statutes and executive orders.
Excellent observation and I agree.
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