Uncategorized

AG Paxton certainly is a ‘public employee’

(Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is making yet another dubious argument that requires a comment from, oh, this blog.

Paxton’s legal team is arguing that as an elected official he is exempt from being held accountable for a whistleblower allegation that he has broken several laws in the conduct of his public office.

As the Texas Tribune reports: The Texas attorney general’s office is attempting to fight off efforts by four former aides to take depositions and issue subpoenas in their lawsuit claiming they were illegally fired after telling authorities they believed Attorney General Ken Paxton was breaking the law.

The agency is arguing that Paxton is “not a public employee,” and thus the office cannot be sued under the Texas Whistleblower Act, which aims to protect government workers from retaliation when they report superiors for breaking the law.

I beg to differ. Strenuously, actually. You see, the attorney general draws his salary from the public trough. Who provides the money for that salary? We do! You and I pay that money. That means the attorney general is a “public employee.”

He works for us!

Also, from the Texas Tribune: Four former Paxton aides claim they were fired in retaliation for telling authorities they believed Paxton had done illegal favors for a political donor, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul. The whistleblowers’ allegations have reportedly sparked an FBI investigation.

Texas AG’s office argues whistleblower laws don’t apply to Ken Paxton | The Texas Tribune

Ken Paxton ought to resign as attorney general. He needs to free the public office from the embarrassment he brings to it … and to those of us who pay his salary!

2016 election, national news

Hey, Sen. Graham, GOP is already destroyed

(AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt, John Locher, File)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Lindsey Graham, arguably Donald Trump’s most loyal U.S. Senate toadie, said impeaching Trump could “divide” the country even more and — I love this part! — could “destroy the Republican Party.”

I have news for the South Carolinian: The Republican Party already is badly damaged and well might be destroyed … thanks to the cult of personality planted and nurtured by Donald Trump.

Good ever-lovin’ almighty God in heaven! Graham himself has become suckered, snookered and snowed by Trump. Back when Graham was competing against Trump for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, he called Trump everything but the spawn of Satan. He was “unfit” for public office, Graham said, and he was right!

Then the carnival barker got elected president and Graham climbed aboard the Trump clown car parade.

The Republican Party would be “destroyed” by impeaching Trump? is this clown serious?

The Senate will put Trump on trial a second time in due course. He’ll be out of office and gone for good from the White House. The very structure of the Grand Old Party, I hasten to add, is just one of the many collateral casualties felled by this individual’s toxic tenure as president.

A party that once stood for fiscal prudence, taking a hard line against dictators and offering itself as a “big tent” organization has been plowed asunder by the self-serving designs of Donald Trump.

Get a grip, Sen. Graham. The party you once knew — what we all knew — appears headed for the trash heap unless it finds a way to rebuild itself into a responsible political organization.

Lindsey Graham can thank only Donald Trump and those — such as Graham himself — who bought into this con man’s lie for the damage that has been done to the once-great political party.

national news, political news

This experiment failed … bigly

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It can be proclaimed forever and ever that the Great American Experiment in Unconventional Politicians has turned out to be a monumental failure.

Yep! I feel quite comfortable making that declaration.

Donald John Trump won election in 2016 in what I consider to be the Mother of All Flukes. He swore an oath to protect the Constitution, our government and us. He failed.

What has been the price of that failure? For him? Well, he is the first president in history to be impeached twice. He got past the first impeachment because only one Republican senator — Mitt Romney of Utah — had the courage to convict him of abusing the power of his office. The rest of the GOP caucus cowered in fear of Trump.

As egregious as the first impeachment allegations were — soliciting political favors from a foreign government — they pale in comparison to what transpired on Jan. 6.

Trump fomented a violent insurrection on the Capitol Building which at that moment contained members of Congress and the vice president who were doing their duty to ratify an election that Trump lost. He didn’t buy into that reality. Hence, he exhorted the terrorists/rioters to march on Capitol Hill.

So now he is impeached again. President-elect Biden becomes president of the United States in six days. The Senate will put Trump on trial once more. There stands a still-slim — but possibly growing — chance that he’ll be convicted, even though he will be out of office. The impeachment article contains a provision that bans Trump from ever seeking public office again. Hmm. That might be sufficient incentive for enough GOP senators to join their Democratic colleagues in banning this clown from the White House forever.

A man with zero public service experience on his record flim-flammed his way into the presidency by promising that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s problems. We knew he was a phony and a fraud. We knew about the refusal to release his tax returns. We knew about the groping of women. We knew that he disrespected our military veterans and our valiant prisoners of war. We knew about his penchant for cozying up to dictators. We knew of his mocking of disabled people.

We knew all of that. Yet he got elected anyway.

His quest to “make America great again” failed as well, chiefly because America has already is great.

The country has demonstrated its greatness by turning away from the failed experiment of electing a novice politician to the nation’s highest office.

The experiment was doomed from the beginning … as many of us knew would be the case.

national news

More to the D.C. riot story?

