A resounding no to ban

So President Trump has gotten his first real lesson in the separation of powers — you know, an important part of the Constitution that he swore to uphold on Inauguration Day. And he’s really not happy about it one bit.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has refused to reinstate the travel ban Trump imposed by executive order on seven majority Muslim countries.

“The government has taken the position,” the court decision said, “that the president’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns are

unreviewable even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections.”

Not so, the judges said. “It is beyond question that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action.”

The initial order was, we now know, hastily conceived, sloppily written and executed. It made no exemption, for example, for those lawful permanent residents already possessing green cards, a part of the ban that had to be rescinded by the White House counsel almost immediately.

But, as the court noted Thursday, “The White House counsel is not the president” adding “we cannot rely” on subsequent guidance memos issued in an attempt to correct those early blunders.

And while the judges were certainly willing to consider an argument based on national security, they also found the administration produced “no evidence” that anyone from the seven named countries had indeed committed an act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

Trump, of course, almost immediately tweeted his intention to appeal the decision. So no doubt we haven’t heard the last of this.

This nation has already put up with eight years of rule by executive fiat. It wasn’t right then and it isn’t right now. There are limits to presidential power — for which right now we should all be grateful.