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Welcome to the pit, Rep. Kinzinger

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Adam Kinzinger has joined Liz Cheney in the purgatory pit of the once-Grand Old Party.

What did the two Republican members of Congress do to qualify for the roles as political pariahs? All they did was stand by the Constitution and vote to impeach Donald J. Trump while Trump was still president of the United States.

They aren’t the only lawmakers headed to the Trump cultists’ version of hell. Eight others also voted with their Democratic colleagues on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for the second time in his term as president.

Cheney’s tenure as the No. 3 ranking member of the GOP caucus is now being threatened by the Trump suck-ups within Congress. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida ventured to Wyoming to drum up support for someone to mount a primary challenge against Rep. Cheney in 2022.

We are witnessing in real time the cratering of a once-great political party. Adam Kinzinger is looking to create a new conservative political action committee dedicated to what he calls real conservative values.

Politico reported: “Look it’s really difficult. I mean, all of a sudden imagine everybody that supported you, or so it seems that way, your friends, your family, has turned against you. They think you’re selling out,” the Illinois congressman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rep. Kinzinger: They claim ‘I’m possessed by the devil’ – POLITICO

The visible and conscious anger being expressed by many Republicans against those who dared to challenge their guy in the White House has drawn some fierce push back in the media … from some surprising sources, I should add.

Chris Wallace, the Fox News Channel stalwart, over the weekend suggested that Republicans should devote more of their energy toward condemning the spewage that comes from QAnon conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and less time criticizing those who followed their conscience and the Constitution in impeaching Donald Trump.

Adam Kinzinger’s family and friends accuse of him being “possessed by the devil.” That kind of idiocy tells me all I need to know about what has infected the GOP.

International news

BLM = Nobel Peace Prize? Hold on!

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(Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Black Lives Matter is a movement with a noble mission: calling attention to unequal treatment by police agencies toward people of color.

That nobility, though, has been shattered by outbreaks of violence in the name of BLM. We have seen it in cities across the land and, yes, around the world.

It is that violence that gives me pause as I consider that a Norwegian lawmaker has nominated BLM for the Nobel Peace Prize. We all should hail the nomination, as it seeks to do enormous good. However, the impact of the BLM movement has produced a whole lot of suffering, loss of life, damage to property and to communities’ reputations.

I have difficulty with the nomination.

As Fox News reported: In his nomination papers, Norwegian (member of Parliament) Petter Eide said the movement forced nations to reckon with racism and other injustices, The Guardian reported. 

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” he wrote. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (mercurynews.com)

I cannot for one second dispute what Eide said about the effect BLM has had on the worldwide discussion of racial inequality. The nomination, though, ignores the collateral damage inflicted by the looters, rioters and all-around bad guys whose conduct has erupted in violence.

Eide noted in his nominating statement that “most of the demonstrations organized by Black Lives Matter have been peaceful.” Most of them? OK, fair enough. That doesn’t wipe away the violence we have witnessed.

I detest the way the term “Black Lives Matter” has been been bastardized by foes of BLM who suggest the movement intends to say that “only Black Lives Matter.” It does nothing of the sort. It states only that the lives of African-Americans and other racial minorities matter as much as everyone else. 

I know we don’t live in a perfect world. Thus, BLM’s noble intention has been perverted by too many hangers-on who seek to escalate what should be a peaceful message into something radically more violent.

Uncategorized

Sod Poodles to play ball?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This message ought to be directed to the couple of Amarillo soreheads who have chastised me for commenting on the city’s minor league baseball team because I no longer live in the Texas Panhandle.

My strong hope is that the Amarillo Sod Poodles will play ball this spring and summer. My stronger hope is to be able to watch the Sod Poodles play hardball, although it is not likely I’ll be able to do so at Hodgetown.

I won’t give up on the notion of attending a Sod Poodles game at the downtown Amarillo ballpark. The greater likelihood will be that I will watch ’em and yell for ’em while sitting in the Frisco Roughriders park, which is a whole lot closer to our home in Princeton.

I had intended to attend a Roughriders game vs. the Soddies in 2020. Then the pandemic wiped out the Texas League season. The Sod Poodles couldn’t defend the league title they won in their initial season in 2019.

A new season well might commence in a few months. I am awaiting the shout to “play ball!”

We have friends who attend ballgames regularly … when they’re playing ball. If we get an invitation to join them when the Sod Poodles come to the Metroplex, we’ll accept.

We might not wait for the invitation. I truly am looking forward to watching the team that has created all the buzz in the Texas Panhandle.

local news, State news

Listen up: Texas cannot secede!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Is it OK to presume that every state legislative body has a wacky caucus in its ranks? If so, then Texas isn’t alone in the legislative wackiness that presents itself from time to time.

