January 31, 2017

Sally Yates, you're fired.

Sally Yates, (former) acting Attorney General and president Obama appointee refused to enforce president Trump's immigration ban order.  And for that, she was, rightly, fired.

As the editors of National Review (themselves no fans of Donald Trump) noted;
Our Constitution vests all executive power — not some of it, all of it — in the president of the United States. Executive-branch officials do not have their own power. They are delegated by the president to execute his power. If they object to the president’s policies, their choice is clear: salute and enforce the president’s directives, or honorably resign. There is no third way. No one knows this better than high-ranking officials of the Department of Justice. That is why President Trump was right to fire Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
It's that simple. Instead, knowing her days were numbered she decided deliberately to turn herself into a martyr in the face of a hyped-up outrage against the ban. The very outrage by the way, that will help convince Trump supporters they were right to support him and will help galvanize their support of what they see as a return to common sense from a president who wouldn't even say the words "extremist Islamic terrorism" to a president who wants to do his job and put Americans' safety first. 

Getting back to Yates, her actions were poorly conceived.  Not only did she get herself fired but she's not going to be made a martyr.  No one outside of her immediate family and circle of friends cares about Sally Yates. Liberals will use her as the flavor of the week cause celebre until Trump's next move which as it turns out, is happening tonight.  And once Trump's ban on former government employees working for lobbyists kicks in, perhaps prior to her next role, she'll potentially be challenged in finding her next obvious role.  perhaps she'll take a speaking-engagement tour or go out touting her eventual book about how she was treated so unfairly by president Trump just because she stood up for her (politically driven) principles.  I'm sure she'll draw huge crowds at Snowflake University.

But her problems don't end there.  Her actions were those of insubordination. 
To make an analogy, there are many federal judges who oppose abortion. They apply Roe v. Wade even though they disagree with it intensely, because their duty is to obey superior courts. As every official in the Justice Department knows, if one disagrees with the law one is called upon to apply, or the policy one is bound to enforce, one is free to resign. Staying on while undermining government policy is not an act of courage. It is an act of sabotage.
Is it indictable? Maybe.
Furthermore, the very thing Ms. Yates turned up her legal nose at -- a president placing restrictions on immigration from terror-infused countries -- was done in 2011 by Barack Obama, the man responsible for her appointment.

That Trump fired her only minutes after she opened her mouth was predictable and necessary -- and not just to provoke the inevitable jokes about his television show. The president was acting within the law. She wasn't.

...She deserves to be indicted and have her license to practice law yanked. But no, she shouldn't go to jail. She should get a job and do something useful -- far from the law. On the weekends, she can go protest all she wants.
To use a military analogy it's a court marshallable offense. To view it as an act of heroism is to ignore the reality of how the government or any business works - like it or not you do as your boss says or you find another job. Do otherwise and you're fired.

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