With all the celebration I’m seeing about the 9th District Court’s ruling this evening, I can’t help wondering: Where was all this confidence in the separation of powers back on election day? And can we maybe back off on the Hitler and fascism talk now?

I watched Sean Spicer’s press conference when I got home tonight, and one part struck me as information I had not heard before. He cited 8 US Code 1182 as the president’s authority to suspend immigration in his Executive Order (around 7:00 in the video). He read it out loud, and it sounded pretty clear-cut to me. It was the first time I heard any mention of where they derived their authority.

It’s official: I can’t keep up with Trump anymore. Every day he signs new orders, says new things, writes new tweets, and I don’t have time to keep reading them and trying to figure out what the heck they mean or whether to push the panic button or not. This was undoubtedly the plan, the way to keep us ordinary citizens from keeping an eye on the government, forcing us to rely on media organizations to distill it down for us, which they always do wrong.

By the way, there is much more to talk about regarding the Executive Order on Immigration and its impact over the past weekend (detainees at airports, ACLU, stays, etc.), but the news is flying around so fast and furious that it’s basically impossible to sort out what’s real and what’s fiction right now. Depending on who you listen to, everything is either back to normal, or there are armed stand-offs between all three branches of government. (That is an exaggeration for comedic effect, I have not actually heard that-either claim, actually.)

Here’s another beauty: That’s completely preposterous. Pure fear-mongering. Throwing gasoline onto a fire. Whatever other metaphor I can think of. I don’t believe these “rogue” government Twitter accounts are real for one second. I was instantly suspicious the moment I saw them. Why? Because real government whistle-blowers go to the press, where they get protection. Also, you know, I read some of their tweets. Like the one above. They aren’t credible. They’re probably the same anarchists who protest in the streets regardless of who wins an election.

I’m not pleased with Trump’s Executive Order restricting immigration. It runs contrary to the spirit of America. I understand the need to vet immigrants, but a universal ban on immigration, particularly banning refugees from war-torn Syria, sends a really bad message to the world that I’m embarrassed to be a part of. I’m particularly embarrassed by the priority given to Christian immigrants. That, in my opinion, is the work of Mike Pence, who I’m increasingly worried is pulling Trump’s puppet strings.

Note: This is my first post after making some changes to the site’s infrastructure. I hope it’s still working. Here’s another fun bit of conservative propaganda I found on Facebook: Once again I have to point out that you can make any political point with data and statistics, liberal, conservative, or any variation between. And here’s another reminder that I still don’t know the source for that picture of the National Mall or when it was taken. However, calling it “not accurate” is … not accurate, as I’ve discussed before.

In case you think I only rag on liberal viewpoints, here I will passive-aggressively respond to a very conservative Facebook post: The true purpose of The Wall is to create a government welfare program for construction companies. Zing! (Apologies if that person does happen to read this blog someday, but I don’t engage with politics on Facebook ever, for any reason.)

Here’s another tweet I saw going around: Silencing of federal government Gag rule Actual Nazis Threat of martial law $20b border wall Goldmann-Sachs cabinet State Propaganda pic.twitter.com/Xu5hEsTo4P — Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) January 25, 2017 Again I’m all for keeping an eye on what the president is doing, but … “Silencing of federal government” doesn’t even make sense. “Gag rule” is wildly out of context. “Actual Nazis” is actually not true because actual Nazis are registered with the actual NSDAP party which actually dissolved in 1945.

It’s time for some basic education on what censorship means again. News came out yesterday (24 Jan) that the EPA had received a directive to cease using its Twitter accounts. Censorship! Well, no. That is not censorship. It’s more like risk management. The government is legally accountable for everything that goes out on those Twitter feeds. They are well within their rights to set a policy for how they are used. The government would also be within their rights to fire people for misusing those Twitter accounts. It’s probably one of the few things you could do to actually get fired from a government job. (Hey-oh!)