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2 Wednesday, May 10, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: I couldn’t let Craig Rullman’s April 26 col- umn “Red-Teaming the climate question” go unchallenged. He would like you to believe that climate change is far from “settled science” and needs to be further debated. Peter Frumhof, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the scientific community, in its vari- ous forms and in professional journals, has a very well-established, time-tested and by- and-large quite effective process for evaluat- ing alternative hypotheses about any body of science — and that’s called independent peer review. “The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in par- ticular for the specific question around global warming is unfounded and ridiculous and sim- ply intended to promote the notion of a lack of consensus about the core findings, which in fact is a false notion.” Mr. Rullman, I suggest you take your own advice and depend “on the integrity of sci- entists and their research to help me form an intelligent opinion.” Terry Weygandt Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Chance Showers Mostly Sunny Showers Likely Chance Showers Chance Rain/Snow Chance Showers 75/41 59/34 52/33 50/33 54/34 54/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. A great deal has been said about Donald Trump’s viola- tions of “democratic norms.” I agree with much of it. But the big problem with violating democratic norms — the unwritten customs and practices even political oppo- nents traditionally abide by — is that once you’ve done it, everybody else wants to do it, too. This makes every- thing worse, because when the people most offended by Trump’s violations respond in kind, they not only con- tribute to the problem, they create incentives for Trump and his biggest supporters to keep doing it. For example, the outgo- ing Obama administration was horrified by the pros- pect of being replaced by the Trump administration. The exact details have yet to be revealed, but it seems that some in the old guard may have violated norms about “unmasking” the identities of certain individuals, and they certainly violated norms by leaking various highly clas- sified details to the press. In response, Trump claimed vindication in his claims that he was wiretapped. A better example might be Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show” on CBS. He has found a sweet spot in the rat- ings as a leading voice of the anti-Trump “resistance.” That’s fine. TV is a niche business these days, even at the broadcast networks. But last week, Colbert’s animus toward Trump’s crudeness got the better of him. Suffice it to say that if you want to condemn a president for his incivility, you squander some credibility when you describe the president of the United States in a lewd act with a foreign dictator. The most acute example of the problem, however, is working its way through the courts. During the cam- paign, Trump outrageously and ridiculously called for a “total and complete shut- down” of Muslims entering the United States. He justi- fied the ban on the campaign trail with lots of incendiary statements. One of his first acts as president was to sign an executive order suspending entry into the U.S. by resi- dents of seven countries for 90 days. It empowered gov- ernment agencies to allow for exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The order, which was immediately blocked by fed- eral courts and ultimately rescinded, was a sloppy piece of work. But it wasn’t a Muslim ban. The vast major- ity of Muslims live outside of those seven countries and were unaffected by it. In March, Trump issued a second “travel ban” execu- tive order to take into account some of the legal and politi- cal objections to the first. Iraq was dropped from the list, for example. That order, too, was blocked by judges. The 4th Circuit in Virginia heard arguments in the case Monday. Reasonable people can disagree with the policy merits of the ban, legally, morally, politically and stra- tegically. But what I find troubling is the way various judges have taken to acting like pundits weighing in on Trump’s campaign rhetoric. For instance, Hawaii Judge Derrick Watson of the 9th Circuit responded to the idea that Trump’s past utterances are irrelevant with this preen- ing statement: “The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has.” Historically, paying such deference to political rhetoric is highly irregular. In Monday’s hearing, a lawyer for the ACLU con- ceded that if a hypothetical president — Hillary Clinton or someone else — had issued the same executive order, it could be constitu- tional. But Trump makes it unconstitutional. That’s nuts. I don’t blame judges or anyone else for being dis- gusted with Trump’s rhetoric. But judges aren’t comedians or pundits. Their job is to fol- low the law. Trump doesn’t help by referring to his executive orders as a “ban” (so as to pretend he’s fulfilled a prom- ise he could never keep). But the reality is that he aban- doned the ban from the get- go. When judges pretend oth- erwise to prove their “woke- ness” they undermine demo- cratic norms even further. And they give Trump and his boosters one more reason to screech that the courts are biased against him. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.