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A North Texas chief of police blurted something out the other day that caught me by surprise.

I won’t reveal his identity, as he doesn’t know I am writing this, but he sent a chill up my spine when he said it.

He mentioned a conversation he had with a classmate who attended the FBI Academy with him; the classmate is now employed by a D.C.-area police agency. He said “there’s a lot more to the story” behind the Capitol Building insurrection than we’ve been told.

A lot more? I asked. Tell me the rest of the story, I implored the chief. He couldn’t speak candidly with me at that moment, so I let the conversation lapse.

It comports, though, with what is beginning to be reported about theories regarding the source of the riot that erupted after Donald Trump incited the rioters to march on Capitol Hill the morning of Jan. 6. We’re hearing investigations into possible collusion — yep, there’s that word again — between members of Congress and leaders of the mob that had descended on Washington to contest Congress’s constitutional duty to ratify President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

The House of Representatives, of course, took swift action Wednesday by impeaching Trump for the second time, just a week before he exits the office and clears the way for Joe Biden.

Something tells me — I don’t know what that “something” is — that we might, indeed, learn a lot more than we ever thought we would learn about what transpired immediately prior to the rebellion we witnessed in real time.

DC riot, national news

Cheney feeling heat for voting her conscience

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Liz Cheney listened to her conscience today when she cast a vote to impeach Donald J. Trump.

The Wyoming Republican joined nine other GOP House members to align with House Democrats in impeaching Trump for inciting an insurrection. He exhorted the riotous mob into storming the Capitol Building a week ago, putting every member of Congress — as well as Vice President Mike Pence — in dire jeopardy.

Yep, it’s an impeachable offense.

But now her fellow Republican, Jim Jordan, wants to strip her of her leadership role in the GOP congressional caucus. Jordan is a fervent Trumpkin, figuring that fealty for the man is more valuable than adhering to the oath they all take to defend the Constitution.

Jordan, one of the House’s more nauseating blowhards, has misplaced his priorities. He should be ashamed of himself rather than seeking to shame a colleague who saw fit to punish a lame-duck president for an egregious breach of the sacred oath he took.

How in the world can that be a bad thing? Well, in Jordan’s perverted view, Rep. Cheney should have remained loyal to the president, to the bulk of the GOP caucus and said to hell with the Constitution and the rule of law.

I happen to believe Rep. Liz Cheney and the other Republicans who joined her deserve to be saluted, not scorned.

As for Jim Jordan … he is a bum.

local news, State news

Good luck, Speaker Phelan

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Dade Phelan Era has commenced in the Texas House of Representatives and — wouldn’t you know it — he already is taking some incoming fire from those on the far right wing of his Republican Party.

Phelan is the newly elected speaker of the House. He is a Beaumont Republican who had the temerity to suggest he wants to work well with Democrats who comprise a substantial minority of the 150-member legislative body.

One of the two House members who voted against Phelan happens to be freshman GOP Rep. Bryan Slaton of Royse City, who said in a statement that he voted against Phelan because the new speaker is someone “who has refused to articulate to Republicans whether or not he believes we should have a true conservative session.”

Dade Phelan elected speaker of the Texas House | The Texas Tribune

What the hell does that mean? Is Slaton suggesting that Phelan’s more bipartisan approach will result in more dreaded “liberal policies” that Slaton and other right wingers cannot support? Slaton is parroting the language used by Texas GOP chairman Allen West, the transplanted Florida fire breather who moved to Texas and got elected party chairman this past year. West doesn’t much like Phelan’s approach, either.

I want to remind everyone here that bipartisanship has worked well for previous speakers of the Texas House. My favorite example of the success of that approach involves former Speaker Pete Laney, the Hale Center Democrat who hardly  legislated as a flaming liberal when he served as the Man of the House. He reached across the aisle frequently and governed on the policy of letting “the will of the House” do its job.

“We must all do our part — not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Texans and Americans,” Phelan said. “Let us unite in one common purpose to do what is right for the people of Texas.”

Wow. That’s hardly lifted from the Communist Manifesto.

I want to wish the new speaker well as he takes the gavel. It likely will be a difficult session that will demand that everyone search fervently for “one common purpose.”

national news

Trump makes history!

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well …

Let’s just start by acknowledging that Donald John Trump has crossed into the realm of “history-making president.”

The U.S. House of Representatives today impeached Trump for the second time in his single term as president of the United States. That’s for the history books, man.

Here’s another history-making aspect: 10 Republican House members joined their Democratic colleagues in casting “yes” votes on impeachment.

Is the president standing tall today after this event? Hardly.

He will walk out of the White House for the final time no later than Jan. 19, when he high-tails it to Florida a day ahead of President Biden’s inaugural.

I reject the notion that this impeachment is overly divisive, or that it tears at the nation’s quest for unity. Donald Trump has done a marvelous job all by himself of widening the divide among Americans. The vote today — 232-197 — does not signal an increase in that chasm. To me it merely signals the start of another political era, one that highlights restoration of the presidency.