Consider this from a Republican state representative, Kyle Biedermann of Fredericksburg, who has pitched a resolution calling for a statewide election to determine whether Texas can secede from the Union.

Yes, the secessionists have returned! Oh, my. When does the madness stop? Don’t answer that. I know that it will never stop. It will never end.

The Texas Tribune reports what many of us know already, that the state cannot secede legally. The Civil War took care of that, right?

Texas seceded once already, joining the Confederacy in trying to break apart the United States of America. It went to war against the government, against fellow Americans. The issue? Slavery. The Civil War ended correctly, with the Union prevailing.

The Tribune wrote this about Biedermann’s idea:

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” he said in a statement announcing the legislation.

The bill d oesn’t appear to have much of a chance. And even if it did, experts say, Texas can’t just secede.

“The legality of seceding is problematic,” Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune in 2016. “The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.”

Texas can’t secede from the U.S. Here’s why. | The Texas Tribune

Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836. We joined the Union in 1845, adopting a resolution that contained language that said the state could partition itself into four parts if it wanted. Indeed, a former Texas Panhandle legislator, David Swinford of Dumas, once pitched the notion as recently as 1991. I asked Rep. Swinford whether he meant it as a serious proposal … and he did not say he was joking. 

Secession, though, is a non-starter. The Tribune cites a bit of wisdom offered by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “The answer is clear,” Scalia wrote. “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘one Nation, indivisible.’)”

Uncategorized

Is it constitutional? Yes!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s Senate suck-ups are making what I believe is a specious argument about the constitutionality of a pending Senate trial of the former president of the United States.

Here is what the nation’s founding government document says about impeachment in Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to the law.

That in effect is the sum of what the Constitution lays out.

Trump is going to stand trial a second time. The Senate acquitted him the first time on multiple charges of abuse of power and coercing a foreign government. This time he is standing trial on a single charge that he incited an insurrection.

He left office on Jan. 20, meaning that he cannot be “removed” from an office he no longer occupies.

But let’s parse the language of what the founders wrote, OK?

They wrote that “judgment shall not extend further than to removal from Office.” The way I read that clause means that removal from office is the maximum punishment that a conviction that deliver. It doesn’t preclude any other judgment.

If one is to take an “originalist” view of the Constitution — acknowledging what the founders intended when they wrote it — then one could presume that the brilliant men who crafted the document would accept the idea of putting a former president on trial.

But … the suck-ups in the Senate are likely to stand firm in their cowardly attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump’s lunatic base of voters who would threaten them if they do the right thing.

national news

Trump team bales out?

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal, legal circumstances the decision by Donald Trump’s legal team to bale out of a pending defense of their client would have me clapping my hands.

As idiotic as the former president’s strategy reportedly is playing out, though, I am going to withhold any hope that there might be an actual conviction coming from the upcoming trial in the U.S. Senate.

Trump is getting ready to stand trial on a charge that he incited the insurrection that occurred on the Sixth of January. He did as has been accused. I saw it. You saw it. The world saw Trump whip the crowd into a frenzy before it marched on Capitol Hill. The House impeached him for it. The Senate will put him on trial even though he has left office.

Trump’s legal team exited the scene reportedly over a disagreement with its client on defense strategy. The lawyers wanted to defend Trump on the basis of a constitutional argument, that the impeachment trial doesn’t fit the Constitution’s provision for removal from office if a conviction is the result. I believe that’s a long shot legal argument.

But then we have Trump wanting the legal eagles to argue on the basis of The Big Lie, that there was widespread vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They declined. Then they walked. Who can blame them? Trump’s argument is moronic in the extreme.

So now Trump has no legal team to defend him against the House impeachment. Should he sweat it? No. Why? Because this isn’t strictly a legal trial being conducted in a court of law. The Senate is going to deliver, more than likely, a political verdict. Senators likely already have made up their mind. Heck, 45 GOP senators voted that the trial is unconstitutional, which suggests to me that the Senate is far from likely to convict, given that the Constitution calls for 67 senators to vote for it; a 50-50 Senate split requires 17 Republicans to make that call.

About the only thing the reporting of the lawyers bugging out tells me is that Trump is clinging to a ridiculous notion that has nothing to do with the issue at hand: Did he incite the terrorist mob to attack the Capitol with the intent of stopping Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election?

Umm. Yeah. He damn sure did!

national news

Elections have consequences!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I hear it one more time my head is likely to explode.

