A nation of laws

Afew weeks back, we weighed in on Idaho’s plan to thumb its nose at the Affordable Care Act and allow insurers to sell cheaper, more bare-bones health insurance policies than those mandated under Obamacare. Congressional Democrats were apoplectic. Three times in February, The Washington Post reports, they confronted Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar demanding to know what he planned to do in response to a state that brazenly refused to follow federal law.

It’s true that principles and politics rarely mix well. But the inconsistency and hypocrisy on display here was particularly shameless given the philosophical confusion that marks the Trump “resistance.”

Fast forward to last week. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday that he would file suit against California for passing a series of “sanctuary state” measures intended to undermine federal immigration law.

Suddenly, Democrats are rushing to defend a state that has made crystal clear it has no intention of adhering to federal statutes. Gov. Jerry Brown demanded that Mr. Sessions “apologize to the people of California.” The state’s two Democratic U.S. senators reached for the smelling salts.

And let’s not forget that just six years ago, liberals cheered a U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited Arizona’s ability to engage in immigration enforcement, ruling that it was a federal prerogative.

Today, Democrats would like you to believe the opposite when it comes to California.

To be a modern-day progressive is apparently to arrogantly insist you are free to disregard laws and policies you don’t like, while granting those on the other side of the political spectrum no such latitude.

“This is a reminder that California does not see his federal policies,” a Sacramento graduate student told The Associated Press as he protested Mr. Sessions’ presence. “We are a state of immigrants.”

Perhaps. But as John Adams reflected, we’re also a “nation of laws, not of men.”