The new U.S president's travel ban has been trumped.
Making headlines for taking a stand against such an unconstitutional executive order was Judge James Robart, who was in 2004 successfully and unanimously appointed unopposed to the bench by the Senate with a 99-0 vote during the Bush administration.
For anyone in American government to garner full support from both the Democrats and Republicans is nearly unheard of.
But that did not dissuade Trump from lashing out at Robart, callously dismissing a man who earned respect across partisan lines and who also devoted his life to public office as a "so-called judge."
Apparently, the president was not informed about the checks and balances enshrined by the U.S. constitution to share power between the executive, judiciary and legislative branches of government.
Diehard defenders of the new administration will claim the travel restrictions as well as the clampdown on refugee admissions did not actually represent a ban on the Muslim majority countries, despite the fact Trump himself referred to the executive order as such in one of his infamous social media posts.
But let us for the sake of argument pretend for just a moment that the travel restrictions do not amount to a ban and that the measures truly were intended as a means to ensure U.S. national security.
Ok, well, let's look at some numbers since the World Trade Centre was brought down.
Not one single terrorist attack has been carried out on American soil by any nationals from any of the seven countries targeted by the new U.S. administration.
Meanwhile, countries with track records of citizens who actually were complicit in terror attacks remain suspiciously off this list. Egypt, the U.A.E and of course Saudi Arabia ó where nearly all the 9/11 suicide attackers came from ó were immune to the presidential order.
Sounds like a disingenuous decision designed to do little more than placate voters who rallied behind the president's promise to ban illegal immigrants.
Robart's hold on the ban was later upheld in a 3-0 vote by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Conspiracy theorists quickly claimed that 80 per cent of the court's decisions are eventually overturned by the Supreme Court. In reality, that assertion is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
"Among less than one tenth of one per cent of circuit court decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court, about 80 per cent of the Ninth Circuit Court's decisions were overturned," says fact-checking website Snopes.com.
"The Supreme Court neither reviewed nor overturned 80 per cent of Ninth Circuit Court's decisions."
The court of appeals was not blind to the dubious nature of the executive order, and determined that Trump's administration failed to demonstrably make a constitutionally sound case for justifying the ban, basically using as its only argument the claim that the president has unquestionable authority on the matter.
"See you in court!" the president Tweeted in all caps within minutes of the ruling.
Jay Inslee, governor of Washington as well as a Democrat who leads one of the states that challenged the ban, responded by posting, "Mr. President, we just saw you in court, and we beat you."
This debacle might be the new president's first major legal battle with the courts over his administration's actions, but at this rate, chances are it won't be the last.
