Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Federal Courts Say Foreigners, Not US Citizens, Are Entitled To Due Process

Paul Craig Roberts



The US Constitution applies to US citizens, and the amendments known as the Bill of Rights guarantee due process as a protection of US citizens’ civil liberties. That’s the theory but not the practice.
Trump’s travel ban applies to non-US citizens, primarily to refugees from the Bush/Obama bombings of numerous Muslim countries. Some of these refugees, whose families and countries were destroyed by American troops, could harbor feelings of revenge against Americans. The Ninth Circuit Panel’s injunction against Trump’s executive order gives the Constitution’s protection of US citizens to non-citizens, apparently on the basis of due process and religious discrimination arguments. The panel of judges said that Trump’s executive order “runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”
So too does bombing numerous Muslim countries over the course of the past 16 years, about which nothing has been done. One would think that, with the Democratic Party’s merger with Identity Politics and with the liberal/progressive/left leaning of the Ninth Circuit, more of a stink would have been raised about bombing Muslims gratuitously than by placing a mere ban on their entry into the US. But it all depends on who does the bombing and who does the ban. Identity Politics requires “America’s First Black President” to be supported at all costs, and Trump, a white heterosexual male billionaire, to be hated at all costs.

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