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by hueving 3401 days ago
That very name is the strawman. The ban doesn't even target the largest Muslim countries.
1 comments

Yet it was sold as a Muslim ban by the administration, which is a major reason for San Francisco's federal appeal court to suspend it. The fact that it's not an effective Muslim ban is a different question.
> The fact that it's not an effective Muslim ban is a different question.

It is precisely the question. What the ban is is much more important that what it purports to be.

For example, if it purported to be a ban on terrorists but actually was as ban on Muslims (and I mean, a bonafide ban on all Muslims), would that not matter?

No, that would still be illegal, because a ban on Muslims is illegal. It is illegal to ban Muslims, and it is illegal to intend to ban Muslims. The latter reason is the one provided by the Ninth Circuit.
> Thoughtcrime, they called it.

- George Orwell, 1984

I don't see the comparison. One is criminalizing citizens having negative thoughts about an oppressive government. The other is prohibiting rulers from promising to discriminate against a religion and then passing a thinly-veiled bill to do so.
If an action that is normally legal becomes illegal if you have wrong thoughts while doing it, you are essentially legislating thoughtcrimes.

The immigration suspension ought to be legal or illegal because of what it is, not what its author thinks.

But the ACA mandate was supposed to be a mandate or a penalty, not a tax. The Supreme Court ruled that it looked like a tax and quacked like a tax, so it's legal as a tax.

Why can't the same principals be applied here? That the pitch and language of a rule aren't important, just the implementation.

100% agree. It doesn't matter whether Obama intended it to be a tax, or a mandate, or a duck. It was a tax because it was.

It doesn't matter what Trump thinks about the order. It's legality is the same no matter who signed it.

>Yet it was sold as a Muslim ban by the administration

Do you have a source for this? There is so much political noise that the only place I've heard it is second-hand from people trying to avoid the contents of the actual executive order and block it based on feelings.

Giuliani said on national television that Trump asked him how he could legally ban Muslims. He boasted that he came up with the idea that banning countries would be legal because it's based on nationality, not religion. When asked why he didn't ban countries that we know sponsored terror attacks like Saudi Arabia, he said they have changed.