Matthew Connor

Orange Bird snuck a peek inside some space that is clearly under construction in One Washington Mall (that office building where the Staples is and where the health club used to be on that alley between City Hall Plaza and the Old State House), and, wait, does that say "Wax Museum"?

Why, yes, it does, thanks to some sleuthing by Erik Griswold, who led us to this Web site on the verge, which is already good enough to get the place listed on this Boston tourism site, which features photos of what will apparently be wax dummies of Amy Winehouse, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Queen Elizabeth and that consumate Bostonian, Steve Jobs.

While we're mildly disappointed the slide show has no photos of a waxen James Michael Curley or a replica of Ted Williams's head, maybe they're saving the best for the unveiling.

Matt Viser posts a copy of Gov. Baker's statement that Massachusetts will join the new US Climate Alliance, announced yesterday by the governors of New York, California and Washington state to uphold and go beyond the Paris Agreement on climate change. Baker is, of course, a Republican; the other governors are Democrats.

The co-owner of what was initially billed as a family-friendly pizza place on Chestnut Hill Avenue now says he is spending every night at the front door, turning away 200 to 250 underage BC students trying to take advantage of his restaurant's beer and wine license.

"It's just shocking," Dimitrios Liakos, co-owner of Agoros Bar and Grille, told the Boston Licensing Board of his three weeks on doorman duty. "It's mind blowing to me. ... It's crazy. It's absolutely insane to see that many students go out with fake IDs and try to get in." And the students are persistent - he said one young woman has been trying for five weeks to get into the bar.

Liakos was before the board to answer the two most recent citations issued for underage drinking.

In one case, on April 6, police detectives said two underage BC students managed to worm their way to the bar. Liakos actually denied entry to one, a 19-year-old from Connecticut, but the guy then went to semi-separate pizza-by-the-slice area Agoros has, then, when nobody was looking, slipped through the door to the bar.

The second, a 20-year-old pal of his from DC, went out back and waited until a kitchen worker opened the back door to throw out trash, then slipped in through that door, detectives said. Detectives said that when they entered the bar area shortly before midnight, they found the two at the bar, enjoying Bud Lights.

In the second incident, on Feb. 17, an underage woman had the bad luck of hoisting a friend's beer to her lips just as detectives entered the restaurant and spied her. Although they agreed they had no evidence she purchased any beer herself, they said they confiscated a fraudulent West Virginia license from her.

Liakos said he's doing what he can to stem the tide - he asks particularly young would-be patrons the capital of the state their licenses are from, for their Zip code or for the name of their favorite restaurant in their alleged hometown; as police have learned, the kids often trip up in their answers. He said he paid $1,000 for a license scanner, but returned it after a couple weeks because it was approving too many fake IDs.

Board Chairwoman Christine Pulgini said that despite his night hours and the questioning, Liakos needs to do even more. She noted that the board cautioned Liakos before he opened last year in what was the former Roggie's, that he'd face a tough job keeping the young BC students away from alcohol.

"Obviously, your plan is not working out so far," she said, noting Agoros has faced other violations, including one in which a new bartender, himself an of-age BC student, was caught serving beers to underage BC students.

Pulgini suggested Liakos talk to the owner of another Cleveland Circle bar, which she didn't name, but which was obviously Mary Ann's, about how it has cleaned up its act and stayed out of trouble for the past year.

The board decides what action, if any, to take on the two citations at a meeting on Thursday.

Sampan reports a restaurant specializing in poke - sort of sushi in a bowl - is planning an outlet at 20 Tyler St.

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center plans to open a cafe in its mosque at 100 Malcolm X Blvd in Roxbury Crossing.

At a hearing before the Boston Licensing Board this morning, one mosque official said part of the reason for the Islamic Common Word cafe is so "the public can begin to come in and meet our congregation - times are such, they are difficult."

The cafe, which would be open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, would serve a variety of dishes from the countries from which mosque members come.

The board decides tomorrow whether to grant a food-serving license. The mayor's office and the offices of at-large City Councilors Ayanna Pressley and Annissa Essaibi-George supported the proposal. Nobody spoke against.

The Globe reports.

Maura Johnston found an interesting Craigslist listing for apartments available 9/1/17:

Location:
Our Harvard Avenue units are located between Brighton Avenue and Cambridge Street. Just a half block away you will find Store 24, Herrells Ice Cream, The Kells, Harpers Ferry, Blanchards, Big City, and Redneck's Pizza. These apartments truly are in the middle of everything.

The National Weather Service is looking at temps near 70 by Wednesday, which the forecasters note is "well above normal." Also, the balmy temps could be accompanied by lots and lots of rain, possibly in the form of thunderstorms.

Then, of course, since this is New England, we could get some snow over the weekend, possibly in the form of two fast-moving "clipper" storms.

Today’s 9th Circuit decision is a bit less of a big deal than it will play in the press tomorrow; it will play big both because of the high stakes of the current litigation and because of some rhetorical excess in the opinion itself. The hype is also a function of the fact that had the court issued the stay the government sought, that would have been a very big deal as it would have caused the order to snap back into effect just as suddenly as President Trump loosed it on the world the other day.

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So this stay denial is something of a dog that didn’t bark—but didn’t bark very loudly.

Let’s deal with the moral throat clearing and virtue signaling of the opinion first. Lawyers dream about becoming judges, particularly 9th Circuit judges, to write opinions like this. So phrases about how the President is not above the law, and citations to cases like Endo and Ex Parte Milligan are inevitable, as are the arch and clucking dismissals of presidential demands for deference in national security cases and the intoning of the fact that it’s the job of the judiciary to say what the law is. Ignore all that stuff. It’s exciting. It’s fun to read. It’s a reminder that we live in interesting and dangerous times. But it’s not ultimately what this case turns on.

This case is about two big questions, only one of which the panel’s per curiam today even mentions. The first question is how broad the president’s authority is to limit admissions from the relevant seven countries—and to what extent that authority is limited by constitutional law—under a statute that gives him the sweeping power to do this:

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this statute, which forms the principal statutory basis for the executive order (see Sections 3(c), 5(c), and 5(d) of the order). That’s a pretty big omission over 29 pages, including several pages devoted to determining the government’s likelihood of success on the merits of the case.

The other question, one the panel does discuss, is the extent to which the repeated and overt invocations of the most invidious motivations on the part of the President himself, his campaign, his adviser, and his Twitter feed will render an otherwise valid exercise of this power invalid. This is what Eric Posner is getting at when he tweets:

Trump's tweets will haunt him for *all* national security actions going forward, interfering even with legitimate gov action pic.twitter.com/5gLKGJQl2l

— Eric Posner (@EricAPosner) February 10, 2017

The Ninth Circuit is correct to leave the TRO in place, in my view, for the simple reason that there is no cause to plunge the country into turmoil again while the courts address the merits of these matters over the next few weeks. Are there tea leaves to read in this opinion? There sure are, particularly with respect to the judges’ analysis of the government’s likelihood of prevailing on the merits and its blithe dismissal of the government’s claims of national security necessity on pages 26-27—a matter on which the per curiam spends only one sentence and one brief footnote.

But it’s worth emphasizing that the grounds on which this order was fought are not the grounds on which the merits fight will happen. Eventually, the court has to confront the clash between a broad delegation of power to the President—a delegation which gives him a lot of authority to do a lot of not-nice stuff to refugees and visa holders—in a context in which judges normally defer to the president, and the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated.

• @benjaminwittes