To be sure, there now will be a Senate trial. It will occur after Trump is gone. I am not even close to believing that the Senate will muster up the two-thirds majority it needs to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” but it might.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the leading Senate Republican, expressed support for impeachment. That means he could vote to convict Trump of inciting that riot on Capitol Hill. Were he to make that declaration ahead of a vote, it could provide some form of political cover for other Republican senators who otherwise might want to hide in the weeds.

To my ears, I heard nothing that gave me pause for supporting Trump’s impeachment today. All I heard from many of Trump’s defenders were “what about” arguments from those who said, “What about those protests last summer?” or “What about Democrats who endorsed the violence then?”

What happened then has nothing to do with what Donald Trump did this past week? He incited a mob to storm the seat of our democratic government and to seek to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

For that act, Donald Trump made history today by becoming the nation’s first-ever two-time impeached president.

Nice going, Mr. President. Now … get the hell out of my house!

Uncategorized

Liz Cheney: Profile in courage

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Stand tall, Liz Cheney.

The third-term Wyoming member of Congress today cast a vote that well could cost Cheney her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She voted to impeach Donald Trump on an allegation of “incitement of insurrection.” Why is this courageous? Consider the following …

She represents an entire state that has just a single House seat apportioned to it. Wyoming, moreover, cast just a shade less than 70 percent of its votes for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. That means that Cheney’s “congressional district” is one of the most pro-Trump districts in the nation.

This vote today well could put Cheney’s political career in jeopardy if it angers enough of the Trumpsters out there who stand by their guy no matter what. Not only that, GOP hardliners in the House are considering how to respond to their colleague’s decision to break ranks with the Trump base of supporters in Congress.

I salute Rep. Cheney for standing on the principle of standing for the Constitution and forgoing allegiance to an individual politician.

Read Liz Cheney’s full statement in support of Trump’s impeachment – POLITICO

I hasten to add that Liz Cheney comes from rock-ribbed Republican political tradition. She is the daughter of Dick Cheney who served, in order, as a congressman from Wyoming, White House chief of staff for President Ford, secretary of defense in the Bush 41 administration and vice president of the United States in the Bush 43 administration.

Whatever political threat she might face — from her House colleagues or from the voters at home — for standing up for the rule of law apparently didn’t faze Liz Cheney.

I applaud her courage.

national news

Debate is brisk, but unconvincing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The House of Representatives is winding down its debate over whether to impeach Donald J. Trump.

It’s been brisk, impassioned, fast-moving, mostly mannerly to the great credit of politicians on both sides of the great divide.

It also has been wholly unconvincing to me. I also suspect it has changed a single mind among those who believe the impeachment is a non-starter.

To my mind and heart, Trump committed an impeachable act when he told the rioters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “take back the country.” He should be impeached. He is about to be impeached a second time and put on trial — eventually — in the Senate.

Trump will be gone from the office next week. My hope is that the Senate will convict him and deny him the chance to seek federal public office ever again.

national news

It’s a ‘go’ for impeachment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The die is cast in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Vice President Mike Pence is not going to push for Donald Trump’s removal via the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment. Trump isn’t likely to resign.

That leaves the House only with the impeachment option. It will follow that course today with one specific aim, it appears to me. It is to prevent Trump from ever seeking public office again … forever.

A House impeachment will land in the Senate likely after Trump leaves office, so removal from the presidency doesn’t appear to be an option. That leaves the House impeachment managers with the task of persuading two-thirds of the Senate to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” which carries a lifetime punishment of keeping him from seeking office.

You know what? I am more than fine with that. Yes, I had argued earlier that the Senate could return immediately and commence an expedited trial.

That won’t happen.

You know the story. Trump incited the rioters to stampede up Capitol Hill, where they stormed into the Capitol Building itself where Congress was performing its constitutional duty to certify President Biden’s victory over Trump on Nov. 3. Trump argues to this moment the election was “stolen.” It wasn’t. Yet he sought to actually prevent Congress from doing what it was obligated to do in ratifying an Electoral College victory for Biden.

He sought to subvert the democratic process. Indeed, many of the rioters were seen with nooses, zip ties, they shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” and shouted out “Where’s Nancy (Pelosi, speaker of the House)?”

Can there be a conviction, given that it would require 17 GOP senators to cross over? Two days ago it looked impossible. Today, not so much. GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is said to be supportive of the impeachment effort, signaling a willingness to convict Trump when the Senate receives the single impeachment article. That suggestion might open the door for other Senate Republicans to join him. I can think of at least three others who are in the “convict Trump” category.

Trump’s days as president are all but over. The rest of the story still needs to play out. I want him banished from seeking federal public office.

It’s not too much to ask our senators to show courage and fealty to something other than to Donald Trump … you know, such as the oath they took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. 

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