It is that Donald Trump’s supporters’ mantra that their guy pulled in 74.2 million votes in the 2020 presidential election, which means — by God — that they won’t be silenced.

OK. I got it. Here is another truth about that election: President Biden garnered 81.2 million votes, 7 million more than Trump; moreover, he won the Electoral College with 306 votes, needing 270 to win the presidency.

Biden won. Trump lost. Elections, as the saying goes, have consequences!

A democratic society requires that losing candidates accept defeat, congratulate the winner, pledge to work together … and yes, also keep pushing for whatever agenda he or she sought during a losing campaign. Donald Trump didn’t do that. He hasn’t done that yet. He apparently will never do any of it.

Instead, he is leading his minions on some sort of call of defiance, ginning up their enthusiasm for a campaign that did not resonate with most Americans who voted in record numbers.

I know what some of you might be thinking. What about the 2016 election when supporters of Hillary Clinton yapped about their candidate getting more votes than Trump? There is no parallel. Clinton pulled in about 3 million more votes than Trump, but lost the Electoral College by the same amount that Trump lost to Biden. There were those who said their voices needed to be heard. Why? Because their candidate collected more rank-and-file support than the actual winner. I was not one of those individuals.

Yes, I was highly critical of Donald Trump during his term as president, but I also recognized that the Constitution prescribes a certain way that candidates win presidential elections, and in 2016 Trump met that standard.

The 2020 result was clear cut. The actual vote comported with the Electoral College vote. So, when the Trumpkin Corps yaps about their guy winning 74.2 million votes, I am left to shrug and say: So fu**ing what? 

The other guy got more votes than your guy! Your guy lost. The Trumpkins have every right to express their point of view; the Constitution is clear about that. But … do not rely on the tired mantra that just because the losing candidate for president won a lot of votes that it means he can still have his way.

Donald Trump said it himself after hearing the gripes of those who supported his opponent four years ago: Elections have consequences.

local news

Hoping to de-fang Empower Texans

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My wish list for the 2021 Texas Legislature is fairly modest, given the constraints the pandemic has placed before governing bodies all across the nation.

I want to offer this modest wish for our legislators: Do not let Empower Texans call the shots on your agenda.

Empower Texans, in my view, is a truly detestable political action committee. It is led by a guy named Michael Quinn Sullivan, a fellow I do not know but he is someone about whom I have heard plenty.

He stuck a shiv in former House Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s back in 2019, recording a meeting he and Bonnen had in which Bonnen gave him the names of 10 Republican legislators that Empower Texans could target for defeat. He recorded the event with Bonnen’s knowledge.

He and his PAC have meddled in GOP primaries throughout the state, including in the Texas Panhandle, where I lived for 23 years before moving to Dallas area two years ago. He has sought to defeat fine legislators, friends of mine … so perhaps my anger is a bit too personal. But it is what it is, you know?

I just want Empower Texans to be kept at arm’s length. The PAC is too rigid to suit me, as a taxpaying Texan. I do not want this outfit to “empower” me in any fashion.

My plea, then, goes directly to two men: Republican state Sen. Drew Springer and Republican state Rep. Scott Sanford. They represent me in the Legislature.

Stay away from Empower Texans. Got it? Good!

medical news

Stay focused on COVID

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the many — seemingly countless — blessings of the new presidential administration is its telling us the truth daily about the pandemic that is still killing too many Americans.

President Biden is letting the scientific team he has assembled talk to us about the COVID crisis; he is staying out of the way and out of the limelight.

We aren’t hearing happy talk from the White House about how we have the virus “under control,” nor are we hearing from the president how we should employ miracle cures, such as injecting household cleaners into our bodies.

I keep hearing snippets of good news, about how the hospitalization rate is showing a modest, but steady decline. The virus continues to sicken too many of us; it is killing too many of us as well.

We are hearing the truth, finally, from the people in charge about how this fight against the pandemic is proceeding. I will listen to the scientists and just like with his predecessor, I will effectively disregard any political diagnosis from President Biden about the status of that conflict.

national news

Trump library? Really?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This thought comes from a member of my family, but it’s so good I have to share it here.

We talked about whether Donald Trump is going to build a presidential library. My own thought is that it is impossible to couch this man’s tenure in office in any positive light, given the horrendous end he brought to it: the insurrection that capped off his refusal to accept defeat at the hands of President Biden, not to mention the two House impeachments and Senate trials.

However, the conversation this morning turned to this idea: Donald Trump won’t build a free-standing structure, but instead will have a room set aside in one of his posh hotels.

As my family member noted: He can put it between the workout room and the breakfast buffet.

I now open the floor for comments. I happen to think that is a workable idea.

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