Is Gorsuch in the Trump dog house?

Neil Gorsuch is the man who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States because of the ideologue gamesmanship that denied former President Barack Obama a third pick to the high court; thereby allowing Donald Trump the ability to fill the vacancy in the early days of his presidency.

GORSUCH: Confounds ideologues?

Meaning I’m sure that Trump expects Gorsuch to be his reliable vote to take his stance on all issues that come before the court, and also to sway a majority of the rest of the court to do so as well.

WHICH IS WHY I’m finding some humor in the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday that struck down a law meant to make it easier (and quicker) to deport non-citizens who are found guilty of violent crimes while in this country.

The nine-member court voted 5-4 to rule in favor of striking down the law, agreeing with a federal appeals court in San Francisco that said it was too vague to be enforceable.

Gorsuch wound up siding with the four members of the court who usually are of a more progressive leaning on issues, even though Gorsuch is supposed to be the swing vote that gives the conservative-leaning justices the numerical advantage.

When considering that Trump is trying to base his political strength from having the support of those people whose idea of immigration reform is to deport as many people as possible, I don’t doubt that Trump felt a bit of disgust when he was informed of the court’s decision.

NOT THAT IT’S a surprise to see a judge place the law above political partisanship. It’s the way things are supposed to be, even though in this Age of Trump we have people who think that their partisanship is meant to prevail over all.

SOUTER: Often offended GOP pols

Anybody who pays attention to the Supreme Court knows there have been many justices who ruled on various cases in ways that went against the political desires of the presidents who appointed them.

Although I’m not ready to put Gorsuch in the same ranks as now-retired Justice David Souter. Remember the man appointed by former President George H.W. Bush whom his chief of staff, John Sununu, initially described as a “home run” for conservatism?

Souter wound up being a justice who aligned himself in his votes with the justices who were appointed to the court by former President Bill Clinton. He also was a justice who, in a case concerning abortion, wrote that doing anything to outlaw it would be, “a surrender to political pressure” and was amongst the court minority in 2000 who wanted to continue the recount of the presidential election ballots in Florida – when the act halting it is what gave us “President George W. Bush” instead of the man who nationally got more votes, Democrat Al Gore.

KAGAN: Wrote for the Ct majority

I’M SURE GORSUCH will come up with several votes on court cases that will appease the ideologues and Trump.

But like I wrote earlier, it is somewhat humorous to see Trump’s appointee be the guy who votes in a way that won’t appease the ideologues on immigration. Which is particularly odd in that this case originally came before the high court during the year that Republicans were thwarting Obama’s attempt to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia with Merrick Garland.

This same immigration case (based off the situation of a man from the Philippines who was found guilty of burglary in California) got a 4-4 vote then, which caused officials to want to re-argue the case with a full court – figuring that now they’d get a 5-4 vote in their favor.

Instead, they got a 5-4 vote against them, on the grounds that calling burglary a “crime of violence” was a bit of a stretch and that the law didn't really specify what a "crime of violence" was.

GORSUCH WOUND UP siding with the majority that let Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan (the old University of Chicago law school professor and an Obama appointee) write the opinion that will all up in arms in the near future about “too many foreigners” in this country.

TRUMP: Temper tantrum in Oval Office?

Personally, I think we have too many ideologues in this country. I also wonder if Kagan will be another reason for Trump to go on a "hate Chicago" diatribe. But those are issues for us to ponder another day.

Because you just know the ideologues will find something else to get all hot-and-bothered about. They usually always find something to get ticked off about, no matter what happens in "real" life.

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